(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says President Trump’s signature on a bill that classifies fentanyl-related drugs as more dangerous substances will save lives. The new federal law will require prison sentences for people convicted of making or selling synthetic drugs that are similar to fentanyl. Grassley says the law will prevent these deadly fentanyl knockoffs from making their way into Iowa communities. Grassley attended the bill signing at the White House. Other elected officials from Iowa were there, too.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says it’s a pivotal moment in the fight against fentanyl. Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks says the bill gives law enforcement the tools to stop fentanyl and copy-cat drugs from claiming more lives. Congressman Randy Feenstra says too many families have lost loved ones to an overdose and this law will strengthen efforts to keep drugs out of our communities and away from our kids.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), at President Trump’s right, applauds HALT Fentanyl Act signing (White House photo)

Fentanyl is an opioid — and opioids and synthetic opioids are the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.

(Council Bluffs, Iowa) – Officials with the Pottawattamie County Secondary Roads Department report 525th Street, from Pioneer Trail (G-66) to Beechnut Road, will remain closed due to weather delays associated with a crossroad pipe replacement project. The Department says the project, which began June 30th, is now expected to be completed (weather permitting), by 5-p.m., July 25th.

525th Street was originally expected to have re-opened on July 2nd, but that was delayed until July 18th, and then to the current expected re-opening of July 25th.

(Sioux City, Iowa) – A former Iowa nurse from western Iowa, who stole pain medication from nursing home residents, burglarized multiple residences, possessed a firearm as a felon, and committed a bank fraud, was sentenced Wednesday, July 16, 2025, to more than three years in federal prison. The U-S Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, reports 47-year-old Sarah Ann Haptonstall, of Onawa, received the prison term after she pled guilty on February 24, 2025, to one count of acquiring and attempting to acquire a controlled substance by misrepresentation, fraud, deception, or subterfuge, one count of possession of a firearm by a felon, and one count of bank fraud.

In a plea agreement, and at her plea and sentencing hearings, Haptonstall admitted that, in March 2023, she burglarized an Onawa couple’s home on multiple occasions in order to steal narcotic pain medication. One the residents needed the medication for constant nerve pain. Haptonstall knew this, because when she was a nurse in 2021, she had delivered narcotics to the Onawa couple’s residence. When law enforcement officers arrested Haptonstall on March 10, 2023, after she re-burglarized the Onawa couple’s residence a final time, Haptonstall possessed a 9mm Luger pistol in her truck. Haptonstall was a felon and drug user at the time, and so it was illegal for her to possess firearms. Haptonstall had purchased two 9mm Luger pistols in February 2020, after falsely stating that she was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, a controlled substance.

The burglaries of the Onawa couple’s home were but one part of a larger drug diversion scheme that Haptonstall was perpetrating in western Iowa. In February and March 2023, Haptonstall was entering multiple apartments in Onawa and stealing the residents’ pain medications. Further, between April and October 2022, while working as a licensed Iowa nurse, defendant stole hydrocodone pills from four elderly residents of an Onawa nursing home and a Sergeant Bluff nursing home. One of the victims was over 90 years old. Haptonstall removed the narcotics from pill cards and replaced them with Tylenol. One of the nursing home residents suffered from severe pain as she died because defendant had swapped out the victim’s narcotic pills for Tylenol and made a false entry in her medical record. Another resident was in hospice when defendant stole her narcotics. Haptonstall was first licensed as a nurse in 2006, and her license was renewed at least five times (in 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2021). Haptonstall ultimately surrendered her nursing license.

Haptonstall also admitted that, in early 2023, she committed a bank fraud against a small family-owned business in Onawa. Haptonstall was the business’s bookkeeper and abused her position of trust to embezzle over $8,000 from the company. Specifically, Haptonstall created fraudulent checks payable to herself, drawn on the small business’s account, and bearing one of its proprietor’s signatures. Haptonstall disguised the fraudulent checks by making false and fictitious entries in the small business’s electronic bookkeeping system.

