WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A 16-year-old girl has been arrested after police say she threw boiling water on her 15-year-old boyfriend during an argument in a Wichita apartment.
The Wichita Eagle reports the incident happened around 9 a.m. Monday. The boy was taken by private vehicle to a local hospital, where he was admitted for second-degree burns.
Police say they weren’t notified of the incident until late in the day Monday. The girl was arrested late that night.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Washburn University has asked federal investigators for more time to respond to an investigation into how the school handled an alleged sexual assault.
University spokeswoman Amanda Hughes says Washburn’s attorney requested an extension of the July 31 deadline to submit its sexual assault policies and procedures to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
KSNT-TV reports the school is asking for an additional four to six weeks because of the volume of documents being sought.
The victim of an alleged sexual assault filed a complaint against the school in April, and OCR opened its probe July 1. University police investigated the case and sent the findings to the Shawnee County District Attorney’s Office, while the student accused in the case was punished for violating student codes.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Three more cases of measles have been confirmed in Sedgwick County, and officials say they expect more cases to emerge through August.
The Wichita Eagle reports the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced the new cases on Tuesday, bringing the total in the county to 11.
Preston Goering, director of the county’s Preventative Health division, told county commissioners on Tuesday that the department’s staff has been going to several homes to take temperatures and check for symptoms when someone has been exposed.
KDHE spokeswoman Aimee Rosenow says the soonest the current outbreak can be considered over is the end of August.
Measles were thought to have been eliminated decades ago, but foreign travel and the refusal by some to vaccinate have caused the ailment to re-emerge.
HUTCHINSON- Three people were hospitalized in a 5-vehicle construction zone accident just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday in Reno County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported 3 vehicles were stopped on northbound Kansas 61 at the Red Rock Road construction zone. Two of the vehicles were there to pick up cones and signs.
A 2008 Freightliner trash truck driven by Jonathan Marcus Yoder, 36, Partridge, was northbound on Kansas 61 when it rear ended a 2012 Chevy Impala driven by Cynthia S. Nelson, 41, Pratt. The truck then side swiped a 2008 Chevy Colorado and a 2008 Ford F650 driven by David Anthony Holzknecht, 21, Kirksville, Mo.
The driver of the Chevy Dylan Joseph Snyder, 22, Kansas City was outside his vehicle picking up signs when he was hit. He was transported to St. Francis Medical Center.
A 2012 Volkswagen Jetta driven by Kally Jo Stauffer, Kally, 30, Cunningham was southbound on Kansas 61 and was struck by flying debris.
Nelson and a passenger in the Ford David Ray Holloway Jr., 24, Camden, Mo., were transported to Hutchinson Regional Medical Center.
No other injuries were reported.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
WASHINGTON, DC – In a meeting today with Senate Agriculture Committee Republicans and Gina McCarthy, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Senator Pat Roberts said the agency has unfairly targeted farmers, ranchers and rural America with burdensome regulations. Audio here.
“Kansans tell me the Agency’s work to regulate fuel storage tanks, prescribed burning of the Flint Hills prairie, cap and trade, pesticide permits, fugitive dust, let alone coal power and our water resources is an assault on our way of life,” Roberts said. “The rocky relationship between Midwest agriculture and the EPA is not new, but the latest round of proposed regulations is making many folks believe the rules are driven by an anti-agriculture agenda that is hurting the Kansas economy.”
In the meeting, Roberts expressed frustration with the Agency’s recent dismissal of concerns from Kansans regarding the proposed Waters of the U.S. rules. Roberts took issue with the EPA’s recent campaign calling these concerns “myths.”
“Just two weeks ago, you were in Missouri to meet with producers regarding the proposed Waters of the United States regulation. Farmers and ranchers had hoped they would be able to persuade you to recognize the far reaching and negative impacts of the proposed and interpretive rules, but the reports back have not been positive.” Roberts said. “To hear that their concerns were categorized as ‘silly’ or ‘ludicrous’ is truly frustrating.”
Roberts has fought regulations that hurt farmers and ranchers, hospitals, businesses and consumers. He is an outspoken opponent of costly regulations that harm the economy and job creation.
Senator Roberts opposes the “Waters of the United States” proposed rule and has cosponsored and voted for legislation to prevent the EPA from finalizing the rule. He is an original cosponsor of S. 2496, the Protecting Water and Property Rights Act, and S. 1006, the Preserve the Waters of the United States Act, and has also cosponsored Senator Rand Paul’s Defense of Environment and Property Act, S. 890.
