MASON CITY, Iowa – Officials with the Iowa Department of Corrections, today (Friday), report a woman convicted in Guthrie County on charges that include Involuntary Manslaughter/Public Offense and Child Endangerment-Serious Injury, and Marshall County charges of Operating Vehicle While Intoxicated and Child Endangerment-Serious Injury, failed to report back to the Beje Clark Residential Center as required, Wednesday (Nov. 13th). Seaira Marie Briceno is a 31-year-old, 5’0″, 180-pound White female.

Seaira Marie Briceno (Iowa Dept. of Corrections photo)

She was admitted to the work release facility on June 4, 2024. Persons with information on Briceno’s whereabouts should contact local police.

(Radio Iowa) – The group that runs the online investigation website Find-Jodi-dot-com, dedicated to Mason City T-V anchor Jodi Huisentruit — who vanished in 1996, says they’ve confirmed -no- human remains were found in a recent search in Minnesota that was connected to the case. The Mason City Police Department recently searched an area in Winsted, Minnesota, which is about 15 miles west from the edge of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Jodi Huisentruit (file photo)

Winsted’s police chief Justin Heldt tells the investigation group that farm animal remains were found in an unused city park that is adjacent to construction underway at an apartment complex. Heldt says it is not unusual in a rural community like Winsted to find animal bones.

Mason City’s police chief Jeff Brinkley had said a tip prompted the search.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce reports a slight policy change is coming for those who wish to participate in the City of Atlantic’s annual “Lighted Christmas Parade.” The parade will fill downtown Atlantic with holiday cheer Saturday, December 7th, starting at 6-p.m. Chamber Executive Director Bailey Smith says “Due to a growing crowd size the last few years, the Chamber is implementing a ‘no’ policy for throwing any items, including candy, from floats this year. If float participants want to hand anything out during the parade, they may do so by walking the sidewalks of Chestnut Street but may not distribute any type of product on the street during the parade.

“Public safety is always our top concern when implementing any type of event in town,” Smith says. “We love how much everyone enjoys this parade and are so proud to see it get bigger every year. We think with this minor adjustment, we’ll be able to keep people from congregating to the middle of the street and avoid any major safety issues.”

Each float will have a holiday theme, lighting and music. Awards will be given for: Best Overall, Best Holiday Spirit and Twinkle Twinkle award. Fireworks will kick off the Christmas magic over the Rock Island Depot, starting at 6 PM. The Lighted Parade & Fireworks are sponsored by A.M. Cohron & Son, McDermott & Son Roofing and Rush, CPA & Associates. Bailey Smith says “The Fireworks and Lighted Parade is a holiday tradition that Atlantic families look forward to every year. It’s always fun to see how creative people get with their light displays each year.”

Lighted Parade & Fireworks in downtown Atlantic, IA. (Chamber file photo)

Before the parade, join Santa and Atlantic Hy-Vee at the Nishna Valley Family YMCA beginning at 9 AM for ‘Pancakes with Santa’ and other fun activities. Santa will be in his Cabin in City Park following pancakes from 3 PM – 5:30 PM. Pancakes with Santa is sponsored by Smith Land Service, Atlantic Dental Center, Sonntag Development and Nishna Valley Dental.

If you would like to participate in the Lighted Parade, visit www.atlanticiowa.com for a registration form. Line-up begins at 5-p.m. at 6th & Walnut Street with judging beginning at 5:30-p.m. Registration is not required, but is encouraged.

Pick up a Christmas brochure from area retail businesses, ‘like’ the Chamber on Facebook or follow on Instagram (AtlanticIowaFan) to find dates and details to celebrate Christmas in Atlantic. You can find a complete list of activities and a printable version of the brochure at www.atlanticiowa.com. Capture the Christmas magic with #MyAtlanticIA or #ChristmasinAtlantic and post to the Atlantic Area Chamber’s Facebook or Instagram pages. Contact the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce with any

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Did you know there were TWO Thanksgiving celebrations in Iowa…in the same year? It’s true. Learn more about why and when, during a special program taking place this Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, beginning at 2-p.m. The program will be held inside the American Legion Memorial Building (201 Poplar St.), in Atlantic. Leo Landis has researched the forgotten stories that began when Iowa became a territory, and shifted to setting the special celebration for as late as December, since that time.

Landis is the Curator for the State Historical Society in Iowa, as well as the State Historical Museum. He continues to add new exhibits, as information is discovered, and is passionate about making Iowa history available and interesting.

Atlantic Rock Island Society (ARISE) is sponsoring the program. There is no fee to attend, but donations are appreciated. The American Legion Memorial Building is handicapped accessible.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – A man from Pottawattamie County was arrested Tuesday afternoon, on a drug charge. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports 23-year-old Allen Ray Schill, of Oakland, was arrested at around 1:15-p.m., for Possession of Marijuana. Schill was booked-into the Montgomery County Jail and held on a cash bond.

(Oakland, Iowa) – If you live in Oakland and heard tornado/fire sirens going-off, you didn’t need to worry. Officials with the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) posted on social media, that the sirens weren’t alerting Oakland residents them to any sort of threat. The EMA said the sirens in Oakland had malfunctioned because of a technical issue.

The social media post said “There is no threat or hazard. The issue is being worked on at this time.”

