The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports five recent arrests. A little before midnight, Friday, 36-year old Dallas Merrill Smith, of Placitas, NM., was arrested at 221st Street and Highway 34, for Possession of a Controlled Substance, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Eluding, Careless Driving, two counts of Speeding and No Valid Driver’s License. His bond was set at $4,000.

Friday evening, 63-year old Norman Dale Bucholz, of Council Bluffs, was arrested at the Pottawattamie County Jail on a Mills County warrant for Theft in the 2nd Degree, with bond set at $5,000. Saturday evening, 41-year old Amy Marie Kanuff, of Pacific Junction, was arrested following an investigation into a non-injury, single-vehicle accident at 180th and Jardine Ave, She was charged with OWI/1st offense, and Failure to Maintain Control. Bond was set at $1,000.

Sunday night, 49-year old Christopher Carl Oliphant, of Glenwood, was arrested in Mills County, on a warrant for Contempt of Court. His bond was set at $3,000. And, at around 11:15-p.m. Sunday, 56-year old Terry Lee Prine, of Sidney, was arrested for Violation of an order.  Prine was being held without bond in the Mills County Jail.

The Union County Sheriff’s Office reports a man was arrested Saturday night on Union County warrants for possession of controlled substance (methamphetamine & marijuana) AND possession of drug paraphernalia. 40-year-old Bart Douglas Dunkerson, of Creston, was arrested at around  9:26 PM at his residence, and later released from the Union County Jail on $2,300 bond.

A Union County man reported to the Sheriff’s Office Saturday night, that shortly after 10:00 PM that day, someone drove a truck through his yard in the 2100 block of Yellow Rose Avenue, tearing up the yard and the tires flung rocks at the house causing a window to break and dents on the side of the house. The damage was estimated at $400.

The Adair County Sheriff’s Office reports two arrests from the past week. On Nov. 15th, 43-year old Patrick Lee Karnes, of Des Moines, was arrested by Stuart Police for Theft in the 5th Degree, for allegedly stealing two bottles of alcohol and a sweatshirt, from the Stuart Kum-and-Go Store. He was also charged with Violation of a No Contact Order. Karnes was released the following day from the Adair County Jail, on his Own Recognizance.

And, Saturday night (Nov. 21st), 63-year old Jeffrey Allen Jennings, of West Des Moines, was arrested by the Iowa State Patrol, for OWI/1st offense. His arrest followed an investigation into an accident, whereby Jennings’ vehicle crashed into a high tension cable barrier off westbound I-80, near mile marker 88. Jennings admitted to drinking three Bloody Mary’s earlier in the evening. He refused to take a breath test at the Adair County Jail, and was held on Sunday afternoon and then released on a $1,000 cash or surety bond.

(Radio Iowa) – There’s a sign on the Iowa Department of Transportation’s website, acknowledging “technical difficulties.” The Iowa D-O-T’s Andrea Henry says the private company that provides the online capacity for the agency’s website is dealing with a ransomware attack on its system.  “We utilize a hosting vendor and they have had a major outage,” she says, “so we have been working with them since last Monday to get that website restored.”

Henry says the data stored on the D-O-T’s website does not appear to be affected. “We’ve been assured that there has been no compromise to any of our data, information or anything that lives on our website,” Henry says. The entire Iowa D-O-T website is down. “However, we do have a temporary site at our usual address, which is www.iowadot.gov, and we’re able to connect you to some of the most time-sensitive services,” Henry says, “such as making appointments for drivers license services, online renewal, renewal of license plates and some motor carrier services as well.”

Henry says there’s also a chat feature on the website, to get other questions answered during normal business hours. It could be next week before the D-O-T’s website is fully functioning again. “We are, of course, approaching the outage carefully to make sure that there’s no continued security concerns, so we’re hoping to have it up in the next day or two,” Henry says. “However, with the Thanksgiving holiday, it may continue into next week.”

Managed.com, the Iowa D-O-T’s web hosting company, shut down all its servers last Monday to prevent the malware from spreading to all it clients.