DOUGLAS COUNTY, Neb. [KETV] — Sheriff’s Officials in Douglas County, Nebraska report a body was found floating in the Missouri River, Tuesday. Authorities were notified when a person called 911 about possible human remains floating in the river just north of the Douglas/Washington County line.

Multiple agencies worked together to pull the body of an adult male from the river along North River Drive a little farther south of County Road P51.

Anyone with information concerning this incident is being asked to call the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office at 402-444-6000.

(Radio Iowa) – Legislation which Governor Kim Reynolds recently signed into law expands the definition of “pedestrian” in Iowa, which safety experts say is an enormous win for everyone who uses a crosswalk. Cara Hamann, director of training and education at the Injury Prevention Research Center, based at the University of Iowa, says broadening the legal description of pedestrian is an important move. “The law says that a pedestrian is a person on foot, and the new law expands that to pedestrian or pedestrian conveyance,” Hamann says, “and pedestrian conveyance includes things like people in wheelchairs, babies in strollers, people on rollerblades or skateboards, or people on bicycles.”

Hamann is an injury epidemiologist, meaning, she studies crash prevention and outcomes. While the law change won’t necessarily prevent accidents, she says the new distinction of what defines “pedestrian” is key. “People in vehicles are protected by the big metal surrounding that they’re in, whereas all these other users — or what we call vulnerable road users — don’t have that protection,” she says. “So ultimately, I think it makes sense that drivers should yield to users crossing the road legally in a crosswalk.” The new law doesn’t take effect for a few months, and while it won’t instantly make crosswalks any safer on July 1st, it -will- make drivers legally liable for anyone they may strike.

“Before this change, really only people on foot were written into the law, so that means if a driver hit a bicyclist in a crosswalk, they could walk away with no consequences,” Hamann says, “because there’s no law to uphold that says they should have yielded to that bicyclist.” Hamann, an associate professor in the U-I’s College of Public Health, says she’s very encouraged by the expanded legal definition of pedestrian: “This is a really positive change in the law that moves us toward a better traffic safety culture overall in the state, recognizing that all road users are important and we should take care of each other on the road.”

This is National Bike to Work Week.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa is among a group of states suing the State of California and the Biden Administration over rules that critics say will force the trucking industry to convert to electric semis before the power grid can support the transition. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says it’s the worst nightmare for the supply chain. “Electric trucks are a lot more expensive than the diesel trucks and they barely exist, mostly as prototypes,” Bird says. “Biden and California’s radical ‘green dream’ is unrealistic and it’s out of touch, a fantasy.”

Two dozen states, including Iowa, are going to court to try to block E-P-A rules about emissions from semi tractors’ tailpipes. A separate legal action involving Iowa and 17 other states is challenging California’s plan to require zero carbon emissions from semis operating in California that come from trucking companies with over 50 trucks. That rule would go into effect in 2036.

Iowa Motor Truck Association chairman Scott Szymanek is president of Stutsman, Incorporated, a trucking company based in the small town of Hills, near Iowa City. He says ithe trucking industry cannot convert to electric semis as quickly as the regulations require.  “Battery electric vehicles are a viable option for some trucking operations, such as urban delivery and even school buses, but you cannot move the entire U.S. economy a battery vehicle alone,” he says. “It is simply unrealistic.”

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks during news conference at Housby Co. in Ankeny. She was joined by Dale Decker of Decker Truck Line, on left, and Iowa Motor Truck Association chair Scott Szymanek on right. (RI photo)

Szymanek says renewable diesel fuel has a lower carbon footprint over its life cycle when compared to battery-operated trucks. Dale Decker, the C-E-O of Decker Truck Line, says his company has been testing electric trucks at their facility in Fort Dodge, but Decker says sending battery powered semis out on the highways is unrealistic.  “It’s just not possible with the cost and charge times, the distance, weather factors. Cold, hot changes the distance on where the truck can go, the capability of that truck,” Decker says. “Sure, we’d all like to get there, but pushing this down our throat like this is just not a way to go.”

