(Radio Iowa) – Studies show about one in eight Iowa women will get breast cancer during their lifetime, and while those numbers are holding steady, there’s a rise in breast cancer cases among young women who typically aren’t yet being screened. Dr. Hope Guzzo, a breast surgeon at Emplify Health by Gundersen, says that presents some unique challenges for women under 40. “It is scary,” Guzzo says. “Younger women can have more advanced cancers just because we aren’t screening them. So typically they are the ones that are coming in because they felt something, and by that time, it’s larger than someone that we would detect on screening.” Breast cancer screenings are recommended to start around age 40, while those who are considered at high risk should start mammograms even sooner. When found early, women have more treatment choices and a better chance of recovery.

“Rates aren’t going down, but we’re also getting better at detecting because our screening is getting better, which is a huge goal,” Guzzo says. “Our goal is to screen more women, and yes, by doing more screening, we will catch more cancers, but if we can catch them early, that’s the whole goal.” Younger women may be hesitant to seek a doctor’s counsel when they find a possible lump. “It’s easy to feel like they’re going to get blown off or feel like, ‘Well, because I’m 25, I couldn’t get breast cancer,’ but anytime you’re worried about something, I would rather you come to my clinic and I can do an exam, and if I’m worried about it, we can do imaging,” Guzzo says. “I would rather do more of those exams and find nothing, then have women sit at home and worry about something or be scared to come in.”

Roughly 27-hundred Iowa women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and almost 400 die from it. It’s the number-two cancer killer of Iowa women behind only lung cancer.

Emplify Health by Gundersen has clinics in Calmar, Decorah, Fayette, Lansing, Postville and Waukon, and a hospital in West Union.

(Radio Iowa) – A spokesman for the trade group called Fur Commission U-S-A reports someone illegally entered a mink farm in southwest Iowa near Woodbine Monday night. Spokesman Challis Hobbs says a farmer, his son and grandson raise more than one-thousand mink and found the perimeter fence torn down.  )”That’s what they woke up to, and they woke up to a lot of the pens had been opened and like the housing, so like the nest box like where it’s warm and stuff where the mink stay, the people who came in, they destroyed those,” he says. Hobbs says around half of the mink stayed around and they’ve been working to find the others as they are domesticated and don’t do well in the wild.

“What we see time and time again is like within 24 to 48 hours, if the farmer can’t recover them, the majority of them die. The ones that don’t, they kind of get loose and they’re desperate and they’re carnivorous. So they’re killing anything and everything they can to eat,” he says. Hobbs says they might survive for awhile eating any birds or chickens they can find, but they often die or are hit on the roadway and killed. Hobbs says there have been some recent attacks on fur farms in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they are not just vandals. “Everyone who’s been caught doing this has been activists. It’s very organized, it’s organized crime really is,” Hobbs says. “Like for example the ones in Pennsylvania, they showed up and they had. They had a whole a whole pamphlet of like what to do, not to get caught. Like turn off your cell phone and what to do if you get caught. What to say and don’t turn on your other basically activist friends, extremist activist friends who are doing the same thing.”

He says local law enforcement and the F-B-I are investigating the Woodbine case. “These crimes do fall under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Because the government does see this as domestic terrorism because they’re intentionally going on these farms and trying to basically shut them down and put these put these farming families out of business,” Hobbs says.

Hobbs says two people were caught in the Pennsylvania and they face multiple charges. Hobbs says the animals cost around 45 dollars each, but it can cost the farmer much more in losing animals for breeding.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – A traffic stop late Tuesday night in Villisca resulted in the arrest of a woman from Harrison County. According to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, 45-year-old Nicholle Annette Gibson, of Missouri Valley, was arrested at around 10:37-p.m.,  for Driving While Barred. Gibson was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) – Former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts has pleaded not guilty to federal immigration charges, KCCI reports. Court documents show Roberts was charged with making a false statement for employment and illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm. A grand jury says Roberts lied on his I-9 submitted as part of his hiring process for Des Moines Public Schools in 2023. The jury says Roberts said he was a U.S. citizen “knowing he was not in fact a United States citizen.”

Federal authorities moved Roberts from the Woodbury County Jail to a federal facility in Council Bluffs. There is a hearing for Roberts set for Wednesday, where the court could set a date for his trial.

If found guilty, Roberts could be fined, imprisoned for up to 15 years, or both.

CRESTON, Iowa — According to a report from KCCI-TV, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Creston Community School District from moving forward with plans to fire a teacher for her comments regarding the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Last month, Melisa Crook, a high school English teacher from Creston, was informed that she was facing termination for a social-media comment regarding Kirk.

