(Atlantic, Iowa) – Did you know there were TWO Thanksgiving celebrations in Iowa…in the same year? It’s true. Learn more about why and when, during a special program taking place this Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, beginning at 2-p.m. The program will be held inside the American Legion Memorial Building (201 Poplar St.), in Atlantic. Leo Landis has researched the forgotten stories that began when Iowa became a territory, and shifted to setting the special celebration for as late as December, since that time.

Landis is the Curator for the State Historical Society in Iowa, as well as the State Historical Museum. He continues to add new exhibits, as information is discovered, and is passionate about making Iowa history available and interesting.

Atlantic Rock Island Society (ARISE) is sponsoring the program. There is no fee to attend, but donations are appreciated. The American Legion Memorial Building is handicapped accessible.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – A man from Pottawattamie County was arrested Tuesday afternoon, on a drug charge. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports 23-year-old Allen Ray Schill, of Oakland, was arrested at around 1:15-p.m., for Possession of Marijuana. Schill was booked-into the Montgomery County Jail and held on a cash bond.

(Oakland, Iowa) – If you live in Oakland and heard tornado/fire sirens going-off, you didn’t need to worry. Officials with the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) posted on social media, that the sirens weren’t alerting Oakland residents them to any sort of threat. The EMA said the sirens in Oakland had malfunctioned because of a technical issue.

The social media post said “There is no threat or hazard. The issue is being worked on at this time.”

DES MOINES, Iowa — Officials with the FBI are asking for help identifying a man authorities said may have critical information about a child victim in a sexual exploitation case. The FBI describes the man as being between 45 to 65 years old, bald with a dark goatee. They are calling him “John Doe 49.” As part of their search, agents released several photos of the man.

“John Doe 49” (FBI photos)

Officials say he has at least five visual tattoos, including the word “Dabby” on the right side of his chest.  The FBI investigators do not have any specific leads on where the man is located, so they released this information nationwide. If anyone recognizes him, contact the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

CLIVE, Iowa — A Clive man has been arrested after authorities say he assaulted a woman then sent explicit photos of her on social media. KCCI-TV in Des Moines reports 20-year-old Gemini Smith is charged with assault, robbery, criminal mischief and violation of a no-contact order.

According to the criminal complaint, Smith went to the woman’s house to pick up a sweatshirt he left there. Once he arrived, documents say he pepper-sprayed and punched her. Smith took her phone and fled the scene. Authorities say Smith logged into the victim’s social media accounts and sent explicit photos and videos of her to people without her permission.

Smith is scheduled to be back in court Nov. 25.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of the families of four workers at the Tyson meatpacking plant in Waterloo who died of COVID-19 in 2020. The workers’ families are asking the Iowa Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision that dismissed their claims as a workers compensation issue. Attorney G. Bryan Ulmer says Tyson executives and supervisors committed fraud and gross negligence after they lied to employees and told workers with COVID symptoms to keep coming to work. “Despite an ever increasing number of sick workers, Tyson denied that there was COVID 19 at the plant. It told workers that it had been cleared of COVID 19 by county health officials. It prohibited interpreters from communicating with non English speaking employees about COVID 19,” he says.

He says at the same time the supervisors were placing bets on how many positive COVID-19 cases would result from the outbreak. The end result was the largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 in the entire country. He says that leads to this question. “Is whether or not the Workers Compensation Act, legislation, which was originally intended to protect workers, now protects employers and coworkers from intentionally tortious conduct,” Ulmer says. Attorney David Yoshimura represented some of the Waterloo plant supervisors who were sued and says these claims that belong in the workers comp system, not in the courts.

Attorneys in the Tyson Worker Covid deaths prepare to present their oral arguments to the Iowa Supreme Court on Nov. 14, 2024

“The legislature has made the judgment that the courts are divested of jurisdiction over these claims, which is why the district court dismissed them,” he says. “Nevertheless, the plaintiff here has engaged in some creative pleading of their own and tried to, through some gamesmanship, keep these claims in the courts.” “What the district court found was that assuming all of these well pleaded facts are true, there is no possibility for the court to maintain jurisdiction over these claims,” Yoshimura .

The Iowa Supreme Court will issue a ruling at a later date on whether the cases can move forward in district court, or if they have to be handled as worker compensation claims.

(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa is the lead institution on a 166-million dollar robotic space mission due for launch next year. Twin spacecraft will study what’s known as space weather, which is responsible for beautiful phenomena like the Northern Lights, but also for technological turmoil, like when satellites stop working — cutting off our phone calls, T-V shows and navigation systems. Professor David Miles, in the U-I’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, is the mission’s principal investigator.

“Space weather, which is just what happens in space to our satellites, can create really intense radiation that damages our satellites,” Miles says. “It can cause the atmosphere of our Earth to kind of push up, and then satellites run into it, and the satellites start dropping in their orbit, or in really extreme cases, it can do things like drive electricity through the electrical grid on the ground and cause blackouts.” If you want to learn about the Earth’s weather from the ground, you’d study things like wind speeds, temperatures and rainfall amounts.

