A Johnson County judge has dismissed lawsuits against Leawood and Prairie Village over bans on open carry of firearms.

The Libertarian Party of Kansas argued in the lawsuits that the two Johnson County cities violated citizens’ rights by banning open carry. They noted the Kansas attorney general issued an opinion last year that cities cannot ban open carry.

Overland Park has rescinded its ban.

District Judge David W. Hauber ruled Wednesday that the Libertarian party officials did not demonstrate how they had been personally injured by the municipal bans. He said he could not issue an injunction against the bans without that proof.

The Kansas City Star reports Prairie Village officials said in a statement Thursday that the city’s citizens had strongly opposed open carry.

Several thousand dollars in cell phones and tablets taken from the Sam’s Club in Salina Thursday evening.

Lt. Scott Siemsen says between 6:45pm-7:00pm a suspect described as a black male wearing a gray hoodie and gray sweatpants went to a kiosk inside Sam’s where cell phones are sold.

Surveillance video shows the suspect broke a door on a case where cell phones are kept and on more than one occasion taking cell phones and tablets and placing them in a red and black Swissgear back pack and left the store.

The following items taken were 4-iphone 4S cell phones, 6-iphone 5′s, 1-Samsung Galaxy S-3 cell phone, and 3-Galaxy Note-2 tablets.

Value of the stolen items placed at $10,241.

Salina Police will be releasing video later of the theft.

(AP) — The bodies of 12 people have been recovered after an enormous Texas fertilizer plant explosion that demolished surrounding neighborhoods for blocks and left about 200 other people injured, authorities said Friday.

 

Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Jason Reyes said it was “with a heavy heart” that he confirmed 12 bodies had been pulled from the area of the plant explosion in West, about 20 miles north of Waco.

Even before investigators released a confirmed number of fatalities, the names of the dead were becoming known in the town of 2,800 and a small group of firefighters and other first responders who may have rushed toward the plant to battle a pre-explosion blaze was believed to be among them.

Reyes said he could not confirm Friday how many of those killed were first responders.

Rescue crews spent much of the day after Wednesday night’s blast searching the town for survivors, and Reyes said those efforts were ongoing. He said authorities had searched and cleared 150 buildings by Friday morning and still had another 25 to examine.

The mourning had begun at a church service at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church the previous night.

“We know everyone that was there first, in the beginning,” said Christina Rodarte, 46, who has lived in West for 27 years. “There’s no words for it. It is a small community, and everyone knows the first responders, because anytime there’s anything going on, the fire department is right there, all volunteer.”

One victim Rodarte knew and whose name was released was Kenny Harris, a 52-year-old captain in the Dallas Fire Department who lived south of West. He was off duty at the time but responded to the fire to help, according to a statement from the city of Dallas.

With search and rescue efforts continuing, what became immediately clear was that the town’s landscape was going to be changed forever by the four-to-five block radius leveled by the blast. An apartment complex was badly shattered, a school set ablaze, and a nursing home was left in ruins.

Residents were kept out of a large swath of West, where search and rescue teams continued to pick through the rubble. Some with permission made forays closer to the destruction and came back stunned, and it was possible that some residents would be let closer to their homes on Friday, emergency workers said.

Garage doors were ripped off homes. Fans hung askew from twisted porches. At West Intermediate School, which was close to the blast site, all of the building’s windows were blown out, as well as the cafeteria.

“I had an expectation of what I would see, but what I saw went beyond my expectations in a bad way,” said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott after his visit. “It is very disturbing to see the site.

 

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a bill into law to block tax breaks for abortion providers and ban abortions performed solely because of the baby’s sex.

The measure signed by the governor Friday also declares that life begins at fertilization.

Some abortion-rights supporters worry that the language in the measure could be used to legally harass providers. Abortion opponents call it a statement of principle and not an outright ban on terminating pregnancies.

In addition to its provisions on taxes and sex-selection abortions, the bill prohibits abortion providers from being involved in public school sex education classes. It also spells out in more detail what information doctors must provide to patients seeking abortions.

The changes take effect in July.

