(Des Moines, IA) – The five state-operated Test Iowa drive-thru sites and the State Hygienic Lab will be closed on Monday, May 31, for the Memorial Day holiday. The sites include:

• Black Hawk County — 4121 Alexandra Drive, Waterloo
• Linn County — Windstar Lines, 5755 Willow Creek Drive SW, Cedar Rapids
• Polk County — 4475 NE 3rd Street, Des Moines
• Pottawattamie County — 3236 Nebraska Ave., Council Bluffs  
• Scott County — North Park Mall, 320 W. Kimberly Road, Davenport

All sites will reopen for testing as usual on Tuesday, June 1, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Individuals who wish to be tested at any site must first complete an online assessment at testiowa.com, and schedule an appointment. Locations and hours of operation for all test sites can be found at testiowa.com or coronavirus.iowa.gov.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa is joining a growing number of states making it legal to use robots for deliveries in areas where foot traffic is allowed, like sidewalks and crosswalks. They’re called P-D-Ds — personal delivery devices. Representative Rob Bacon of Slater says under the new law, the maximum speed for a delivery robot is no more than six miles an hour on a sidewalk or pedestrian area. “If there are no sidewalks, the little PDD can operate on the left side of the road,” Bacon says.

A type of PDD robot

A delivery robot will be allowed travel 20 miles an hour on a street — but may only operate on street with posted speed limits of 40 miles an hour or less. The delivery robots can be no more than 500 pounds — before any cargo is added — and the robots must be operated or supervised remotely by a live person. Representative Dave Williams of Waterloo says P-D-Ds are being tested in a handful of U.S. cities before delivery robots would see wider use. “I expect we’ll be back here perfecting this before that happens,” Williams says, “and I hope it happens in Bondurant before anywhere else.”

An Amazon fulfillment center opened in the Des Moines suburb late last year. Amazon’s six-wheeled robot is called Scout. The FedEx delivery robot is called Roxo (ROCKS-oh). The companies envision driving a truck load of personal delivery devices to an area and releasing the robots to travel the final segment of the delivery route. Iowa cities and counties will not be allowed to impose regulations on delivery robots that are stricter than the new state regulations. Governor Reynolds signed the bill this month and the law goes into effect July 1st.

The 8:07-a.m. broadcast news from Ric Hanson.

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The Creston Police Department reports two arrests and an incident of vandalism. Authorities say Thursday afternoon, 27-year-old Zakary Arthur Titus, of Creston, was arrested on a warrant for Violation of Probation. He was being held in the Union County Jail on a $1,000 cash-only bond. And, 43-year-old David Carlson Wallander, of Thayer, was arrested Thursday afternoon in Creston, for Driving While Suspended. He was taken to the Union County Jail and later posted a $300 bond.

Creston Police said also, a man residing in the 400 block of Livingston Avenue reported on May 21st, that multiple vehicles he owns, were vandalized. The front driver’s side window of a 2019 Mitsubishi Outlander was broken out, and scratches were made on the rear driver’s side quarter panel of a 2013 Nissan Titan. The total amount of damage was estimated at $1,000.

With Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) – The Powerball and Lucky for Life games are adding more drawings later this year. Iowa Lottery spokesperson, Mary Neubauer says Powerball is going to add a Monday drawing along with the Wednesday and Saturday drawings — while the Lucky For Life game will move from two drawings to a drawing every night.” Powerball is nationwide, while the Lucky For Life game involves Iowa and 15 other states. Neubauer says the changes are in response to the feedback they’ve been getting. “Players are looking for bigger, faster-growing jackpots in games like Powerball and MegaMillions. And so, the change in Powerball is designed to help deliver those bigger, faster-growing jackpots,” Neubauer says. “When you have another drawing in the mix every week it would mean more tickets being sold and that way the jackpot would grow more quickly.”

The big jackpots in the games have lagged since the pandemic.”We’re an instant gratification society — and this is a way to speed up the pace of the games a little bit,” she says. Neubauer says more drawings don’t change your odds of winning a jackpot. “Even though extra drawings are being added in the game — it does not change the rest of the specifics in the game, ” according to Neubauer. “So the prize levels are staying the same, the odds of winning, the ticket price is all the same, it’s just that there will be more drawings per week.”

