(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports three people were arrested recently on separate drug-related charges.

43-year-old Dirk Wayne Parrish, of Tingly, was arrested in the parking lot of O’Reilly’s Auto Parts in Creston. Parrish was charged with Fail to Affix Drug Tax Stamp – 7 or more grams, Maintain Drug House – Vehicle, Possession of Controlled Substance – 3rd, and Intent Manufacture/Deliver Meth Over 5g Under 5Kg. He was transported and held at the Union County Jail on $42,000 cash or surety bond.

29-year-old Jacob Jack Davis, of Cromwell, was arrested on an outstanding warrant on original charges that include Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Interference with Official Acts, and Public Intoxication. Davis was transported and held at the Union County Jail on $900.00 cash or surety bond

and, 66-year-old Anita Rose Fasce, of Creston, was arrested at the Union County Law Enforcement Center on charges of Disorderly Conduct – Loud Raucous Noise, and Unlawful Possession of Prescription Drug. Fasce was being held in the Union County Jail on a $1,300 cash or surety bond.

(Radio Iowa) – An emergency medical physician is urging Iowa parents who have small kids living in their homes to avoid buying any sort of health-related gummies. Dr. Benjamin Orozco, a medical toxicologist with Emplify Health by Gundersen, says kids get curious and they love candy, and if gummies are in the house, there’s a chance your child could end up seriously ill — or worse — if they find the bottle. “Any supplements, whether it be gummy vitamins, melatonin, recreational marijuana use in adults that’s in gummy form, any of that stuff is a very high risk to be eaten by children, especially toddlers in large amounts,” Orozco says. “They’ll eat the whole bottle, and depending on what the product is, you can actually have a fair amount of toxicity associated with that.”

Despite what the label says, he says the concentrations may be all over the map. If your child is discovered feeling woozy with the container nearby, you’d better make a fast call to the Iowa Poison Control Center. “If you call the poison center and your kid is alert and talking, they can walk you through the treatment and observation for that,” he says. “Many times, you’ll be able to keep the kid at home, but they’ll appropriately identify the kids that need to be in the hospital. I always put in a plug for the poison center at 1-800-222-1222.” Orozco says he’s not a fan of children being given melatonin for help with sleep as he says many supplements are “littered with problems.”

“First of all, it may not get to the root cause of why the child is having poor sleep,” Orozco says. “Second of all, even if you buy melatonin and there’s a labeled amount on the bottle, recent studies show you could have three or four times as much melatonin in there than you think you’re getting your child, none at all, or potentially CBD or some other substance all together.” There are plenty of non-medical ways to help a kid with sleep, including enforcing a regular sleep schedule, banning screens before bedtime, having regular meal times and plenty of physical activity. Orozco says it’s risky to have this sort of supplement in the house with kids, and he recommends if adults need any of these products, get them in pill or tablet form so they don’t tempt a child.

“Avoid gummies, chocolate bars, things like that, at all costs,” Orozco says. “Don’t have them out where your kids can see them. Don’t take them in front of your kids, because they’ll look for them later. They need to be locked up high and out of sight. And really, I don’t like gummy and candy forms for any sort of supplement or recreational substance in the house with small children.” If a child takes an adult dose of any medication, he says “any is too many,” but gobbling an entire bottle of gummies could land them in the I-C-U. It’s safer, Orozco says, to simply not allow them in the house.

DES MOINES – State Treasurer Roby Smith is celebrating College Savings Month this September with a statewide giveaway! Five Iowa students will each win a $1,000 contribution to an ISave 529 account, and each winner will choose a K-12 school to receive an additional $1,000 donation. “Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, guardian, the fun aunt or the cool neighbor – anyone can register a child to try and jump-start saving for their future educational expenses,” said Treasurer Smith. “Iowans from Larchwood to Keokuk and everywhere in-between should visit Iowa529Contest.com throughout the month of September and register a child in their life. The winners won’t just make a difference in that child’s life, but will also help out a school of their choice in the process.”

Iowans can register to win a $1,000 ISave 529 contribution and $1,000 to a K-12 school now through September 30 at Iowa529Contest.com. It takes about 60 seconds to register and give a child in your life the gift of education. Connect with ISave 529 on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay informed of updates and news.

