The Walnut City Council, Thursday evening, amended the dates for the Antique Fall Festival. City Clerk Shannon Wood said the Festival will take place Sept. 21st & 22nd, instead of the previously announced dates of Sept.14th & 15th. The Council, Thursday, approved a list of streets that will be temporarily closed.

Walnut is a pass through city for this year’s RAGBRAI, and Wood said planning is just getting underway. She said there was a meeting this past Tuesday, with committees being set-up for vendors, public relations and so on.  Officials will conduct a “dry run” of the course on June 2nd, and then the City will approve what streets will be shut-down for the event.

And, the Parks Department reported on preparations for Little League at the City Parks this summer. Wood said all the Little League games from AHSTW will be played there this summer. Crews have been working hard on making the parks….which she says haven’t been used a whole lot these past few years…ready for action.

The Council also approved a Budget Amendment for the FY 2018-19 Budget, after a Public Hearing.

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

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A friend of a 19-year-old Sioux City resident accused of stabbing to death his ex-girlfriend and another man testified that the defendant said he wanted to talk to the girl about their breakup and that he needed closure. The defendant, Tran Walker, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. He’s accused of killing 17-year-old Paiten Sullivan and 18-year-old Felipe Negron Jr. Police say Walker was in a car with the other two on Jan. 28 last year when he stabbed Sullivan and then Negron when he tried to intervene.

Walker’s friend Erin Brand said at the nonjury trial that began Thursday that Walker “was very hurt.” Sullivan’s stepmother, Stevie Sullivan, testified that Walker and Sullivan broke up because he didn’t want her to finish school.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:05-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — A former college softball player fatally shot while driving in eastern Iowa will be memorialized today (Friday) at a funeral Mass in her Kansas hometown. Micalla Alexis Rettinger was shot early Sunday morning as she drove over a wooded area along the Cedar River in Waterloo.

(Photo provided by the University Of Northern Iowa Athletic Department via AP)

The 25-year-old former University of Northern Iowa softball player pulled over along U.S. Highway 218 and died. The bullet also struck one of her passengers: her 32-year-old boyfriend, Adam Kimball. He was hospitalized and the bullet was recovered.

At least $58,000 has been offered as a reward for information leading to an arrest. The Mass is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. today (Friday) at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Lenexa, Kansas. She had been living in Waterloo since graduating in 2016 from the university.

A man from Nebraska died late Thursday night during a single-vehicle rollover accident south of Williams, in northern Iowa’s Hamilton County. The Iowa State Patrol reports 41-year old Justin Daniel Meyering, of Lincoln, NE., was eluding law enforcement during a pursuit while driving a 2003 Ford Mustang. The car – which was traveling at a high rate of speed -failed to negotiate a curve and rolled over. Meyering, who was wearing a seatbelt, died at the scene. The accident happened at around 11:30-p.m. at 220th Street and Vail Avenue.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed into law a bill that makes it a crime to claim a pet is a service animal if the animal owner doesn’t have a disability and hasn’t demonstrated a need for a service animal. The new law also requires landlords to allow individuals with a disability to have service animals but it also requires the person to provide proof they are disabled and need the animal. Denying a disabled person an animal is a simple misdemeanor but a person intentionally lying that their animal is a service animal when it isn’t also is a misdemeanor.

The bill also alleviates any liability for property owners for injury or damage caused by a service animal. It was supported by the groups representing grocers, restaurants, retailers and landlords. Disability Rights Iowa opposed it fearing store or restaurant employees may call the police on individuals with service animals but no visible disabilities such as those with post-traumatic stress disorder or diabetes.

An SUV rear-ended a semi tractor-trailer in Pottawattamie County, Thursday evening, resulting in an Audubon County woman being flown to a hospital in Omaha. The Iowa State Patrol reports Interstate 80 eastbound traffic was stop-and-go in a construction zone. A 2018 Volvo semi driven by 64-year old Lyle Hass, of Iowa City, was almost at a complete stop in the right lane near mile marker 41.8, when for reasons unknown, the semi was hit from behind by a 2017 Jeep Cherokee.

The SUV, driven by 48-year old Jolene Hasbrouck, of Audubon, went into the south ditch, following the collision. Hasbrouck was flown by LifeNet helicopter to Bergan-Mercy Hospital in Omaha. Authorities say she was wearing a seat belt.

The accident, which took place at around 6:30-p.m., remains under investigation.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:45 a.m. CDT

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A judge has sentenced an influential youth basketball coach to an effective lifetime prison sentence for secretly collecting sexual images of 440 boys and fondling more than a dozen over a 20-year period. U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams sentenced former Iowa Barnstormers coach Greg Stephen to 180 years in federal prison. Williams called Stephen’s crimes horrendous, saying he abused his position of trust to prey upon boys who saw Stephen as a gateway to college basketball.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska has secured another win in its fight with Iowa and Nebraska to keep its newly opened casino in western Iowa. The National Indian Gaming Commission ruled in the tribe’s favor Wednesday, saying it has the right to operate the Prairie Flower Casino on land it acquired in Carter Lake, Iowa. Nebraska, Iowa and the neighboring city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, sued to close the casino, saying the tribe had misrepresented its plans for the site.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed into law a bill that makes it a crime to claim pet is a service animal in order to take it into a store or a restaurant. The new law also requires landlords to allow individuals with a disability to have service animals but it also requires the person to provide proof they are disabled and need an animal. Denying a disabled person an animal is a simple misdemeanor but intentionally lying that an animal is a service animal when it isn’t also is a misdemeanor.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Mississippi River at the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois has reached a new record high. The National Weather Service website on Thursday afternoon showed the river level at 22.64 feet (6.9 meters), just above the 22.63-foot mark reached on July 9, 1993. Parts of downtown Davenport, Iowa, remain underwater after the river tore through a temporary barrier. Several Mississippi River towns also are seeing floods that are closing in on levels reached in 1993.

(Radio Iowa) — A new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives Iowa infrastructure a “mediocre” but passing grade — and suggests raising taxes to improve water quality and finance improvements to bridges, airports and other critical infrastructure. Joshua Trygstad, a civil engineer at a consulting firm in Grimes, is president of the society’s Iowa section.

“Infrastructure is the foundation of everyday lives,” he says. “It impacts all parts of how we live, work and play in Iowa.” Christy VanBuskirk, an engineer from Hedrick, was chair of the group that evaluated 12 different forms of infrastructure and came up with the grades. “In 2019, Iowa receives an overall grade of C,” she says. “That is an improvement from the 2015 grade when infrastructure in our state received a C-minus. We’ve made progress in some areas, but we still have a lot of work to do overall.”

The engineers noted many levees in urban areas have been improved over the past decade, but it’s been difficult to get grants to improve levees in rural areas. Aaron Moniza, a civil engineer from Cedar Rapids, says reliable funding for new levee construction as well as improvements to existing systems are essential.  “In many locations, for each dollar spent on flood mitigation in advance of a flood event, multiple dollars are saved that otherwise would be spent on flood recovery efforts,” Moniza says. “Additional study on flood plain hydraulics is also needed to assess the impacts of climate change and infrastructure activities affecting run-off rates and stormwater volumes.”

The group also suggests the standards for designing and inspecting levees should be uniform throughout the country. The lowest grade — a “D” — went to the more than four-thousand dams on Iowa rivers and streams. The engineers warn the frequency and severity of flooding means MORE “emergency action plans” must be prepared to deal with the failure of dams, including the locks and dams on the Mississippi River.

The group supports raising the state sales tax to help finance water quality improvements and the civil engineers suggest the state’s gas tax should regularly increase at the rate of inflation.