WASHINGTON, Iowa (AP) — A man accused of stabbing to death his roommate in southeast Iowa has been ruled incompetent for trial. Washington County District Court records say 64-year-old Clarence Pedersen is charged with first-degree murder. The judge issued the ruling last week after Pedersen underwent psychiatric examination in October. The judge ordered Pedersen sent to the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville for treatment.

Washington Police Department officers sent July 11 to check a call about a suspicious death at an apartment complex found the body of 70-year-old Ed Jones , who’d been stabbed in the upper torso. The Iowa Department of Public Safety says Pedersen acknowledged owning a knife that looked like the bloody one found at the crime scene. The department also says officers found a handwritten note among Pedersen’s belongings. It said: “Kill Ed.”

(Radio Iowa) — The president of the Board of Regents laid out their plan moving forward on tuition increases at their meeting Thursday in Cedar Falls. Michael Richards says they will hold the first reading of tuition in April, but wait until June for the final reading so they know how much state money they have available. This will allow them to avoid another tuition increase in the middle of the year.  “This was confusing to families students and Iowans. This is not how we want to treat Iowa students and families. We will set tuition once,” Richards says. He says they are also acknowledging that Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa are different schools with different needs. “We cannot continue to treat the institutions the same,” Richard says, “For U-N-I, if the state fully funds their request we will begin to take steps to make them more competitively priced with other Midwest comprehensive universities.

The degree and the amount will be determined by their appropriation.” Richards says the board will use what he calls “guardrails” in determining the tuition increases for the U-I and I-S-U. ” If the state provides no additional funding, the base undergraduate rate increase will be three percent plus the projected Higher Education Price Index or HEPI,” he explains. The HEPI is projected to be two percent this year. He says there’s also the possibility the tuition at the two schools could be below the three percent increase. “If the state partially funds our appropriation request, the base undergraduate rate will be somewhere within the defined range,” according to Richards.

He says they are looking to provide students and parents with a stable system for setting tuition. “It is our intention to follow this approach for the next five years. The guardrails will become a part of the Board of Regents five-year plan,” Richards says. “Obviously, unforeseen circumstances could cause us to reevaluate.”  The statement Thursday comes after Richards said at the board’s September meeting that they would look at multi-year tuition increases. The board also determined then that it would ask for an additional 20 million dollars in state funding in the next legislative session.

(UPDATED 10-a.m.) SOLON, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say two people were killed and one injured in an eastern Iowa collision. The crash occurred around 8:30 p.m. Thursday on Iowa Highway 1, just south of Solon in Johnson County. The Iowa State Patrol says a southbound 2013 Dodge Caravan driven by 30-year old Tori Saben Smith, of Mediapolis,  crossed the center line and struck an oncoming 2017 Kia driven by 50-year old Kirk Flom, of Solon.

Smith and Flom died at the scene. A passenger in one of the vehicles, 20-year old Jose Gamez Avila, of Wapello, was injured and was flown to University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Authorities say Smith and Flom were wearing their seat belts, but Avila was not.

(Radio Iowa) — A state board has completed its plan for greatly expanding options for Iowa children who need mental health care services. Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven says he’s optimistic lawmakers and the governor will implement the board’s proposals. “We looked at what is doable quickly and what is most important quickly, so we know we need crisis services,” Foxhoven says. “We know that we need, like, an 800 hotline. We know that we need universal screenings — so some of those steps we require almost immediately.”

The plan calls for mental health screening of Iowa children under the age of 18, so parents and professionals can perhaps intervene earlier — before there’s a crisis. Peggy Huppert, the leader of a mental health advocacy group, says she’s encouraged by the recommendations, but she cautions that lawmakers will have to find money somewhere to make the entire plan a reality. Foxhoven says he’s optimistic lawmakers will make it a priority.  “There’s been such a commitment from the governor and from both sides of the aisle that it’s worth putting money into it,” Foxhoven says.

There’s no estimate, yet, of exactly how much money is needed to implement the plan.

