BROWNVILLE, Neb. (AP) — Utility crews extinguished a fire at a nuclear power plant in southeast Nebraska over the weekend. The Nebraska Public Power District says the fire was discovered in the basement of the facility around 9 a.m. Saturday while crews were investigating a hazardous gas. It was extinguished before 10 a.m.

The utility says the fire never threatened public safety. NPPD and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will investigate what started the fire and evaluate the utility’s response. The Cooper nuclear plant continued operating throughout the incident on Saturday.

Cooper sits along the Missouri River in southeast Nebraska near Brownville about 80 miles south of Omaha and across the river from Iowa.

Police in Red Oak, late Saturday night, arrested a woman for assault. 71-year old Diane Elaine Charmeda, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 11:15-p.m., for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st offense. Charmeda was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held without bond, pending an appearance before the magistrate.

One person died and another was injured during a crash on Interstate 80 Saturday night, in Polk County. The Iowa State Patrol reports a 2018 GMC pickup driven by 37-year old Travis Gonzales, of Bondurant, was traveling at a high rate of speed westbound on I-80 a little after 10-p.m., when his truck struck a 2016 Ford Focus from behind, just before the east mixmaster (the I-80/I-235/I-35 interchange). After the impact, both vehicles entered the north ditch, where the car struck a tree. The driver of the Ford was not identified. The victim who died at Mercy Hospital, was a 24-year old. The unidentified person who was injured was 22-years old. Both were wearing their seat belts. The injured person was transported to Methodist Hospital by medical helicopter. Their names were being withheld pending notification of family.

The accident remains under investigation, with charges pending the results of the investigation.

Stuart Fire and Stuart Rescue, along with Menlo Fire and Rescue were called into service for a single vehicle accident just east of Menlo, Saturday evening. Officials said two patients were extricated, with one being transported by Mercy One helicopter. The other person was transported by ambulance to the hospital for treatment of their injuries.The accident happened at around 10-p.m. Saturday, as a 2000 Chevy Silverado was traveling north on Ranch Trail Road near White Pole Road. The vehicle went out of control on a bridge and hit the guard rail before going airborne. The pickup cleared a creek and landed on its wheels in the east ditch. No names have been released.

Image from the Stuart Fire Dept. Facebook page

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — Students in Wayne Lidtke’s sustainable construction and design class have learned about house building by doing it. They’ve framed walls, hung drywall, installed windows and doors, and done minimal wiring while building small scale houses at the Waterloo Career Center. The students will be working on some other skills, like roofing, in the Waterloo Community Schools’ program before the semester is over, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported .

Though, the nine high schoolers put down their hammers and picked up trowels. Iowa Masonry Institute members taught them lessons on mixing mortar and building a number of structures with cinder block and brick. Their task was to construct a pier. The column-like structure can support a beam in a building, an overhang on an entryway or have a more decorative use at the end of a driveway.

Students shoveled mortar out of wheelbarrows onto plywood platforms. They scooped up the substance with their trowels, depositing it on the edges of a pair of cinder blocks before adding another layer of blocks. Chris Busch, overseeing the students’ efforts, emphasized the importance of getting the right amount of mortar between the blocks. Without the right amount, “it’ll start to lose considerable integrity,” he said.

Students were building the piers five blocks high, and then covering them with a veneer of brick. Busch doesn’t expect everyone in the class to end up as a bricklayer. But bringing the program into schools is important to finding the next generation of workers he says — and the amount of time they’ve had at the career center only helps.

PROMISE CITY, Iowa (AP) — Local builders and avid do-it-yourselfers have long turned to Lockridge, Inc. for construction materials. Many residents are beginning to turn to them for high-speed Internet. The Daily Iowegian reports the unique scenario recently drew the attention of Gov. Kim Reynolds and her Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg, as they stopped at the company’s Promise City location during a southern Iowa swing.

Lockridge, Inc., a family-owned building materials company with locations in Wayne, Appanoose, Lucas and Putnam counties, set out about two years ago to come up with a solution to their own internal problem of obtaining high-speed internet. That solution may end up solving a societal problem faced by many in rural southeastern Iowa. Challenges with getting high-speed Internet in rural areas and even small towns have proved a struggle, even in places in which federal data states an area has access to high-speed internet, that data doesn’t always prove true.

The Lockridge company is headquartered where the business began in the 1940s in Promise City, population 113. The location houses their company network, including point-of-sale and their estimate generation systems. Getting their other locations in Centerville, Chariton and Unionville, Missouri able to connect to that network, however, was sometimes a challenge due to the lack of broadband access in the area.

Around the same time, they were aiding in the construction of a home for Pete Krebs, who has an Internet networking background. Together, they came up with a solution: Create Lockridge’s own wireless Internet network. That involved setting up various towers in the area, which drew questions from curious residents in the sparsely populated rural areas. Caleb Housh, a sales manager of the family-run business, said at first some employees of Lockridge themselves got connected with the system. The family began seeing they could begin offering the service to the communities they serve.

Housh said the service is still in a pre-launch stage. Krebs said over two years the new Internet service company has grown confident in their network and service options. Krebs, who co-owns the new Lockridge Networks company, told Reynolds that just a few feet in elevation change can make a major difference in the kind of power or radios that need to be used to establish service. One day, Housh told Reynolds, the dream is that service would be available south of the Highway 34 corridor between Interstate 35 and the Mississippi River. For now, the service is expected to remain in somewhat of a soft-launching phase until the first part of 2019.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 4:00 a.m. CST

CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — A major financial rating agency has lowered its bond ratings for an Iowa town because of how it is financing a $70 million arena project. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that S&P Global Ratings pointed to Coralville’s bank loans with variable interest rates to pay for the planned 5,700 seat arena set to open in 2020. City leaders say they remain confident the project does not threaten the city’s finances.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa woman whose son died from a drug overdose has had a chance to hear his heart beat again in the chest of an Ohio man who received it as an organ donation. The Quad City Times reports that Lisa Bragg met Friday in Davenport with 45-year-old Kenneth Vogelsong, of Sherwood, Ohio. Bragg’s 27-year-old son, Markus Abbott, died in January, and his heart was transplanted in Vogelsong.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — In 2008, Barack Obama won the hearts of Iowa Democrats. Today, his supporters are looking more pragmatically for someone who can simply seize the presidency from Donald Trump in 2020. Niki Neems, a Democratic activist in Iowa city, says that ideally she would want to fall in love with the new candidate the same way as she did with Obama. But she adds that the candidate’s ultimate success at defeating Trump is more important. Neems says, “So, for me, it’s OK to just fall in like.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police have charged a Des Moines man with murder in the deaths of his mother and uncle. Detectives on Friday night charged 30-year-old Joshua Adams with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his mother, 49-year-old Tracy Linn Adams, and his uncle, 54-year-old Gaylord George Jolly Jr. Police say both of the victims died of “sharp-force injuries.”