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Many of the soldiers from the Iowa National Guard Unit in Storm Lake are about to deploy to year-long assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the Storm Lake unit is not considered deployed, the departing local soldiers will be attached to a Fort Dodge group that is part of a call-up including about 330 Iowa soldiers from 1st Battalion, 194th Field Artillery, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, and 34th Infantry Division. ...

Some suspects are faking COVID symptoms to dodge sentencing.

Storm Lake High School students celebrated a unique “Prom Not Prom” recently. With COVID-19 ending the school year early, and making it impossible to hold a traditional dance, students instead traveled the town one carload at a time to stops set up by volunteers and community organizations, including this ‘80s themed “photo booth” outside Witter Gallery. See more photos, page 6B. / Pilot photo by Dana Larsen...

An employee of the Spencer Park Department was terminated recently after Spencer city officials conducted an investigation into an alleged incident at Spencer’s Walmart where the former employee is alleged to have used racist comments toward a black woman ahead of her in line at the store’s checkout. The exchange reportedly occurred during a dispute over the number of items in the cart...

FONDA - It was a showdown between #2 Newell-Fonda and #9 Extra-EHK on Monday night in the 1A-Region 2 finale. The Mustangs came out of the gates hot once again and used that to take a 10-0 victory against the Spartans in five innings, advancing on to the 1A state tournament...

During their meeting Monday evening the Clay Central-Everly School Board met with Brent Koppie, of Guardian Education and Athletic Services, to discuss a proposal for purchasing the former CC-E High School building and grounds in Everly. “Basically what we’re looking at is, more or less an intermediate college program, this would be geared toward college athletes,” Koppie said. ...

The proposed Cherokee Braves football field turf project fundraising effort received a joyous jump this week with the announcement from North Star Community Credit Union of Cherokee that it was donating $225,000 to the project. North Star representatives met with project committee members Tuesday at their new building nearing completion on North 2nd Street to commemorate a check presentation. The funds will be dispersed over a 5-year period, as will all major donations, according to plan...

“We need to be sure we are not creating a Petri dish experiment with COVID. The single most important thing we can do as a community is commit to wearing masks, keeping our social distance, washing hands and all of those things we know we should do. Places that thought they were done with it are getting it again because they opened too soon… If we can keep our COVID rate down and keep the spread rate down, we will be more likely to be able to keep our kids in school.”

An inmate in the Sac County Jail escaped Friday night around 7:30 p.m. Dylan Lee Pedersen of Lake City, age 28, was fist booked in to the Sac County Jail on July 23 on a domestic abuse charge out of Calhoun County. Video surveillance shows Pedersen kicking a fire exit door. ...

While farmers have had to contend with all sorts of challenges over the past years due to precipitation and flooding, this year the weather has been much kinder to the crops growing in fields throughout the region. Area agriculture professionals who’ve been out in the fields said the only thing that could potentially cause havoc as we head through the summer is hot weather...