More About ISave 529:

ISave 529 is Iowa’s direct-sold 529 plan administered by State Treasurer Roby Smith. With the plan people can save for future educational expenses for themselves, children, grandchildren or more and Iowa taxpayers can deduct up to $5,800 in contributions per beneficiary account from their state income taxes in 2025. An ISave 529 account can be opened with as little as $25, and anyone – parents, grandparents, even friends – can contribute. The plan offers a variety of investment options and is easy to manage online at ISave529.com or through the READYSAVE 529 app.

To learn how you can open an ISave 529 account, visit ISave529.com. For more information about the plan, read the Program Description.

DECORAH, Iowa — The Crown Prince of Norway, Haakon, will visit Iowa next month as part of a tour celebrating 200 years of organized immigration from Norway to the United States.

Prince Haakon, who is second in line to the Norwegian throne, will make three stops in the country, including Decorah, which has significant Norwegian history and ties.

The prince is expected to visit between Oct. 6 and Oct. 9.

H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon (Royal House of Norway photo)

(Radio Iowa) – National data indicates the popularity of weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy is creating losses — for the restaurant industry. Jessica Dunker is president and C-E-O of the Iowa Restaurant Association. “When people first started talking to me about this, oh, up around the first of the year, I thought: ‘Hmm. That doesn’t make a lot of sense,'” Dunker said. “But as more and more of the population is taking these GLP-1s, there’s a couple of side effects that are maybe unforeseen and they do impact restaurants.”

For every 1000 people IN IOWA, a dozen had a prescription for Ozempic and Wagovy that was being covered by insurance according to a recent Axios report. Dunker says that doesn’t count others who are paying up to 13-hundred dollars out of pocket for a month’s supply — using disposable income to lose weight and get healthy, leaving less money to go out for a meal.

“Secondly, their appetites are definitely impacted by this,” Dunker said. “We’re finding that people do go out less. They spent less when they arrive. They are definitely choosing smaller portion sizes or only maybe just a small appetizer and one drink, versus someone who maybe would have come for dinner.” A survey by Bloomberg found 54 percent of G-L-P-one users said they’ve dined out less frequently since starting the medication. It’s having an effect in Iowa restaurants that offer table service, according to Dunker.

“We’re not going to encourage anyone to not get healthy, but there is real impact there,” Dunker said, “so if you have had a recent weight loss, come out and celebrate with something healthy and bring some friends along.”

As Radio Iowa recently reported, Dunker is predicting up to 600 Iowa restaurants will close this year because of they’re losing money due to the rising costs of food and labor.

(Radio Iowa) – A rally at the Iowa Capitol later this (Monday) morning is one of over a thousand “Workers Over Billionaires” events planned around the country. The head of the country’s largest teachers union will speak at the Des Moines rally. Joshua Brown, president of state teachers union, will, too. He says the 2017 Iowa law that scaled back collective bargaining rights for public sector unions was a set back for the Iowa State Education Association.

“But we’ve been starting to get back to stable and starting to see some growth,” Brown says. “and so we’re looking forward to continuing that growth and making our members excited about some of the things that we can do as a union.” The Iowa State Education Association represents 50-thousand educators — school nurses, counselors and office staff as well as teachers. Brown is concerned about a proposal floated by the governor’s efficiency task force that would tie teacher pay to student performance.

“It’s a scheme that winds up just hurting morale and hurting the ability for educators to trust one another, to work together,” Brown says “because you add that measure of competitiveness, people don’t want to share the best ideas with other people and people want to go to the easiest jobs and try to leave the places where we actually need the best teachers.” Several years ago, former Governor Terry Branstad talked about linking teacher pay to the results of their students’ test scores, but the proposal never became law.

Brown says in areas where the policy has been implemented, high-performing schools continue be high performing, but there isn’t that much of an increase in test scores among students in schools that have had chronically lower graduation rates. “I think the educators on the ground and the parents in our communities as well as the students should all be at a table and working on solutions, but it needs to be funded and there’s been over a decade of funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation in public schools,” Brown says. “If we really want to see improved student achievement, we need to invest in public schools and give educators autonomy and use their expertise to actually make a difference.”

Brown made his comments this weekend during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S.

(Radio Iowa) – The mourning dove season in Iowa opens today (Monday). D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenschutz says the participation by hunters and number of birds have been steady. “Basically 14 to 15-thousand hunters, pretty stable there, and our harvest has bounced around between, 150 and 200-thousand doves over the last couple of years,” Bogenschutz says.
Bogenschutz says there are no changes in regulations for doves, and the D-N-R has plenty of information about where to find them.