Crook then sued the district in federal court, citing a series of pro-Republican posts by Superintendent Deron Stender and school board president Don Gee, and alleging that her First Amendment rights were being violated. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger recently granted Crook’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking the district’s plans to terminate her. The judge also deferred Crook’s request for a preliminary injunction until after a court hearing that’s currently planned for Oct. 31, 2025.

The order prevents the district’s school board from conducting Crook’s employment hearing, scheduled for Oct. 21, 2025, and from “taking any other adverse employment actions” against Crook based on her Facebook comments. In her ruling, Ebinger found that Crook “is likely to succeed in showing Stender took adverse action against her in response to exercise of her First Amendment rights” and that she is “likely to succeed on the merits of her First Amendment claim as to Stender.”

Ebinger added that she concluded “Crook spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern when posting her Facebook comment.” As part of her ruling, Ebinger observed that Crook had “responded to and discussed the murder of a public figure, Charlie Kirk, and her (subsequent) longer post clarified her intent” in posting the original comment. “Crook posted her Facebook comments on her personal time, at home, from her personal Facebook account,” Ebinger stated in her ruling. “She did not purport to speak as an employee of the Creston Community School District.

The school district had argued that a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction would defeat its decision to discharge an employee and improperly extend “the employment of a potentially incompetent employee.” Ebinger rejected that argument, stating that “the court finds the enforcement of First Amendment rights outweighs any potential employment harm to defendants. Further, the public has a compelling interest in protection of First Amendment and other constitutional rights.”

As part of her ruling, the judge denied Crook’s request to be removed from administrative leave.

DES MOINES, Iowa [KCCI-TV] — Des Moines Public School leaders voted to approve Associate Superintendent Matt Smith’s contract as the district’s interim superintendent.

Under the new contract, Smith will serve in the new role through June 30, 2027. He took over the role on September 26.The annual salary written into the contract is $286,716 for the first year, which is a more than $25,000 increase from his current salary.

The new contract is the same salary former Superintendent Ian Roberts was earning. After the first year, the board will determine raises based on Smith’s performance.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Robert Lundin, the chief academic officer for Des Moines Public Schools, has been placed on administrative leave, according to district officials. KCCI reports Lundin was placed on leave on Oct. 6.

No details have been provided regarding the reasons behind this decision, with a spokesperson for the district describing it as a personnel matter.

(Radio Iowa) – Brad Sherman, a Republican candidate for governor, says reducing property taxes is a priority, but he suggests taking a sledgehammer to the system and completely eliminating property taxes isn’t doable. “I would love to see no property tax,” Sherman said. “It’d be great, but I don’t know that there’s a way to fund our essential services, you know, if we were to cut out all property taxes. How do you do that?”

Sherman says he can think of only two ways to pay for police, fire and other essential services if the property tax is eliminated — either raise the state sales tax or use state income tax revenue. “And we’ve been cutting income tax, so that’s probably something we shouldn’t look at right now,” Sherman said, “but a sales tax, to replace a property tax elimination, it would be a big sales tax and then it would have to be collected by the state.”

Sherman says that’s because not all areas of the state have enough retail establishments that would collect the sales taxes needed to fund local services. “Some counties have a lot of retail, other counties don’t have hardly any retail, so one county would go broke (and) the other would have a…boom and so you would have to collect that centrally by the state and then it would have to be doled out in many ways and that would be a big problem,” Sherman said. “And centralized government always scares me, you know, I believe in decentralized government.”

GOP gubernatorial candidate Brad Sherman on the “Iowa Press” set at Iowa PBS on Oct. 17, 2025. (Iowa PBS photo)

Sherman proposes reducing property taxes for people who’ve lived in Iowa for at least a decade and own their own home. “When you hit 60 or 65 for seniors, that then their primary residence could be tax free. A very small sales tax could cover that, but even that in itself might end up paying for itself because people would stay in Iowa then instead of actually moving to another state when they retire because now they have a home,” Sherman said. “Plus it would protect seniors on low income from losing their homes.”

Sherman made his comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S. Sherman is a pastor from Williamsburg who served one term in the Iowa House. He launched his campaign for governor in February — before fellow Republican Kim Reynolds announced she would not seek reelection.

(Sidney, Iowa) – A Fremont County man was injured during a collision early this (Tuesday) morning near the Sidney Junior-Senior High School.

The Iowa State Patrol says a 2007  Chevy truck driven by 18-year-old Mavryc Morgan, of Sidney, crossed the center line of the road at 2700 Knox Road in Sidney a little after 8-a.m. The truck struck a 2003 GMC Yukon driven by 51-year-old Sergio Contreras, of Sidney.

Contreras – who was not wearing a seat belt -was flown by air ambulance to the UNMC in Omaha. Morgan was uninjured in the crash. An investigation into the accident remains ongoing.