Haptonstall has an extensive criminal history, beginning with six theft convictions in the late 1990s and 2000s. Between 1997 and 2013, a state court dismissed more than 30 additional theft charges against Haptonstall after she agreed to pay restitution to the victims in those cases. Haptonstall’s felony record started in 2006, when she pled guilty to forgery after she forged signatures on checks. In 2014, Haptonstall was convicted of a felony controlled substance violation after making a material misrepresentation to obtain hydrocodone from a grocery store. In February 2023, while she was committing bank fraud, and about a month before burglarizing residences in Onawa, Haptonstall received a ten-year, fully suspended prison sentence in state court for felony drug diversion after she admitted she had swapped patients’ hydrocodone for Tylenol pills while working as a delivery driver for a local pharmacy.

Haptonstall was sentenced to 42 months’ imprisonment. She was also ordered to make over $8,000 in restitution to her former employer and to repay $5,000 in court-appointed attorney fees. Haptonstall must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

Haptonstall was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Timothy L. Vavricek and investigated by the Iowa Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and Monona County Sheriff’s Office assisted the investigation.

(Shelby County, Iowa) – The Iowa State Patrol has released more information about a collision that took place Tuesday afternoon, south of Elk Horn. In their report, the Patrol says a 2000 Peterbilt semi driven by 64-year-old Robert Mark Rauterkus, of Manilla, was traveling north on Highway 173 near the intersection with 400th Street, when 22-year-old Ariea Lyn Soll, of Bondurant, failed to yield as she was driving a 2015 Chrysler sedan eastbound on 400th Street. Her car struck the trailer of the semi, causing the semi to roll-over and come to rest on its passenger side just north of the intersection. The car came to rest in the intersection.

KNOD Photo

Soll suffered suspected minor, non-incapacitating injuries and was transported by Elk Horn Rescue to Cass Health, in Atlantic. She was cited for Failure to Obey a stop sign, and yield the right-of-way. Her car sustained $15,000 damage and was declared a total loss. The semi sustained $75,000 damage, and was also totaled in the crash.

(Radio Iowa) – A south central Iowa man is in custody after a fatal shooting in Appanoose County. Appanoose County Sheriff Gary Anderson says deputies were dispatched to rural Mystic and encountered two gunshot victims, 62-year-old Randy Walker, and his son, 36-year-old Destry Walker. The elder Walker was airlifted to a hospital in Des Moines where his status remains unknown. Destry died at the scene.

After launching an investigation with the assistance of the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation, authorities were notified of a motorcycle accident and an altercation approximately five miles from the scene of the shooting. Officials searched the area of the crash and found 51-year-old Robert Barrell hiding in the weeds.

Based on information from the scene of the shooting and the accident, Barrell was charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. He is currently in the Appanoose County Jail.

(Radio Iowa) – More than one in every ten Iowans is diabetic, and studies show more than 19,000 Iowans are being diagnosed with diabetes every year. Dr. Kim Hardy, a family medicine physician with Emplify Health by Gundersen, says diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy — and it’s getting worse because of our lifestyles.

Dr. Kim Hardy (Photo by Emplify Health by Gundersen)

“We, in general, are a sedentary society. We have cars, we don’t walk a lot of places. We work long hours so it makes it difficult to exercise,” Dr. Hardy says. “A lot of our food and the affordable food is processed. Highly-processed food increases blood sugars, which increases risk for diabetes.”

State health officials say diabetes is the number-one cause of kidney failure, lower-limb amputations, and adult-onset blindness. Nationwide, diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death. Hardy says it costs more to eat healthy, and we could be sacrificing good health to save a few dollars. “To keep fruits and vegetables that haven’t gone bad, you have to go to the grocery store frequently, and it makes it an extra challenge,” Hardy says, “and as I mentioned, financially, it’s also a burden paying for the fruits and the vegetables. It certainly costs more than noodles, rice, all those carbohydrates.”

