A sporting goods chain says it’s suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the school shooting in Connecticut.

Dick’s Sporting Goods also says it’s removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown, where the massacre took place.

Authorities say a gunman killed 26 people, mostly children, with a military-style rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday after killing his mother. He then killed himself.

A statement posted on Dick’s website expresses sympathy for the victims’ families. It says sales of modern sporting rifles will be suspended during “this time of national mourning.”

Dick’s declined to answer Associated Press questions about how long the suspension would last or which weapons were being pulled.

Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. has more than 500 stores in 44 states, including Wichita, Topeka, and Manhattan, in Kansas.

Kansas officials have exhumed the bodies of two men executed for the 1959 slayings of a Kansas family made infamous in Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, “In Cold Blood.”

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation said the bodies of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were exhumed Tuesday at the Mount Muncie Cemetery in Lansing at the request of Florida officials.

The Sarasota County, Fla., sheriff’s office asked for the exhumation to collect DNA that could help solve the 1959 murders of Cliff and Christine Walker and their two children in Osprey, Fla.

The Walkers were killed soon after the slayings of Herb Clutter and his family in Holcomb, Kan.

Sarasota officials say Hickock and Smith fled to Florida after the Kansas killings and were in the area when the Walkers were killed.

Former pop star Frankie Valens has a new gig as a preacher in western Kansas.

Valens and his wife, Phyllis, moved to Syracuse about a month ago, where he is pastor of the First Christian Church.

The 70-year-old Valens tells The Garden City Telegram he’s never preached from a pulpit. But he says he’s been testifying about his faith for years, so he is prepared for his new challenge.

Valens’ father pastored the same church in 1978 and 1979.

Valens was popular in the 1960s and ’70s for hits such as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

After his career ended, he and his wife toured the country performing gospel songs and skits at various functions before settling in Clearwater a few years ago.

A Manhattan man who provided the weapon used in a murder has been sentenced to life in prison.

Forty-two-year-old Domingo Soto was sentenced Monday for aiding and abetting the death of 31-year-old Steve Freel in December 2011. He was also sentenced to four concurrent years in prison for drug charges.

The sentence came after a judge denied a motion to grant Soto a new trial.

Prosecutors say Soto provided the .45-caliber handgun that 20-year-old Michael Layne used to kill Freel, whose body was found along a rural road near Manhattan.

Layne pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in Freel’s death.

Prosecutors say Freel and Layne committed several armed robberies together but had a disagreement, which led to Freel’s murder.