(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Wednesday afternoon, arrested three women on Theft in the 5th Degree, charges. 33-year-old Natasha Ann Campbell, of Creston, was arrested at her home. 54-year-old Gena Ann Chumbley, of Creston, was arrested at 302 N. Pine Street. And, 36-year-old Amber Marie Buchanan, of Creston, was arrested at the Union County Law Enforcement Center. All three women each posted a $300 bond and was released.

Separately, 35-year-old Wesley Gene Keeler, of Creston, was arrested following a traffic stop. He was charged with Driving while Suspended and later posted a $300 bond before being released.

(Radio Iowa) – A Central College math professor has updated work that figures the lowest amount of the popular vote a candidate would need to win enough electoral college votes to become president. Professor Russ Goodman says the work was first done in 1961 and then updated in 2012. “So we’ve had a few presidential elections since then, and we’ve had a census since then, also, so the number of representatives per state has changed. And so I really familiarize myself with what their model looked like, and it was just interesting and timely, and I just wanted to push it forward a little bit,” Goodman says. His work shows you could theoretically win the presidency with only 20 to 24 percent of the popular vote depending on the year.

The modern day strategy has been to win the states with the most electoral votes — but Goodman says winning with the fewest number of votes goes completely against that plan.  “Overall, the mathematical model says the exact opposite. What a candidate should do is actually stock up on all of the small states and not get any votes at all from the big states,” he says. Goodman says a candidate would stay away from states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that have the most electoral votes. “If you stock up on the states, like Maine and Iowa, you know, all the smaller states, if you accumulate those electoral votes, and you get to 270, and you only earn half of those votes, like you just barely win the majority and each of those states, that’ll actually get you more easily to the minimum percentage of the popular vote. Because remember, those big states have lots of people voting,” Goodman says.

Goodman says the proposal is based solely on the mathematics of winning one particular way and doesn’t figure in politics. “So if a candidate wanted to look at this, and think of it as a particular strategy, I don’t know that our current national politics would work all that well,” Goodman says. “Because a state like Maine is very different from a state like Iowa, politically.” He says it’s fun to figure out the mathematics of the problem — but he says the odds are stacked against it ever happening. “Virtually zero. I mean, in reality, it’s virtually zero,” he says.

Goodman says anyone who’s campaigning, probably is using data to help them make good decisions, and using this strategy is not one they would use to give themselves the best chance to win.

(Radio Iowa) – Former Dickinson County Attorney Amy Zenor has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication — and court documents are suggesting it was carbs, not alcohol, that caused her to appear drunk. On November 10th, the Dickinson County Sheriff’s office was notified someone in the county courthouse was drunk. Zenor was arrested and the county board of supervisors accepted her resignation as county attorney a few weeks later. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Zenor is claiming she has a rare medical condition that causes someone to become intoxicated without drinking alcohol.

It’s called A-B-S or Gut Fermentation Syndrome and the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports an Ohio doctor says Zenor has it. Medical studies indicate when patients with A-B-S eat carbohydrates, the carbs can interact with yeast in the intestines and produce ethanol.

Gut Fermentation Syndrome was first diagnosed in a five year old child in 1947. Fewer than 100 cases have been diagnosed worldwide, over half of them in Japan.

(Radio Iowa)- Business owners in Mount Pleasant say the closure of Iowa Wesleyan University announced Tuesday is going to be felt around the entire community. Roger Beckman and his brother Dale have owned Main Street Pizza in downtown Mount Pleasant for 32 years. Beckman tells K-C-R-G TV about 20 percent of his business comes from the students. “We have some students that come once or twice a week,” School leaders say there are around 800 students enrolled at the university and 110 staff.

Beckman hopes if any good news was to come out of Wesleyan shutting down, that the building could be repurposed for the community. “Hopefully, they won’t want to hold onto it and let the cobwebs grow,” said Beckman. “Hopefully, something good will come out of it.”

The U-S-D-A helped the school refinance to try to turn things around, but they continued to face financial issues. The U-S-D-A ill take ownership of the campus at the end of the school year in June.