WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The number of small banks in Kansas and the U.S. continues to shrink at a significant rate.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data shows that between June 30, 2004, and June 30, 2014, the number of Kansas-based banks with assets less than $100 million declined 44 percent. The Wichita Eagle reports that the data also showed the number of small banks in the nation declined by 54 percent in the same period.
Officials said the decline is mostly the result of mergers and acquisitions. But Chuck Stones, president of the Kansas Bankers Association, said there are other reasons. He said one example is when a bank owner wants to retire and has no children willing to take over the family bank.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he intends to issue an order easing the threat against deportation for immigrants in the country illegally.
He’d act despite warnings from Republican leaders that he would be poisoning the well with a newly elected GOP-controlled Congress.
Obama tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that even if he goes ahead, there still would be room for Congress to pass immigration legislation.
He says if Congress does act, it would take the place of whatever he puts into place by his own authority.
Obama is expected to issue an order before the end of the year.
It’s a step that incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner both warned against in postelection news conferences.
TOPEKA – A Kansas man was injured in an accident just after 10 a.m. on Sunday in Shawnee County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2010 Dodge Stratus driven by Anthony W. Etheridge, 25, Centerville, was westbound on Interstate 470 at 17th Street in the left lane.
For an unknown reason the vehicle left the highway onto the inside shoulder. The driver over corrected and the vehicle went back onto the highway, struck a semi-trailer and drove off into the median.
Etheridge was transported to St. Francis Hospital.
The KHP reported he was properly restrained at the time of the accident.
Fort Hays State University will host its third Kansas Startup weekend from Friday to Sunday, Nov. 14 to Nov. 16. Led by FHSU’s College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Startup Weekend is an event designed for entrepreneurs to meet, share ideas and launch new business plans.
Henry Schwaller IV
The three-day event kicks off at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, in McCartney Hall on the FHSU campus.
“Kansas Startup is a great opportunity for anyone interested in starting a business, nonprofit or cause-related organization to share their idea with others and create a viable organization over a weekend,” said Henry Schwaller IV, instructor of management and marketing.
“Participants meet each other, pitch ideas and then form teams around the best ideas,” said Schwaller. “The teams work through Sunday on their concept and then present it to a panel of distinguished judges on Sunday evening.”
This event is open to anyone with a great idea and the desire to make that idea a reality. Registration is available online at www.kansasstartup.com, or by calling Schwaller at (785) 628-5873.
EUDORA, Kan. (AP) — A northeast Kansas school bus driver has been fired after leaving a sleeping preschooler on a bus.
Eudora schools spokeswoman Kristin Magette says the child fell asleep Wednesday while being taken to afternoon preschool at Eudora Elementary School. The Lawrence Journal-World reports that after dropping off children, the bus driver took the bus home and went inside. A passerby noticed the preschooler crying a couple hours later and called Eudora Elementary. The school resource officer then came to take the child back to school, and the child’s parent was notified.
Magette says the school was not expecting the child because the preschooler’s parent had called about the child having an appointment.
The Eudora district requires bus drivers to walk to the back of the bus, checking each seat.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas City, Kansas, police say a sword-wielding man was shot and killed after he charged an officer.
Police said in a news release that the shooting happened Saturday night while officers were responding to a disturbance. An officer encountered the man armed with a sword and ordered him to drop the weapon. The release said that when the man refused and charged, the officer opened fire.
The suspect died at the scene, but no officers were injured. Police said an investigation is ongoing and didn’t immediately release any other details, including the name of the suspect.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and the GOP-dominated Legislature will get new revenue projections that are expected to make the state’s budget problems look worse.
Legislative researchers, officials in the Brownback administration and university economists are meeting Monday afternoon to draft a new financial forecast for state government.
It will revise revenue projections for the budget year that began in July and issue the first official numbers for the budget year beginning July 2015.
The Legislature’s nonpartisan research staff made unofficial predictions going into the meeting of a $14 million budget shortfall by July, compounding to $282 million by July 2016.
A new, more pessimistic forecast would cause the gaps to grow.
The budget problems come after legislators enacted massive personal income tax cuts at Brownback’s urging to stimulate the economy.
For the first time, a father and son have combined their action-packed photography adventures into one exhibition at the Hays Art Center, 112 E. 11th.
Dr. Zoran Stevanov, professor of art and design at Fort Hays State University, and his son Donald Stevanov, art instructor at Free State High School in Lawrence, have travelled to the bottom of the ocean, to the monuments of Egypt, through the national parks of Utah and the rainforests in Costa Rica to capture on camera what very few people get the chance to experience.
The elder Stevanov said that at age 16 he was one of the first certified scuba divers in the state of Florida. “The sport just started and I happened to be there. It was a dream come true.”
Stevanov calls one of his underwater photographs “Truck in the Truk Lagoon.” He was on his way to an old nuclear bomb test site in the ocean when his plane broke down at Truk Lagoon, which is an area of WWII shipwrecks, he said.
On a tour of Egypt in 2000 with his wife, Teodora, Stevanov seized the chance to photograph ancient monuments.
“It was always my wish to go,” he said.
The younger Stevanov, Donald, was one of his father’s students. The son, said the father, eventually “superseded his master.”
In Costa Rica, Donald captured up-close shots of the “Kell-Billed Tucan,” “White Faced Monkey,” “Howler Monkey,” “Crocodile” and the “Red-Eyed Tree Frog,” which can all be seen at the exhibition.
Not only have these artists captured scenes from outside the country and brought them here to Hays, but they’ve captured Kansas from its classic scenes to its original landscapes that display the state as majestic and mysterious.
The Stevanovs’ photography will stay on display until Nov. 26. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.
