OTTUMWA, Iowa (AP) — Police say a 37-year-old man has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of another man whose body was found last weekend in an Ottumwa home. The Des Moines Register reports that Preston Odell Martin, of Ottumwa, was arrested some hours after the discovery Saturday afternoon of 41-year-old Thomas Carlton Foster, who was found dead in his Ottumwa home. Police initially described the death as suspicious. Officials have not said how he died.

Police had received a call of a suspicious person in the area of Foster’s home earlier that day. After finding Foster’s body, police broadcast the description of the suspicious person.
Police say Martin was found on the city’s Jefferson Street bridge.

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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Police in Creston report 25-year old Michael Cox, of Creston, was arrested Tuesday afternoon on two Union County warrants. The warrants are for:

• Probation Violation on original charges of (2 counts) Burglary in the 3rd Degree, Possession of a Controlled Substance/2nd offense, and Violation of Probation.
• Probation Violation on an original charge of Theft in the 3rd degree.

Cox was being held in the Union County Jail on a $7,000 bond.

(Included in 7-a.m. Newscast/podcast)

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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HAMBURG, Iowa (AP) — Motorists in southwestern Iowa are back to traveling a maze of detours as a new round of flooding closes portions of Interstate 29 and other highways and roads.
Those thoroughfares had only reopened in recent weeks following devastating flooding along the Missouri River in March. On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Transportation said that I-29 is closed from St. Joseph, Missouri, to the Iowa state line at Hamburg. From Hamburg north to Pacific Junction, the interstate sees intermittent lane closures due to new flooding, significantly slowing the flow of traffic.

Highway 2 — which connects the interstate to Nebraska City, Nebraska, over the Missouri River — is again closed for flooding. New flooding has also closed Highway 34 between the Nebraska state line and I-29 near Pacific Junction. Detour routes can be found online at https://www.511ia.org/ .

(Radio Iowa) — A proposed cross-country network of recreational trails called the Great American Rail Trail would follow a 465-mile path through Iowa. Existing trails cover about half that distance, according to the Rail Trail Conservancy which created the route. Lisa Hein, of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, says to finish the job, local and state groups need to step up efforts to connect trail systems. Hein says, “We have enough funding to do maybe three to ten miles a year and if we have 150 miles of connections that we need to still make to complete the Great American Rail Trail across Iowa, it’s going to take a few years.”

On average, Hein says building one mile of trail costs 300- to 400-thousand dollars. Some 53-percent of the Iowa route is made up of existing trails like the Lake Manawa Trail and the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, but there are still hundreds of miles of gaps in between. Mike Wallace, executive director of the Dallas County Conservation Board, says they plan to finish one of them — a nine-mile stretch between the High Trestle Trail and the Raccoon River Trail northwest of Des Moines.  “We know we can do at least another mile, but that will be done in 2020,” Wallace says. “One piece of the puzzle at a time, I guess.”

The Great American Rail Trail for hiking and cycling would travel from Council Bluffs in western Iowa to Davenport in the east. Nationwide, it would stretch 37-hundred miles from Washington, D-C to Washington state.

(Thanks to Grant Gerlock, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) — Governor Kim Reynolds has declared this “End Distracted Driving” week — and Sgt. Nathan Ludwig, a spokesman for the Iowa State Patrol, says a smart phone is the main distraction troopers see on Iowa roads. “People know it’s wrong, but they’re still doing it.”  Ludwig says he sees too many drivers texting while he’s on patrol AND when he’s out on the road in his personal vehicle. The state patrol has written about 100 fewer citations so far this year for texting while driving. “We hope that people are getting the message, but the bad news is that…the majority of the accidents are attributed to distracted driving,” Ludwig says. “So just because we’re not stopping the cars and writing the citations for doing it doesn’t mean people have stopped doing it, because crashes are going up.”

There 17 categories of “distracted driving” on the D-O-T’s accident form and Ludwig says drivers using a phone is the “number one” distraction. Troopers have issued 331 tickets for distracted driving since January 1st. Ludwig says the biggest misconception among motorists is a driver can read their email and text while they’re at a stoplight. “You have to be off the travel portion of the road and be at a complete stop before you can engage in any internet or texting activity,” Ludwig says.

The fine for texting or surfing the internet while driving is 100 dollars. Iowa lawmakers considered a “hands free” law for drivers this past year. Sergeant Ludwig says that would be easier to enforce.  “But that’s up to the legislature and I think it may come down the road, but you don’t need a law to tell you common sense,” Ludwig says. “We just want people to get the phone out of their hand.”

Eighteen states have laws which bar drivers from handling a smart phone while they’re driving. Governor Reynolds says that “seems like the next natural step” for the state to take, especially when considering the statistics about traffic accidents.

(Radio Iowa) — Governor Kim Reynolds says she’s willing to work with lawmakers to adjust Iowa’s medical marijuana law — but Reynolds says she made it clear to legislators she had concerns about a bill that could have boosted the potency of the cannabis products sold at state-licensed outlets.  “I do not support recreational marijuana and I just felt that was too much of a jump,” Reynolds said.  The governor vetoed that bill late Friday. “It wasn’t a surprise,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds says she could have accepted all the other aspects of the bill, but allowing an Iowan to buy cannabis products with up to 25 grams of the chemical T-H-C over a 90 day period was the stumbling block. “For example, if you take a gummie that you can get in Colorado that has THC in it, that typically has anywhere from five to 20 milligrams and the bill that passed was 25 grams, which would equate to 277 grams per day,” Reynolds said.

