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Sheriff confirms Lu Verne bank employee shot and killed

Posted on by Rick Watts

BY 

The Kossuth County Sheriff’s Department is confirming an employee of a bank in Lu Verne was shot and killed Wednesday.

The sheriff’s department says deputies were called to the Security State Bank in Lu Verne at around 8:40 a-m about a possible shooting.

Deputies found 43-year-old Jessica Wieshaar of Algona lying on the sidewalk in front of the bank. They say Wieshaar — who was a bank employee — was dead from an apparent gunshot wound. Video surveillance and witnesses provided deputies with a description of the possible shooter.

A person matching the description was stopped on Interstate 35 and is in custody. That person’s name has not been released.

 

Centerville woman sentenced in infant son’s death

Posted on by Rick Watts

A judge in Centerville has cancelled a plea deal for a Centerville woman who pleaded guilty in the death of her infant son.  In August, 31-year-old Brittney Keller pleaded guilty to child endangerment and drug charges.  Keller acknowledged that in May of this year, she left the bathtub running with her 11-month-old son and his sister in the tub.  Her son was taken to the hospital, where he died.  A plea deal was set up where Keller would get a suspended jail sentence and be ordered to have mental health and drug treatment.  But on Wednesday (12/4), Judge Rose Anne Mefford sentenced Keller to two years on each count.  The sentences will run concurrently and Keller will get credit for time served.  Keller was originally charged with child endangerment causing death.

Chris Stapleton Exhibit Coming To Country Music Hall Of Fame

Posted on by Bob Ballard

The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum announced that the lives and careers of Chris Stapleton, Martina McBride, and Bill Anderson will be featured in individual exhibits in 2020.

Chris Stapleton: June 26 (opening date)
Martina McBride: August 21
Bill Anderson: November 20
Additional details specific to each exhibit will be revealed as the opening date approaches in 2020.

“I’m proud to get to share pieces of our musical journey at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum,” said Chris.

“Having an exhibit in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is something I’ve had on my dream list for a long, long time,” said Martina. “Being able to share moments and mementos from my life and career with my fans and country music fans from all over the world is both humbling and exciting. I’m so grateful to be a part of country music.”

“I grew up dreaming of the day they’d put my ball glove into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but realized many years ago that wasn’t going to happen,” said Bill. “But now, knowing that my guitar and maybe a rhinestone suit or two will be put into an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, more than makes up for it. When our Hall does an exhibit, they really do it up right. I am thrilled to know that I am about to be a small part of their incredible legacy.”

In addition, the Museum’s annual American Currents: State of the Music exhibit will return in 2020, while the Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s exhibit, which opened in May 2018, will continue through February 2021.

Source: RollingStone

 

Elon Musk in court dances around meaning of ‘pedo guy’ tweet

Posted on by Rick Watts

By BRIAN MELLEY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Elon Musk has owned up to insulting a British spelunker in a rash tweet, but wouldn’t concede on the witness stand that he called the man a pedophile.

The Tesla CEO returns to the witness stand Wednesday after spending several hours at his defamation trial trying to dance around the meaning of the “pedo guy” tweet he aimed at Vernon Unsworth, a cave diver who helped rescue a dozen boys and their soccer coach from a flooded Thailand cave last year.

Musk said the insult meant only “creepy old man” and did not literally mean he was calling Unsworth a pedophile.

The spat began when Unsworth ridiculed Musk’s effort in the rescue by having engineers at his companies, including Space X and The Boring Co., develop a mini-submarine that could transport the boys to safety. Despite working around the clock to build the sub in short order, Musk arrived in Thailand late in the rescue effort and the craft was never used.

Unsworth called it nothing more than a “PR stunt” and said Musk could stick the sub “where it hurts.” Musk watched the CNN clip of Unsworth several times before lashing out in a series of tweets July 15, 2018.

“It was wrong and insulting, so I insulted him back,” the billionaire told a Los Angeles federal court jury. “It was an unprovoked attack on what was a good-natured attempt to help the kids.”

Unsworth is seeking unspecified damages for pain, suffering and emotional distress from the tech entrepreneur whose net worth exceeds $20 billion.

Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, said during opening statements that Unsworth deserves nothing for what he called “joking, taunting tweets in a fight between men.”

The shame and mortification Unsworth said he experienced is undercut by the attention he received after the rescue, Spiro said, including honors from the Thai king and British prime minister and offers from agents and film crews.

Musk, who was dressed in a charcoal gray suit and white shirt, remained composed on the witness stand during questioning from Unsworth’s lawyer, who called him as his first witness.

His answers were at times humorous and sometimes seemed like those of an executive under court order to be careful about what he says.

Musk is required to have his tweets about Tesla screened as part of court settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations he posted misleading information about the company that caused wild stock swings.

His tweet about Unsworth caused Tesla’s stock to drop about 3% the following day, though it recovered a day later.

After company officials tried to get Musk to apologize for the tweet, he responded in an email that he didn’t want look “foolish and craven” by doing so right after the stock dropped.

Musk projected an air of humility as he was asked about his influence in the world. He said he didn’t think his efforts to address climate change were taken seriously, that few people were aware of his goal to colonize Mars and he didn’t really pay attention to how his fortune stacks up against other billionaires.

With his arms crossed, Musk at times squinted and stared off in the distance as he searched for answers to events that occurred more than a year ago.

He clashed at one point with attorney L. Lin Wood, telling him he interpreted the lawyer’s letter threatening to sue as a shakedown and extortion attempt.

“I get these shakedown letters a lot,” Musk said. “I think you’re looking for a significant payday.”

Spiro attempted to humanize Musk, having him discuss his family — sets of 15-year-old twins and 13-year-old triplets, all boys. Musk choked up talking about a son who died as a baby and when asked about his childhood in South Africa.

“It wasn’t good,” he said after a long pause.

Musk said he was asked to help with the cave rescue and decided to get involved when he heard a Thai Navy diver died in the cave system and that a monsoon was forecast that could drown the soccer team.

Musk received no compensation for his efforts, though he acknowledged his work could have been interpreted as a “narcissistic” publicity effort.

Musk deleted the July 15, 2018, tweets and apologized on Twitter, though subsequent statements he made have called into question what he meant.

Musk responded to a question on Twitter about whether he had accused Unsworth of being a pedophile by saying, “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true.”

He told a Buzzfeed reporter seeking comment on the threat of a lawsuit by Unsworth to “stop defending child rapists,” followed by expletives.

Musk was asked about an almost comical attempt to dig up dirt on Unsworth when it became clear he could be sued.

One of his executives created a fake email account to communicate with a man who said he was an investigator, but then signed his own name on a nondisclosure agreement.

The investigator turned out to be a con man who was paid $52,000 and produced nothing damning about Unsworth.

Musk said he didn’t know Unsworth had helped with the rescue when he first tweeted about him and said “pedo guy” wasn’t asserted as a fact.

“Just as I didn’t literally mean he was a pedophile, I’m sure he didn’t literally mean shoving a sub up my ass,” Musk testified, provoking snickers.

When asked about the final line of his email to the Buzzfeed reporter that said he hoped Unsworth would sue him, Musk quipped: “I guess be careful what you wish for.”

Osky’s Lighted Christmas Parade moves to Saturday

Posted on by Rick Watts

Oskaloosa’s annual Lighted Christmas Parade is coming up this week.  But not on Thursday, when the parade is usually scheduled.  This year’s parade will be held on Saturday (12/7).  Oskaloosa Main Street Executive Director Emily Brown says the parade has traditionally been on Thursday because that’s the day that downtown stores are open at night.  Brown says feedback from citizens led to the change this year.

“Over the years, we started to hear more from people that they wished it was on a weekend, so their family could come visit.  We’ve heard quite a bit of that the last couple of years.  We decided we had heard it enough, we needed to try it and that’s where we’re at now.”

Saturday’s Oskaloosa Lighted Christmas Parade starts at 7 on the square in downtown Oskaloosa.  There will be a pre-parade show with music by Tyler Richton and the High Bank Boys from 5 to 6pm at Penn Central Mall’s Central Court.  There’s more information about the Lighted Christmas Parade at the Oskaloosa Chamber’s website: oacdg.org.