Senator Roberts is also an outspoken opponent of the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit that is now required in addition to any label requirements or restrictions already placed on the use of a pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
This double permitting requires approximately 35,000 pesticide applicators to get permits to cover about 500,000 applications per year. EPA estimates determined the permit rule will cost states, local entities and pesticide applicators $50 million and require one million hours to implement per year.
Roberts and Senator Mike Johanns have introduced a bill, S. 175, to ensure Clean Water Act permits are not needed for the applications of pesticides and amends FIFRA by stating that no permit shall be required for the use of a pesticide that is registered under FIFRA. Roberts introduced the same legislation in the last Congress where it was blocked from consideration on the Senate floor.
Responding to the concerns of Kansans, Senator Roberts has also fought the cap and tax scheme for its negligible impact on climate. He says cap and tax policies will simply pass on costs to consumers already struggling in this tough economy.
Roberts is a senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
By Alex Smith, KCUR
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — When Steve Jobs needed a liver transplant in 2009, the Apple CEO left California and went to Memphis, Tenn. While Jobs’ home state has some of the longest waiting lists in the country for donated livers, Tennessee has some of the shortest.
Many health advocates point to Jobs’ story as an example of the harsh disparities faced in different parts of the country by those who need new livers.
Plans are in the works to fix those disparities, but some Kansas City doctors worry about what a shake-up would mean for local hospitals and patients.
Waiting for a liver
After living for years with hepatitis C, 56-year-old retired pediatric nurse Marcy Quarles was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2013. In March, she was placed on the waiting list for a transplant.
“I sit here and I try to think positive about everything,” she said. “And I carry my phone with me constantly because I just know that I’m gonna get that call any minute, and that’s what I wait for.”
Quarles is staying in a bed at the University of Kansas Hospital, anticipating the day she gets a new liver.
“I just feel like I’m going to be happy and healthy,” she said, “and I’m going to be able to live out the rest of my life. I just imagine really good things to happen.”
But change is coming to the way donated livers are allocated in the United States, and Richard Gilroy, a hepatologist and medical director of transplantation at KU Hospital, said that’s not good news for those on waiting lists in Kansas and Missouri.
“Bottom line: people from our region will have longer wait times,” he said.
In a KU Hospital operating room, Dr. Timothy Schmitt removes a patient’s liver to make way for a donated one. Dr. Sean Kumar reaches in with a tiny vacuum to clear away blood.
While they work, their guitar rock mix, including tunes like Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” wails in the background.
KU doctors performed 114 liver transplants last year — more than the number at many of the country’s biggest hospitals. The hospital has even become something of a destination for those seeking transplants. Schmitt estimates about 5 percent of his transplant patients come from outside the region.
KU credits Schmitt and his team with the program’s success, but a lot of credit also goes to the generosity of local organ donors, said Rob Linderer, CEO of the Midwest Transplant Network. The network coordinates organ donation for Kansas and the western half of Missouri.
“We see it with organ and tissue donation, that the Midwest — and particularly our area — people want to help other people, and they want to do it after their death,” Linderer said.
In addition to high donation rates, the area has a high rate of accidental deaths and a streamlined system of organ recovery. Those factors contribute to the entire area, not just KU, having some of the shortest waiting lists for livers in the country — particularly compared with California.
“We have a very, very high rate of liver disease due to the prevalence of hepatitis B and C in the Pacific Rim, and also there’s a higher predominance to liver failure among Hispanic populations (compared) to the general white population for more genetic reasons,” said Tom Mone, CEO of OneLegacy, which coordinates organ transplants for Los Angeles.
Los Angeles area residents also have longer average lifespans, which means when donors die, their organs may not be viable for transplant. In addition, the city has a younger population, which tends to donate at a lower rate. Those factors contribute to one of the country’s longest waiting lists.
Mone said Los Angeles patients wait 12 to 18 months longer than patients in the Midwest. There, patients typically must get a lot sicker than patients in Kansas City before they can get a transplant.
Last year, 129 people died in Los Angeles while awaiting liver transplants.
For the past several years, the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which coordinates transplants nationally, has been studying ways to address liver transplant disparities by changing the way donated livers are allocated and shifting some organs away from healthier patients and toward sicker ones.
“Patients can wait a little longer and they will be fine, and they’re going to have excellent outcomes, and so will the people that have been dying with a chance of getting one who may be in areas that have less robust access to these organs,” said David Mulligan, a professor of surgery at the Yale School of Medicine who chairs a UNOS committee on liver and intestinal transplants.