Supporters of the bill say the limited number of Iowans who’ve gotten a doctor’s recommendation to use cannabis pills, oils and creams need higher dosages to deal with pain and other medical issues. Two Democrats in the Iowa Senate plan to hold a news conference tomorrow (Wednesday) asking their fellow legislators to reconvene in a special session to override the governor’s veto. The bill passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins, but some House Republicans who voted for it expressed concerns after learning a state advisory board did not support the potency recommendation in the legislation. “I have to balance the health and safety of all Iowans with a program that’s providing some alternatives to individuals that feel that it is making a difference,” Reynolds says.

The top two Republican leaders in the Iowa Senate say expanding Iowa’s medical marijuana law will be a priority for them in the 2020 legislative session. Reynolds says she’ll work with lawmakers to ensure the expansion is “narrow and cautious.”

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — After several quiet years, tornadoes have erupted in the United States over the last two weeks as a volatile mix of warm, moist air from the Southeast and persistent cold from the Rockies clashed and stalled over the Midwest. On Monday, the U.S. tied its current record of 11 consecutive days with at least eight tornadoes confirmed on each of those days, said Patrick Marsh, warning coordination meteorologist for the federal Storm Prediction Center. The previous 11-day stretch of at least eight tornadoes per day ended on June 7, 1980. “We’re getting big counts on a lot of these days and that is certainly unusual,” Marsh said.

The National Weather Service had already received at least 27 more reports of tornadoes Tuesday, suggesting that the record for consecutive days would be broken once the official totals are in. The weather service has received 934 tornado reports so far this year, up from the yearly average of 743 observed tornadoes. More than 500 of those reports came in the last 30 days. The actual number is likely lower, however, because some of the reports probably come from different witnesses who spot the same twister.

The U.S. has experienced a lull in the number of tornadoes since 2012, with tornado counts tracking at or below average each year and meteorologists still working to figure out why. “A lot of people are trying to answer that, but there’s no definitive answer,” Marsh said. The recent surge in tornado activity over the past two weeks was driven by high pressure over the Southeast and an unusually cold trough over the Rockies that forced warm, moist air into the central U.S., sparking repeated severe thunderstorms and periodic tornadoes. “Neither one of these large systems —the high over the Southeast or the trough over the Rockies— are showing signs of moving,” Marsh said. “It’s a little unusual for them to be so entrenched this late in the season.”

Those conditions are ripe for the kind of tornadoes that have swept across the Midwest in the last two weeks, said Cathy Zapotocny, a meteorologist for the weather service in Valley, Nebraska. Zapotocny said the unstable atmosphere helped fuel many of the severe winter storms and subsequent flooding that ravaged Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri earlier this year.
“We’ve been stuck in this pattern since February,” she said. Zapotocny said the number of tornadoes this year was “basically normal” until the surge this week. May is typically the month with the highest incidence of tornadoes, usually in the Plains and Midwestern states collectively known as Tornado Alley, where most of this year’s twisters have hit.

Most of the confirmed tornadoes were rated as less-intense EF0, EF1 and EF2s on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. But 23 were classified as EF3 tornadoes, with wind speeds of 136-165 mph. The strongest confirmed tornado this year was the EF4 tornado that killed 23 people in Alabama in March. So far this year, 38 people have died in 10 tornadoes in the United States, including a combined seven within the last week in Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma and Ohio. The relative quiet in recent years followed the massive tornado that killed 161 people and injured more than 1,100 in Joplin, Missouri, in 2011. The EF5 storm packed winds in excess of 200 mph and was on the ground for more than 22 miles.

Scientists also say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme weather such as storms, droughts, floods and fires, but without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to the changing climate. Monday’s outbreak was unusual because it occurred over a particularly wide geographic area. Eight states were affected by two regional outbreaks, in the high Plains and the Ohio River Valley. Tornadoes strafed the Kansas City metropolitan area straddling Kansas and Missouri Tuesday night, barely a week after a massive tornado ripped through the Missouri state capital of Jefferson City.

(Radio Iowa) — The U-S-D-A crop report showed just one day suitable for fieldwork last week and corn progress is 10 days behind and soybeans are two weeks behind last year. Iowa corn growers now have 76 percent of the expected crop planted, with is two weeks behind the five-year average. This is the smallest amount of corn planted by May 26 since 1995 when 75 percent of the expected crop had been planted. Forty-two percent of the crop has emerged — nine days behind last year and 10 days behind average. Less than one-third of the expected soybean crop has been planted. This is the smallest percent of soybeans planted by May 26 since 1993 when just 23 percent of the expected crop had been planted. Eight percent of the crop has emerged, 12 days behind last year and 8 days behind average. Farmers saw one sunny day this weekend, but say it was not enough to make a difference.