RILEY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect after an altercation with law enforcement.

Just before 8:30p.m. Wednesday, police arrested Jason Nigels, 34, of Manhattan in the 1000 block of Thurston Street in Manhattan on a two Riley County District Court warrants each for failure to appear, according to the  Riley County Police Department Activity Report.

Nigels is being held on a bond of $19,000 for domestic battery, criminal damage to property, animal cruelty, battery of a law enforcement officer and interference with a law enforcement officer.

A domesticated animal was injured during Nigels encounter with law enforcement, according to RCPD spokesperson Hali Rowland. Police released no additional details.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Federal prosecutors in Kansas have agreed to address issues arising from the furor over their use of recordings of phone conversations between attorneys and clients at the pretrial facility in Leavenworth.

Details remain to be worked out, but after a highly charged day-long hearing Tuesday in federal court, U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said Wednesday that his office was prepared to work out an agreement with the Federal Public Defender’s Office and the special master appointed to look into the tapings.

David R. Cohen, the Cleveland attorney who had been appointed special master by the court, said he hoped the agreement meant defense attorneys and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would begin acting “more openly and professionally” with each other.

“If that happens,” Cohen said, “the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, are the big winners, as they will enjoy an increased quality of justice for the entire community.”

The disclosure nearly two years ago that attorney-client calls had been recorded triggered an uproar among defense attorneys, who said it struck at bedrock principles of due process and the right to counsel under the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.

McAllister’s dramatic announcement came after the parties asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson to delay the resumption of Tuesday’s hearing and met informally in the courthouse for nearly two hours to see if they could reach some kind of accord.

In a highly unusual move, the Federal Public Defender had subpoenaed more than a dozen current and former employees of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to testify after Cohen reported that prosecutors had ceased cooperating with his investigation.

At Tuesday’s hearing, a current federal prosecutor, Scott Rask, declined to answer dozens of questions after the U.S. Attorney’s Office invoked a rule governing the extent to which federal agencies can release information.

“I’m not authorized to answer that question,” Rask repeatedly responded to questions by Cohen and attorneys with the Federal Public Defender.

The hearing also exposed the degree to which prosecutors, while initially claiming to cooperate with the special master’s inquiry, were directing their subordinates to withhold information from Cohen.

That may have prompted McAllister, who was confirmed as U.S. Attorney last year, after the tapings had been revealed, to reconsider his office’s position.

McAllister, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

Any agreement would have to address the volatile issue that led Robinson to appoint Cohen: the recording of attorney-client phone calls at the Leavenworth Detention Center and their use by prosecutors.

Criminal defense attorneys inadvertently learned of the recordings in mid-2016 in a criminal case accusing inmates and guards at Leavenworth of trafficking in drugs and other contraband. After a video recording surfaced of an inmate who had just met with his attorney, criminal defense attorneys discovered that their calls and meetings with clients may have been taped.

Evidence at a hearing in August 2016 revealed that the private contractor operating the facility, then known as Correction Corporations of America and since rebranded as CoreCivic Inc., had made recordings of confidential conversations between inmates and their attorneys and may have passed some of it on to government prosecutors in response to a grand jury subpoena.

As a result, Robinson appointed Cohen, a neutral third party, to investigate, later expanding the scope of his investigation to look into whether the government obtained and used such recordings. After initially cooperating, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in October said it would no longer provide Cohen with the information he was seeking, triggering the hearing that began on Tuesday.

A 24-page letter written by Steven D. Clymer, a federal prosecutor in New York who was appointed to act as the contact with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, asserted that there was no evidence suggesting any Sixth Amendment violations.

Moreover, Clymer wrote, “There is no evidence that the recording of attorney-inmate meetings or outgoing inmate telephone calls to attorneys was conducted at the direction of the OUSA (U.S. Attorney’s Office).”

Cohen, in the course of his investigation, found that 188 attorney-client phone calls had been recorded at Leavenworth and 700 meetings videotaped.

Any agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office would likely require that procedures be put in place to ensure that attorney-client phone calls and meetings at Leavenworth are not recorded.

Cohen told KCUR after the hearing that McAllister “deserves credit for seeing this as an opportunity and not a problem; in particular, an opportunity to reach across the aisle and work hand-in-hand with the Public Defender to find ways to improve and to increase mutual trust.”

“The willingness to say, ‘Let’s sit down and see if we can work things out’ is the first step toward rapprochement,” Cohen said.

An agreement probably would include retrospective relief as well. On Wednesday, McAllister agreed to dismiss the charges against one of the contraband defendants and to file a motion to dismiss the charges against another.

