With KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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MADRID, Iowa (AP) – A central Iowa nursing home faces federal fines of at least $64,000 for care problems found during inspections. The Des Moines Register says state inspection reports that led to the fines suggest many of the issues cited stem from staffing shortages at the Madrid Home for the Aging. A lawyer for the nursing home denied the allegations and says the owners are appealing the fines.

Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals spokesman David Werning says the nursing home was hit with unusually strong punishment because inspectors had found similar problems there within the past year. In August the home was sued by a woman who says she found her 74-year-old mother naked and soiled on the floor of an unfinished room at the facility. Her mother has since died.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Transportation Security Administration officials say they have released a man after a loaded handgun was found in his carry-on bag at an Omaha airport. The TSA says the Taurus Slim 40 pistol loaded with seven rounds was discovered during a checkpoint screening on Wednesday afternoon at Eppley Airfield. Omaha Airport Authority police confiscated the weapon and interviewed the passenger.

No charges have been reported. The passenger’s identity hasn’t been released. Authorities say it’s the 13th firearm discovered during a screening at the airport this year. The TSA can levy a civil penalty of up to $11,000 for people who bring guns to checkpoints.

Two Pottawattamie County men were arrested Monday on theft charges, following an investigation into the theft of a tractor from a farm near Hamburg, in Fremont County. Sheriff Kevin Aistrope said Thursday (Today), his office received a report Monday evening about a 1967 John Deere 3020 tractor that was stolen from a farm on 240th Avenue.

Less than 10 minutes after the report was conveyed to law enforcement, the Sheriff saw a suspicious vehicle traveling in the 1100 block of 300th Avenue. Aistrope contacted his deputies and followed the vehicle, which then took off at a high rate of speed. The vehicle ran a stop sign at 300th Avenue and Waubonsie Avenue.

During the pursuit, the Sheriff noticed a tractor stuck in the mud in the 1100 block of 292nd Avenue. The tractor matched the description of the one reported stolen. The vehicle was eventually stopped by a marked Fremont County patrol car near the intersection of 310th Street and Paddock Avenue, in Mills County.

Following an investigation, 55-year old James Sarver and 46-year old Leroy Tichota, both of Council Bluffs, were arrested for Theft in the 1st degree.  Both men were being held in the Fremont County Jail on $10,000 cash only bond, each. Additional charges are pending.

The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office was assisted during the incident by officers with the Tabor Police Department and deputies with the Mills County Sheriff’s Office.

A man from Adams County was arrested late Wednesday night in Montgomery County on a drug-related offense. The Sheriff’s Department says 19-year old Brandon Robert Pafford, of Nodaway, was stopped at 7th Avenue and 3rd Street in Villisca at around 11:24-p.m., for a traffic offense.

Pafford was subsequently arrested for OWI-drugged/1st offense. He was brought to the Montgomery County Jail and held on $1,000 bond.

The Iowa Insurance Commissioner has approved double-digit rate increases for the insurance policies held by about a quarter of a million Iowans. Individual health insurance polices from Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield will increase an average of 14-and-a-half percent on January 1st. The rates for the Wellmark Health Plan of Iowa will go up an average of 11-point-nine percent.

State Insurance Commissioner Nick Gearhart says he found “no evidence” Wellmark’s rate hikes were “discriminatory or excessive.” Gearheart says due to the Affordable Care Act, Wellmark faces higher costs partly because insurers can’t deny coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions, plus new rules restrict how much a client’s age, potential health risks or gender can factor into rates.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is set to visit Iowa this weekend to help Democratic candidates. An O’Malley spokeswoman says he will be in the state Saturday and Sunday. This is the fourth trip the potential 2016 presidential candidate has made to the kickoff caucus state this year.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — The owner of a building in Cedar Rapids where posters appeared promoting the opening of a marijuana dispensary says the advertisement is a hoax. John Wasta says two posters appeared Tuesday on the outside of his empty storefront that implied a business known as the Iowa Marijuana Company would open in October 2015. Wasta tells KCRG TV in Cedar Rapids he took down the posters and is not taking the apparent prank too seriously.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — The former Argosy riverboat casino has pulled away from its dock in Sioux City and started a long journey to a shipyard in Illinois, where it will be sold or salvaged. The Sioux City Journal reports the floating casino closed this summer after the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission ordered it stop its operations.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a man has dropped off a newborn baby at a family medicine clinic in Des Moines. KCCI TV reports the baby was later taken to Blank Children’s Hospital.

CORRECTIONVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Authorities have released the name of a construction worker killed after he was pinned under a piece of equipment in northwest Iowa. Maj. Todd Wieck with the Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office says 49-year-old Daniel Lewis Uhl, of Anthon, was killed Tuesday at a construction site near Correctionville.

Uhl was at the site when a large piece of “earth-moving equipment” pinned him. He was airlifted to a Sioux City hospital but was pronounced dead before the helicopter landed. The Sioux City Journal reports the circumstances of the death are under investigation.

An Omaha man’s admission to robbing a Sioux City bank was his last strike and he’ll spend the rest of his life in a federal prison. Fifty-four-year-old Richard Allen Shaffer admitted to walking into a Sioux City bank on October 12th and handing a teller a note that said he had a gun and wanted money. He fled with around 37-hundred dollars and the clothes he wore and the note were later found at his girlfriend’s home.

Shaffer robbed the Sioux City bank after he was released from federal prison for six 2004 bank robbery convictions. Those were all considered one felony crime, but a review found Shaffer had convicted in a United States Army General court-martial in 1979 of unpremeditated murder and served 18 years in prison. The Sioux City robbery made it the third felony and triggered the three-strikes law and the life sentence.

(Radio Iowa)