(Reporting for Radio Iowa by Iowa Public Radio’s Katarina Sostaric)

(Radio Iowa) — Leaders of Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant say the school will remain open this spring and recruiting for new students will continue. Thursday’s announcement followed word from administrators earlier this month that the school might close because of financial troubles. Annette Scieszinski, chair of the Iowa Wesleyan Board of Trustees, says alumni and residents of Mount Pleasant rallied around the school. “We are so grateful for the support of the community,” Scieszinski said. School officials on Thursday also announced the formation of a “New Directions Team” to address needs beyond this academic year. “I think Iowa Wesleyan University will stand as a leader in higher ed for the prospects that we see and the open-mindedness that we exercise in going forward in a changed environment,” Scieszinski said.

A couple weeks ago, University President Steven Titus said the school needed to find $2.1 million to have a spring semester. Students and faculty were among those who helped raise the money to keep the 176-year-old school in business. “I think it speaks of the commitment of this community,” Titus said. “I also think it illustrates how important institutions like this are to rural communities.” Prior to Thursday’s announcement, Kristi Ray of the Mount Pleasant Area Chamber of Commerce said the loss of Iowa Wesleyan would devastate the local economy. “We’re going to see houses on the markets, you’re going to see sales tax revenue decrease, and we’re going to see students in our public schools that have to leave because their parents were administrators here,” Ray speculated.

Iowa Wesleyan administrators said they’re open to institutional changes, including a potential merger with another school. They say long-term solutions will depend on more donor support and new partnerships with other organizations.

(Reporting for Radio IA by Theresa Rose, KILJ, Mount Pleasant & Kate Payne, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) — Attorney General Tom Miller says the budget for the Iowa Department of Justice has reached a “perilous” point. Miller says there’s not enough money to cover the costs of working with county attorneys on criminal cases, working to uphold criminal convictions that are appealed AND representing the state when it’s sued in civil court. “Pretty vital functions of our office and state government,” Miller says. The situation, Miller says, has been caused by a series of budget cuts over a long period of time. “Earlier this year we really had a crisis or a semi-crisis in representing the state in civil litigation. A whole sort of ‘perfect storm’ came at us,” Miller says. “I was extremely concerned and we worked through that, at least temporarily, but we’re just teetering on what the citizens of Iowa want us to do and expect us to do.”

Miller says “to avert total disaster” over the past two years, lawmakers gave him authority to use payments from legal settlements paid to the state by companies accused of bilking Iowa consumers. Miller says that fund can’t be tapped forever. He’s asking the governor and legislators for a half-a-million dollar boost for the current state budgeting year and a one million dollar increase in his agency’s budget for the following fiscal year.

This past spring, a key Republican lawmaker threatened to cut Miller’s budget by 10 percent — because Miller is joining lawsuits challenging Trump Administration policies. Miller, a Democrat, was just reelected to a 10th term in office. Republicans did not nominate a candidate for attorney general in 2018.

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

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa (AP) — A private school in southeast Iowa that was on the verge of closure says it has secured new funding that will keep its doors open. The board of Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant voted Thursday to continue operations after securing funding from alumni and the community, as well as collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has ordered flags on state property flown at half-staff to honor a fallen sailor from Traer in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. U.S. and state flags are to be lowered from sunrise to sunset Friday to coincide with a burial Mass in Traer for William Kvidera. Kvidera was a 22-year-old carpenter’s mate 3rd class assigned to the USS Oklahoma when it was torpedoed on Dec. 7, 1941. His remains were recently identified.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Banking giant Wells Fargo has informed employees that it will lay off 400 workers in the Des Moines area. Local bank spokesman Steve Carlson told the Des Moines Register that the company notified employees in the home lending department on Thursday. The layoffs go into effect early next year. Wells Fargo employs more than 15,500 people in Iowa, including about 14,000 in metropolitan Des Moines.

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) — Dozens of students were sent to hospitals after a building with high levels of carbon monoxide was evacuated at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in suburban Des Moines. An overnight security officer detected a strong odor a little before 6 a.m., academy director Judy Bradshaw said. Nearly 60 students with elevated blood levels of carbon monoxide were sent to hospitals, and Bradshaw said other students who’d been exposed but displayed no symptoms were taken to hospitals as a precaution.

Officials with the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources said Thursday, that a plugged manhole at the Smithfield Foods plant in Denison, sent some rinse water to the Boyer River early Thursday morning.

