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ISU, Iowa, UNI open college football season this week

August 31, 2009 By

Game week is here as Iowa, Iowa State and UNI get ready to open the college football season. The cyclones kick it off on Thursday night with a matchup against North Dakota State. It will be the first game for new ISU coach Paul Rhoads and the cyclones hope to better last years 2-10 mark.North Dakota state was 6-5 a year ago and is receiving votes in the pre-seaason FCS poll.

Iowa and UNI come into the season with high hopes and they will matchup Saturday in Kinnick stadium. The Hawkeyes have several starters back from last year’s team that finished with a 9-4 record and beat South Carolina in the Outback bowl. A question mark is at running back where Jewell Hampton aggravated a knee injury he suffered this past summer and his immediate future is unclear. He was not listed on the latest two deep released by the coaching staff.

After making it to the semifinal round of the national playoffs in 2008 the Panthers enter this season fourth ranked in the national poll and they are the precession favorite in the Missouri Valley race. 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Man makes first appearance in Webster County murder case

August 31, 2009 By

The man wanted in connection with the 2001 murder of a rural Clare woman made his initial appearance in Webster County court in Fort Dodge on Saturday.Fifty-year-old Mark Anthony Wilson is being held under one-million dollars bond on a charge of first degree murder in the death of 43-year-old Joni Lee Manning at her home in July, 2001.

Wilson returned to Iowa late Friday night on flight from California. He was accompanied by Webster County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Jim O’Brien and an agent from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. In addition to the first-degree murder charge, Wilson is facing charges of forgery and second-degree theft with the bond on those two charges set at a total of 110-thousand dollars.

There will be a preliminary hearing for Wilson this Wednesday. Wilson is being held in the Webster County Jail in Fort Dodge.

 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Wind turbines show up on radar as tornadoes

August 31, 2009 By

Wind turbines in Iowa and across the country are showing up on weather radar and looking like tornadoes. Recently, the Des Moines National Weather Service office received a call from an emergency worker who mistook a wind turbine for a twister on doppler radar.

Meteorologist Jeff Johnson says only an amateur would make that mistake. "Wind turbines can produce a false radar echo and you can see it on reflectivity on the internet," Johnson said. "They look like splotches, they may look like a storm, but to a trained eye it’s obviously what it is – it’s not a meteorological echo."

But, elsewhere in the country there have been discussions about shutting down wind farms prior to bad storms. In Kansas, a computer program misidentified a wind turbine on radar and mistakenly issued a tornado warning. A meteorologist quickly called off the alert.

"To the lay person out there looking at radar data…a lot of things look false," Johnson said. "You can have bird interference that shows up on doppler radar that shows a signature that may be confused with something that isn’t there." Weather radar recognizes motion to warn of storms, and there’s no way to filter out the spinning blades.

Johnson says the National Weather Service is working with the wind power industry so new wind farms might be located to minimize interference with weather radar.  

Filed Under: Weather

Volunteers needed to help run second free dental program

August 31, 2009 By

Organizers are preparing for a second two-day event that offers free dental care, and are looking for volunteers to help. It’s called “Iowa Mission of Mercy” or I-MOM and the chair of the event, dentist Richard Hettinger of Sioux City, says you don’t have to know how to drill a cavity to get involved.

He says they need dental professionals, they also need lay volunteers for a variety of things from escorting people through to serving food to patients. “Just about anybody that wants to help somebody, we can find a place for you to work,” Hettinger says. He says all it takes is a little time.

Hettinger says they need far more lay volunteers who are not dental professionals than they do dental professionals. The last mission was in Waterloo last fall and there were over 1,200 people show up to take advantage of the care. Hettinger expects a similar turnout this time.

Hettinger says there are a lot of people who can’t pay for the care they need to have and this is a way for dental professionals to help the people who can’t get into a dental office. Hettinger says the first event helped a lot of people, and it left all those involved with a good feeling.

“This is very gratifying for those of us that participate in it,” Hettinger says, “one of the hallmarks of the event that we Waterloo last year was that everybody was smiling, didn’t matter whether you were one of the professionals that were actually giving the care, or you were one of the people bringing water to the people who working of food to the people who were being cared for. The workers were happy, the patients were extremely happy.”

The free dental care will be given Friday, September 25, and Saturday, September 26, at the Iowa Speedway in Newton. If you would like to volunteer, you can go to the mission website here.

 

Filed Under: Health & Medicine

Two charged after high-speed chase in Carroll and Crawford counties

August 30, 2009 By

Two Omaha men are in custody after leading deputies on a high-speed chase through portions of Crawford and Carroll counties. Twenty-six-year old Mark A. Lea Junior and 36-year-old Brian K. Thessen are being held in the Carroll County jail on charges of attempted murder, eluding law enforcement and reckless driving.

The chase began after eight a-m when a citizen reported two men were trying to break into a coin box at the Dow City Car Wash. The pursuit began six miles west of Denison on Highway 30, proceeded through Denison and continued east into Carroll County. About one mile and a half east of Arcadia, the suspects crashed into a sheriff’s department patrol car as a deputy was attempting to deploy stop sticks.

The suspect vehicle then rolled end over end into a ditch where Lea and Thessen were taken into custody. The Crawford County Sheriff’s Department says Lea was the driver. The pursuit reached speeds in excess of 100 miles-an-hour and involved the Crawford and Carroll County Sheriff’s departments, Denison Police and Iowa State Patrol.

Story contributed by Brian Schmid, KDSN-Denison

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Racing and Gaming Commission pushes back deadline for new license applications

August 30, 2009 By

The state Racing and Gaming Commission pushed back the deadline today for applications for new gambling licenses. Commission chair, Greg Seyfer of Cedar Rapids, says the extension will give everyone enough time to get things in.

Seyfer says they had some initial meeting with the applicants and discovered the October 1st deadline might be too quick to get the applications together — especially for the financing. So the commission pushed the deadline back to November 9th. The commission indicated today that a second gambling license for Polk County is not likely as the board of Prairie Meadows has said they are not interested.

Seyfer says that’s the decision of the Prairie Meadows board as the commission is not there to promote gambling, their job is to regulate gambling. Dubuque-based Peninsula Gaming which operates the Diamond Jo casinos in Dubuque and Worth County offered a proposal that would link a new casino in Polk County with the Prairie Meadows horse track and casino.

Seyfer says another gambling facility is not possible right now in Polk County without the support of the horse track. He says if Prairie Meadows does not want to proceed, then it would require another referendum to approve gambling, and it would be some time before that could happen.

Seyfer says they have not received any proposals for new licenses yet. The commission met today in Riverside.

Filed Under: Politics & Government

Football Friday Night – August 28, 2009

August 30, 2009 By

Dar Danielson and the Football Friday Night crew report scores and highlights from high school football games throughout Iowa. Football Friday Night is sponsored by Iowa Network Services, “We Keep You Connected.”

Now you can get the latest scores on our Football Friday Night Twitter page. We’ll post scores there as soon as they come in. At the end of the evening, we’ll update this page with finals scores. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Football Friday Night, Sports
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