The U-S Supreme Court recently ruled California can enforce animal welfare rules related to pork that’s produced elsewhere, but sold in California. Bird says she’s disappointed in that ruling, but the attorneys general will argue, as they did in the pork-related case, that California’s rule is a violation of the U-S Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. “California does not have the power to tell another state what to do, particularly when it comes to trucking,” Bird says. “What California is doing is extreme.”

Bird says there are other legal precedents directly related to cases involving the trucking industry that support the effort to block California’s ‘clean fleet’ trucking rules. California officials have said while only six percent of the vehicles on California roads are trucks, those trucks account for a quarter of the state’s transportation-generated greenhouse gas emissions.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird attended Donald Trump’s trial in New York on Monday at the invitation of the Republican Attorneys General Association. She briefly answered a question about the trip during a news conference today (Tuesday) in Ankeny. “I went to New York to show my support for President Trump and to witness what was going on there in that courtroom in Manhattan,” Bird said.

Bird told Iowa reporters no tax dollars were used for the trip. A spokesperson for her campaign later identified the group that paid for it. Bird spoke with New York reporters Monday and said Trump’s trial was a travesty and the charges against the former president were a scam, but during her news conference in Ankeny she spoke about the trial for about 12 seconds. Bird was at a trucking company with Iowa Motor Truck Association representatives to announce legal action against E-V rules for semis.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Board of Directors of the Atlantic Community School District will meet at 5:30pm Wednesday, May 15, 2024 in the Atlantic High School Media Center. The meeting will be open to the public as required in Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code.

AGENDA
1. Call to Order
2. Roll Call
3. Approve Agenda
4. Action Item(s)
a. Approve 2024-2025 Certified Agreement between the Atlantic Education Association and the Atlantic School District
5. Discussion
a. The Atlantic Classified Union will present its initial contract proposal for the 2024-2025 school year between the
Classified Union and the District’s Negotiation Committee.
b. The District’s Negotiation Committee will present its opening proposal to the Atlantic Classified Union and its
representatives.
6. Adjournment
7. Exempt Session
a. The District’s Negotiation Committee will go into an exempt session to review proposals. Meeting closed to the public.

(Radio Iowa) – A ceremony on the state capitol grounds today (Tuesday) marked an anniversary for the state’s Vietnam Memorial.  “The Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated 40 years ago on Memorial Day May 28 of 1984 by then Iowa Governor Terry Branstad,” according to Dan Gannon, Commander of the Des Moines Chapter 20 of Vietnam Combat Disabled Veterans.

Gannon says the Iowa Memorial came two years after the National Vietnam Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D-C. Gannon, who served in the Marines in Vietnam says many other Iowans served our country as well. “During the Vietnam War years 115-thouand Iowans served in Vietnam in all branches of the military,” he says. “Their average age was 19. They were still teenagers barely out of high school and some not yet old enough yet to vote for the president’s who sent him there.” Gannon says nearly 900 Iowans gave the ultimate sacrifice.

“Eight hundred and 68 Iowans became casualties of that Vietnam War their names are etched as you can see in the black granite to my to my back,” Gannon says. “There are over 58-thousand-281 names on the Vietnam Wall in D-C.” He says it wasn’t very far into the war before the first Iowan died. “Iowa’s first casualty of the Vietnam War was Navy hospital corpsman second class Gerald Owen Norton. He served with the first Marine airwing and was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam on October the second of 1962, Gannon says.

He says Norton, who was from Moulton, was the first corpsman killed in the war. Gannon says the last Iowan killed in combat tragically came just before the war ended. “Nineteen-year-old United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Darwin Judge from Marshalltown, Iowa. He died on the 29th of April 1975. The last day of the war during a rocket attack. His death occurred just prior to the final evacuation of the Embassy in Saigon.” Gannon says He says five Iowans received the Medal of Honor for their conduct in the Vietnam War.

It is the 17th year there has been a state ceremony for Iowa Vietnam Veterans Recognition Day. All of the names of the Veterans on the Iowa wall were read for the first time in another ceremony that followed the anniversary recognition.

