One person suffered non-life threatening injuries during a motorcycle accident Wednesday night, in Atlantic. According to reports, the accident happened at around 9:10-p.m. in front of the Family Table Restaurant in the 600 block of W. 7th Street. The injured party suffered from a head laceration.

Cass EMS and Atlantic Rescue responded to the scene. Additional information was not immediately available.

A man from Exira died Wednesday from injuries he suffered during a motorcycle accident in Audubon County. The Iowa State Patrol reports 65-year-old Jed Bengard, Jr., was riding an Indian Challenger motorcycle north on Littlefield Drive just before 5-p.m. and entering a curve south of 310th Street, when for reasons unknown, the cycle left the road and entered a ditch.

The motorcycle overturned in the ditch, causing Bengard to fall from the machine. He died at the scene. The accident remains under investigation. The Patrol was assisted at the scene by Deputies with the Audubon County Sheriff’s Department.

(Radio Iowa) – The man who leads the union representing thousands of state employees plans to retire. AFSCME Council 61 president Danny Homan says he will retire at the end of his term and a new president will be elected at the union’s upcoming convention on July 24th. The 68-year-old Homan has been an employee of Council 61 for more than 33 years and was elected President in 2005.

Homan says in a statement that working for the union has been the “honor of his life” — and says while there is a lot of fight left in him –now is the time for new leadership to move the council forward. Homan joined AFSCME in 1986 when he worked as an officer with community-based corrections in Sioux City.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says she’s confident the new majority on Iowa’s Supreme Court will overturn a 2018 ruling that upheld abortion rights. The court ruled a 72-hour waiting period for an abortion violated the due process and equal protection clauses of Iowa’s constitution, but in the three and a half years since that ruling, Reynolds has appointed four of the court’s seven members. She is appealing this week’s district court decision that a 24-hour waiting period for abortions is unconstitutional.

“I absolutely don’t agree with that decision and that’s what the process is for and so we will be appealing that decision,” Reynolds says, “and we’re pretty confident that we can get the outcome that we’re looking for.” Rita Bettis Austen, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, says the district court judge’s opinion is consistent with the precedent set by the 2018 Iowa Supreme Court ruling.

“We would have no reason to think the court would reach a different outcome,” Bettis Austen says. Republicans in the legislature are proposing an amendment to the state constitution that says the document does not recognize the right to an abortion or public funding of the procedure, but it has to clear more hurdles before it would be put to a statewide vote.

Some Republicans are hoping the legal dispute over a 24-hour waiting period for abortions in Iowa could be appealed all the way to the U-S Supreme Court and be the means by which Roe v Wade is overturned. In May, the U-S Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

One person suffered a laceration to their hand, during a collision Wednesday evening near the Atlantic Fire Station on southwest 7th Street. The collision occurred at around 5:07-p.m. Cass EMS and Atlantic Fire and Rescue responded to the scene. Both lanes of traffic – east and west bound – were blocked for about 20-minutes.

According to Atlantic Police Lt. Devin Hogue, the driver of a 2021 Chevy 2500 pickup was attempting to pull out onto southwest 7th Street from 1307 southwest 7th, when they failed to see an approaching southbound 2004 Grand Am. The two vehicles collided in the middle of the highway.

Cass EMS transported the driver of the Grand-AM to Cass Health for treatment of possible minor injuries. The pickup driver wasn’t injured. The accident remains under investigation. More details will be released on Thursday.