Police in Creston, Wednesday night, arrested 28-year old Jullian Allison, of Creston, on a Union County warrant for Contempt of Court. The warrant was for Failure to Appear on a Child Support matter. Allison was being held in the Union County Jail on $2,000 bond.

The area’s top news at 7:07-a.m., w/KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.1MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss says the Midwest’s manufacturing sector is lackluster while agriculture and energy are slipping into negative territory. Goss blames too much government regulation for the sluggish productivity he’s seeing in Iowa and across the nine-state region.

“You’ve got this bailing out of solar energy companies, the war on coal, all this,” Goss says. “Now, we’ve got a new regulation that if you make less than $47,400, you’re entitled to overtime. These are really bad interferences from the federal government.” Gasoline prices are starting to creep up in advance of the busy travel holiday just ahead, but Goss says pump prices would have to get a lot higher before there’s an outcry.

“We got accustomed to prices between $3 and $4 a gallon and now we’re seeing it much lower than that, depending on where you buy it,” Goss says. “You’d have to see it approach $3 a gallon to get any negative response from the consumer.” The average price for a gallon of gas in Iowa is $2.25, which is up a nickel since a week ago. The national average is $2.30. Goss says the price hike isn’t big enough to have any impact on Memorial Day weekend travel plans.

“The consumer is doing reasonably well, it’s the businesses, profitablity,” Goss says. “We’re in a profits recession now. Profits are negative. The growth has been negative over the last three quarters.” Goss predicts an interest rate hike this summer of perhaps a-quarter percent. Over the next few months, he says the economy is more likely to move “sideways,” not up or down.

(Radio Iowa)

A U.S. Justice Department official is warning on-line predators are engaging in a new form of extortion. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Duax: “And ‘Sextortion’ is essentially when the offender gets a compromising image or a compromising piece of information about the victim and then threatens the victim with the disclosure of that information if the victim doesn’t engage in sexually-explicit conduct or send him sexually-explicit images.”

In 2014, a 24-year-old Cedar Rapids man was sentenced to 42 years in prison for coercing a dozen girls between the ages of 12 and 15 into sending him photos via text or Facebook and other online sites. Duax says the man then threatened to post the sexually-explicit images he already had online or send the photos to the girls’ parents and friends if they didn’t continue to send him more pictures.

“As a parent you definitely need to know what your child is using on their device, who they’re communicating with on their device and to try to set forth some ground rules for your children when they’re using those machines,” Duax says. “And it’s not easy, sometimes, to have those discussions, but if you don’t, you run the right of being one of the parents of the kids I just talked to you about.”

Duax says U.S. law enforcement agencies investigated 54-thousand reports of online sexual predators in fiscal year 2015, leading to more than 85-hundred arrests. The Cedar Rapids man who was sentenced in that 2014 “sex-tortion” case kept on threatening one girl even after she sent him a text saying she was considering suicide.

(Radio Iowa)

Thunderstorm winds or possibly a tornado caused a Union Pacific Train to derail early this (Thursday) morning, in Crawford County. Emergency Management Coordinator Greg Miller told KJAN News some of the train’s container cars derailed between 2-and 2:25-a.m., about a mile and a half west of Westside. None of the cars were toppled over, though. The train was carrying some hazardous material, but as of the latest report, nothing was leaking, and no injuries were reported.

Miller said the train’s engineers swore a tornado caused the damage, as several of the containers inside the rail cars were sucked out of those cars. He said winds gusted up to 75-miles per hour for a short time. All the crossings are open in area towns, but power lines were down in several communities. Charter Oak, Dow City and Denison all reported scattered power outages. Winds just southwest of Denison at the airport, peaked at 87-mph at around 2:15-a.m.  A few minutes earlier, winds were gusting to near 60-mph in the same area.

The National Weather Service says Arcadia, in Carroll County, was hit with near 60-mph winds and quarter-sized hail at around 2:30-a.m. Miller said the town was hit pretty hard.  Elsewhere, a resident of Audubon County who lives about 7-to 8-miles east of Exira off 280^th Street, reports a solid wood corn crib that’s stood the test of time for over 50-years, was blown over sometime between 2:25-and 2:45-a.m. today.  And, a little southwest of Minden, in Dallas County, half-dollar size hail was reported at around 2:35-a.m.

Police in Red Oak, Wednesday night arrested a man on a Montgomery County warrant for 3rd Degree Harassment. 39-year old Richard Allen Straw, of Red Oak, was arrested at around 8:50-p.m. in the 200 block of W. Washington Avenue. Straw was brought to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $1,000 cash bond.

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office says deputies responding to a report of a person trying to break into a home late Tuesday night ended-up arresting a man on a trio of charges. Richard Alexander, of Corning, was taken into custody for Public Intoxication, Criminal Mischief, and Domestic Abuse.

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office reports a fist fight in a field late Tuesday evening resulted in an arrest. Deputies were notified of the incident just before 8-p.m. Upon further investigation, Jose Huerta of Prescott was placed under arrest for Interference With Official Acts.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 1:40 a.m. CDT