(Creston, IA) – A man and a woman were arrested on separate Assault charges, Wednesday, in Creston. According to the Creston Police Department, 39-year-old Thomas James Blobaum, of Creston, was arrested at his residence at around 4-p.m., Wednesday. Blobaum was charged with Domestic Abuse. He was taken to Union County Jail and held without bond until seen by a Judge.

And, at around 7-p.m., Wednesday, Police in Creston arrested 36-year-old Juscinda Starr Butcher, of Corning. She was arrested at the Creston Dollar Tree store, on charges of Assault, and Child Endangerment. Butcher was cited and released from the scene on a Promise to Appear in court.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s largest zoo is preparing to launch its first-ever statewide art project to celebrate 60 years in operation. Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines is sponsoring Roar & Explore, which will feature life-sized African lion sculptures that will be displayed in all corners of the state, creating a lion art trail. The zoo’s Alex Payne says they’re recruiting artists from anywhere in Iowa to decorate the lions. “We’ll have 26 of these sculptures and we’re looking for Iowa artists to come and submit their designs,” Payne says. “We will go through the different submissions and select 26 different artists to paint these sculptures that we’ll then put out across the entire state of Iowa.”

In the past, some Iowa communities have taken on projects with sculptures resembling local team mascots, for example, but Payne says Roar & Explore will offer a different type of canvas for the artists.”There’ll be steel sheets of lion silhouettes and so there will be intersecting lions, one will be a lioness and one will be a lion,” Payne says. “Instead of a three-dimensional kind of life-like lion, it’ll be a flat silhouette where artists can then come up with different designs, so if they want to make it look like a lion with different designs, you can do that or it could just be a different abstract type design.”

Blank-Park-Zoo-image

The steel lions will be actual size — about three-and-a-half feet tall and six-feet long. Artists are encouraged to get creative and submit their visions for how these lions could be put on the prowl across Iowa. “They can go to our Facebook page or blankparkzoo.com/sculpture and there they can find our call for artists,” he says. “They can submit their designs there as well, and then we will have a committee go over all the different designs and select the winners and we will then reach out to them early next year.”

Finished sculptures will be installed across Iowa in April and they’ll remain on public display through Labor Day weekend. So why lions? The zoo’s lion conservation center is set to debut in 2026, tripling the space dedicated to the animals, and lions have long been an icon of the zoo, symbolizing strength, courage, and community.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Air National Guard has activated new squadron that will help fend off cyber threats. Chief Master Sergeant Crystal Jordan is part of the 133rd Combat Training Squadron under the 132 Air Wing located at the Des Moines Airport. “We’re basically a total force cyber trainer. So, we train any branch of the military,” she says. Jordan says they set up “range environments” for training.

“Whether you are doing defensive cyber operations — so you are defending a network –that’s your mission. Or you could do offensive cyber operations, which means you are attacking some sort of network. So, that’s in this range environment,” she explains. Sergeant Jordan says they use cyber professionals to help set up scenarios for training. “An those cyber professionals will go out, and some of them can be our own professionals as well, where the trainer becomes the operator. And those missions can be all over the world,” she says.

Jordan says being able to fend off cyber attacks is a key skill in the modern military. “Every modern aircraft sensor and weapon, it is going to use a network of some sort. So the tanks, they use radio frequency and WIFI to communicate back with headquarters,” she says. “And everybody uses satellite communication for G-P-S. And so it doesn’t matter what the type of network is, that is what is all the different scenarios that we’re building.”

Jordan says they now have staff in place. “We currently have 72 members assigned. Of those 72, we have 12 that are fulltime and the rest are D-S-G, traditional guardsmen that come in. Everybody is used to hearing, one drill weekend a month, two weeks a year,” she says. Jordan says they expect to eventually expand to 130 to 140 personnel.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association is urging Iowa lawmakers to include money for development of vaccines for bird flu and foot-and-mouth disease in next year’s state budget. Kelli Klink is director of government relations for the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

“If we want affordable beef on our grocery store shelves, we must do everything we can do to protect our livestock,” Klink said. Foot-and-mouth disease is a fast-spreading viral disease that primarily affects cows and other animals with split hooves, like pigs and sheep. Foot-and-mouth disease has been eradicated from North America, but livestock producers are concerned it could arrive in the U-S in a shipment of livestock from another country.

Since 2024, bird flu has been detected in 13 dairy herds in Iowa. Joel Harris is C-E-O of Genvax Technologies in Ames, which received a state 250-thousand dollar grant last year to support its research into a bird flu vaccine. He says the virus has been the most significant animal disease event in U.S. history. “In Iowa alone, millions of chickens and turkeys have been depopulated to stop the spread, costing farmers, straining rural communities and impacting food prices,” Harris said.

“Investing in foreign animal disease preparedness, especially vaccine development, is one of the most cost-effective tools we have. It helps protect Iowa farmers, reduces the need for mass depopulations, strengthens biosecurity and keeps our food supply stable and affordable.” Harris made his comments during a recent online forum with Governor Kim Reynolds. The governor says she gets a monthly update from the U-S-D-A about bird flu.

“It is critical we figure out how to get in front of this,” Reynolds said. Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are part of a bipartisan group of senators that have called on the U-S-D-A to speed up its review of the agency’s avian flu vaccine strategy for poultry. Last February, U-S Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a billion dollar plan to address the ongoing outbreak of bird flu — and it included 100 million dollars for research into a bird flu vaccine and other potential treatments.