(Radio Iowa) – Residents in the Sioux City area say their local community college needs to be more transparent about a $3 million settlement with 13 Chilean students who accused the school of human trafficking.

Three other international students from Chile have not yet settled with Western Iowa Tech. Dave Bernstein, the president of State Steel in Sioux City and a former member of the Iowa Economic Development Board, addressed the Western Iowa Tech board yesterday.

“I think there’s great concern over the fact that most likely there will be additional settlements taking that number up significantly, whether or not you actually have insurance in place to cover that or not, whether that’s going to take a hit to tuition’s or come out of your state funding or come out of the levy that goes against property tax holders within this area,” he said. “I think that’s a very significant concern that all taxpayers have a right to know.”

Rosanne Plante, a Sioux City lawyer, is a former instructor at the college. She said the school’s reputation has been tarnished. “You don’t reach a settlement of $3 million without spending a significant amount of money on lawyers,” Plante said, “and without determining that it’s far better to settle than it is to have your dirty laundry aired.”

The students say the college promised a free two-year program with internships, but they were forced into manual labor jobs at a dog food factory and a food processing plant to pay off tuition. The trial in a separate case involving Western Iowa Tech students from Brazil is scheduled to start about a year from now.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Glenwood Police Department reports the arrest today (Tuesday), of 19-year-old Jonathan Young, from Glenwood. Young was taken into custody for Failure to appear. His cash-only bond was set at $300.

DES MOINES – Governor Reynolds today sent a letter co-signed with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig to Secretary Tom Vilsack at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requesting federal assistance for farmers whose properties were damaged or destroyed by severe weather on April 26-27, 2024. 

The governor issued the letter after being notified earlier in the day that a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration had been authorized by the White House, opening Federal Emergency Management Agency and Small Business Administration programs to disaster-affected homeowners, renters, and businesses in eight counties. 

An excerpt from the letter to the USDA is included below: 

“Iowa farmers have been significantly impacted by these storms and require assistance to recover from these catastrophic damages and to rebuild and replace destroyed grain bins, farm equipment, and operational business losses.  Disaster assistance programs only offered through the Farm Service Agency following a Secretarial Designation, including the Farm Loans Program and the Emergency Assistance for Livestock Program, are needed to help Iowa farmers recover from these storms. 

“As a result, we respectfully request your consideration and prompt issuance of U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretarial Designation and activation of any and all eligible assistance for the following eight Iowa counties:  Clarke, Harrison, Mills, Polk, Pottawattamie, Ringgold, Shelby, and Union.” 

The letter can be read in its entirety online. 

DES MOINES – Gov. Kim Reynolds announced today that President Biden has approved Iowa’s request for a Major Disaster Declaration. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) are now authorized to provide assistance to Clarke, Harrison, Mills, Polk, Pottawattamie, Ringgold, Shelby, and Union Counties that were impacted by severe weather on April 26, 2024.

Residents in these counties can now apply for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Individual Assistance Program, which provides disaster-affected homeowners, renters, and businesses with programs and services to maximize recovery, including assistance with housing, personal property replacement, medical expenses, and legal services. Individuals and business owners who sustained losses in the designated areas can begin applying for assistance by calling 1-800-621-3362. The helpline operates from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., 7 days a week. Anyone using a relay service, such as video relay service (VRS), captioned telephone service or others, can give FEMA the number for that service. Other options include registering online at www.disasterassistance.gov or downloading the FEMA app.

Homeowners, renters, businesses, and nonprofit organizations whose property was damaged or destroyed by this disaster, may be able to apply for low-interest disaster loans from the SBA. In addition, small businesses, agricultural cooperatives, and private, nonprofit organizations impacted by the severe weather may be eligible to apply for working capital loans.  Applicants may apply online, receive additional disaster assistance information, and download applications at www.sba.gov/funding-programs/disaster-assistance.

Applicants may also call SBA’s Customer Service Center at 1-800-659-2955 or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov for more information on SBA disaster assistance. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.

The Iowa Individual Assistance Grant Program is no longer available in counties where the FEMA Individual Assistance Program has been made available and residents should apply for the FEMA Individual Assistance Program.