(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with MAHLE Engine Components USA, in Atlantic, have announced plans to relocate much of the Atlantic plant’s bearing production lines to other company engine component facilities. While it’s anticipated the move will occur by April 2025, plating operations will remain in Atlantic.

Officials say the change is in response to continuously intensified competitive pressure.

MAHLE has 160 employees in Atlantic. The company says it aims to minimize the impact on the employees affected by the closure and find solutions that are as socially responsible as possible.

MAHLE Engine Components USA plant in Atlantic, IA

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Cass County Extension will be celebrating all things 4-H during National 4-H Week October 1-7. Now is the time of year for youth to join and participate in 4-H, a worldwide youth development program, hosted in Iowa by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.

Cass County 4-H will be hosting a Fall Fest on Sunday, October 8th from 2:00-4:00pm at the Cass County Fairgrounds. The community is invited to come out for an afternoon of family fun! Current 4-H members will be at the event to celebrate 4-H. All are welcome to join in on the fun and see what 4-H all is about.

“We have a variety of fun activities planned which will showcase some of the project areas with hands-on activities, games and fun at our Fall Fest October 8th!” says Katie Bateman, County Youth Coordinator with Cass County Extension. “A 4-H information booth and snacks will be available from 2:00-4:00pm!”

Fall Fest will be a fun event for all ages to come out and celebrate National 4-H Week! You are invited to follow Cass County 4-H on Facebook page, www.facebook.com/CassCoIAExt or search for “Cass County Iowa 4H” on Instagram.

Keep an eye out for Cass County 4-H members, volunteers, and supporters showing their 4-H pride during National 4-H Week. Many of our local 4-H clubs will be creating window displays in local businesses. Other clubs will be doing special events and activities during the week such as wearing 4-H shirts to school or doing service projects around their community!

In addition, the Iowa 4-H Foundation and Cass County 4-H are partnering to host the Iowa 4-H Giving Day (www.iowa4Hgivingday.org), a special 24-hour event, on October 3rd at noon until October 4th at noon. Each year on Iowa 4-H Giving Day, supporters and alumni across the state come together to financially support Iowa’s largest youth organization, to ensure these opportunities continue to be available to youth across the state and at the county level. 4-H supporters can donate online or in person to support programs at the county or state level!

“4-H is a year-round program for youth in grades Kindergarten through 12. National 4-H Week is a great time to show some the wonderful things 4-H offers to youth,” stated Bateman. “In fact, research has shown that young people in 4-H are nearly four times as likely to contribute to their communities and are twice as likely to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs during after school time.”

4-H is active in each of Iowa’s 99 counties and empowers youth to reach their full potential through many different types of experiences including photography, music, woodworking, sewing, livestock and horticulture. 4-H grows confidence, creativity, curiosity, courage, character and much more in youth. 4-H allows youth to use the skills that they learn to go out and make a positive difference in their communities.

Cass County 4-H has more than 300 4-H youth and 100 volunteers involved in the program. Interested in joining 4-H? Contact the Cass County Extension Office at 712-243-1132 or visit the Cass County Extension website at www.extension.iastate.edu/cass.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says the Biden Administration has reversed course and will not block hunter safety and archery programs in Iowa’s schools. Ernst says Biden made the decision after she pushed back on the idea of ending the popular programs.

(Radio Iowa) –  The Board of Regents has approved a plan for Iowa State University to tear down LeBaron Hall and replace it with a new building. I-S-U’s Shawn Norman says LeBaron Hall was built in 1952 and has had no significant renovation since its original construction. He says replacing the building would address their concerns and offer a contemporary learning environment to encourage independent learning and leadership development.

New LaBaron classroom design (ISU photo)

Students in the apparel, merchandising and design program would use the new production labs and teaching spaces. Construction is expected to start in September 2024 and will be completed by summer of 2026. The estimated project budget is 39 million dollars to be funded by private giving and university funds.

(Radio Iowa) – The labor union representing more than two-thousand graduate assistants at the University of Iowa is demanding higher wages, saying the current minimum 26-thousand dollar salary isn’t enough. Natalie McClellan is a third year P-H-D student and she represents COGS, the graduate student worker union at the U-I.  McClellan says, “Our demand was to keep up with inflation but keeping up with inflation, which can go up and down, it’s not accounting for what it would actually take to have a living wage.”

