COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – Iowa authorities have recaptured a man who escaped from a work release program in Council Bluffs over the weekend.  Fred Scaletta with the Iowa Department of Corrections says 56-year-old Carroll Wayne Walker was arrested on Sunday, and is being held in the Pottawattamie County jail.

Walker failed to report to work and didn’t return to the work release facility on Friday. He escaped less than a month after the Parole Board allowed him to transfer there on March 1.  Walker is in the middle of a ten-year sentence for second-degree robbery that he began serving in 2006.

A film that documents the dangers faced by one of the busiest fire fighting units in America will be showing in theaters across Iowa this month (April), including here in Atlantic. “BURN” follows Detroit’s Engine Company 50 as they battle both fires and city hall. John Jensen, a Des Moines firefighter who helped organize screenings of the film in a dozen Iowa cities, says Detroit has one of the highest arson rates in the world. “The economic downturn has left all these houses and buildings (in Detroit) abandoned and there’s people just going around setting them on fire,” Jensen says. “They have 500 structure fires a month.”

The firefighters in Detroit are put at an even greater risk due to a lack of funding and broken down equipment. Jensen film saw “BURN” while attending a conference in Phoenix. “It was very inspiring to me because, in the movie, one of the (firefighters) is injured in a wall collapse and he becomes paralyzed. They follow him through his rehab,” Jensen said. “It hit me right in the heart.”

Tickets to see “BURN” at theatres in Iowa are $15. A portion of the profits from the film will go the Leary Firefighters Foundation, an organization founded by actor Dennis Leary which purchases new equipment for firefighters. The film will be shown in Atlantic on April 24^th and 25^th, beginning at 7:30-p.m.

(Radio Iowa)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A monthly economic survey index for nine Midwest and Plains states jumped last month, suggesting improving economic growth for the region over the next three to six months.  The Mid-America Business Conditions index hit 58.2 in March, compared with 53.1 in February and 53.2 in January.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss oversees the survey, and he credits the index jump to “the strongest new-orders growth in two years.”  The survey of business leaders and supply managers uses a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth while a score below 50 suggests decline for that factor.

The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.