TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Topeka Zoo has temporarily postponed a black bear exhibit after adopting a second orphaned cub.

The zoo took in a female cub named Valor this month who had been orphaned in Alaska. Zookeepers on Tuesday introduced her to their other cub, Independence.

The exhibit tours have been postponed so the animals can get used to each other. It’s unclear when the exhibit will reopen.

The cubs will live together until they are old enough to meet Sneak and Peak, adult black bears who arrived at the zoo in 1996 from Peoria, Illinois.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of a federal commission planning a memorial near the National Mall to honor the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower are voting on how to proceed after years of controversy.

The Eisenhower Memorial Commission met last week but didn’t have enough members present. So they are holding an electronic vote by the end of the day Wednesday on how to proceed.

Architect Frank Gehry has presented a revised design for a proposed memorial park after objections from critics and Eisenhower’s family. The revised design eliminates two large, metal tapestries on the sides of the park. One long tapestry would remain as a backdrop, depicting the Kansas landscape of Ike’s boyhood home.

The memorial commission is deciding whether to proceed with Gehry’s design.

Eisenhower’s family has called for a simpler design.

ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A new study confirms what anyone watching television in Kansas recently probably knows: political ads in the hotly contested race between Republican incumbent Gov. Sam Brownback and Democratic challenger Paul Davis are flooding the airwaves.

Spending by campaigns and political groups is about seven times more this election than in 2010, when Republicans easily swept all statewide offices in Kansas, according to a report released Wednesday.

The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity estimates $2.2 million has been spent on television ads for statewide offices — or about $1.11 per eligible Kansas voter — so far this election cycle. The center counted a total of 8,967 ads, many of them repeats of the same ad. The governor’s race alone has consumed $2.1 million of that spending.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says consumers in most states will have more insurance options next year under the president’s health care law.

The Health and Human Services department on Tuesday reported a net increase of 63 insurers joining the market in 44 states. The preliminary figures show 77 insurers entering for the first time, while 14 are dropping out.

The health insurance exchanges offer subsidized private plans to people who don’t have coverage on the job. Last week the largest provider in Minnesota’s marketplace announced its exit, prompting concerns in that state and beyond.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said greater competition will help keep premiums in check.

There will be winners and losers. Indiana will see a net gain of five insurers, while California faces a net loss of two.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Sedgwick County Zoo says a 19-year-old lioness has died.

The zoo’s executive director tells the Wichita Eagle that the South African lioness named Nemesis died Tuesday. Necropsy results haven’t been released, but the director says recent tests indicated her kidneys were failing.

Nemesis came to Wichita in 2000 for the opening of the lion exhibit from the Oklahoma City Zoo. She gave birth to 12 cubs, six of which are still at the zoo. She has 24 grand-cubs and seven great-grand-cubs living in zoos across the country.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Republican Party is criticizing an event aimed at boosting support among teachers for Democrat Paul Davis in the governor’s race because it was being held at a state Supreme Court justice’s home.

Tuesday’s evening barbecue was organized by Richard Green, who is a retired high school teacher and the husband of Justice Carol Beier.

A flyer for the event suggested that participants make a $20 donation.

Beier told The Associated Press she was not involved in setting up the event and was not attending. Neither Davis nor lieutenant governor candidate Jill Docking were attending.

Davis hopes to unseat Republican Gov. Sam Brownback in the November election. The Kansas GOP called the event inappropriate.

Davis spokesman Chris Pumpelly said the GOP is resorting to what he called “manufactured outrage.”

By Andy Marso
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — A health care compact bill designed to get Kansas and other states out of federal health regulations is gaining attention locally for its possible Medicare implications, but a national expert on Medicare says the compact, which would need congressional approval, is not even being discussed in Washington, D.C.

Tricia Neuman, a senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy, said she has read news reports of the compact that nine states have joined, but as far she knows “there’s no discussion of congressional action on the compact,” which would allow states to receive their Medicaid and Medicare money in no-strings-attached block grants.

“The idea of Medicare block grants is not something that has reached the front burner, or even the back burner, in Congress,” she said.

Neuman gave the keynote address Tuesday at the Sunflower Fair in Salina’s Bicentennial Center. The fair, sponsored by the North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging, is an all-day exhibition for seniors and their caregivers.

Julie Govert Walter, executive director of the North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging, called Medicare a “national treasure” and said her organization is delighted that Neuman agreed to speak about it.