Smithfield crews noticed the discharge around 3:30 a.m., about 15 to 30 minutes after they think it started. An unknown amount of final rinse water flowed across the property, then entered a storm sewer that flows into the river.

In less than two hours, a construction crew built a small dam, stopping the flow into the river. Another crew began vacuuming up the rinse water. DNR staff were on site before 8 a.m., checking on the cleanup and the river. DNR will continue to monitor cleanup efforts and consider appropriate enforcement action.

(Radio Iowa) — The executive director of a group which provides school safety training says districts are overlooking a key area where student deaths could be prevented. Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International says accidents in parking lots are the biggest danger to students.  “In 1998 to 2013 we had 525 people hit and killed in the parking lots, 487 died from violence — this is nationally — of those, 62 died in active shooter events,” Dorn says.

Dorn made a presentation at the Iowa Association of School Boards annual convention. He says the parking lot deaths often involved one individual at a time, so they don’t get the headlines that other things do. “When you look at the data on it, we are focusing a great deal of our time, energy, money on some of the rarest — to be clear most catastrophic types of events that we can’t ignore — but even within the category of violence, nine of ten people, more than nine out of ten who are murdered, it doesn’t look like the events we see on the national news,” Dorn says. “Or if you Google school violence on the internet or social media you are going to get the rare but catastrophic, but you are going to miss most of what causes fatalities.”

Dorn says suicides accounted for 129 deaths in the same five-year time period.  “Twice as many people died from suicide than at the hands of an active shooter,” Dorn says. “And suicide prevention efforts lower the risk for both. One of our more effective approaches. If you step back and look at the data what we see is a lot of schools are now very seriously out of whack with their risk profile. And we are doing a lot of things that sound good — that are very popular — but they are not tested.”

Dorn says the images of school shootings push schools to take some kind of action. “What has happened in this country in the last few years is there’s been a bit of a motive reaction to things. And we’re rolling out products and we’re rolling out training programs but people are taking the time to test them with simulation to see how they actually work and they are not doing as well as we might thin, And they can make things much more dangerous as we see.”

Dorn says school districts could benefit more by spending money training personnel on student supervision techniques. “We can reduce our risk of death in tornadoes, active shooter, sudden cardiac arrest, anaphylactic shock, the risk of abduction, sexual abuse of children by children, accidents on the playground,” Dorn explains. “So, taking the time to teach people how to supervise. Taking the time to teach people how to look at our traffic flow in the morning.”

He says schools need to create drills that provide real experiences and teach school personnel the best way to react to situations to keep kids safe.  “We go to a staff member, give them a scenario and they have to react as they would in a real event. That does a lot of things. It reinforces the empowerment of the individual employed to take lifesaving action. It lets them practice, it really makes them confront the reality that they have to be prepared and they have to learn what’s in those plans,” Dorn says. “And when you do that, you won’t get that type of complacency and boredom. Because every time we do a drill, those teachers, those custodians are saying ‘next month it could be me’.”

He talked to school board members about how they can conduct simulations that he says work.  “We get tremendous affect with it and it dramatically improves the speed and reliability of decision making under stress. And very easy to do, not expensive, they don’t have to buy anything. And any school in Iowa can do this,” Dorn says.

Dorn’s bio says he is a former police officer who became a safety specialist and has traveled around the world helping organizations improve their safety.

(DES MOINES) – Gov. Kim Reynolds ordered all flags in Iowa to fly at half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Friday, November 16, 2018, to honor a fallen U.S. sailor. Navy Carpenter’s Mate 3rd Class William L. Kvidera, of Traer, was killed in action on December 7, 1941, when the USS Oklahoma was attacked by Japanese aircraft at Pearl Harbor. The 22-year-old was accounted for on July 3, 2018. Kvidera’s remains were returned to his family for burial in Traer with full military honors.

William Kvidera

A Mass of Christian Burial for Kvidera will be held 1-p.m. Friday, Nov. 16th, at the St. Paul Catholic Church, in Traer. Flags will be at half-staff on the State Capitol Building and on flag displays in the Capitol Complex. Flags will also be half-staff on all public buildings, grounds and facilities throughout the state.

Individuals, businesses, schools, municipalities, counties and other government subdivisions are encouraged to fly the flag at half-staff for the same length of time as a sign of respect.