(Red Oak, Iowa) – Two men were arrested on separate charges Friday (Today), in Montgomery County. Sheriff’s officials report 43-year-old Michael Gene Landon, Jr., of Council Bluffs, was arrested on two Montgomery County warrants for providing false information and driving while suspended. Landon was transported to the Montgomery County Jail where he was booked in an held on a cash only bond.

And, early this (Friday) afternoon, sheriff’s deputies arrested 43-year-old Dewight Eugene Binau, of Red Oak, for public intoxication. Binau was transported to the Montgomery County Jail where he was booked in and held on a cash only bond.

(Onawa, Iowa) – The Monona County Sheriff’s Office reports Monona County Communications received a 911 call from Bank First, in Onawa, at around 10-a.m. today (Friday). The caller advised the bank had just been robbed by a person who entered the bank and brandished a weapon (That was initially described as a long [barreled] gun).

Sheriff Jeffrey R. Pratt said in an online post, “The investigation is on-going at this time,” and that “We do not feel there is any danger to the public.” More information will be released as it becomes available.

The Monona County Sheriff’s Office is being assisted in its investigation, by the Ida and Woodbury County Sheriff’s Departments, and the FBI.

(Radio Iowa) – Swan Lake State Park in Carroll will be the site of a seven-stop Halloween event for kids and adults tomorrow (Saturday). Carroll County Conservation Naturalist Kristen Bieret says activities are spread out over about half of the 500-acre park. “We’ll actually have a hay ride so people can get to all of the different places,” she says. Two female eagles live in an enclosure in the park and experts are bringing in an owl and a red-tailed hawk for a raptor demonstration. That’s one of the seven stops on the Halloween tour. Two bison live in another part the park.

“We have two female bison. One’s 30 and the other one’s about six and they live in a pasture right behind our conservation education center,” she says. “We just built a new observation tower where you can go up and you can kind of see out to the bison and view the lake and we added that this summer and so we were kind of inspired by those two things to have that be the heading/title of our event.” The Bison Haunted Hollow event begins at 5 p.m. Saturday and will end at eight o’clock. Bieret says it looks like lovely fall weather is forecast.

“Not scary at all,” Bieret says. “I think the scariest part about it is just that towards the evening it’s going to get darker, but we are trying to make it something that’s centered around Halloween, but is definitely family friendly.” The Carroll Library is setting up a half-mile guided walk through the playground, featuring a fall-related story. Swan Lake is a state-owned park, but it has been managed by Carroll County Conservation since 1950.

October 21, 2022 (DES MOINES, IA) – Today, the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board approved two awards for companies in Charles City and Council Bluffs, which will assist in the creation of 71 jobs and result in more than $605 million in new capital investment for the state. In Council Bluffs Google, LLC is expanding its presence in Iowa through a proposed project that would involve the construction and operations of a data center that powers many internet-related products.

At the request of the City of Council Bluffs, the board authorized a local property tax exemption through the HQJ program. This enables the city to provide the 20-year sliding scale tax abatement approved by its City Council on October 10, 2022. No new state incentives are planned, but the project will result in $600 million in new capital investment and create 31 jobs at a qualifying wage of $28.73 per hour. Google LLC is a multinational technology company that focuses on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and consumer electronics.

And, Cambrex, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) headquartered in East Rutherford, New Jersey, plans to expand their facility in Charles City. Cambrex will add 9,000 square feet to the existing footprint, including a new quality control laboratory and administrative space. The project represents a $6.5 million capital investment and is expected to create 40 jobs, of which 39 are incented at a qualifying wage of $20.58 per hour. The board awarded the company tax benefits and $300,000 in direct financial assistance through the High Quality Jobs (HQJ) program. The Charles City site manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and pharmaceutical intermediates for both the generic and branded human pharmaceutical markets. The company currently supplies APIs for the treatment of ADHD, smoking cessation, oncology, Crohn’s disease and others.

(Radio Iowa) – The police chief in Cherokee says there’s a lot of work to do before local school employees would be allowed to carry concealed weapons on school grounds — and Police Chief Nate James suggests there’s no guarantee any employee will get the go-ahead. “We’re not looking at this lightly, by all means,” he says. “It’s something that we need to figure out if this is the right thing to implement into our schools, by letting staff carry.” The Cherokee School Board endorsed the concept this week and school officials said they’d been consulting with the police chief. “I have children in the school,” James said. “There are a lot of factors that I would personally like to know before we move forward.”

The police chief says policy and procedures will be paramount. “It would require a lot of training — a lot of training,” he says. “This is going to be a long, long process…a collaboration of a lot of different departments. I know the school has reached out to an organization already, but there is a lot more that will go into it than that.”

James was a policeman in Cherokee for eight years before being named Chief of Police in April of 2015.