The union and the Iowa Board of Regents agreed to that 26-thousand minimum last March during negotiations, but McClellan says the reality is, the wages don’t cover costs like housing, transportation and food. The regents are asking the legislature to increase funding for the state’s three public universities, but McClellan says any increased funding needs to benefit the workforce. “Okay, you’re asking for more money for the university system,” she says. “How is that going to benefit us as the people who are making it go.”

During the regents’ Wednesday meeting in Iowa City, protesters organized by the union shut down proceedings. Regents President Pro Tem Sherry Bates had to raise her voice to adjourn the meeting.

The union is using M-I-T’s Living Wage Calculator that accounts for costs like transportation and housing. Assuming a 40-hour work week, it says a single person with no kids in Johnson County needs a pre-tax salary of 35-thousand dollars. The U-I estimates a 25-percent increase in graduate student wages would cost the system nearly 14-million dollars. Just this month, the Regents requested an additional 15-million dollars from the state for the 2025 fiscal year.

(Fontanelle, Iowa) – A property management firm in Nebraska has purchased a former care facility in Adair County. Officials with Zoul Properties, LLC, said they bought the 24,000 square-foot Good Samaritan Society-Fontanelle building. The building was left vacant when the facility closed its doors in November 2022 as the result of operating challenges faced in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Zoul said they intend to redevelop and renovate the building into an apartment community. The property will be converted into 25 apartments consisting of one and two-bedroom apartments and have features like a community room and laundry facility. The investment by Zoul Properties is expected to be $1 million, according to a press release. Renovation work is expected to kick off late this year and continue through the summer of 2024, with residential apartments available for lease and occupancy shortly thereafter.

Zoul Properties manages apartment properties in Iowa and four other Midwestern states. One of their other properties is in Adair. In Iowa, third party property management is provided by Iowa West Realty, a division of Zoul Properties.

(Radio Iowa) – That moose is still on the loose in northwest Iowa. D-N-R conservation officer Joey Yarkosky has covered Clay and O’Brien counties for eight years and says it’s a first for him. “It’s really unusual, especially for Iowa,” Yarkosky says. “Having breeding populations of moose, you’ve really gotta go up to northern Minnesota. They would have moose that would wander, especially a young bull like this, would wander south in different territory, so to make it all the way down in Iowa, it’s really pretty unique and he’s still on the move, so we’ll see where he heads to from here.”

Last week, the moose was photographed on the outskirts of Sioux Center. It appears he made a turn at Orange City and headed east, being spotted in recent days near Ruthven and Gillett Grove. Yarkosky is pleading with the public to keep its distance in hopes the moose can find its way home. “We hope so, that’s always our hope for a positive outcome, especially if we get some unique species of animals we usually don’t see,” Yarkosky says. “We always hope that they stay away from roads and people are alert as well, too, and we just hope that they give it space and then he could return back to his habitat, where it came from.”

Moose in a field in Sioux County. (Sioux Center PD Facebook photo)

He says not only is it disrespectful to crowd the moose, it’s also dangerous.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With a government shutdown looming, U.S. Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) today (Thursday) wrote a letter to the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives requesting his pay be withheld until the government is funded.

“Members of Congress have a responsibility to the American people to work together to resolve our differences, responsibly cut wasteful spending, and protect the critical programs that Americans rely on,” Rep. Nunn said in the letter. “Congress’s failure to do so will imminently subject many Americans to painful decisions about their budget.  Members of Congress must not live by a different set of rules than the people they are sworn to serve, and as such, I do not believe it is appropriate for Members of Congress to collect a paycheck during a government shutdown.”

Rep. Nunn’s letter can be found here.

(Rural Guthrie Center, Iowa) – An SUV vehicle struck a deer on the road Wednesday night, in Guthrie County. The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Office reports the accident happened on northbound Highway 25, near 280th Street south of Guthrie Center, a little after 8-p.m.  The 2010 Jeep Liberty driven was driven by 57-year-old Loni Sue Anderson, of Shelby. Anderson was not injured. Her vehicle sustained about $4,000 damage.