A near head-on collision occurred late Monday night, in Crawford County, resulting in two people being injured. The Iowa State Patrol says the crash happened at 11:55-p.m. on Highway 59, between X and W Avenues. Authorities report a 2002 Chevy pickup driven by 37-year old Johnathan Miguel Casteneda Mendoza, of Denison, was traveling north on Highway 59, at the same time a 2005 Freightliner semi driven by 63-year old Juan Manuel Ortiz, of Chaska, MN., was traveling southbound.

For reasons unknown, the pickup crossed the center line of the road into the southbound lane, in front of the semi. When the vehicles collided in an off-set manner, the pickup rotated to the east and came to rest facing west in the northbound late, partially on the east shoulder. The semi entered the west ditch and rolled onto its driver’s side, burst into flames and burned.

Mendoza was transported by Crawford County Ambulance to the Crawford County Memorial Hospital, in Denison. Ortiz was flown by Med Air 1 to the UNMC, in Omaha. Both drivers were wearing their seat belts. The accident remains under investigation.

(Radio Iowa/KJAN) — Iowa’s Secretary of State says it’s important for people to vote in today’s (Tuesday) city and school board elections. The polls are open from 7-a.m. until 8-p.m. Local election results will be posted as soon as the results are available. They can be found online on the kjan.com News page, and our social media sites (Facebook & Twitter).

Secretary of State Paul Pate says city government is the most efficient and effective level of government.  “Who’s going to decide how to make sure your neighborhood is safe? How many policemen and where will they be? That’s local government,” Pate says. “You’re going to have a fire department that’s going to be there when you need them. When you talk about key things like streets, you make take them for granted today, but I guarantee if you ever have a trash problem, you’re going to call you your city government and want to know where it’s at.”

Especially in smaller communities, Pate says it only takes a handful of people to decide an election. “More local races are impacted by a smaller number of people than you can imagine. Ten to 20 people could push an election one way or the other,” Pate says. “So it doesn’t take having thousands, if you spend some time looking just looking at your phone contact list and making some calls, you could be the impacting force that got someone elected to one of these positions.”

Every year, there are local elections that are decided by single digits, or in the cases of a tie, a name being drawn out of a hat.  “We have many elections that are that close where you’re doing that, that are won and lost by 10 and 20 votes more than most candidates ever wanted to have happen. That’s here in Iowa and multiply that across the country,” he says. “Every vote counts, and we want to make it as simple and easy to vote as we can, and we’re going make it is hard as we can for people to cheat.”

Besides winning elections to the Iowa legislature and to two separate terms as Secretary of State, Pate won municipal elections in November 2001 and 2003 for mayor in Cedar Rapids.

(Radio Iowa) — Firefighters are investigating after a body was found in a burning home in northwest Iowa Monday morning. The Spencer Fire Department was called shortly after ten o’clock Monday morning to a report of a structure fire with an occupant possibly still inside. Once on scene, firefighters made entry into the home where a primary search found a closed bedroom door.

A search of the room revealed the origin of the flames and the body of 72-year-old Lawrence Bendlin. Fire crews spent around three hours at the scene and were able to contain fire damage to the one room with smoke damage seen throughout the structure.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:30 a.m. CST

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa health coach accused of defrauding more than 100 people out of millions of dollars by getting them to invest in a gym and fitness program has been sentenced to more than six years in federal prison and must pay more than $8 million in restitution to his victims. A judge sentenced Mark Alan Blankespoor of Pella after he had agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The state and the city of Boone have agreed to pay $80,000 to an Iowa drug suspect who was arrested after an illegal search. The State Appeal Board has approved the payout under a legal settlement with Daniel Vinnece. His home was searched in April 2018 by parole officer Kari White and a Boone police detective without a warrant. Parole officers can conduct warrantless home visits but White wasn’t Vinnece’s parole officer. She was later fired over the incident.

DECORAH, Iowa (AP) — Two candidates have clear momentum in Iowa with three months until the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. Democratic rivals Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren are offering starkly different arguments as they try to close the deal. But other top contenders including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders aren’t going away. The jumble at the top reveals vulnerabilities for all the candidates.

MANCHESTER, Iowa (AP) — A judge has rejected a plea deal for a man charged in the death of a woman hit in northeast Iowa by fragments from a homemade cannon in July 2016. Delaware County District Court records say Max Fenton pleaded guilty to aggravated misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter, which replaced the felony charge. The Telegraph Herald reports that the judge rejected the deal last week, saying the plea was to a new charge that was not a lesser-included crime alleged among the original charges.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa health coach accused of defrauding more than 100 people out of millions of dollars by getting them to invest in a gym and fitness program has been sentenced to more than six years in federal prison and must pay more than $8 million in restitution to his victims.

A judge sentenced Mark Alan Blankespoor of Pella on Friday. He had pleaded guilty to wire fraud in June.
U.S. Attorney Marc Krickbaum says Blankespoor must repay $8.4 million to over 100 victims.

Court documents says Blankespoor was a health coach and consultant in Pella and convinced others he was developing medically-oriented gyms and was licensing the program to fitness clinics across the country.

Over four years he convinced investors to hand over millions of dollars which he used for personal expenses and to pay other investors.