(Red Oak, IA) – Sheriff’s deputies in Montgomery County, Thursday evening, arrested a man on an Assault charge. Authorities say 19-year-old Talan Michaael Ennis, of Villisca, was arrested at around 6:50-p.m., in the 100 block of W. 3rd Street, in Villisca. Ennis was charged with Assault – Causing Bodily Injury. He was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $1,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Christmas 2025 has come and gone, but did you know that the Iowa Legislature declared Christmas as an official state holiday in 1862 — eight years before Congress declared Christmas a federal holiday. Michael Swanger is editor of the Iowa History Journal, which has a cover story in its current issue about how European immigrants brought their Christmas customs to Iowa.

“It goes back to even before statehood in terms of the roots of the traditions,” Swanger said. Swanger says holding candle-light church services on Christmas Eve, for example, came from Moravia — which is now part of the Czech Republic. “The Moravian congregations in eastern Iowa, they really helped shape the way that we celebrate Christmas in Iowa still today,” Swanger said.

According to the Archives of the Moravian Church in America, Moravians started coming to the U-S in the 17-hundreds and many brought with them the figures for Nativity Scenes. The town of Moravia, in southern Iowa’s Appanoose County, was founded by a group of Moravian families just five years after Iowa became a state. By the way, Sunday is Iowa’s 179th birthday.

Iowa became the 29th state on December 28th, 1846.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – One person died after a house fire Christmas evening in Cedar Rapids. First responders were called to the 3800 block of Bluebird Dr. SW just before 5:30 p.m. for a house fire. When they arrived, they found an attached garage fully engulfed in flames.

An elderly man was alerted to the fire by the sound of fire alarms. An elderly woman was exposed to smoke as she attempted to escape. She was transported to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The home and garage were severely damaged. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

(Radio Iowa) – Missouri and Big Sioux River paddlefish license and tags are now on sale now through January 7th. Southwest Iowa D-N-R fisheries biologist John Lorenzen says most people come away happy.”I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but it is fairly successful, especially you know in the Missouri River, there’s going to be pockets of deeper water where people are going to find these fish,” he says. “They’re not going to be evenly distributed across the whole river.”

There’s going to be pockets of deeper water where the fish are going to congregate. “With modern electronics, you know, it’s going to be easier for people to find fish nowadays than what it was in the past. And so it there’s certainly catchable. It’s not like a, you know, a golden ticket that you’re going to buy, and probably, you know, not cash in on it. If you buy a tag, you do have a really good chance of catching one,” he says.

He says you should seek out someone who has go after paddlefish before. “Like anything in the outdoors, people with more experience are typically the more, you know, successful ones. So if you’re new to it and you want to give it a try. If you head out with somebody who’s already done it in the past, has all the right equipment, you’re probably going to be more successful than just going out on your own for the first time,” Lorenzen says.

The license sales run through January 7th and if there are leftover licenses, you will get a chance to buy another one.

(Radio Iowa) – It’s a happy holiday for many Iowans, but some of us are alone and feeling there’s little to be joyful about. New studies are finding people who are lonely and obese may be at risk for larger problems with their physical and mental health. Jennifer Linse, an advanced practice social worker, says cases of loneliness often escalate in Iowa during the wintertime as more of us become socially isolated by the cold weather.

“If people are wanting to talk about loneliness or explore their feelings or experience with loneliness, I would certainly encourage them to connect with a counselor to talk about that,” Linse says. “Also, through counseling, we can help people get connected to resources or find some social supports that they’re already involved in to help with that feeling of loneliness.” Even when we’re surrounded by other people, Linse says it’s easy to be overcome by loneliness, as we crave that contact.

“From the minute you’re born, you’re born to connect with other people,” Linse says. “Really, that’s our human experience, to be connected with others around us. We are social beings, so that’s really the essence of why this is so important — it’s that human connection.” People who are overweight may face discrimination which can leave them with an emotional scar, something Linse says can be difficult to overcome.

“There’s this idea in our society of what the ideal person is, the way we look, the way we speak, and that includes our body image,” Linse says. “So in our society, we hear people talk and experience something that we may call fat-shaming, and that can make people feel very lonely.” We don’t often hear health care professionals recommend Facebook as a solution to anything, but in this case, Linse says it might provide some benefit.

“Typically when we think about social media, we find it to be a very isolating experience because we’re looking at it very surface level,” Linse says, “but there are groups and activities happening online that can connect you with others. For some people, it’s just sort of dipping your toe into being with others in your community.” Instead of reading a book at home, for example, she suggests taking the book to a library or coffee shop where you might interact with others.

Linse is an employee assistance program consultant at Emplify Health by Gundersen, which has clinics in Fayette, Decorah, Waukon, Lansing, Postville and Calmar, and a hospital in West Union.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham says in today’s economy — and with a limited pool of workers as Iowa’s population ages — state incentives for manufacturers are being focused on the quality of jobs that would be created rather than on the number of jobs.

“What we’re really interested in…is automation,” Durham said, “because if we’re going to increase productivity, if we’re going to make ourselves continue to be relevant, when we know that we have this very shrunken pipeline coming in from talent, we have to do things differently.” Automation is having a big impact in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, and Durham says she’s visiting companies in places like India that are making prescription and over-the-counter medications.

“I know the tariff stuff has been challenging on one hand, but I will tell you as the Trump Administration is resetting the table on our on trade agreements it is having an impact because they all know that if they want to do business in the United States they need to have a presence in the United States,” Durham said. ” and when you think about it during COVID when you couldn’t get amoxicillin for your grandkids because we don’t manufacture that here any more and we have outsourced it to countries that are not our friend, we need reclaim all of that.”

Durham says automation not only increases productivity and improves work flow, it improves safety in industries like food production. “You can see that a lot of the stuff that’s being automated are those things where they tend to have more worker comp claims because it’s highly repetitive,” Durham said, “or basically injury prone.” Durham says manufacturing plants will still need people, but will have more limited staff and the state is preparing for a future dominated by artificial intelligence and automation.

Durham made her comments at the Iowa Taxpayers Association annual symposium.