Wire
Stores hope for post-holiday push
By The Associated Press Bargain-hungry Americans will need to go on a post-Christmas spending binge to salvage this holiday shopping season. Despite the huge discounts and other incentives that stores offered leading up to Christmas, U.S. holiday sales so far this year have been the weakest since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession. So stores now are depending on the days after Christmas to make up lost ground: The final week of Dec...
full story
Russia approves anti-U.S. adoption bill
MOSCOW (AP) — Defying a storm of domestic and international criticism, Russia moved toward finalizing a ban on Americans adopting Russian children, as Parliament’s upper house voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of a measure that President Vladimir Putin has indicated he will sign into law. The bill is widely seen as the Kremlin’s retaliation against an American law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators...
full story
Syrian minister leaves Beirut; MP chief changes sides
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s wounded interior minister cut short his treatment at a Beirut hospital Wednesday and returned home for fear of being arrested by Lebanese authorities, while Syria’s chief of military police defected to the opposition, becoming one of the highest-ranking officers to switch sides. The twin developments reflected the deepening isolation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, which has suffered a number of setbacks on...
full story
Storm may delay Christmas presents
NEW YORK (AP) — Will Santa’s sleigh be late? A record number of Americans took to the Web to order holiday gifts after retailers flooded their inboxes with offers of extra discounts, free shipping and easy returns. But a storm bringing heavy winds and snow to much of the Midwest on Thursday — the heaviest shipping day of the year — could mean that some packages might not make it under the tree in time for Christmas. That’s a headache for retai...
full story
House GOP puts off ‘Plan B’ vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — Confronted with a revolt among the rank and file, House Republicans abruptly put off a vote Thursday night on legislation allowing tax rates to rise for households earning $1 million and up, complicating attempts to avoid a year-end “fiscal cliff” that threatens to send the economy into recession. In a brief statement, House Speaker John Boehner said the bill “did not have sufficient support from our members to pass.” At the ...
full story
Brownback wants mental health services examined
TOPEKA (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback said Thursday that he wants to examine whether Kansas is providing adequate mental health services but is wary of jumping into a contentious debate over gun control following last week’s mass elementary school shooting in Connecticut. Brownback also said during an interview with The Associated Press that he believes responding to the shooting with proposals to rewrite gun laws is likely to prevent a serious exa...
full story
New Agers in Mexico hope Dec. 21 brings new era
MERIDA, Mexico (AP) — The crystal skulls have spoken: The world is not going to end. American seer Star Johnsen-Moser led a whooping, dancing, drum-beating ceremony Thursday in the heart of Mayan territory to consult several of the life-sized crystal skulls, which adherents claim were passed down by the ancient Maya. The skulls weren’t the only inheritances left by the ancient civilization that have been making waves this week: The supposed en...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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...
full story
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 ...
full story