“When we’re doing this in space, we read things like the electric field, the magnetic field, and the electrons and the particles that are moving around in the plasma,” Miles says. “So, the University of Iowa built three instruments to measure those sorts of parameters, and we have other instruments coming from participating institutions like UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Southwest Research.” The mission is called TRACERS, or Tandem Re-connection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites. Miles and a large contingent from Iowa City will be closely watching in person as the twin spacecraft are launched aboard a single rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California next year.

“We actually stack them on top of each other, and then they get launched together, one a little bit ahead of the other,” Miles says, “and then over time, we basically play with how close together the satellites are, and that lets us figure out how quickly processes are turning on and turning off, and how things are moving around, but it lets us pick out what’s changing in space versus what’s changing in time.” The mission’s primary goal is to learn about the magnetic re-connection effect when powerful winds from the sun crash into our planet’s magnetic fields. Miles says these interactions, which create the Aurora Borealis, also can disrupt technology we depend upon.

https://tracers.physics.uiowa.edu/

“We’re really trying to understand the process that takes energy from the sun and brings it into near-Earth space,” Miles says. “How quickly does that process turn on and off? How much energy does it transfer in? Because that’s the free energy source for a lot of these space weather effects that we’re talking about, so if you want to understand space weather, you’ve got to understand what’s feeding it.” The U-I is the lead institution on the 166-million dollar mission, which is the largest external research award in university history.

“We’re basically the prime contractor to NASA, so we’re responsible for the whole mission, but a lot of that money flows through us to do things like procure the actual spacecraft, or bring instruments in from the participating institutions,” Miles says. “So all of the money comes to Iowa, but a lot of it flows through to the subcontractors.” A specific launch date isn’t yet set, though TRACERS is scheduled to go up in the second quarter of 2025.

https://tracers.physics.uiowa.edu/

(Radio Iowa) – Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away and as Iowans plan their family get-togethers or getaways, the Iowa State Patrol is also planning to put extra troopers on the roadways to help keep everyone safe. Trooper Paul Gardner, based in Fort Dodge, says they’re prepping for a very busy several days on Iowa’s thoroughfares. “We will certainly see an increase in travel and vehicles coming through the state, a lot of people taking to the roadways,” Gardner says. “They may be driving to their destinations, but they also may be going to the airport, so we will be seeing a lot of people traveling.” There may be times during the long holiday when the roads are nearly deserted, but there’ll be plenty of other times where the highways are packed with cars, trucks and SUVS.

“The two or three days before Thanksgiving and then right after Thanksgiving weekend seems to be another busy travel day, but typically the Wednesday before Thanksgivings are busiest, and then that Monday afterwards, we’ll definitely see a lot of travel coming back from Thanksgiving,” Gardner says. “So we just want to make sure that everyone’s buckled up, driving sober.” The state patrol will be taking part in multiple STEP or Special Traffic Enforcement Programs during the holiday.  “We’ll be participating in a ‘Click it or Ticket’ campaign around Thanksgiving, and that’s enforcement of seat belt laws,” Gardner says. “Then we also have a campaign called ‘Buzzed Driving, Same as Drunk Driving.’ So if you feel different, you’re going to drive different. Any festivities that include alcohol, make sure you get a sober ride to get you home.”

Iowa recorded its 300th traffic death for the year this week. In all of last year, there were 377 people killed on the roads statewide, including eight deaths over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

DES MOINES, Iowa [KCCI] — The Iowa State Board of Education met Wednesday to discuss proposed rules for implementing a 2023 law that bans books depicting sex acts in school. Senate File 496, signed into law last year, requires schools to remove books depicting sexual acts. It also prohibits discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation before seventh grade. The board held a public hearing Nov. 5 on the guidelines.

Thomas Mayes, general counsel for the Iowa Department of Education, said they received 32 written comments and one person who showed up in person for the public hearing.

Under the proposed rules, districts must post an updated list of their books at least two times a year. If libraries serve multiple grades, the district must have controls in place to ensure students only have access to age-appropriate materials.

The board also discussed penalties for violating the law. The new rules say staff and administrators who fail to follow the law will first receive a written warning. Repeated offenses could mean appearing before the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners. The law also prohibits discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation before seventh grade. Proposed guidelines clarify that a neutral reference or a factual reference would not considered promotion or instruction.

The ACLU of Iowa renewed its legal battle against the law in October. The organization was successful in getting the law blocked back in December, which caused the state board to pause its work on the law. The injunction was lifted in August.

There will be another public hearing on Dec. 11 in the state boardroom of the Grimes State Office Building from 8 a.m. until 9 a.m. Written comments can be made no later than 4:30 p.m. Dec. 11 by emailing thomas.mayes@iowa.gov, by calling 515-281-8661 or by mailing them to Thomas A. Mayes, Iowa Department of Education, Grimes State Office Building, 400 E. 14th St., Des Moines, IA 50319.