Johnson named Oskaloosa Officer of the Year

Posted on by Rick Watts

At Monday’s (12/2) Oskaloosa City Council meeting, Senior Officer Nathan Johnson was named the City’s Police Officer of the Year.  Johnson talked about why he received the honor.

“I think I stepped up in a leadership position and adapted to the new department very easily and just continued to work hard every day.”

Johnson is in his first year with the Oskaloosa Police Department.  Previously, he had served on the Bloomfield Police Department for ten years.

Luke Bryan Asks Fans For Help

Posted on by Bob Ballard

Luke Bryan is asking his fans for their support for a Giving Tuesday campaign that is very close to his heart. Luke is raising funds for the “Brett Boyer Foundation” in honor of his niece, who died in February of 2017.

The foundation was created in honor of Sadie Brett Boyer. She was the daughter of Luke’s wife Caroline’s brother, Bo Boyer, and his wife, Ellen. She was born with Down Syndrome and suffered from congenital heart disease (CHD), and died at the age of seven months.

In a Facebook video, Luke and Caroline talk soberly about the fundraiser, with him noting that the death rates from CHD have declined by more than 30 percent over the course of the last decade.

“But we want to do better,” he says, before insisting, “We can do better.”

The fundraiser had raised $1,618 of its $5,000 goal within hours of him posting it to Facebook yesterday.

 

 

This day in 1956: The “Million Dollar Quartet” records at Sun Studios in Memphis

Posted on by Bob Ballard

Today in 1956, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis posed for a photo at the Sun studio in Memphis. The foursome conducted an impromptu jam session, which was dubbed “The Million Dollar Quartet.”

An article about the session was published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar under the title “Million Dollar Quartet”. The recording was first released in Europe in 1981 as The Million Dollar Quartet with 17 tracks. A few years later more tracks were discovered and released as The Complete Million Dollar Session. In 1990, the recordings were released in the United States as Elvis Presley – The Million Dollar Quartet. This session is considered a seminal moment in rock and roll.

The jam session seems to have happened by pure chance. Perkins, who by this time had already met success with “Blue Suede Shoes”, had come into the studios that day accompanied by his brothers Clayton and Jay and by drummer W.S. Holland, their aim being to record some new material, including a revamped version of an old blues song, “Matchbox”. Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records, who wanted to try to fatten this sparse rockabilly instrumentation, had brought in his latest acquisition, Jerry Lee Lewis, still unknown outside Memphis, to play piano (at the time, a Wurlitzer Spinet) on the Perkins session. Lewis’s first Sun single would be released a few days later. Sometime in the early afternoon, 21-year-old Elvis Presley, a former Sun artist now with RCA Victor, arrived to pay a casual visit accompanied by a girlfriend, Marilyn Evans.

After chatting with Phillips in the control room, Presley listened to the playback of Perkins’s session, which he pronounced to be good. Then he went into the studio and some time later, the jam session began. At some point during the session, Sun artist Johnny Cash, who had recently enjoyed a few hit records on the country charts, arrived as well. (Cash wrote in his autobiography Cash that he had been first to arrive at the Sun Studio that day, wanting to listen in on the Perkins recording session.) Jack Clement was engineering that day and remembers saying to himself “I think I’d be remiss not to record this,” and so he did. After running through a number of songs, Elvis and girlfriend Evans slipped out as Jerry Lee pounded away on the piano. Cash wrote in Cash that “no one wanted to follow Jerry Lee, not even Elvis.” Whatever Elvis’s feelings may or may not have been in regard to “following” Lewis, Presley was clearly the “star” of the impromptu jam session, which consisted largely of snippets of gospel songs that the four artists had all grown up singing. The recordings show Elvis, the most nationally and internationally famous of the four at the time, to be the focal point of what was a casual, spur-of-the-moment gathering of four artists who would each go on to contribute greatly to the seismic shift in popular music in the late 1950s.

During the session, Phillips called a local newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Bob Johnson, the newspaper’s entertainment editor, came over to the studios with UPI representative Leo Sora with photographer George Pierce. Johnson wrote an article about the session, which appeared the following day in the Press-Scimitar under the headline “Million Dollar Quartet”.

Source: Wikipedia

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