Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:00 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The reward fund offered for the safe return of a missing University of Iowa student has grown to more than $332,000. Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa in a news release Thursday that 210 individual donors have contributed to the fund and that Crime Stoppers has passed on more than 935 tips to authorities investigating the disappearance of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — BNSF Railway has acknowledged flooding played a role in a derailment that loosed thousands of gallons of oil into northwest Iowa floodwaters. BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said Friday that the derailment was “flood related” but declined to say whether the train engineer knew or should have known about washed-out tracks mentioned in a preliminary federal report released Thursday.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa election officials were told Friday by the state Supreme Court they cannot implement several absentee voting requirements in a new voter ID law until a challenge to the law can be heard at a trial. A court order signed by Chief Justice Mark Cady upheld a judge’s temporary injunction halting enforcement of several sections of the 2017 law pertaining to absentee ballots.

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa (AP) — Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, is telling Iowa Democrats that the party needs a bare-knuckle fighter to take back the White House _ and he’s considering formally casting himself in the role. Avenatti was the closing speaker at the Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Iowa, a traditional stop for presidential hopefuls. He says “the Democratic Party must be a party that fights fire with fire.”

A blown tire on a motorcycle resulted in a fatal motorcycle accident Friday morning, near Desoto, in Dallas County. The Iowa State Patrol says a 2007 Harley Davidson cycle operated by 42-year old Matthew Allan Babcock, of Olivet, MI., was traveling east on Interstate 80 at around 9:50-a.m. near mile marker 109, when the back tire blew out.

The cycle went out of control, causing Babcock, and his passenger, 43-year old Jamie Lynn Babcock, also of Olivet, MI., to be ejected. Neither of the riders were wearing a helmet. Matthew Babcock suffered fatal injuries and died at Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. Jamie Babcock was also injured and transported to Methodist.

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, Dallas and Waukee Rescue Squads assisted at the scene.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Republican House Speaker John Boehner says his party has an uphill climb in its goal to hold the majority. Boehner spoke during an impromptu press conference at the Iowa State Fair Friday. Boehner, who left office in 2015, says he would “do this a little differently,” when asked about the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods, as well as on steel and aluminum from allies.

Boehner says “I always thought you caught more bees with honey than vinegar.”
Boehner batted down questions of a presidential campaign while touring the fair, known for attracting White House prospects in the early presidential caucus state.
The former Ohio representative says he was in Des Moines visiting former Rep. Tom Latham, an Iowa Republican and close friend, and “had a few extra hours.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The reward fund offered for the safe return of a missing University of Iowa student has grown to more than $332,000. Crime Stoppers of Central Iowa in a news release Thursday that 210 individual donors have contributed to the fund and that Crime Stoppers has passed on more than 935 tips to authorities investigating the disappearance of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts.

Tibbetts was last seen jogging in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18. Her family reported her missing the next day when she didn’t show up for work.

Television station KCCI reports that the Tibbetts’ family and her boyfriend were at the state fairgrounds Friday handing out flyers bearing the picture of and information on Tibbetts.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa election officials were told Friday by the state Supreme Court they cannot implement several absentee voting requirements in a new voter ID law until a challenge to the law can be heard at a trial. A court order signed by Chief Justice Mark Cady upheld a judge’s temporary injunction halting enforcement of several sections of the 2017 law pertaining to absentee ballots. The order said the state cannot throw out an absentee ballot based on a judgment by local election officials that the voter’s signature doesn’t match one on file.

It also said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate cannot require absentee ballots to include a voter verification number and he must make it clear in materials sent to voters that an ID isn’t required to vote until next year.

In elections this year, voters without IDs have been allowed to sign an “Oath of Identification” attesting that they are who they say they are. The oath option will remain available for the November election, which features competitive races for governor and at least two Republican-held U.S. House seats.

Next year, however, when there will be local races, the option of signing an oath will go away and voters must have acceptable identification or they will have to cast a provisional ballot, then return to show ID within a few days for their ballot to count.
Friday’s court order does allow the state to narrow the timeframe for casting absentee ballots to 29 days from 40 days, a change that will be effective for the general election in November.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa and Iowa State University student Taylor Blair sued the state in May, arguing that changes in the voter ID law would disenfranchise voters, especially Latinos who vote absentee in large numbers.
They asked the court to issue an injunction halting enforcement of the absentee ballot provisions and a judge did so in July. The state appealed.

Guy Cecil, chairman of the Priorities USA Foundation, a voting rights advocacy organization that is helping to fund the lawsuit. Cecil said the court’s decision means voters in the fall elections “will no longer be forced to produce an obscure voter ID number in order to cast an absentee ballot, nor will they be in danger of having their ballot thrown out due to inaccurate signature matching.”

Pate said in a statement that he is disappointed the court set aside only part of the injunction but he looks forward to a full hearing in court. “Voters benefit from having clarity in how the election laws will be applied for the November general election,” he said.

The issue is a key topic for Pate’s re-election race this year. His opponent, Democrat Deidre DeJear, has been a critic of the law passed by a Republican-led legislature with Pate’s support.