Today, most livers donated in Kansas and the western part of Missouri are used locally, with about 40 percent going to nearby areas of the Midwest and a few outside the region. UNOS is considering a change from this mostly local allocation strategy to a more regional, or even national, approach.
Under some of the plans being studied, organs donated in Kansas City would be sent much more often to places as far away as Phoenix, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, depending on where they’re needed most.
Gilroy, the medical director of transplantation at KU, thinks that’s a mistake, in part because of what it might mean for programs like Medicaid.
“The cost to the state of Kansas and the state of Missouri will increase because they’re going to be managing more people sicker longer,” he said.
Mulligan said the biggest financial cost of the waiting lists comes from managing the patients who are the sickest. A UNOS model of the new allocation strategy shows that it would prevent patients in places like Los Angeles from reaching the most severe levels of illness.
“We can save over $150 million in health care costs by reducing these super-sick patients from having to go through that level of illness in hopes they can get a life-saving transplant,” he said.
The UNOS transplant committee’s model also shows that, although prioritizing sicker patients would result in many healthier patients getting sicker than they would now, it also could save nearly 600 lives nationally over five years.
But Schmitt, the KU transplant doctor who is also the hospital’s director of transplantation, isn’t convinced.
“We need to be careful because we might just create a system that just changes where you die versus how many transplants are done,” he said.
Schmitt thinks the key to addressing regional disparities is increasing organ donation rates and, in the case of severely sick patients, transporting them to places like Kansas City to take advantage of shorter wait times.
Like everyone involved in transplants, Mulligan agrees about the need for more donors but doesn’t think transporting patients is the solution.
Rather, he said, fixing the nation’s liver transplant disparities will require a more collaborative approach.
“I’m telling them, ‘Come on board, and let’s figure out a way. Let’s find a way to work together to save more lives.’ Because in the end, we’re all health care providers. We are all passionate about taking the best care we can of our patients,” Mulligan said.
KU officials estimate that adopting the new approach under consideration could reduce the number of liver transplants it performs by 40 percent over two years.
UNOS will host a public forum on liver allocation Sept. 16 in Chicago. A decision about the new strategy for transplantation is expected no earlier than the spring of 2015.
SALINA- Three people were injured in a rollover accident just before 3 p.m. on Tuesday in Saline County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Pontiac Montana driven by Christopher A. T. Davies, 15, Abilene, was eastbound on Interstate 70 five miles east of Salina.
The vehicle drifted over the white fog line. The driver over corrected and lost control of the vehicle.
The vehicle entered the center median sideways and rolled landing on its wheels in the westbound lanes of travel.
Davies and passengers in the vehicle Linda J Davis, 49, and Jennifer Davies, 13, both of Abilene, were transported to Salina Regional Medical Center.
The KHP reported they were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS-01) will be interviewed live on C-SPAN’s morning call-in show, Washington Journal, to discuss recent developments with the ongoing Veterans Affairs scandal. The program is Wednesday July 23, 2014 at 7:30 a.m.CDT on Eagle Cable TV Channel 19
DETROIT (AP) — Chrysler is recalling up to 792,300 older Jeep SUVs worldwide because the ignition switches could cause engine stalling.
Tuesday’s recall covers 2005-2007 Grand Cherokees and 2006-2007 Commanders.
Chrysler says it’s not sure exactly how many will be recalled. The company says an outside force such as a driver’s knee can knock switches out of the “run” position, shutting off the engine. This disables power-assisted steering and braking and the front air bags might not inflate.
Engineers are working on a fix. Chrysler says it knows of no injuries and only one accident. The company says only a few complaints have been filed. Owners should keep clearance between their knees and keys until repairs are made.
The recall comes as U.S. safety regulators investigate ignition switch problems across the auto industry.
By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
Like any other year, farmers in Kansas had to deal with wild swings in temperatures, both continued drought and wet fields but, once again, they found a way to pack bins and elevators across the state.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service reported Monday that 95 percent of the wheat harvest has been cut and agriculture experts in the area say farmers in Ellis and Trego counties are all but done with this year’s harvest.
The 2014 winter wheat harvest is finally coming to a close across the state of Kansas and in Ellis and Trego counties it is no different than most.
Bob Redger, general manager of Golden Belt Co-op of Ellis and Riga, said harvest in the area has been done for about a week but some farmers are still finishing up terrace channels and some wet areas.
Farmers in Trego County were also dealing with some wet and muddy areas, according to Ethan Lamont of Cargill in WaKeeney.
