EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer

The U.S. Olympic Committee has decided to bid for the 2024 Olympics, hoping to bring the Summer Games back to America after a 28-year absence.

The USOC board heard presentations from four candidate cities Tuesday — Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington — and voted to enter a field that already includes Rome and either Hamburg or Berlin, with Paris likely to join.

A decision on which city the U.S. will put forward for a bid is expected next month.

The United States hasn’t hosted a Summer Games since the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

The country’s last two tries have been flops, with New York (2012) and Chicago (2016) each finishing fourth in voting. The USOC chose not to bid for the 2020 Games, which will take place in Tokyo.

MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, has detected spikes of methane in the planet’s atmosphere. That suggests something is producing or venting the scientifically tantalizing gas, but no one knows what.

Most of Earth’s atmospheric methane comes from animal and plant life, and the environment itself. So the Martian methane raises the question of past or present microbial life. Or the gas elevations could come from geological sources, comet impacts or something else entirely.

The latest study, released Tuesday by the journal Science, indicates there’s less than half the expected amount of methane in the atmosphere around Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater. But over a full Martian year, the rover measured fairly frequent occurrences of elevated methane levels — tenfold increases.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Christopher Webster led the international study.

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says approving the Keystone XL pipeline will top the Senate agenda in January. The issue could set up an early 2015 veto confrontation with President Barack Obama.

Congressional Republicans have been pushing for approval of the pipeline for years. Obama has resisted because of environmental concerns.

The pipeline would carry oil from Canada into the United States and eventually to the Texas Gulf Coast.

The Republican-led House has repeatedly passed legislation approving the pipeline. But the bills have died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republicans will take control of the Senate in January, and McConnell said approving the pipeline will be the first issue on the agenda.

McConnell said the pipeline would create jobs.

Hutch Post

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Despite pleas from former fellow officers, friends and family, the Hutchinson City Council stuck with City Manager John Deardoff’’s recommendation and upheld the termination of former Hutchinson police officer Lorenzo Bohringer.

Bohringer was dismissed from the force for lying during an internal investigation into a complaint against a fellow officer.

Several fellow officers stood up for Bohringer, including officer Tyson Myers, who was a part of the negotiating team for the Fraternal Order of Police.

Myers says that the city wanted to have matters settled through an arbitrator and the Council went against his recommendations.

Myers said that the Council should follow the recommendations of the arbitrator since that ‘s the way they wanted the system to work.

Most of the Council could not argue with Bohringer’s credentials, but in the end could not look past his actions that stem from a complaint by a woman against another officer.

That officer, Jamin Raigoza, was at the center of the complaint in which she accused Raigoza of making advances toward her, following her arrest for a DUI.

In the end the council voted 5-0 to uphold Deardoff’s recommendation. Deardoff said that the action taken wasn’t easy, but was necessary.

Mayor Cindy Proett said it all came down to a level of trust that is expected from officers when making her decision to back Deardoff.

The action taken by the city council leaves one more officer to go before the council. That’s officer Charles Malvo, who was also dismissed for allegedly covering up wrongdoing of another officer.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The largest electric company in Kansas says it will purchase power from a wind farm under development to meet a state renewable-energy mandate for utilities.

Westar Energy’s announcement Tuesday comes with legislators preparing to debate repealing the requirement.

Westar said it will purchase power from the Cedar Bluffs wind farm in Ness and Trego counties in western Kansas after the farm begins operating by the end of next year. The Topeka-based utility said the new wind farm will provide 200 megawatts of power.

Westar said the plans are part of its efforts to comply with a state law requiring renewable resources to make up 20 percent of utilities’ generating capacity by 2020.

But some legislators want to repeal the rule after convening their annual session Jan. 12.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Pittsburgh is declaring that President Barack Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab says Obama’s order in November designed to spare millions living illegally in the United States from deportation amounts to “unilateral legislative action” in violation of the Constitution. Schwab issued his opinion Tuesday in a criminal case involving an immigrant here illegally from Honduras.

The administration has said the new policy does not apply to criminal cases.

Schwab’s opinion puts forth some of the same arguments made by Texas and 23 other states in their challenge to Obama’s actions on immigration. Schwab was appointed by President George W. Bush.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler says he’s skeptical that Schwab’s opinion will stand.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — An avowed white supremacist accused of killing three people outside two suburban Kansas City Jewish facilities on the eve of Passover this year says a mental evaluation has determined that he is mentally fit to stand trial.

Aurora, Missouri resident Frazier Glenn Miller is charged with capital murder in the April 13 attacks outside a Jewish community center in Leawood, Kansas, and a nearby Overland Park retirement home.

The 73-year-old told The Associated Press one of his attorneys informed him last week that a court-ordered competency evaluation found that he is mentally sound.

Johnson County, Kansas, District Attorney Steve Howe says a judge has issued a gag order that prevents him or other attorneys from discussing the case.

Multiple phone messages left for Miller’s lawyers were not returned.