“If you go to our website and and just search for morning doves, a lot of folks are asking about, you know we do do some managed food plots for doves and we have that listing on our website,” he says. Bogenschutz says dove are found across the state, but cooler weather recently may make the hunting better in southern Iowa. “Part of that might just be due to migrations probably already started. And so we’ve got those that probably left northern Iowa. But I mean we, you know, our hunters have good hunts from north to south. So definitely, I think southern Iowa does carry a little bit higher densities than northern Iowa at this time of the year,” he says.

Bogenschutz says dove hunting has a lot of positives that make it good for beginning hunters. “Obviously a very early season here, starting one of our earliest in September, so it’s relatively warm. Doves are very abundant, you don’t need a lot of gear to to dove hunt, basically a bucket to sit on and a shotgun and some shells and an area the doves are using, and you’re good to go,” be says. “So from that perspective it’s a it’s a great way for beginning folks into the the hunting realm.”

Bogenschutz says there’s a lot of opportunities to hunt on private land if you get permission, and there are also the public wildlife areas.

(Radio Iowa) – Labor Day marks what many Iowans consider the end of summer, but it’s not the end of our problems associated with ticks. The region has seen a rise in cases of Lyme disease and other ailments ticks carry, which one expert blames on warmer winters which allow millions of the tiny insects to survive and thrive.

“Tick season essentially now is moving year-round,” according to Megan Meller, an infection preventionist at Emplify Health by Gundersen. She says Iowans should do tick checks during every month of the year. There are more than a dozen species of ticks in Iowa. The three most common are deer ticks, dog ticks and lone star ticks. Meller says some are easier to spot than others.

“If we’re lucky, they’re large and we can find them right away but some of them are really tiny, the size of a dot at the end of a sentence, and if you overlook those, they can also cause an infection,” Meller says. “It’s really important to not just do a thorough tick check on yourself and on your pets and children, but to also take additional preventative measures.” Those measures include wearing long pants and long sleeves.

“Wearing bug spray when you’re outside that repels ticks. It’s closing up your sock line. That’s an easy way for ticks to get up, too. It’s wearing long socks over your pants,” she says. “It’s just being really mindful that there are also hidden dangers lurking out there.”

There’s another tick to be watchful for, especially if you raise livestock. The Asian longhorned tick was found in southeast Iowa in June. It apparently doesn’t have a taste for human blood, but can be quite harmful for animals, including cattle, horses, sheep and deer.

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

(Radio Iowa) – Candidates from BOTH parties who’ve been campaigning for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat say Republican Joni Ernst would have faced backlash over her voting record if she had run for a third term in the senate. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs, a Democrat who’s currently a member of the Iowa House, says the “yes” vote Ernst cast for President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was a liability.

“There is no way she was going to be able to defend slashing and gutting health care to children and to disabled individuals and cutting food assistance just to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Turek says. Republican Jim Carlin of Sergeant Bluff, a former state legislator, has criticized Ernst for failing to IMMEDIATELY support Pete Hegseth when President Trump nominated him to be defense secretary.

“You know, in the last few years we’ve seen that President Trump does need some allies,” Carlin said. Ernst, a combat veteran, ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth, but she initially raised concerns about Hegseth’s comments that women should not serve in combat. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Nathan Sage of Indianola, the former head of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, says having an incumbent exit the race makes Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat attainable for Democrats.

State Senator Zach Wahls of Coralville, one of the other Democrats running to the U-S Senate, says Ernst was a vulnerable incumbent. “Republicans in Iowa are now running scared,” Wahls said, “and we know that we have the chance to defeat whoever the Republicans nominate.” Des Moines School Board president Jackie Norris, a Democrat who entered the race a few weeks ago, says Iowans are ready for change and Ernst saw the writing on the wall.

Carlin — the Republican who announced in June he intended to challenge Ernst in the 2026 Primary Election — says Ernst’s decision NOT to run isn’t a surprise. “I talk to a lot of people and they were all kind of thinking, you know…’I don’t think she’s going to run,'” Carlin said. “I heard that over and over and over again.”

Carlin says Ernst should be credited for fulfilling a promise from her 2014 campaign — that she would serve no more than two terms in the U.S. Senate.