OGALLALA, Neb. (AP) – A 22-year-old Kansas man has been charged with vehicular homicide for the crash deaths of four Iowa residents in western Nebraska. Authorities say a car driven by 22-year-old Jeser Cisneros-Hernandez, of Liberal, Kansas, crossed the center line on U.S. Highway 26 south of Lake McConaughy on July 1st, striking two motorcycles carrying two people each.

Authorities say 54-year-old Sheila Matheny and 61-year-old James Matheny, from Bedford, Iowa, were on one motorcycle. The other riders were 58-year-old Michal Weese and 59-year-old Jerolyn Weese, who lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Cisneros-Hernandez remains in the Keith County, Kansas Jail today (Friday). He’d told investigators that he’d had little rest the day of the crash while driving from his workplace in Sidney, Montana, home to Kansas.

Nearly 300 members of Sioux City’s Iowa Air National Guard 185th Air Refueling Wing will be deployed overseas beginning in October. Colonel Larry Christensen, the base commander, says it’s one of the largest deployments in recent history of the unit and involves two separate entities. He says they usually deploy the airplanes, crews and maintenance, but this time they are also deploying a lot of the support staff that deal with food service, communication, supply and security that don’t deal directly with the airplanes.

Senior Master Sergeant Ron Bennett says they will start leaving in September and be stationed in countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.  “By the time January of 2018 comes, all 200 will be in their deployed location to do their job for about six months deployed. And then they’ll start cycling them back,” Bennett says.

Members from of the 133rd Test Squadron in Fort Dodge are also part of the deployment. Sergeant Bennett says another 100 airmen from the 185th Operations and Maintenance groups will deploy for 30 to 120 day deployments to similar locations in the Persian Gulf and to support the continuous bomber presence in the Pacific at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. He says they will be doing the same job that they do in their weekend training as the Air Force requires them to drop in among active duty members and to their standard job.

Colonel Christensen says he greatly appreciates the Siouxland community who employ and support the guard members. “This actually affects the whole entire community and their families,” Christensen says. “We are just extremely lucky to have the support that the Siouxland community and the family gives us, and they’ve done that for many, many years.”

The 185th will continue to fly domestic missions as well involving refueling, medical missions and troop transports while their contingent is serving overseas.

(Radio Iowa)

Police in Red Oak arrested a man early this (Friday) morning on weapon, drug and other charges. 37-year old Luke Daniel Rinehart, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 12:10-a.m. in the 200 block of N. Broadway Street. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on charges of Carrying a Concealed Weapon, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and Violating the conditions of a Protection Order. His bond was set at $2,000.

An earthquake specialist at the University of Iowa says the quakes that have rattled Oklahoma this week adds to evidence they’re tied to human activity. Bill Barnhart, an assistant professor in the UI Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, says earthquakes in Oklahoma picked up dramatically after 2008 as oil drilling and fracking operations started injecting wastewater into the ground.

“So, operators there will inject wastewater at depths…to sequester it, so that it doesn’t get into aquifers or into the surface water. But, that has incidental effects of making faults down there weak and when faults become weak, they can produce earthquakes,” Barnhart says.

Bill Barnhart

At least a half dozen relatively small earthquakes – between magnitude 2.6 and 4.2 – struck central Oklahoma between Tuesday night and early Thursday. The damage has included cracked floors and walls, and household items knocked off shelves and counters. Just over a year ago, an earthquake in Oklahoma was felt here in Atlantic,  other parts of Iowa and the Midwest.

“In September of 2016, there was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake near the town of Pawnee, Oklahoma that was widely felt throughout Iowa,” Barnhart said. “It didn’t cause any damage, but it was felt.”

To date, there have been no “induced” earthquakes in Iowa like the ones in Oklahoma and other states such as Kansas and Colorado. “So, the greatest risk to Iowans is if a large earthquake happens in one of these areas, there could be potential shaking impacts here,” Barnhart said.

Regulators in Oklahoma introduced new restrictions on wastewater injections in May of 2016. Quakes in the state have become less frequent in the state since those changes were put in place.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:50 a.m. CDT

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A man who was serving prison time for armed robbery was released last fall by Iowa corrections officials who claimed that he probably wouldn’t pose any danger to the public. Eight months later, Curtis Cortez Jones was accused of fatally shooting a cab driver during a robbery. Now newly released records show that Jones was paroled even though he had been deemed a high risk to commit more violence and had recently escaped from a halfway house.

WEBSTER CITY, Iowa (AP) — A former Webster City school board member has received two years’ probation in an Iowa sex abuse case. The Messenger reports that Paul Stenger was sentenced Wednesday morning in Hamilton County District Court on a charge of lascivious conduct with a minor. The 65-year-old Stenger had entered in June an Alford plea, which is a guilty plea without an admission of guilt.

MCINTIRE, Iowa (AP) — Apparently, it was a not so special election in the tiny town of McIntire, Iowa: nobody voted. Tuesday’s ballot asked two questions: Should the term of the mayor be raised to four years from two, and should the terms of council members be raised to four years, staggered, from two years. None of the 70 registered voters showed up to answer.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A Minnesota contractor who damaged a natural gas pipeline in western North Dakota last week has a history of striking pipelines. The most recent damage occurred while Carstensen Contracting was installing a water pipeline near Watford City. The Bismarck Tribune reports that it’s at least the second gas pipeline the contractor has damaged in North Dakota while installing water pipelines. The North Dakota Public Service Commission recently fined the company $15,000 in another incident from 2015.