BARTON COUNTY – A K&O Railroad locomotive came off the tracks in Ellinwood on Friday in Barton County.

Just after noon, law enforcement authorities briefly closed Main Street and South Fritz to traffic while railroad personnel worked to remove the engine from the street, according to a report from Ellinwood Police.

K& O Railroad officials in Wichita said they had staff on the way to the scene but did not know what caused the locomotive to leave the tracks and would not comment on what the train was carrying at the time of the accident.

There were no injuries reported.

By BRYAN THOMPSON

One of every three adult Kansans was obese in 2015, ranking the state seventh in the country in an annual report. Kansas also was one of only two states where obesity rates increased from the previous year.

The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America by the nonprofit Trust For America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports that Kansas had an adult obesity rate of 34.2 percent in 2015, up from 31.3 percent in 2014, when Kansas ranked 13th. In 1995, just 13.5% of Kansans were obese.

Missouri wasn’t far behind, ranking 10th with an obesity rate of 32.4 percent in 2015, up from 16.9 percent in 1995.

Only Kansas and Kentucky had statistically significant obesity increases among states for 2015. Most remained steady, though rates dropped in four states: Minnesota, Montana, New York and Ohio.

Men and women in Kansas had similar obesity rates, although they varied among racial groups at 42.7 percent for black Kansans, 35.4 percent for Latinos and 31 percent for whites.

Albert Lang, spokesman for Trust for America’s Health, said the growing obesity problem in Kansas is likely to be followed by larger numbers of Kansans with diseases linked to obesity — and larger health care costs.

“With more and more people becoming obese, as we saw in Kansas this year, more and more people are going to end up getting diabetes, hypertension and the other diseases,” he said.

Those other diseases include cancer, heart disease and arthritis. The report projects the number of Kansans with diabetes will increase by half from 2010 levels by 2030. The number of Kansans with hypertension is projected to rise 28 percent over that same time period. Meanwhile, incidence of cancer is projected to more than double, while heart disease cases more than triple.

More than half the country has obesity rates at or above 30 percent, including all of the states that border Kansas except for Colorado at 20.2 percent. Twenty-two of the 25 states with the highest rates of obesity are in the South and Midwest.

“Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas — they all have significantly high rates. They’re all above 30 percent,” Lang said. “The troubling thing for Kansas is that those other states did not show increases this year, while Kansas did.”

Not all the news is bad. The number of states where obesity is increasing has dropped over the past decade. Lang said the country also seems to be making progress in the battle against childhood obesity.

“We’re beginning to see across-the-board stabilization or decreases in childhood obesity rates,” he said. “That only is good news for the future adult obesity rate, because we know if we can keep kids at a healthy weight through adolescence and into their teen years, they’re much less likely to be obese when they’re adults.”

Some other findings from the report, now in its 13th year, include:

The number of high school students who drink one or more soda a day has dropped by nearly 40 percent since 2007, to around one in five (20.4 percent).
The number of high school students who report playing video or computer games three or more hours a day has increased more than 88 percent since 2003, from 22.1 percent to 41.7 percent.
More than 29 million children live in “food deserts,” where access to fresh produce and other healthy foods is limited, and more than 15 million children live in “food insecure” households with not enough to eat and limited access to healthy food.
Farm-to-School programs now serve more than 42 percent of schools and 23.6 million children.
Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., require a minimum amount of time that elementary students must participate in physical education; 14 states and Washington, D.C., require a minimum amount for middle schoolers; and six states require a minimum amount for high schoolers.
The report also includes policy recommendations that include investments in obesity prevention and policies and programs at the early childhood, school and community levels.

Richard Hamburg, interim president and CEO of the Trust For America’s Health, called on policymakers nationwide to take steps to build on this progress.

“Across the country, we need to fully adopt the high-impact strategies recommended by numerous experts. Improving nutrition and increasing activity in early childhood, making healthy choices easier in people’s daily lives and targeting the startling inequities are all key approaches we need to ramp up,” he said.

