(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court is upholding a verdict against a Manchester police officer in the death of a motorcyclist after a chase. A jury found Manchester police officer James Wessels committed assault and battery against Augustin Mormann when he ran his patrol car into Mormann’s motorcycle twice and caused him to crash. Mormann eventually died from his injuries and the jury awarded Mormann’s estate more than four million dollars ($4.25-million).

Wessels and the city appealed citing numerous grounds, including qualified immunity and lack of evidence. The Supreme Court ruled the evidence showed that Wessels persisted in his own pursuit, violating department policy after other officers had called off the chase. And that Wessels’s cruiser hit Mormann’s motorcycle intentionally, without justification for using that deadly force.

(Radio Iowa) – A truck stop along Interstate 35 in northern Iowa near Williams that was known for 45 years as being a haven during blizzards will reopen soon under a new name. The Boondocks is ready to make a return as a TA Truck Stop. The Boondocks closed in 2018, and reopened as a Jay Bros truck stop in 2019, until it closed up again over a year ago. The nearby Boondocks Motel was demolished earlier this year. Social media posts stated there have been interviews for those wishing to be an employee at the former iconic truck stop in Hamilton County.

KQWC photo

A giant TA Truck Stop sign was recently installed. Officials with the Ohio-based firm have not announced when the official opening will take place.  This will be the second truck stop for Williams. The Flying J Truck Stop is located not far from the future TA Truck Stop.

DES MOINES, Iowa – The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announces today the first influenza-related death of the 2025-26 respiratory virus season. The individual was an older adult from southwest Iowa.

Iowa’s most recent Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report shows the virus at a very low level of activity, and hospitals are currently reporting low patient admission rates. Although flu activity in Iowa is currently low, Iowans can take a few simple precautions to keep themselves and their families healthy throughout the respiratory virus season.

“Holiday gatherings bring us together with family and friends we may not see often,” said State Medical Director Dr. Robert Kruse. “To keep those celebrations, our workplaces and our communities safe and healthy, I encourage everyone to stay home when feeling sick and to talk with your healthcare provider about vaccination.”

Vaccination protects from serious illness and death from respiratory diseases like flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). HHS encourages Iowans to talk to their doctor or other trusted health care provider about vaccines, especially those with chronic health conditions who may be at higher risk for serious illness.

Additional Tips to Stay Healthy:

• Stay home and avoid social gatherings if you or your children are sick.
• Clean high touch surfaces in your home frequently with household disinfectants.
• Practice hand hygiene frequently with soap and water or hand sanitizer for at least 20 seconds.
• Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue, or if a tissue is not available, cover them with an upper shirt sleeve, not a hand.
• Keep children home from daycare or school who have fever, cough, congestion, runny nose, or sore throat, and until they are fever-free for 24 hours without medications that reduce fever.

If you or a loved one is sick and needs medical care, contact your healthcare provider. Your healthcare provider can offer advice on whether you or your child needs to be evaluated in person, tested for flu or other respiratory diseases, and the best location for care.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Congressman Randy Feenstra says if he’s elected governor, he’ll make cutting Iowa property taxes a priority — and one step could be freezing property taxes for seniors. “But, on the flip side, you’ve got to have economic growth in those communities,” Feenstra says. “It all goes together.” And Feenstra says that means cutting property taxes for small businesses, too. “It’s the number one cost when it comes to small business. Before you even turn on the lights, you’re paying property taxes,” Feenstra says, “so we’ve got to figure out a solution to lower them, to make sure that they can grow and stay successful and keep their doors open.” Cutting the budgets for certain services, like police, fire and ambulance services isn’t the goal, according to Feenstra.

“There’s a new way to do this to be transparent on what property taxes look like,” Feenstra told reporters this morning, “what’s being paid.” Feenstra touts his work as a state senator in lowering Iowa’s income tax and his work in congress on federal tax cuts included in the “Big Beautiful Bill” President Trump signed in July. “I was a city administration. I understand how we can do this. I was also county treasurer, so I get how property taxes work,” Feenstra told reporters. “I know there’s ways to lower property taxes and freeze them and so that is my vision and we’ll get it done.” Feenstra was the city administrator in his hometown of Hull before serving two years as Sioux County Treasurer.

Feenstra made his comments early this (Friday) morning after an event in Des Moines organized by his campaign for governor. Feenstra, who’s been a member of the U-S House since 2021, told reporters he and other members of a House committee are working diligently to come up with an alternative to expiring tax credits for some of the Americans buying health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. “We want to come out with a new plan that dramatically lowers premiums for families and for small businesses when it comes to health insurance,” Feenstra says. Health care subsidies for Americans whose income is at 400 percent of the poverty line or below will continue under current law, but the COVID era extension of those subsidies for higher income Americans that was approved in 2021 will expire December 31st.

“We understand how important it is to families and to small businesses that we’ve got to get it done,” Feenstra says. “We’ve got to come up with a solution and that’s our goal.” Congressman Zach Nunn, a Republican who represents Iowa’s third district, supports a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits, to give lawmakers time to come up with long-term solutions that lower health care costs.

(Radio Iowa) – Black Friday is one week from today (Friday), launching another holiday shopping season, but a University of Iowa study finds people who are lonely may find themselves unable to resist the impulse to buy. Marketing Professor Alice Wang, in the U-I’s Tippie College of Business, says loneliness is different for everyone, but if someone perceives themselves as having a relationship deficit, they may be more susceptible to compulsive shopping. “When they don’t have the relationship they need, we humans, as social animals, it bothers us,” Wang says. “It’s forefront in the brain. We feel bad, we think about it, we dwell on it, and then the fact that we’re depleted cognitively affects our control.”