Air traffic controller furloughs scheduled to kick in on Sunday could result in flight delays of more than three hours in Atlanta, as well as significant delays in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York-area airports, federal officials said Thursday.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta said they have no choice but to cut controller staffing by 10 percent, which will reduce how many planes airports can handle. But a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, a trade association for the airline industry, said the furloughs are unnecessary and airlines are considering suing the government.

Without the furloughs, FAA officials could find no way to cut $637 million from the agency’s budget as required by automatic, across-the-board spending cuts approved by Congress, LaHood and Huerta said at a media briefing.

Calling the automatic spending cuts “a dumb idea,” LaHood said his department, which includes the FAA, has done “everything possible” to find the money.

“If we had had our way, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said. “This is a fluid situation, but we want the traveling public to have the best information.”

In the most extreme case, the furloughs could delay flights up to 210 minutes at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, depending upon the time of day and other factors. The FAA said, however, that the average delay will be far less, about 11 minutes.

Other airports for which officials provided delay estimates include Newark, N.J., with maximum delays of 51 minutes and average delays of about 20 minutes; John F. Kennedy in New York, with maximum delays of 50 minutes and average 12 minutes; LaGuardia in New York, with maximum delays of 80 minutes and average 30 minutes; Los Angeles International, with maximum delays of 67 minutes, and average 10 minutes, and Chicago’s O’Hare, with maximum delays of 132 minutes, average 50 minutes.

Airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; San Diego, Philadelphia and San Francisco, as well as Chicago’s Midway Airport, are also expected to experience significant delays, the officials said, although they didn’t provide estimates on how long those delays might be.

The estimates vary because each airport is unique, Huerta said. At O’Hare, for example, it’s possible there won’t be a full complement of controllers to staff the airport’s two control towers, requiring one tower to be shut down. Without a second tower, one of the airport’s runways will have to shut down, reducing takeoffs and landings, he said. Most airports only operate one control tower.

In Atlanta, it’s also possible some of the airport’s five runways may have to be closed for parts of the day, and planes arriving at the airport may have to circle longer or take longer routes in order to avoid overloading controllers, Huerta said. Atlanta is the world’s busiest airport based on the number of passengers, many of them catching connecting flights.

The FAA’s delay estimates don’t include possible ripple effects throughout the country, he said.

The furloughs have been a source of tension between the administration and the airline industry. LaHood said airlines have been briefed repeatedly on what to expect since late February, but Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for the airline association, said the industry’s first briefing wasn’t until this week.

The association has legal opinions “affirming that the FAA has discretion to implement cuts without furloughing air traffic controllers,” she said. Unlike other agencies, “they have not acted to minimize potential impacts.”

“We find ourselves with little choice but to actively review all of our legal options to protect our passengers and shippers from being needlessly impacted,” Medina said.

A key Republican lawmaker accused President Barack Obama and administration officials of deliberately trying to upset the public.

“They want to cause the most pain to the American people out there so they will put pressure on Congress to back away from sequestration (spending cuts),” Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania Thursday told a transportation gathering hosted by the National Journal news magazine. Shuster chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“I believe he (Obama) is instructing his agencies to do things that inflict the most pain on the most people. This should be laid right at the president’s feet,” Shuster said.

The FAA’s 47,000 employees — including nearly 15,000 controllers — are scheduled for one furlough day every other week through Sept. 30. That will reduce the number of controller hours on duty and pay by 10 percent, Huerta said.

The employee furloughs will save an estimated $200 million, and the tower closings will save $25 million, he said.

But air travelers may get a break on the ground. A senior Transportation Security Administration official said Thursday he doesn’t expect furloughs for his agency, which staffs airport security across the nation. And, he said, longer wait times at checkpoints have not yet materialized as a result of so-called sequestration, as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned last month.

Congress included additional money for security officers in a budget bill for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year, and long wait times have been averted for now, TSA Deputy Administrator John Halinski told a congressional panel. Obama signed the budget bill last month.

Halinski cautioned that even with the extra funding, travelers may see lines and wait times increase during busy travel periods.

Here’s a new flyer released by the FBI this morning identifying the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect. Click on the photo for a closer look.