(By the Associated Press) — The Iowa woman charged in a string of racially-motivated attacks this month managed to avoid prison in recent years after arrests for previous violent crimes and threats. Nicole Poole is charged with intentionally driving her SUV into a Hispanic girl and a black boy near Des Moines-area schools in separate hit-and-run crashes on Dec. 9. She’s also charged with using racial epithets that day at a gas station. In 2017, Poole was charged with stabbing her then-boyfriend while she was on probation. But a felony charge was dismissed after the alleged victim refused to cooperate. Charges alleging she assaulted and harassed another boyfriend in 2018 were dismissed after he also declined to cooperate.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – State officials have referred to Iowa prosecutors the names of nine people suspected of voting twice in the November election last year. The Iowa secretary of state’s office said in a news release today (Friday) that the nine are suspected of voting in Iowa after casting ballots in other states. There were 27 suspected instances of people voting first in Iowa and then other states during the same election. The information was discovered through Iowa’s partnership with several states in the Electronic Registration Information Center. The states share data to improve the accuracy of voter rolls and enhance voter confidence.

The Secretary of State’s Office says four of the alleged instances of double voting where the second vote was cast in Iowa, are believed to have taken place in Polk County. There is one suspected incident each in Johnson, Mitchell, Sioux, Story and Warren counties. The 27 other instances of suspected double voting have been shared with the respective states’ commissioner/board of elections.

(Radio Iowa) — After more than five decades of collecting rare rocks, a self-taught geologist from Fort Dodge recently donated the thousands of fossil specimens he catalogued in his garage to the University of Iowa. Sixty-four-year-old Robert Wolf says he got interested in fossils very early on. “I was in 4th grade and a friend of mine showed me a fossil he found in his driveway of crushed rock,” Wolf says. “I didn’t know anything about them and we started looking in the field between the two houses and found a few fossils.”

Wolf started studying fossils and essentially never stopped. He furthered his knowledge by joining the Geological Society of Iowa and went on field trips to dig sites around the region. “I started numbering my specimens and before you know it, I was up to over 18,000 catalogued and a lot more than weren’t catalogued,” he says. While he made his career as a writer, working for many years as a reporter at the Fort Dodge Messenger, Wolf says geology has always been his number-one hobby. “A lot of it was stuff I learned out in the field and in libraries and I had an Earth Science teacher in high school who taught me a lot about it, too,” Wolf says. “Now, I’m on Facebook and I learn a lot of stuff through Facebook and people are always contacting me to have me identify things.”

Some Iowans love to collect arrowheads, he notes, and they’ve found hundreds of Native American artifacts by roaming through the state’s cornfields and forests. “I’ve been doing this for 55 years and I have never found an arrowhead,” Wolf says. “I think, after a while, your eyes just grow accustomed to what you’re looking for and that’s how I go about it, just trial and error.”  Wolf says one of his most memorable moments was discovering fossils from the Cambrian Era in northern Iowa. “I’m just fascinated by these things because they’re like 490-million years old and they come on the heels of what they call the Cambrian Explosion, which was a big worldwide event where many of the lifeforms we know today first started appearing,” Wolf says. “It’s just fascinating to read this and see documentaries on it and actually be able to put my hands on that stuff right here in Iowa.”

Wolf made his comments on the Iowa Public Radio program “Talk of Iowa.”

(Thanks to Charity Nebbe, Iowa Public Radio)

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — Authorities have removed several animals from a Dubuque farm where more than a dozen other animals were found dead. The Telegraph Herald reports that several of the 26 animals removed earlier this month were in poor health. The animals removed included horses, a pony, goats, sheep, pigs, geese and other fowl. Authorities say the bones and rib cages of some of the animals could be seen, and many had matted hair. Charges are pending.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) – Federal safety regulators have proposed fining a Davenport bowling alley more than $8,300 for violations found after the death of an employee this past summer. Authorities say 27-year-old Brittany Russell died July 7 at the Blackhawk Bowl and Martini Lounge, which is inside the Hotel Blackhawk. An Occupational Safety and Health Administration filing says she was killed after coming into contact with an electrical system while trying to unjam a pinsetter. A representative of the bowling alley didn’t immediately return a call Friday from The Associated Press.

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) — An Iowa State University study finds people are more likely to be unhappy with their house if it’s smaller than their neighbors’ houses. Daniel Kuhlmann, an I-S-U professor of community and regional planning, studied data as far back as the U-S Census’ 1993 National American Housing Survey, which included a special neighborhood section assessing people’s home satisfaction.  “There’s this idea that when position matters, if there’s some value people get from living in the largest house in their neighborhood, that itself is by definition a scarce resource,” Kuhlmann says. “Only one of us can have the largest house.”

Our housing decisions may affect our neighbors’ actions, Kuhlmann says, and we could be unwittingly pushing our neighbors to spend more money to buy larger homes to “catch up.” It’s one possible explanation for the steady boost in the size of single-family houses nationwide over the last five decades. “We care about how we compare to our neighbors, right?” Kuhlmann says. “I don’t think it’s necessarily materialism exclusively that explains this. I think it raises larger questions that need to be answered about how we’re building neighborhoods and how we’re building cities and the impact that these things have on not only our own well-being but our social well-being.”

As suburbs become more developed, Kuhlmann says big houses tend to beget even bigger houses. His research found that people living in the smallest house in their neighborhood are on average five-percent more likely to say they’re dissatisfied with their house compared to those living in the largest houses. “What really makes us better off?” Kuhlmann asks. “Is it living in larger homes in the suburbs or would we all be better off if our homes were slightly smaller? We’d be spending less on housing. We’d be living closer to our neighbors, stuff like that. It’s just one small part of this larger impact of the way in which we live that I like to think a lot about in my field.”

The study was published earlier this month in the academic journal Housing Studies.

Creston Police say a resident of the 200 block of N. Sumner Street reported Tuesday morning, that his garage had been broken into. Items missing included an air compressor, various tools, and a BB gun. The loss was estimated at $1,200.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:05-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Few states have changed politically with the head-snapping speed of Iowa. In 2008, its voters propelled Barack Obama to the White House. In 2012, Iowa backed Obama again. But by 2016, Donald Trump easily defeated Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Republicans were in control of the governor’s mansion and state legislature and held all but one U.S. House seat and both U.S. Senate seats.

Democrats are hoping the state could be swinging back. Tom Vilsack, Iowa’s only two-term Democratic governor in the past 50 years, says Republicans have “gone too far to the right and there is the slow movement back.”