DES MOINES, Iowa — Officials with the FBI are asking for help identifying a man authorities said may have critical information about a child victim in a sexual exploitation case. The FBI describes the man as being between 45 to 65 years old, bald with a dark goatee. They are calling him “John Doe 49.” As part of their search, agents released several photos of the man.

“John Doe 49” (FBI photos)

Officials say he has at least five visual tattoos, including the word “Dabby” on the right side of his chest.  The FBI investigators do not have any specific leads on where the man is located, so they released this information nationwide. If anyone recognizes him, contact the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

CLIVE, Iowa — A Clive man has been arrested after authorities say he assaulted a woman then sent explicit photos of her on social media. KCCI-TV in Des Moines reports 20-year-old Gemini Smith is charged with assault, robbery, criminal mischief and violation of a no-contact order.

According to the criminal complaint, Smith went to the woman’s house to pick up a sweatshirt he left there. Once he arrived, documents say he pepper-sprayed and punched her. Smith took her phone and fled the scene. Authorities say Smith logged into the victim’s social media accounts and sent explicit photos and videos of her to people without her permission.

Smith is scheduled to be back in court Nov. 25.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of the families of four workers at the Tyson meatpacking plant in Waterloo who died of COVID-19 in 2020. The workers’ families are asking the Iowa Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision that dismissed their claims as a workers compensation issue. Attorney G. Bryan Ulmer says Tyson executives and supervisors committed fraud and gross negligence after they lied to employees and told workers with COVID symptoms to keep coming to work. “Despite an ever increasing number of sick workers, Tyson denied that there was COVID 19 at the plant. It told workers that it had been cleared of COVID 19 by county health officials. It prohibited interpreters from communicating with non English speaking employees about COVID 19,” he says.

He says at the same time the supervisors were placing bets on how many positive COVID-19 cases would result from the outbreak. The end result was the largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 in the entire country. He says that leads to this question. “Is whether or not the Workers Compensation Act, legislation, which was originally intended to protect workers, now protects employers and coworkers from intentionally tortious conduct,” Ulmer says. Attorney David Yoshimura represented some of the Waterloo plant supervisors who were sued and says these claims that belong in the workers comp system, not in the courts.

Attorneys in the Tyson Worker Covid deaths prepare to present their oral arguments to the Iowa Supreme Court on Nov. 14, 2024

“The legislature has made the judgment that the courts are divested of jurisdiction over these claims, which is why the district court dismissed them,” he says. “Nevertheless, the plaintiff here has engaged in some creative pleading of their own and tried to, through some gamesmanship, keep these claims in the courts.” “What the district court found was that assuming all of these well pleaded facts are true, there is no possibility for the court to maintain jurisdiction over these claims,” Yoshimura .

The Iowa Supreme Court will issue a ruling at a later date on whether the cases can move forward in district court, or if they have to be handled as worker compensation claims.

(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa is the lead institution on a 166-million dollar robotic space mission due for launch next year. Twin spacecraft will study what’s known as space weather, which is responsible for beautiful phenomena like the Northern Lights, but also for technological turmoil, like when satellites stop working — cutting off our phone calls, T-V shows and navigation systems. Professor David Miles, in the U-I’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, is the mission’s principal investigator.

“Space weather, which is just what happens in space to our satellites, can create really intense radiation that damages our satellites,” Miles says. “It can cause the atmosphere of our Earth to kind of push up, and then satellites run into it, and the satellites start dropping in their orbit, or in really extreme cases, it can do things like drive electricity through the electrical grid on the ground and cause blackouts.” If you want to learn about the Earth’s weather from the ground, you’d study things like wind speeds, temperatures and rainfall amounts.

“When we’re doing this in space, we read things like the electric field, the magnetic field, and the electrons and the particles that are moving around in the plasma,” Miles says. “So, the University of Iowa built three instruments to measure those sorts of parameters, and we have other instruments coming from participating institutions like UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Southwest Research.” The mission is called TRACERS, or Tandem Re-connection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites. Miles and a large contingent from Iowa City will be closely watching in person as the twin spacecraft are launched aboard a single rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California next year.

“We actually stack them on top of each other, and then they get launched together, one a little bit ahead of the other,” Miles says, “and then over time, we basically play with how close together the satellites are, and that lets us figure out how quickly processes are turning on and turning off, and how things are moving around, but it lets us pick out what’s changing in space versus what’s changing in time.” The mission’s primary goal is to learn about the magnetic re-connection effect when powerful winds from the sun crash into our planet’s magnetic fields. Miles says these interactions, which create the Aurora Borealis, also can disrupt technology we depend upon.

https://tracers.physics.uiowa.edu/

“We’re really trying to understand the process that takes energy from the sun and brings it into near-Earth space,” Miles says. “How quickly does that process turn on and off? How much energy does it transfer in? Because that’s the free energy source for a lot of these space weather effects that we’re talking about, so if you want to understand space weather, you’ve got to understand what’s feeding it.” The U-I is the lead institution on the 166-million dollar mission, which is the largest external research award in university history.

“We’re basically the prime contractor to NASA, so we’re responsible for the whole mission, but a lot of that money flows through us to do things like procure the actual spacecraft, or bring instruments in from the participating institutions,” Miles says. “So all of the money comes to Iowa, but a lot of it flows through to the subcontractors.” A specific launch date isn’t yet set, though TRACERS is scheduled to go up in the second quarter of 2025.

https://tracers.physics.uiowa.edu/