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Former University of Dubuque football players arrested in Kentucky

December 31, 2009 By

Two former Dubuque football players arrested in Kentucky will be sent back to Iowa to face bank robbery charges. Twetny-three-year old Travis Strowbridge and 22-year-old Michael Holton are being charged with second-degree robbery for holding up two bank employees who were filling an A-T-M at a U.S. Bank branch in Dubuque on December 17th.

They were arrested the next day in Kentucky. Both men waived extradition. However they also both face charges in Kentucky and may have to deal with that case before returning to Dubuque Count. Both had played football at the University of Dubuque.

By Roger King, KOEL, Oelwein

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Clearing snow from the roof can prevent problems

December 31, 2009 By
Snow and ice on a Des Moines home.

Snow and ice on a Des Moines home.

After two big blizzards in two weeks, the roofs of at least two businesses in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area collapsed last weekend under the weight of heavy snow and ice.

Jeremy Bleeker, a general contractor and certified roof inspector, says Iowa homeowners who are concerned about the snow on their roofs might be able to take care of the situation themselves.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Weather

King unsure whether he’ll endorse GOP candidate for governor before June

December 31, 2009 By

Congressman Steve King says he doesn’t know whether he will endorse one of the Republicans who’s running for governor before the June primary.

King, a Republican from Kiron in western Iowa, won his seat in congress in 2002.  Before that King served in the Iowa Senate for six years, so he was a state legislator during former Governor Terry Branstad’s last two years as governor.  Branstad is seeking a fifth term in office, but King doesn’t seem ready to endorse Branstad or any of Branstad’s competitors either.

“You know, I don’t know.  I really don’t know…I believe I know them all and, boy, they’re good people and so I’d like to see them fight this out because it tests their vigor and it tests their ability,” King said this week during taping of the IPTV program, Iowa Press.  “And it also shapes the policy for Republicans that’ll be matched up against the policy that’s been set by Governor Culver.” 

Culver, a Democrat, intends to seek a second term in 2010.  According to King,  the Republican candidates are basically in agreement when it comes to the issue of gay marriage.  King said that’s why he wants the primary contest among the Republican candidates for governor to focus on economic issues, like tax policy, and fixing the state budget.

“I think Governor Culver is wobbly.  I think that he is vulnerable,” King said. “…This is the time.  I think there will be a Republican governor.  There are many reasons for it and the budget is the biggest reason.”

King endorsed 2008 Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, but laments on the show that he should have made the endorsement sooner.  Read more about King’s remarks on the topic of endorsements.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , ,

Sisters turn resolutions into a fundraiser

December 31, 2009 By

Two sisters from Iowa are completing a list of New Year’s resolutions that have helped raise money for research into a disorder that claimed the life of a friend. Radio Iowa’s Pat Curtis reports:

 

Last year at this time, Courtnee Carstens of Des Moines and her sister Bree, who lives in Chicago, decided to complete one resolution per week for a year. If they failed to complete a resolution, they would donate $10 to the Preeclampsia Foundation.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, Human Interest

Practical Farmers of Iowa prepares for 25th annual conference

December 31, 2009 By

The group “Practical Farmers of Iowa” is preparing for its annual conference the next week in Marshalltown. P-F-I executive director, Teresa Opheim, says it’s a milestone conference. She says 2010 is the group’s 25th anniversary and they plan to honor their past as well as focus on the next 25 years of agriculture in Iowa.

Opheim says the group started as a way to improve farming among farmers. Opheim says the group was started in 1985 by a couple of farmers in central interested in doing on-farm research and demonstrations on problems to come up with solutions on their own. Since then, she says they’ve done all kinds of trials and demonstrations as well as other programming.

Opheim says the group has expanded through the years. She says in the last five years they’ve had an influx of fruit and vegetable producers and there have also been a lot a “consumer” members who want to support farmers and believe farmers are valuable members of Iowa’s landscape.

The annual conference runs January 8th and 9th at Marshalltown Community College, and you can sign up at their website. Opheim says the address is: www.practicalfarmers.org, and she says there is a deadline to get a lower cost. You can also show up that day, but she says it’s important to sign up on-line so they know how much food to have on hand.

The deadline is today (December 31st) to get a reduced registration fee. The topics of this years conference range from getting the most out of your fertilizer to shaping the future of agriculture.

Filed Under: Agriculture Tagged With: , ,

Experts predict “spike” in farm foreclosures

December 31, 2009 By

Some economists are warning that farm foreclosures may “spike” in 2010.

Farmers, particularly those raising dairy cattle and hogs, have suffered significant losses in the past two years. Net farm income was down by about a third in 2009 and David Miller, director of research for the Iowa Farm Bureau, expects farm income to be down next year, too. 

“The farm economy is lagging behind the general economy in terms of its deliquencies and its level of debt,” he says.  “…But because the farm economy…may also be lagging behind in terms of its recovery, we think…farm debt, delinquencies, etc. — that the spike in those may well come in the year or two ahead of us.”

Miller doesn’t expect corn prices, for example, to rise back up to 2008 levels.

“Corn prices, if we’re looking at 2010 versus this year, are likely to 10 to 12 percent below what they were in the current year and 15 percent below what they were in 2008,” he says.  “So siginificant reductions in the revenue coming out of our crops.”

And Iowa State University economist Arne says hog producers have been losing money since the third quarter of 2007.

“You’ve got a lot of livestock people who are not in foreclosure, but they’ve been running with very large losses for a long enough time period that that debt has got to be accumulating,” Hallam says.  “And so I am, also, particularly concerned about the hog sector that you are going to see foreclosures.  A lot of people put up plants with the assistance of packers…or other types of units and those are eventually are going to come due and I think we are going to see some debt problems.” 

The Farm Bureau’s research director says the ag sector has always been “more volatile” than the economy as a whole, but that volatility has been “accentuated” in the past decade because corn prices have been more directly linked to the price of oil through the production of corn-based ethanol.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Business
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