Officials with the Iowa Department of Public Safety reported Sunday evening, that the Ottumwa Police Department has found the body of a missing woman. Authorities had said earlier Sunday afternoon, Helen Elizabeth Showalter’s family reported her missing on Saturday. She was last seen walking away from a vehicle near the Garrison Rock Park in Wapello County.

At about 12:30 p.m. Sunday, police received reports that a body was found in the Des Moines River in Wapello County. The remains have been identified as 60-year-old Showalter. Police are investigating it as a suspicious death. The State Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy.

In a press release, Lt. Jason Bell with the Ottumwa Police Dept. said, “At this time we do not feel that there is any danger to the public with the information that we have.” Anyone with information about this case should call the Ottumwa Police Department at 641-683-0661.

The Atlantic City Council is set to meet 5:30-p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 4th, at City Hall. During their session, the Council is expected to act on passing a Resolution “adopting Job Descriptions for the Acting Deputy City Clerk and Temporary Administrative Assistant.” The action is necessary because the current Deputy City Clerk is on an indefinite medical leave.

The City crafted a job description for a temporary, Acting Deputy Clerk and is looking for an Administrative Assistant to ensure Finance and Administration maintains a 3.5 FTE (Full-Time Employee) staffing level that has been the practice since Aug. 31, 2015. City Administrator John Lund says budgeting related to the position will be completed with the FY2022 Revised Estimate. He says it will not affect the City’s insurance levy, as no new health plans are being made available to existing or new employees.

The City’s Personnel and Finance Committee met last week to review the job descriptions, wages and benefit issues pertaining to the proposal. They subsequently approved those matters and made paid time-off (PTO) a pro-rated benefit based on the actual hours worked by the employee. The Council will act on adopting compensation for the Acting Deputy Clerk and Temp. Administrative positions, following action on the previous resolution (mentioned above). They will also act on the related matter of Paid Time-Off for permanent part-time positions.

In other business, the Atlantic City Council will act on orders to appoint the following persons:

• Dick Casady, Frazer Werts, Connie Boose, Dave Jones and Christina Bateman, to the Housing Committee.
• Jeff Gude to fill a vacancy on the Community Promotion Committee, as recommended by Mayor Dave Jones.

The Council will recognize Hannah Richter for her service to City Hall over the Summer. And, they will receive a presentation by “Retail Coach” Project Director Austin Farmer. The City was identified by Retail Coach as a potential client. If the company’s services are approved, it would cost $40,000, with the City paying $35,000 as part of the primary contract cost, possibly through LOST (Local Option Sales Tax) Revenue. The Chamber and CADCO have agreed to split the remaining $5,000 in travel and reimbursement costs of the contract ($2,500 each).

And, the Atlantic City Council is expected to receive a monthly report from Kris Erickson on Animal Shelter and Code Enforcement matters.

The Ames Police Department is investigating a death after a body was found in a shack Friday night. KCCI reports authorities were called to a dilapidated shack on the 900 block of S. Duff Avenue at about 6:05 p.m. A citizen had reported a deceased body in the shack. When police arrived on the scene they found the decomposing body of a man. The body was transferred to the Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. Authorities are waiting for an autopsy to be performed before releasing a cause of death. Police conducted interviews, canvassed the area and processed evidence. They do not believe there is a threat to the community at this time.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Ames Police Department at 515-239-5133 or the anonymous tip line at 515-239-5533. Tips can also be sent in to Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa at 515-223-1400.

About 250 Iowa Army National Guard soldiers returned home Saturday to cheering, smiling and tearful loved ones, following a yearlong deployment. Dual ceremonies in Des Moines and Fort Dodge honored the soldiers returning home. They included members from the 1st Battalion, 194th Field Artillery, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division. KCCI reports Gov. Kim Reynolds attended the ceremony at a hangar at Des Moines International Airport. She called ceremonies for returning service members one of her favorite parts of the job.

“On behalf of a grateful state, thank you for your service, for your selfless devotion to cause and country, for protecting the freedoms of your fellow Americans and for doing so with courage, honor and integrity,” she said.

Ninety-nine soldiers were on the flight that returned to Des Moines.

Police in Red Oak arrested a woman Saturday night for allegedly driving while license revoked. Authorities report 26-year-old Aspen Renee Riley was taken into custody at around 8:30 p.m. Following a traffic stop on 200th Street. Riley was transported to the Montgomery County Jail, and held on a $1,000 bond.

Sidney, Iowa – July 31, 2021, The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office is notifying drivers that I-29 Southbound, south of the Hamburg Exit, will be closed tomorrow (August 1, 2021) at 7:00 A.M. so that an accident scene can be cleaned up at the 122 MM in Missouri. The estimated clean up time is one to two hours. Sign boards will direct traffic on a detour through Hamburg, Iowa via Highway 333 east to US 275 south to Missouri Highway 136.

Despite the heavy rain Atlantic received Friday night and early today, the Cass County Fair Board has determined that ALL activities scheduled for today, will take place as planned. Thank you.

(Radio Iowa) – Sure, it’s been a sweltering week in Iowa, but University of Iowa researchers are doing groundbreaking studies on an environment that’s beyond scorching — using data from a spacecraft that’s orbiting the sun. U-I physics and astronomy professor Jasper Halekas is the lead author of a report on the sun’s electric field and the solar wind that flows outward from our star. Halekas compares that flow to an earthly waterway. “Let’s say we’re sitting here in Iowa City watching the Iowa River go by. It’s hard to know when that river might flood unless we know what’s going on upstream, say, at the Coralville Dam,” Halekas says. “So, we really need to make measurements up close, where the source of this solar wind — or in my analogy, the river — is to know what’s going to happen when that solar wind gets to Earth.”

Fluctuations in that solar wind, like a solar flare, can disrupt our power grid, our satellites, and much of our communications on Earth — everything from cell phone calls to G-P-S navigation to T-V and radio broadcasts. The Parker Solar Probe has made eight orbits of the sun so far, and each orbit takes about three months to complete. Remember, the sun is huge. “Every couple of orbits we fly by Venus and dump a little bit of our momentum there and that allows us to get in still closer to the sun,” Halekas says. “By the end of the mission, we hope to get about two times closer to the sun than we are now — and where we are now is already far closer than anything man-made has ever gone.”

The spacecraft has gotten within nine-million miles of the sun, which may not sound all that close, but temperatures on the side facing the sun are peaking around one-thousand degrees. It’s a robotic explorer like no other in history, and no, it won’t melt. “The front end of our spacecraft has this big carbon-carbon heat shield and then there’s a bunch of plumbing that hangs off of the back of it that acts to shunt heat away from that heat shield and keep it from getting back to the rest of the spacecraft,” Halekas says, “and the rest of the spacecraft kinda’ hangs back in the shadow.”

The research they’re doing is historic, he says, as these are the first definitive measurements anyone’s ever been able to make of the sun’s electric field. “I’ve been involved in this mission since it was just a sketch on a napkin, so it’s been extraordinarily rewarding to see it built and tested and launched and now we’re charting new territory closer to the sun than anything man-made has ever gone,” Halekas says, “so, yes, it’s very exciting for me.”

Launched in 2018, the NASA-funded mission is scheduled to run through at least 2025 as the spacecraft should be able to make about 20 orbits around the sun, drawing ever closer, at a speed that should top off around 430-thousand miles an hour. It’s the first NASA spacecraft named after someone who’s still alive, 94-year-old Eugene Parker, an astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, who first did key research in solar physics in the 1950s.

The broadcast News at 8:05-a.m., from Ric Hanson.

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