When it comes to eating habits, raccoons are a lot like teenage boys; they’ll eat anything that smells good, and a lot of things that don’t. Common home-grown coon baits are marshmallows, jelly beans, peanut butter, barbeque sauce, maple syrup and cream style corn. There are people raking in the dough selling custom baked pet treats, so after the recent Kansas Fur Harvesters convention, I opened the Gilliland Coon Bait Test Kitchen, intent on dazzling the trapping world with my coon bait creations.
First order of business was to put on my lab coat and hair and beard net. My brother runs the R&D department at a brand name pet food plant and has to wear hair and beard nets to guard against getting hair in the pet food, so I thought it only right that I guard against hair in my raccoon bait!
I needed some early success, so for my first creation I used a jar of product I bought at the convention. The jar contains all the flavors and smells the seller uses in his raccoon bait; you merely add the jar contents to one pound of dog or cat food. I marched into my woodworking shop turned test kitchen with a bag of Walmart’s cheapest cat food under my arm. In a monstrous zip lock bag, I mixed the cat food and the powder in the jar, which smelled sweet and yummy like butterscotch. The whole shop (I mean test kitchen) smelled like butterscotch for three days. It’s good I’m not a sleep walker; I probably would have awakened late that night and found myself eating a bowl of it with milk.
For my second creation, I wanted to try a recipe I found on the all-wise, all-knowing Internet. The base for this recipe was commercial pond fish food. So with a zip lock bag of the fish food and various other ingredients, I entered the SATELLITE test kitchen, aka my wife’s real kitchen. This was still a test, so I used just a small amount of the fish pellets, then added mini-marshmallows, molasses and vanilla according to the recipe. I mixed it all together and sealed the bag. It smelled like my grandmothers ginger cookies times ten, but looked like it had already been eaten once. In my defense, at least it had a palatable kitcheney’ smell and didn’t reek of rotten eggs or dirty gym socks like many trapping baits.
I let the concoction marinate for a few days, then decided it was not exactly what a finicky, man-of-the-world raccoon might want to smear all over his face. I found a bulk food store and came home with butterscotch oil, peppermint oil and anise oil, all of which, by the way are oft-used ingredients in commercially made raccoon bait.
Anise oil smells like black licorice and I decided to play with it first. I opened the jar of the gingerbread smelling goo and tore off a softball sized chunk, put it into its own container and began adding the anise. My drum beats to the tune of “More is Always Better,” so I dumped every last drop from the three tiny bottles into the goo and mixed it as best I could. It was soft and pliable all right but mixing it was like trying to stir something into a volley ball. When I finished, it smelled like an explosion at a black licorice factory, but looked like a bowl of cow brains.
Next came the butterscotch oil. I only had two little bottles of it, so again I ripped off a chunk of the gingerbread goo and added the oil. It actually smelled yummy like a combination of grandma’s cookies and Werther’s candies, but looked no different than the first.
Last but not least was the peppermint oil. Again I pried off a lump of the goo and added the peppermint. I intentionally took a big whiff of the oils before adding each to the mix, and the peppermint was the sharpest of the three. It was sweet like peppermint, but almost overpowering. When finally mixed, this last concoction smelled like wonderful sweet wedding mints, but still looked like cow brains.
It remains to be seen whether any of my “experimental” coon baits will do more than wreak havoc on the local possum population, understandable I guess for something that looks like cow brains. But however it turns out, it all makes for a good story, and if they don’t work at all I’m sure I’ll have learned my lesson…no I won’t; I’ll probably try it all again next year! …Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.
Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].
CHANUTE- Two people were injured in separate accidents just after 9 p.m. on Saturday in Neosho County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a pickup was westbound on 150th Road at U.S. 59, failed to stop at a stop sign, and struck a 2003 Toyota Corolla driven by David Stevens, 58, Vanita, OK, that was southbound on U.S. 59.
The pickup spun and hit a 2005 Chevy Silverado driven by Will Harding,15, Erie. The driver of the pickup then drove away from the scene.
Following the initial crash, a 2000 Jeep Cherokee driven by Katrina Herold, 42, Chanute, was southbound on U59 and struck the Toyota.
The impact knocked the Toyota into the ditch, ejecting a passenger.
Herold was transported to Neosho Memorial Regional Hospital.
A passenger in the Toyota Carol Stevens, 58, Vanita, OK., was transported to Freeman Health System.
David Stevens, Harding and a passenger in the Silverado were not injured.
Carol Stevens was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the second crash.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than possible computer woes lurk as HealthCare.gov’s second open enrollment season begins this coming Saturday.
There’s a bright look to the rebuilt website, so version 2.0 of President Barack Obama’s health insurance overhaul represents another chance to win over a skeptical public.
But the risks include an unproven system for those renewing coverage and a tax hit that could sting millions of people.
Those tax issues are the result of complications between the health care law and income taxes, and they will emerge during next year’s filing season.
The Obama administration cannot afford a repeat of last year’s online meltdown. Congress will be entirely in Republican hands, and GOP lawmakers will be itching to build the case for repeal.
BRANDON, Miss. (AP) — A civil rights group is launching an advertising campaign aimed at softening religious opposition in the Deep South to equal rights for gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign is taking on the region’s longstanding church-based opposition to homosexuality in a series of television commercials, direct-mail messages and phone-bank operations. They’re designed to promote equality and legal protections to LGBT people.
The ads begin airing Monday in Mississippi, and similar spots could be used in Alabama and Arkansas.
Commercials will feature people like Mary Jane Kennedy, who’s led Bible studies in her native Mississippi for decades. She has two gay sons and believes God loves them like everyone else.
Tim Wildmon of the conservative American Family Association doubts advertising will have much effect on religious attitudes.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The number of small banks in Kansas and the U.S. continues to shrink at a significant rate.
