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State Briefs
Brownback calls for moment of silence across Kansas on Friday TOPEKA (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback is urging Kansans to observe a moment of silence Friday for the victims of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Brownback and governors across the country are calling for people to pause and reflect at 9:30 a.m. in local time zones. That’s the hour of the shooting last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The gunman killed 20 first-graders and si...
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Obama, Boehner clash on fiscal cliff
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fiscal cliff talks at a partisan standoff, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner swapped barbed political charges on Wednesday yet carefully left room for further negotiations on an elusive deal to head off year-end tax increases and spending cuts that threaten the national economy. Republicans should “peel off the war paint” and take the deal he’s offering, Obama said sharply at the White House. He buttressed...
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Kansas exhumes bodies of ‘In Cold Blood’ killers
LANSING (AP) — The bodies of the two men executed for the 1959 murders of a Kansas family that became infamous in Truman Capote’s true-crime book “In Cold Blood” were exhumed Tuesday in an effort to solve slayings of a Florida family killed weeks later. Kyle Smith, deputy director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said bone fragments were collected from the skeletal remains of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, who were hanged for the murde...
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School panel eyes two-year budgets
TOPEKA (AP) — The chairman of a Gov. Sam Brownback’s task force on school efficiency said Tuesday that Kansas legislators should consider establishing two-year budgets for school districts. State Board of Education member Ken Willard told members of the Legislative Education Planning Committee that the idea is one of several recommendations being considered by the task force, which met throughout the fall. A final report is due to Brownback be...
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Gun makers lose investors
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Investors shunned some of the nation’s largest gun makers Tuesday in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shooting, including making plans to sell the company that manufactures the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle used in the bloody attack. Stocks of other gun companies fell, and one sporting-goods chain said it would temporarily stop sales of military-style firearms. In Washington, some former opponents of gun control sig...
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Gun control backing builds on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional gun rights supporters showed an increased willingness Tuesday to consider new legislation to control firearms in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shootings — provided it also addresses mental health issues and the impact of violent video games. A former co-chairman of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and 10-term House Republican Jack Kingston — a Georgia lawma...
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Pupils return to their schools
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Newtown returned its students to their classrooms Tuesday for the first time since last week’s massacre and faced the agonizing task of laying others to rest, as this grieving town wrestled with the same issues gripping the country: violence, gun control and finding a way forward. Funerals were held for two more of the tiny fallen, a 6-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. A total of 26 people were gunned down at Sandy Hook...
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Man kills two police officers
TOPEKA (AP) — A man with a history of theft and weapons convictions gunned down two police officers investigating possible drug activity in a Kansas grocery parking lot, and was later killed after an armed standoff, authorities said Monday. Kyle Smith of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation identified the man who opened fire on Topeka police Cpl. David Gogian, 50, and Officer Jeff Atherly, 29, on Sunday night as 22-year-old David Tiscareno of To...
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Gun control gains backers on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Prominent gun-rights advocates in Congress are now calling for a national discussion about restrictions to curb gun violence, signaling that the horrific shooting at a Connecticut elementary school could be a tipping point in a debate that has been dormant for years. “Everything should be on the table,” West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin declared Monday. He is a conservative Democrat, avid hunter and lifelong member of the Nation...
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Obama offers concessions to avoid fiscal cliff
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has agreed to curtail future cost-of-living increases for recipients of Social Security and softened his demand for higher taxes at upper income levels as part of accelerating talks with House Speaker John Boehner to avoid a “fiscal cliff,” people familiar with the talks said Monday. Speaking a few hours after Obama and Boehner met at the White House, these people said the president was now seeking high...
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Audit questions state's computer security
TOPEKA (AP) — Kansas doesn’t do enough to secure computer systems used by its state government, making confidential information vulnerable to hackers, a legislative audit said Thursday. Auditors said their review of practices, computer systems and employee training at nine state agencies showed significant security weaknesses. Their report, presented to legislators, said none of the agencies had done a comprehensive assessment of computer secu...
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Vote means fateful choice for Egypt
Egypt vote means fateful choice for nation CAIRO (AP) — Two days before a constitutional referendum it considered boycotting, Egypt’s secular opposition finally launched its “no” campaign Thursday with newspaper and TV ads detailing the argument against the charter drafted by Islamist supporters of President Mohammed Morsi. The Morsi camp has a simpler message: A “Yes” to the constitution is a yes to Islam. The deadly violence and harsh divi...
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Pope reaches million mark before first tweet
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI hit the 1 million Twitter follower mark on Wednesday as he sent his first tweet from his new account, blessing his online fans and urging them to listen to Christ. In perhaps the most drawn out Twitter launch ever, the 85-year-old Benedict tapped the screen of a tablet brought to him at the end of his general audience after the equivalent of a papal drum roll by an announcer who intoned: “And now the pope ...
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North Korea launches rocket despite warnings
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea successfully fired a long-range rocket on Wednesday, defying international warnings as the regime of Kim Jong Un took a big step forward in its quest to develop a nuclear missile. While the rocket launch will enhance the credentials of young leader Kim, who took power after his father Kim Jong Il’s death a year ago, it is also likely to bring fresh sanctions against the country and further complicate relat...
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Crews preserve old steam engine
CARONA (AP) — Exposed to rain, snow, ice and sun for 58 years, the only surviving Kansas City Southern steam locomotive came close to turning into a pile of rust. Engine 1023, once a fixture at Schlanger Park in Pittsburg, is now undergoing preservation efforts at the Heart of the Heartlands Railroad Museum in Carona. It was moved there Sept. 8 after Pittsburg city commissioners voted unanimously one year ago to turn it over to the museum. Its...
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Feds allow Kansas Medicaid overhaul
TOPEKA (AP) — Federal officials have granted Kansas permission to overhaul Medicaid, allowing the state to turn the $2.9 billion-a-year program for the needy over to three private insurance companies next year as planned, Gov. Sam Brownback announced Friday. The state already has awarded three-year contracts to Kansas subsidiaries of three multibillion-dollar, out-of-state companies and assigned each Medicaid participant to one of them so that...
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Killer cites obesity in fight against execution
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — At about 450 pounds, Ohio death row inmate Ronald Post is so fat that his executioners won’t be able to find veins in his arms or legs for the lethal injection, and he might even break the death chamber gurney, his lawyers say. If the state is forced to use a backup method that involves injecting the drugs directly into muscle, the process could require multiple doses over several hours or even days and result in a grueli...
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Panel says NASA lacks goals, direction
WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA, the agency that epitomized the “Right Stuff,” seems lost in space and doesn’t have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday. The one place the White House wants to send astronauts — an asteroid — doesn’t seem to be getting the engines firing at NASA, they said. “More than two years after the president announced the interim goal of sen...
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Poll finds support for raising taxes on rich
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans prefer letting tax cuts expire for the country’s top earners, as President Barack Obama insists, while support has declined for cutting government services to curb budget deficits, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows. Fewer than half the Republicans polled favor continuing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. There’s also a reluctance to trim Social Security, Medicare or defense programs, three of the biggest drive...
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Obama warns GOP against debt ceiling fight
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hewing to a hard line, President Barack Obama warned congressional Republicans on Wednesday not to inject the threat of a government default into complex fiscal cliff negotiations aimed at avoiding year-end tax increases and spending cuts that could harm the economy. “It’s not a game I will play,” declared Obama as Republicans struggled to find their footing in talks with a recently re-elected president and unified congressio...
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