Police in Red Oak say a man was taken into custody at around 11:20-p.m. Friday, for Interference with Official Acts. 27-year old Steven Ripley, of Red Oak, was taken into custody in the 500 block of E. Reed Street and brought to the Montgomery County Jail, where his bond was set at $300.

Officials with the Iowa Department of Public Health, Saturday (today), report Cass County has one new positive case of COVID-19, for a total of 12. Nine people have also recovered from the virus in the County. The only other changes in numbers for the surrounding counties, was in Guthrie County where there were two more cases (for a total of 50; 30 have recovered), and in Shelby County, which had an additional case (for a total of 35; 30 have recovered).

In western/southwest Iowa, the latest RMCC data show 12 persons were hospitalized over the past 24 hours, 6 were in an ICU, 5 were admitted to a hospital, and 3 people were on ventilators.

Statewide, to date:

• 148, 886 Iowans had been tested for the virus
• 19,019 tested positive for COVID-19
• 129,440 have tested negative
• 10,896 have recovered
• 527 have died
• 368 people were being treated for the virus in a hospital
• 118 patients were in an ICU
• 29 had been admitted over the past 24-hours
• 69 patients were on ventilators.
• The number of LTC facility outbreaks is up one, to 39; 1,553 LTC patients/staff have tested positive; 702 have recovered, and 247 have died.

Officials with Pottawattamie County Public Health, late Friday, reported there are 12 new cases of COVID-19 among residents of Council Bluffs. PCPH said also, “We are sad to report our eight COVID-19 related death for Pottawattamie County.” The patient was a woman from Council Bluffs who was 81 years of age or older, and had pre-existing medical conditions.

Six of the 12 new, positive COVID-19 cases are persons age 18-to 40, two are age 41-to 60, and one is a person 81 years of age or older. Those persons were tested between May 23rd and 27th. PCPH says so far, 2,915 Pottawattamie County residents have been tested for the virus. Of those, 272 tested positive.

An additional six people have recovered, for a total of 152. Seven patients are hospitalized, and 99 are self-isolating. A total of 79 cases are the result of community spread. For additional COVID-19 information, including case demographics filtered by county, go to the IDPH COVID-19 dashboard at coronavirus.iowa.gov.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:45 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred people who gathered near the downtown police headquarters after a peaceful rally earlier in the evening. Live video by KCCI-TV showed police trying to talk with protesters at a rally several days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody. Floyd’s death has led to nights of protests and unrest in Minneapolis and St. Paul that have spread to other cities around the country. Organizers of a rally outside Des Moines police headquarters had asked people to leave after the hour-long event but some remained nearby, occasionally shouting slogans at police who were wearing helmets and holding shields. Police fired tear gas about 9 p.m., leading many protesters to run into nearby streets.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Meatpacking plants that had to briefly close due to coronavirus outbreaks have been back up and running for weeks, but production backlogs are forcing farmers to euthanize thousands of hogs that can’t be processed, drawing complaints from animal welfare advocates. The preferred methods of euthanizing hogs include gunshots or electrocution, but when thousands must be destroyed en masse, producers shut off the ventilation, causing heat to build up in barns and kill them. Animal welfare groups say that is inhumane and should be stopped. An estimated 2.5 million hogs are backed up on farms nationwide.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — State budget experts say Gov. Kim Reynolds and the legislature will have about $360 million less to use for next year’s budget than earlier expected. The Iowa Revenue Estimating Conference, a group of three people responsible for estimating state revenue, set lower expectations for this year and next after debating the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The group lowered the state revenue estimate for the current year, which ends June 30, by $150 million from a March estimate. For next year, officials will have about $7.88 billion to work with. That’s about $360 million less than had been estimated in March.

EVANSDALE, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say they believe they’ve found the remains of a missing Arizona woman and her stepfather in Iowa inside the stepfather’s car after it was found buried in an undeveloped lot. The Waterloo Courier reports that authorities were waiting for confirmation from a medical examiner that the remains found on a dead-end road in Evansdale, Iowa, are those of 28-year-old Elissa Landry and 45-year-old David Batten, of Chino Valley, Arizona. Landry and Batten were reported missing April 19. No arrests have been made, but a 24-year-old suspect who was formerly from Waterloo, Iowa, has been detained.

Emergency personnel were dispatched to the scene of a rollover accident Friday night, northeast of Atlantic. According to scanner traffic, the single-vehicle accident happened at around 8:23-p.m. at 640th and Fayette. Initial reports had one person trapped, but about 10-minutes later, all occupants where out of the vehicle, a Saturn Vue, that had rolled over and landed on its top. Law enforcement said there did not appear to be any serious injuries.

Atlantic Fire and Rescue, Medivac Ambulance and Cass County Sheriff’s Deputies were on the scene.  Additional details are currently not available.

(Radio Iowa) — For the past 12 weeks, Governor Kim Reynolds has been holding news conferences on weekdays to discuss the pandemic. She’s also been working out of the emergency operations center at the Iowa National Guard’s armory at Camp Dodge. “Iowans are gradually getting back to life and business as usual and it’s time for me and my team to the same thing,” Reynolds says. Starting Monday, Reynolds will return to her office suite in the state capitol. She’ll hold news conferences on Tuesdays and Thursdays rather than every weekday.

“Like you, I’m eager to get things back to normal,” Reynolds says, “but I’m committed to taking a measured approach, practicing personal responsibility and doing my part to protect not only myself, my family but our fellow Iowans.”

The governor’s daily news conferences have been broadcast live on dozens of Iowa radio and T-V stations and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook, giving thousands of Iowans a change to hear COVID-19 announcements directly from the governor.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa lawmakers will have to pare down the state spending plans they were drafting before the pandemic hit. The state Revenue Estimating Conference met this (Friday) afternoon and lowered its estimate of state tax collections. The governor’s budget director and a division chief from the Legislative Services Agency were more optimistic about an economic recovery than Clear Lake C-P-A David Underwood. He’s the third member of the panel.

“I don’t think we have reached a bottom,” Underwood says. “We certainly could climb out and fall back rather quickly.” Underwood argued to set a far lower estimate of state tax collections. “I think most of the businesses that we’re hoping are going to reopen — a lot of those won’t,” Underwood said. But, in the end, the group agreed to slice 360 MILLION off its earlier prediction of next year’s state tax collections.

Holly Lyons of the Legislative Services Agency says the real economic consequences of the pandemic are still unknown and that’s why she resisted a deeper reduction. “I’m a little concerned about the message that we send,” Lyons said. “There’s enough fear and trepidation now out there.” Dave Roederer, the governor’s budget director, says he believes the economic setbacks of the past 12 weeks are temporary, not permanent.

“While bruised and somewhat battered, our fundamentals are still strong in this state,” Roederer says. “…Is everything rosy? Of course not.” But Roederer says he believes most if not all the Iowans who’ve lost their jobs will be able to go back to work.” The three-member panel predicts overall state tax revenue in the next fiscal year will be just eight-tenths of a percent below this year’s total. The group shaved 150 million dollars off their estimate of the state’s tax take in THIS fisal year, but it will not require emergency state budget cuts in the next month.

The CURRENT state budget has an unspent cushion of nearly 400 MILLION dollars to dip into to cover that.