Lamont said the rains in the middle of June kept some out of the field.
“We kind of geared up for one weekend and then we were kind of slowed down,” he said.
Lamont said this year’s wheat harvest was spotty across Trego County.
He estimated the average bushel per acre was in the upper 20s to 30.
“It wasn’t horrible, there was some bad spots and there was some good spots, just pretty spotty this year,” Lamont said.
Redger said in Ellis County the yields ranged all over. He said they saw yields of zero to 20 to 25.
At the Golden Belt Co-op locations in Ellis and Riga, Redger said they took in about 30 percent of the normal crop.
He said the test weights averaged about 58.5 with fairly good protein levels.
But both Lamont and Redger said the moisture was a welcome site for fall crops.
Redger said there were farmers in the area planting before the rains and some of those who planted milo after the rains will have two harvests.
Redger added “It’s looking up, so far.”
Due to a mix up in scheduling, Tuesday night’s game between the Hays Larks and the Junction City Brigade has been postponed to Friday.
Wednesday night’s game with the Brigade will still be played.
Host Family recognition night, which was scheduled for Tuesday, will now be moved to Wednesday.
The Larks wrap up Jayhawk League play Thursday night at home against Dodge City.
Some believe “big data” may be the next renaissance in agriculture. Others call it the greatest advance in agriculture since the Green Revolution during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s when one of the biggest waves of research and technology spurred the growth of agricultural production around the world. Some compare big data with the biotech revolution.
High praise, but still so many questions remain about big data. Pressing questions facing farmers now are who owns this big data? Who controls it and how will it be used?
And if you don’t know what big data is join the crowd, there are countless people who don’t know or have multiple and diverse answers.
Not to alarm anyone, but less than a year ago, few people had heard this buzz word that means gathering and analyzing the vast amount of digital information produced by farmers.
Drones flying above farm land recording high resolution images, and field sensors providing immediate information concerning crop conditions including moisture, nutrients, pests, etc., may become commonplace during the big ag-data era.
No matter what beatitudes are bestowed on big data, most believe and hope it will improve farmers’ yields and productivity. Some say it will help feed the growing population expected to hit 9 billion in 2050. Agri-business companies are banking on its future.
Successful farmers and ranchers have always kept data. While it may have begun when the first cave man dug a hole in the soil and planted the first seed and progressed to a pocket-sized notebook and pencil, keeping and gathering information has always been beneficial to profitable agriculture.
About the mid-1990s, gathering data rocketed forward as computer technology fueled the concept of precision agriculture. This only intensified with the application and interest driven by the ever-growing data infrastructure. Greater affordability of this technology coupled with more computer processing power has also fanned the usage flames.
Prescriptive planting or relating soil, climate and seed data with a farmer’s productions records seems to be some of the potential of big data in agriculture. The potential for an increase in grain yields is another potential.
During the last couple years the Guettermans in Johnson County and Miami counties have used big data equipment provided by John Deere on their family farm. Nick Guetterman believes the more information he has at his disposal, the more likely he is to figure a better way to do things.
What he’s most interested in during this initial phase of using these new data collecting tools is to become even more efficient, farm as productively as possible and increase the return on his investment.
“Farmers collect data on almost every pass over the field — planting data, tillage data, spraying records and machine performance,” Nick says. “We’re trying to help use this data in real time – right now to make decisions that potentially make us better, more profitable farmers. Before we always looked at this data and analyzed it after the fact.”
But who gets that information — the farmer or the provider? Will they be prescribing what best suits their interests or those of the farmer?
Guetterman believes because he’s paid for the equipment, the data should belong to him and not be shared with anyone without his knowledge and permission. He’d also like to know where and what companies collecting big ag data are doing with this information.
The Johnson/Miami County farmer says he’s been told the data is not being used individually but in an aggregate format. Guetterman also believes companies selling ag- data services acknowledge farmers’ concerns in their policy and marketing statements, but their contracts don’t make that explicit,
“A farmer makes decisions based on his own experience and expertise, supplemented with his own data,” Guetterman says “That’s how I produce value as a manager.”
Some producers also worry the proliferation of ag data will erode the advantages producers have developed throughout several generations. Farmers like Guetterman also harbor real concerns about data privacy. That’s the world today’s farmers live in.
Stay tuned.
John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.
On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran visited with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News Channel about the need for the Senate and House to come together and pass a Veterans Bill before August recess. Additionally, Sen. Moran discussed the lack of leadership shown by President Obama on the world stage including the tragedy of the Ukraine of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and next steps toward finding answers.