Bryan Thompson is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Highway Patrol says a man who apparently was hitchhiking died after being hit by two vehicles on the interstate.

The patrol says the man was hit Thursday night on Interstate 70 about six miles east of Lawrence.

Authorities say that the 42-year-old man from the St. Louis area was struck by two vehicles. The first vehicle didn’t stop but the second vehicle’s driver stopped and cooperated with investigators.

The man died at the scene.

SALINE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a unique online scam.

An elderly couple in Salina was interested in purchasing a puppy online and found a female Shih Tzu puppy named “Sophie” for sale for $500 on the website PerfectShihtzu.com, according to Salina Police Captain Mike Sweeney.

The couple contacted the website by email and were contacted several times between August 22nd and August 26th by a man that identified himself as “Henry Anderson”.

When the couple attempted to pay for the puppy using a credit card, “Anderson” told them the website did not accept credit cards.

Sweeney said the couple was instructed to send the $500 payment via Western Union to an address in Texas.

They were told that once the money was collected, the dog would be flown from Texas to Denver, Colorado and then to Salina.

After sending the payment, the couple was contacted on August 26th by a man with a middle eastern accent that identified himself as “Adam Karl” from Pet Express Transportation Services.

He informed the couple that the dog was still in Denver and would not be flown to Salina unless a $1,200 payment was made for flight insurance for the dog. The couple sent the payment and the dog never arrived.

Sweeney said his agency was notified of the scam by the couple on August 28th after the dog was not delivered.

Total loss in the case is listed at $1,700, according to Sweeney.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Four former Kansas governors are launching a bipartisan campaign next week to retain Kansas Supreme Court justices in November’s election.

The three invitation-only events with former Republican Govs. Mike Hayden and Bill Graves and former Democratic Govs. John Carlin and Kathleen Sebelius are sponsored by Kansans for Fair Courts. It says it wants to keep the state’s courts independent.

The first event is Tuesday morning at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. The others are Tuesday afternoon in Topeka and Wednesday morning in Wichita.

Voters will determine whether five of the seven justices receive another six-year term. They are Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Carol Beier, Dan Biles, Marla Luckert and Caleb Stegall.

Conservatives are targeting all of them except Stegall. He is Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s only appointee.

LAWRENCE — A $1 million dollar gift commitment from a retired University of Kansas engineering faculty member will endow a fund named in honor of four influential professors.

The Herbert and Grace Himmelstein Endowment for the Bishop-Rosson-Swift-Marchello Chemical Engineering Fund at KU will support chemical engineering graduate students and faculty in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at KU, according to a media release.

Kenneth Himmelstein, who established the gift, was a faculty member at KU from 1976 to 1988. The gift recognizes the accomplishments of Kenneth Bishop, Harold Rosson and the late George “Bill” Swift, all engineering professors at KU, and Joseph Marchello, formerly of the University of Maryland.

The four professors are being recognized for their academic, educational and service contributions to their respective students, departments and universities.

Bishop is retired and lives in Lawrence. His research specialty was in the area of computer applications to chemical engineering.

Rosson is also retired and living in Lawrence. In addition to his accomplishments in traditional academic areas, he was a former department chair and associate dean of engineering.

Swift, a KU alumnus, received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from KU before becoming a professor. His research area was in the physical properties of liquids and gases.

The late Joe Marchello was an engineering professor at the University of Maryland. Marchello went on to become the chancellor at the University of Missouri-Rolla and president of Old Dominion University in Virginia.

Michael Branicky, dean of KU’s School of Engineering, said, “This gift helps KU Engineering fill a critical need. Funding that supports our outstanding faculty and helps to recruit more top minds to KU Engineering is essential to our continued success.”

The fund will support a named assistant professorship in a nontraditional chemical engineering field, named graduate student fellowships based on merit and an award fund for junior faculty members and graduate students to attend professional meetings or purchase textbooks.

Himmelstein encourages anyone who had experience with the educators for which the fund is named to donate to the fund and continue the spirit of academic generosity that Bishop, Rosson, Swift and Marchello exemplified.