Red Oak Police report three arrests took place, Thursday. At around 11:35-p.m., officers with the Red Oak P-D arrested 52-year old Robert Wade Abraham, of Red Oak, for Interference with Official Acts. Abraham was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $300 cash bond.

And, at around 3:45-p.m., Red Oak Police arrested 20-year old Ridge Allen Casteel, of Creston, and 20-year old Ashley Kate Lewis, of Red Oak. Casteel was charged with Assault and Trespass, while Lewis faces a Domestic Abuse Assault, charge. Both were transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where Casteel was being held on $300 bond, and Lewis was being held without bond until appearing before a magistrate.

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

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A review of Des Moines Police Department data shows the city has seen an increase in drive-by shootings this year. The Des Moines Register reports that 31 drive-by shootings were reported in the city through the end of June. Police say 22 drive-by shootings were reported during the same time period last year. Sixteen drive-by shootings were reported for the same period in 2014, and 22 were reported the year before. Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek says there isn’t one cause for the shootings.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A judge has rejected conspiracy allegations against Missouri State Highway Patrol commanders named in a federal civil lawsuit over the 2014 drowning of a 20-year-old handcuffed Iowa man at Lake of the Ozarks. U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey said Wednesday lawyers for Brandon Ellingson’s family hadn’t proved that patrol officials conspired to cover up the cause of the death of Brandon Ellingson, who drowned after he fell from a patrol boat.

FORT DODGE, Iowa (AP) — A 21-year-old Iowa woman who caused a Christmas Day crash that killed a 6-year-old Webster City girl has pleaded guilty to three traffic violations. The Fort Dodge Messenger says Ruth Tomlinson pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving on the wrong side of a highway, failure to maintain control and having no proof of insurance. She was ordered to pay more than $2,300 in fines and court costs.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is suing federal regulators for approving permits for a $3.8 billion pipeline between North Dakota and Illinois that would be the biggest-capacity pipeline carrying oil out of the state’s oil patch. Tribal officials filed the lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The tribe says it opposes the Dakota Access Pipeline because it fears a spill could contaminate drinking water on its reservation, which is home to 8,000 people.

The Iowa Utilities Board recently updated its rules for people who produce their own electricity. I-U-B spokesman Don Tormey says it involves a process known as “net metering.”  “When customers generate their own electricity, any electricity that the customer generates that they do not use is exported to the utility grid. And under net metering, the customer’s extra generation is credited to his or her account and is used to offset the customer’s future electricity use,” Tormey explains. The new rules expand the size of operations that can feed electricity back into the grid.

He says it now allows larger facilities to participate as they increased it from 500 kilowatts to one megawatt. The rules cover the state’s two largest utility companies and it asks them to write new rules for the cost or tariff charged to the customer for hooking up to the grid. He says the board ordered MidAmerican and Alliant Energy’s subsidiary Iowa Power and Light to file new tariffs on or before August 15th, and once the board receive those, they will have to review and approve them. Tormey says there’s not an exact number of people who are creating their own energy with the chance to feed the excess back to the power companies, but it could be around 15-hundred or more.

“There’s even customers who are off the grid that attempt to do that,” Tormey says. “You know people who live in real remote areas that have attempted to do solar panels and storage batteries and things like that.” He expects more people to look at creating their own energy either from wind or solar.

“It would be a mixture of both, but I would anticipate it might be more solar,” Tormey says. Experts in the field says the cost of solar panels has been coming down as technology improves and more people are looking at using them. You can find out more about net metering on the I-U-B’s website or in the link in this story at iub.iowa.gov

(Radio Iowa)