(Radio Iowa) — Recent ag nuisance rulings against hog operations in North Carolina have resulted in large financial awards to the plaintiffs. But the legal counsel for the Iowa Pork Producers Association, Eldon McAfee, doesn’t believe those rulings will have much impact on livestock producers in the Midwest. McAfee says the North Carolina cases are focused on the manure handling practices of the farms, which differ from those used by most Midwestern farmers. “The use of lagoons and spray irrigation – which is what we call it here in Iowa – that’s regulated, as to how you can use spray irrigation. You can’t use it with undiluted manure,” McAfee says.

According to McAfee, although each case is different, several recent Midwestern nuisance rulings have been in favor of the farmers. “Nuisance cases are very fact-specific, both from the neighbors’ standpoint and from the producers’ standpoint, at least at the trial level,” McAfee says. “You can’t take a lot of precedential effect from one case to another. It depends on the facts of each case.”

McAfee works for the Brick Gentry law firm in West Des Moines.

(Radio Iowa)  — You think it’s hot on the Midway at the Iowa State Fair? A NASA space probe, designed in part at the University of Iowa, will be launched tomorrow (Saturday) morning on a mission to the sun. U-I physicist Jasper Halekas, a co-investigator on the Parker Solar Probe, says his main experiment is focused on what’s known as the solar wind. “It’s ionized hydrogen and helium and electrons,” Halekas says. “Those compose what we call the solar wind which is this stream of hot plasma that flows out from the sun constantly at around a million miles an hour.” Halekas’ helped to design SWEAP, which stands for Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons. It’s housed in three clusters of instruments onboard the spacecraft. With a reflective heat shield comprised mostly of carbon foam, the compact car-sized probe is built to withstand the incredibly scorching heat of the sun.

“We’ll get to about 25 times closer to the sun than the Earth is, which is about seven times closer than any human-made object has ever been before,” Halekas says. “In actual terms, that’s about four million miles.” By comparison, the closest planet to the sun, Mercury is about 36 million miles from the sun, so he says this probe will get “right in there.” The spacecraft will do a fly-by of our solar system’s second planet, Venus, in order to use its gravitational pull to “slingshot” the probe closer to the sun.

“About two months into the mission, we do our first fly-by of Venus and about a month after that, only three months after launch, we do our first close pass of the sun,” Halekas says. “Then, over the course of seven more years, we do six more fly-bys of Venus and nudge ourselves closer and closer and closer into the sun.” The front of the heat shield will have to withstand temperatures of around 25-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The cooling system is so amazingly efficient that the back of the spacecraft, in the shadow of the heat shield, will be below room temperature. Launch of the solar probe is scheduled for about 2:30 AM/Central on Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a Delta IV (four) Heavy rocket.

(Radio Iowa) — Senator Chuck Grassley says the chairman of the Senate Ag Committee has assured him the 2018 Farm Bill will become law before year’s end. “And I sure hope so, because I don’t want to do what we had to in 2013 — extend the Farm Bill for one year,” Grassley says, “because farmers need that continuity you get from a five-year Farm Bill and farmers also would (get) a bit of good news if they had a five-year Farm Bill, considering the anxiety they have about the tariffs.”

Iowa’s other U.S. Senator, Joni Ernst, is serving on the conference committee of House and Senate members that are trying to craft a final version of the bill that could pass both. Grassley toured the Iowa State Fairgrounds Friday morning, visiting with fairgoers.

Sheriff’s officials in Adams County report a woman was arrested Tuesday afternoon on a warrant and drug charges. Authorities say 24-year old Anastasia Imsland was arrested in Taylor County on an Adams County warrant, plus charges that include Felony Gathering where a Controlled Substance is unlawfully used, Possession of Controlled Substances (Meth and Marijuana), and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. Her arrest followed a call to authorities at around 4-p.m. Tuesday, about an unlicensed driver traveling south from Nodaway towards J-20/130th Street, in Taylor County.

The caller described the vehicle, which was located by Adams County Deputies at 130th and Highway 148, in Taylor County. Imsland was taken into custody and transported to the Adams County Jail.

(12-p.m. News)

The Shelby County Extension Service in Harlan announced Friday (Today), Tim Christensen has joined Iowa State University Extension and Outreach as a farm management specialist. Christensen, who has worked at Iowa State as an agricultural specialist since 2015, will cover the counties of Ida, Sac, Calhoun, Monona, Crawford, Carroll, Greene, Harrison, Shelby, Audubon and Guthrie for ISU Extension and Outreach. Christensen joins a team of eight farm management specialists located throughout Iowa who deliver the latest in research-based information on farm financial and risk management, instructions on government programs such as the farm bill and crop insurance, guidance on strategic and business planning and information on agricultural marketing tools and supply chains to farm owners and operators.

Prior to joining ISU Extension and Outreach Christensen was as an agriculture specialist for Iowa State University, working to monitor the health and wellbeing of Iowa State’s animals, maintaining detailed herd health records and training students and staff on animal welfare protocols. Christensen also has experience as a location manager for Farmers Cooperative and as a group leader of vet services at Boehringer Ingelheim in Fort Dodge. He holds a degree in animal science with a minor in commercial agriculture from Northwest Missouri State University.