The Lucky for Life game will change first. “The first daily drawings in that game begin on July 19th. And then the changes in Powerball will occur in August — with Powerball moving to three drawings a week. The first Monday drawing in that game will happen on August 23rd,” she says.

You can win the Powerball jackpot by matching all six numbers selected in the drawing, while the Lucky for Life game gives players a daily shot at winning its top prize of one-thousand dollars a day for the rest of their lives.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa State University study finds a recent federal court decision forcing the line speeds at meat processing plants to slow down could result in a two-and-a-half percent loss in pork packing capacity nationwide. I-S-U economist Dermot Hayes says without any changes, the ruling will lead to a cut of more than 80-million dollars in income for small pork producers. “We were expecting those plants to be at capacity this fall so those extra hogs are going to have to find a home,” Hayes says. “Packers will have to cancel contracts with producers and push those hogs out and they’ll be transported a couple hundred miles to a plant that is willing to take those hogs, but of course, at a discount.”

Hayes says the new regulations go into effect July 1st, but plants won’t start reaching capacity until September, October or November — which is when the forced slowdowns will hit. “Four or five of the plants have been running at these line speeds for 20 years,” Hayes says, “so it’s not a short-term decision that caused this. It’s one of those laws of unintended consequences. We’ll see it this fall when we traditionally get the most hogs going through the pipeline.” Hayes says if the agency plans to appeal the court’s decision, it’ll need to act quickly.

“The decision that the U.S. Department of Agriculture made to allow higher line speeds under the Clinton administration, the judge just didn’t think they had done a good enough job documenting the impact on worker safety,” Hayes says. “One outcome would be for the USDA to appeal and ask for some time to document the impact on worker safety, if any.”

The National Pork Producers Council is urging the U-S-D-A to appeal the decision. N-P-P-C president Jen Sorenson says the lives of many hog farmers will be upended if the ruling takes effect.

DES MOINES – On Thursday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new Public Health Disaster proclamation that extends critical regulatory relief for an additional 30 days to those on the frontlines of COVID19 recovery.

The proclamation also continues to extend the waiver on transportation restrictions for overweight loads.

The proclamation can be found online here.

(Radio Iowa) – A report on local health finds nearly one in five Iowa households do not have broadband access. The report, from the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute, uses more than 30 measures like adult obesity and air quality to rank counties on their overall health. Researcher Anne Roubal says internet access helps people apply for jobs and stay socially connected for their mental health during the pandemic. “And then also just access basic health care things like telehealth, especially in rural or even frontier areas across our nation,” Roubal says.

Iowa fell short of the report’s top benchmark of having at least 86-percent of households with broadband access. “Iowa as a state is only at 81-percent,” Roubal says. “That’s still five-percent less than what we would want them to be at.”

The report found the percentage of households with broadband access in Iowa varies from as high as 89-percent in Dallas County, down to 65-percent in Davis County. This is the first year the report has included access to broadband as a factor in health.

(By Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio)

Former Iowa Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer — the Democrat who lost her bid for a second term in the U.S. House last year — is reportedly considering a run for the U.S. Senate.

Finkenauer lost her 2020 race in Iowa’s first congressional district by about two-and-a-half percent or a little less than 11-thousand votes. According to Politico, two unnamed sources indicated Finkenauer is laying the groundwork for a U.S. Senate race in 2022.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s seventh term ends in early 2023. The 87-year-old has said he won’t announce until this fall whether he plans to run for an eighth term and put his name on the 2022 ballot. Finkernauer, who lives in Cedar Rapids, would face a Democratic Primary if she does run for the Senate.

Western Iowa farmer Dave Muhlbauer of Manilla launched his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign this week. Other Democrats are considering the race, too. State Auditor Rob Sand recently told the Carroll Times he will not run for the U.S. Senate, but is still considering a race for governor or for re-election to a second term as state auditor.