More than 287,000 Iowans now have diabetes, according to a state report. There’s no cure for diabetes, though you can be considered in remission if you’re off the meds for three months and the A-1-C blood sugar levels are being maintained. Hardy says, “We know that through some dietary changes, exercise, working with our dietitians to help tweak your diet, can really help to improve your overall health and can help to control your diabetes or even put you into remission.”

Emplify is treating more than 11,000 people with diabetes.

The health system includes a hospital in West Union, and clinics in Fayette, Decorah, Waukon, Lansing, Postville and Calmar.

(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Wednesday afternoon, arrested a man on a charge of Driving While Barred-Habitual Offender. Authorities say 51-year-old Cory Wayne McKinney, of Creston, was arrested at around 1:35-p.m.  McKinney was being held in the Union County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Visitors to Iowa’s largest zoo may have to be patient, but they should now be able to spot the newest resident, a tiny brown Japanese macaque. Blank Park Zoo spokesman Alex Payne says the monkey named Taro was born at the Des Moines facility almost a month ago, but they held off making his arrival public until it was clear he’d bonded well with his mom. “It’s actually really important for these animals to connect with their parents, so we give them a little bit of time before we do announce that,” Payne says, “just because there is also a really high infant mortality rate for Japanese macaques.” The name Taro is of Japanese origin, meaning “eldest son.” Payne says the monkey’s birth highlights the zoo’s ongoing commitment to wildlife conservation.

Taro and Anika (Blank Park Zoo photo)

“There is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that we’re a part of in their species survival plan,” Payne says. “Blank Park Zoo is actually the zoo that coordinates that for all the different AZA zoos across the country. We really are excited about this, not just because it’s another birth, but because it’s a species that we are really taking that lead on.” Since the introduction of the species at the zoo in 1985, a total of 46 Japanese macaques have been born there, including Taro’s mother, Anika, who was born in 2014. This is her first baby. Taro is only a few inches tall, so you’ll need to keep a sharp eye out to see him.

“He’ll be close to his mom for the next several weeks, until he starts getting a little bit bigger and can go off and do some more of his own stuff,” Payne says. “You can see him out there just by the carousel, next to the giraffe. He’s definitely a curious little animal. You’ll see him exploring, checking out different sticks and leaves.” Taro is among several new arrivals at the zoo this summer, including AJ, an eastern black rhino, Henri the addax, baby wallabies, and two bamboo sharks.

https://www.blankparkzoo.com/

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, a Republican from Marion, was asked about the impact of the latest round of tariffs on farmers and others during her weekly conference call. “I would say my message to them is President Trump needs to be trusted here. He will not abandon Iowa farmers and our producers and our people because he understands this is about getting the best deal possible for them long term,” Hinson says. Inflation has bumped up a little, but Hinson says things are a lot different in the first six months of the Trump presidency compared to the last four years under Joe Biden. “A direct turnaround from four years of Bidenflation, true rises and prices of over nine percent in some cases and inflation, housing costs over the course of Biden’s presidency skyrocketed through the roof and created a real unaffordability crisis for Iowa families and American families. And you’re starting to see that turn around,” she says.

Cong. Ashley Hinson (File photo from Iowa PBS)

Hinson says she heard directly from representatives of corn and soybean groups in her office Wednesday. “One of the things I think they were in here saying was they were grateful for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that’s going to really be a shot in the arm for them,” Hinson says. “They were specifically thanking me for the foreign market access and market access programs and development dollars that we were able to include.” Hinson says they talked a lot about the trade deals that are moving forward, like the one with the U-K and the announcement about Indonesia, and the potential for one with Vietnam. Hinson was also asked about the effort by a Congressman to force the release of the Epstein files. She says she trusts President Trump and the Attorney General to do the right thing.

“President Biden was president for four years, and if there was something damning in there about President Trump, I think we would all already know it in the mainstream media, would be covering it,” she says. Hinson says the issue is being used as a wedge to divide people and she doesn’t think that’s the right approach.