“Dr. Neuman, a nationally recognized expert from one of our country’s most respected foundations, is devoted to knowing Medicare and in her presentation will answer questions people have about Medicare,” Walter said.

Neuman’s visit occurs as the Kansas Legislature’s vote to join the interstate health care compact comes under increasing scrutiny. The Johnson County Commission on Aging plans to run an article next month in a county newsletter called The Best Times that criticizes the vote for its possible Medicare implications. Conservative Republican legislators who spearheaded the compact’s passage as a repudiation of President Barack Obama’s health reforms have called the draft of the article unfair and have tried to have it altered prior to publication.

The Johnson County League of Women Voters is devoting its Sept. 30 “JoCo in the Know” forum to the health care compact, and promoting the event with fliers that ask: “Have you heard about a new law called the Health Care Compact? Are you concerned that it might change your Medicare?”

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and the retirees group AARP cited Medicare concerns when they testified against the compact bill last session.

Linda Sheppard, formerly special counsel and director of health care policy and analysis for the Kansas Insurance Department who now works for the Kansas Health Institute, is slated to be on a panel at the League of Women Voters event. The Kansas Health Institute is a nonpartisan policy and research organization that also houses the editorially independent KHI News Service.

Neuman said that if Medicare is included in the compact, “then it does raise some questions that I’m sure seniors would want to have answered.”

Block grants are capped payments, she said, whereas Medicare as it is now administered by the federal government is an entitlement program to specific services regardless of costs. So seniors would want to know if they would still be entitled to those same services if the block grant payments from the federal government don’t keep pace with the costs, Neuman said.

“Those are typically the questions people ask when there’s discussion about a block grant,” Neuman said. “A block grant differs from an entitlement because the dollars are fixed, which raises questions about whether or not the same sort of benefits are promised.”

Legislators who supported the compact have said that the state would not touch the Medicare program under the compact or that it would only take it over to save it from a federal government deep in debt.

Though the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback approved Kansas’ membership in the compact, its effects remain purely hypothetical for now.

Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp has co-sponsored a compact approval bill, but it’s has gained little traction at the federal level thus far.

In vetoing the compact in his state, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said the United States will “put a person on Neptune” before Congress OKs the compact. Some constitutional scholars say the president also has to approve interstate compacts before they take effect, though the Competitive Governance Action group that drafted the health care compact disputes that.

The compact was adopted as model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council in 2011, helping it gain approval in South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, Texas, Utah, Oklahoma and Missouri, as well as Kansas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Convicted national security leaker Chelsea Manning is suing the Defense Department for hormone therapy.

Lawyers for the Army private formerly known as Bradley Manning and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Washington.

It seeks an order for the Defense Department to provide Manning with hormone therapy and other treatment for her gender identity condition at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Army Lt. Col. Alayne Conway said she could not comment on pending litigation, per military policy.

Manning also seeks to be allowed to follow female grooming standards, including dress and hair length.

The 26-year-old former intelligence analyst is serving a 35-year sentence for sending classified documents to the WikiLeaks website. She changed her legal name in April after disclosing at her court-martial last year that she had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge will hear arguments next month on whether to block aircraft parts maker Spirit AeroSystems from selling off its fabrication operations or laying off workers pending arbitration.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree on Tuesday set an Oct. 8 hearing in Topeka over the lawsuit filed by the Machinists union against the Wichita company. The union contends the potential outsourcing would violate its labor contract and cost 1,400 jobs.

Spirit argues the grievances filed by the union are premature and provide no basis for an injunction.

The lawsuit contends the Machinists gave up the right to strike and accepted pay cuts and smaller wage increases in a 10-year contract negotiated in 2010. It says that in exchange, Spirit agreed to maintain major manufacturing operations in Wichita.

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Kansas State University has been awarded a $50 million federal grant for a global food security project.

The award was announced Tuesday by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Kansas State will use the funds to establish a Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Sustainable Intensification.

The government’s Feed the Future program funds labs at colleges and universities nationwide to research ways to improve food production and nutrition around the world.

Kansas State’s new lab will identify technologies to help small farmers in West Africa and South Asia improve land, water, soil, crop and livestock management while also improving yields and sustaining natural resources.

Kansas State has three other Feed the Future labs, focusing on sorghum and millet research, applied wheat genomics and the reduction of postharvest loss.