Photo credit: Stanford Graduate School of Business

In the U-I study, Wang says they asked people to think about their existing relationships, and to elaborate on them in writing, perhaps how your current friends helped you through a tough time. Such an exercise can help to change perspectives, she says, and change habits. “It does make them feel, ‘Oh, you know what? I don’t have as many friends as I want, however, these couple of friends I have are so meaningful and important to me,'” Wang says, “so that was enough to at least temporarily reduce loneliness and therefore reduce subsequent consumption patterns.”

Of course, there’s no magic number of friends we all require, it depends on the individual, but Wang says some of us may benefit from focusing less on what we don’t have and more on all we -do- have. “We’re getting close to Thanksgiving,” Wang says, “so maybe instead of being thankful for the materials we have, one nudge we can give to the general public is to be thankful of the relationships we have — and then the quality of the relationships we have.”

As we near the holidays, she suggests people who may be feeling lonely and isolated take stock of the good things in their lives, possessions -and- people, and work to monitor themselves so they don’t buy things they don’t need.

(Radio Iowa) – A report says Mason City police were back in Minnesota on Thursday to follow up on a tip in connection with the Jodi Huisentruit case, but the trip came up empty. According to a social media posting by the group that runs the FindJodi.com website, Mason City police were back in Winstead, Minnesota, about 15 miles west from the edge of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, where they were in October of last year, to examine a very old lead that produced no signs of human remains.

Acting Mason City Police Chief Mike McKelvey tells FindJodi.com that officers from his department and Minnesota authorities went to a location where a house had recently been torn down. Law enforcement used a specially-trained dog to examine the area in reference to a possible lead in the case. McKelvey says in the areas where the dog showed interest, machinery was used to dig and excavate the site to look for evidence related to the case. He says the tip did not pan out as nothing was found, but he says they felt it was important to examine the site since the house was recently removed.

Huisentruit was a Mason City T-V news anchor when she vanished in 1995.

(Radio Iowa) – The Des Moines and West Des Moines Fire Departments have taken on a pilot project that could end up saving lives across the state. Des Moines Lieutenant Dan Davis says it involves having blood available that first responders can administer to patients in the field. “So what they wanted us to do was to build up a program, and since we’re full time and we have administrative staff that we could take on this big of a project, build the framework that we could use for the rest of the state,” he says. It’s based on military use where administering blood in the field can help soldiers survive. Davis says the command vehicles for the two departments will have special coolers to carry the blood when the departments receive a call.

“So these vehicles will get dispatched, like in Des Moines, they’re automatically dispatched to all automobile accidents with extrication, all industrial entanglements with extrication, gunshots, stabbings, that stuff, they’re all automatically initiated,” he explains. Iowa paramedics are normally not allow to administer blood, but the pilot program status gives them that ability. Davis says the procedure has been shown to make a huge difference for victims.

“Part of the training is watching that video from New Orleans, and this guy is barely do anything more than moan. By the time they get two units of blood in him, he’s telling his name, date and name and birth date, so it’s pretty remarkable thing,” Davis says. West Des Moines paramedic Brian Rayhons is working with Davis on the project. He says it brings hospital type care to the field to give the patient more time before they get to the doctor. “I’ve been in E-M-S for about 20 years at this point. And I think in my career, even in the future, this is going to be one of the biggest highlights. One of the biggest transformations in care that we are providing to our patients,” Rayhons says. Rayhons says they are figuring out how to put the whole system into a box that departments can use.

“A part of that is how do we bring this to the rest of the state of Iowa, whether that be Fort, Dodge or Waterloo or Iowa City. You name the other city or entity, county level ambulance service that wants to do this. Dan and I are trying to set a pathway or pave the path for them to be able to do it much faster,” he says. They have been planning for around a year to now get it started in the field for the two departments to work through the larger process. Rayhons says there is one thing everyone can do to help. “Blood is a, one of those resources that we can’t just make up, and so without people going out and donating, we wouldn’t have this, this treatment that to be able to provide,” he says.

Rayhons and Davis say another step for the program is to change the rules so E-M-S personnel in Iowa can administer blood to patients.

(Red Oak, IA) – The Red Oak Police Department reports the arrest of a man Thursday night, following a traffic stop. Authorities say 46-year-old Kip Lee Kalkas (no address given) was arrested at around 9:30-p.m. in the 600 block of S. Broadway, for Driving While Suspended. Kalkas was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on bond amounting to a little over $491.

ORANGE CITY, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Wynja Feedlot in Orange City have reached a settlement of $20,000 for the feedlot’s unpermitted wastewater discharges. The EPA can charge up to $68,445 per day of Clean Water Act violations, but the agency lowered the charge on the basis that the feedlot had “a limited ability to pay a civil penalty.”

In addition to the fee, Wynja Feedlot Inc., a 999-head capacity cattle feedlot, is required to apply for an National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit, construct a lined containment basin and sample discharges from the surrounding tile for possible pollutants.

The EPA discovered in March 2021 that the confined animal feeding operation had been discharging wastewater through a drainage pipe that led to a “relatively permanent” tributary of the West Branch of the Floyd River. According to EPA, the wastewater contained high levels of bacteria, ammonia, chlorides, and unprocessed organic matter, all of which can contribute to impaired water quality. The feedlot did not have an NPDES permit for the drainage pipe, and according to EPA, the facility admitted the observed discharge had occurred for three consecutive days.