The contraband case, known as U.S.A. v. Black et al, was announced with great fanfare in early 2016, but has been overshadowed by the uproar over the tapings.

Last June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office belatedly disclosed that a prosecutor in the office, Erin S. Tomasic, who is no longer employed there, had listened to recorded calls between a defendant and his attorney.

Tomasic testified on Tuesday that she had filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility against her supervisors, including former acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall. The OPR is an office within the U.S. Department of Justice that examines attorney misconduct by prosecutors.

Tomasic, who was at the center of the tapings controversy, blamed her superiors for authorizing her after-hours entry into Robinson’s chambers in August 2016 to deliver evidence. She was later excoriated by Robinson, and said her supervisors failed to correct the record that she had not acted on her own.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor for the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

SALINE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities and school district officials are investigating a Kansas teen for an alleged social media threat against the school.

On Wednesday, Southeast of Saline school officials were made aware of an alleged threat made by an individual student towards the school, according to USD 306.

“The alleged threat was made via social media using an app in which the message disappears after a short time (snapchat), according to the school district.

“As far as can be determined there is no copy or screen capture of the message,” the school district wrote. “While we beleive the alleged threat is not genuine, we assure you that we are taking it seriously.”

Deputies arrested the 17-year-old boy Thursday morning, according to Sheriff Roger Soldan. Law enforcement also provided additional security at the school Thursday, according to Soldan.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a man has been fatally shot in Kansas City while leaving a health club.

The shooting happened Wednesday night outside a Genesis Health Club, which is located in the Ward Parkway Center.

Officers found the victim, who was believed to be in his late 20s, lying on the sidewalk. Police say he was soon pronounced dead.

The man’s name wasn’t immediately released.

NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. birth rates declined last year for women in their teens, 20s and – surprisingly – their 30s, leading to the fewest babies in 30 years, according to a government report released Thursday.

Experts said several factors may be combining to drive the declines, including shifting attitudes about motherhood and changing immigration patterns.

The provisional report, based on a review of more than 99 percent of the birth certificates filed nationwide, counted 3.853 million births last year. That’s the lowest tally since 1987.

Births have been declining since 2014, but 2017 saw the greatest year-to-year drop – about 92,000 less than the previous year.

That was surprising, because baby booms often parallel economic booms, and last year was a period of low unemployment and a growing economy.

But other factors are likely at play, experts said.

One may be shifting attitudes about motherhood among millennials, who are in their prime child-bearing years right now. They may be more inclined to put off child-bearing or have fewer children, researchers said.

Another may be changes in the immigrant population, who generate nearly a quarter of the babies born in the U.S. each year. For example, Asians are making up a larger proportion of immigrants, and they have typically had fewer children than other immigrant groups.

Also, use of IUDs and other long-acting forms of contraception has been increasing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report also found:

-The rate of births to women ages 15 to 44, known as the general fertility rate, sank to a record low of about 60 per 1,000.

-Women in their early 40s were the only group with higher birth rates in 2017, up 2 percent from the year. The rate has been rising since the early 1980s.

-The cesarean section rate rose by a tiny amount after having decreased four years. Studies have shown C-sections are more common in first-time births involving older moms.

-Rates of preterm and low birth weight babies rose for the third straight year, possibly for the same reason.

-Birth rates for teens continued to nosedive, as they have since the early 1990s. In 2017, they dropped 7 percent from the year before.

-Rates for women in their 20s continued to fall and hit record lows. They fell 4 percent.

-Perhaps most surprising, birth rates for women in their 30s fell slightly, dipping 2 percent for women ages 30 to 34 and 1 percent for women 35 to 39.

Birth rates for women in their 30s had been rising steadily to the highest levels in at least half a century, and women in their early 30s recently became the age group that has the most babies.

That decline caused some experts’ eyebrows to shoot up, but they also noted the dip was very small.

“It’s difficult to say yet whether it marks a fundamental change or it’s just a blip,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania demographer who studies birth trends.

Another notable finding: The current generation is getting further away from having enough children to replace itself.

The U.S. once was among a handful of developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace it.

The rate in the U.S. now stands less than the standard benchmark for replacement. It’s still above countries such as Spain, Greece, Japan and Italy, but the gap appears to be closing.

A decade ago, the estimated rate was 2.1 kids per U.S. woman. In 2017, it fell below 1.8, hitting its lowest level since 1978. “That’s a pretty remarkable decline,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics.