Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CDT

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A trucking company linked to a recent deadly human smuggling case in Texas had long promoted itself as a family firm whose hard-working drivers helped keep the U.S. economy running. But according to public records and interviews with former drivers, Pyle Transportation was a cutthroat business that flouted laws. One of the company’s contract drivers is charged in the deaths of 10 immigrants found in a sweltering trailer in Texas. The firm says it knew nothing about the human smuggling operation.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Court records say an Iowa woman accused of trying to flush her newborn down a toilet and then leaving the baby for dead in a trash can intends to change her plea. A plea hearing is scheduled Aug. 11 in Iowa City for Ashley Hautzenrader, who’s already pleaded not guilty to attempted murder. The records don’t say how she’ll plead and to what charges. Police say the child was found alive in the trash.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Drought conditions are increasing in several states, and extreme heat and weeks with little rain have begun to stress corn, soybeans, wheat and livestock in some areas. The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln says nearly 11 percent of the continental United States is in moderate drought or worse.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — A Nebraska man has been sentenced to more than a year in federal prison for escaping last year from a federal halfway house in western Iowa. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa says 28-year-old Keith Wayne Page, of Omaha, was sentenced Thursday to 16 months in prison for escape, to which he pleaded guilty in January. Officials say Page failed to return to CH Inc., a residential re-entry center in Council Bluffs, in early September.