Tickets are $30 per person, and will include a catered meal and admission to the dance. Tickets must be purchased before September 28th. Tickets purchased after September 28th will not include a meal.
Proceeds will go towards helping the ARC of Central Plains build their new Accessible Recreation Complex.
All Adults 21 and over are welcome to attend.
Cash Bar Presented by the Rose Garden Banquet Hall
Prom Attire Suggested
Tickets available for purchase through HAYP Members, and the following business: Platinum Group (116 E 11th St), Hays Area Chamber of Commerce (2700 Vine St) and The ARC (600 Main St). Groups of 6 may reserve a table if tickets are purchased together. Cash & Check only.
For Questions Contact the Chamber Office at 785-628-8201.
Join Sternberg Museum of Natural History, 3000 Sternberg Dr, Hays, Sunday, October 14, 2018, 1 PM – 5 PM for our National Fossil Day celebration as we explore this year’s theme “The Age of Reptiles: Not Just Dinosaurs”.
We will dive into the ocean ecosystems that thrived in Kansas while dinosaurs ruled the land. Admission to the Museum will be FREE all day and with activities for all ages!
Arthur V. Reif, 72, died September 30, 2018, at his home in Great Bend. He was born October 4, 1945, in Hoisington, Kansas, the son of Alfred and Clara (Polzin) Reif.
Arthur graduated from Osborne High School in 1963. He then served in the United States Navy as a RD-3 during the Vietnam War.
He was a resident of Great Bend, previously in Hoisington and Osborne. Arthur was the owner of Petroleum Electric Company for 30 years.
He was a member of Prince of Peace Parish, the American Petroleum Institute Western Kansas Chapter, and the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association.
Survivors include: daughter, Sheryl (Travis) Peak and, stepdaughter, Nicole (Jody) Messersmith, all of Great Bend; grandchildren, Allison Peak and Braydan Peak; step grandchildren, Kiana (Emmanuel) Ferrel, Darah Messersmith, and Devin Messersmith; step great grandchildren, Madelyn Ferrell, Jasilyn, Jaxon, and Sebastion Messersmith; four brothers, Charles (Lucille) Reif of Plainville, Robert Reif of Arizona, Alfred (Anne) Reif of Osborne, Victor Reif of Osborne; four sisters, Alice Snyder, Oologah, Oklahoma, Inez Vohs of Haysville, Virginia Wrench of Manhattan, and Theresa (Ron) Boxum of Lebanon.
He was preceded in death by his parents, a brother, Edgar Reif, sister, Elizabeth “Betty” Yarnell, maternal grandparents, William & Kathryn Polzin, and paternal grandparents, Antone H. and Josephine Reif.
Friends may call 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Casket will be closed.
Vigil and Rosary will be 7 p.m. Wednesday at Nicholson-Ricke Funeral Home.
Mass of Christian Burial will be 10 a.m. Thursday, October 4, 2018, at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, celebrated by Father Don Bedore. Burial will follow in St. John Catholic Cemetery, Hoisington, with military honors conducted by the United States Naval Honor Guard.
Memorials may be made to Reif Educational Trust, Prince of Peace Parish or a church of your choice, all in care of Nicholson-Ricke Funeral Home, PO Box 146, Hoisington, KS 67544.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has pulled more than $1 million in advertising support from Rep. Kevin Yoder’s re-election campaign in the Kansas 3rd District, according toThe Hill newspaper.
The Hill broke the story late Sunday and quotes an unnamed source “familiar with the NRCC’s strategic thinking.”
Photo courtesy Congressman Kevin Yoder
The report comes on the heels of Inside Politics Saturday moving the race to “Tilt Democratic.” Other ratings organizations have the race as a “toss up.”
The last poll was from the New York Times which has Democrat Sharice Davids up eight points on the incumbent.
Yoder’s campaign isn’t ready to concede that the NRCC is abandoning the race.
“Chairman (Steve) Stivers reiterated the NRCC’s commitment to helping Kevin directly to him last week,” campaign spokesperson C.J. Grover said it a text. “The committee remains engaged in our race and is sending coordinated TV dollars this week.”
Even if the NRCC is pulling out of town, Yoder is getting plenty of outside money. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the largest GOP PAC, has already poured $1.8 million into the race and has hundreds of thousands of dollars more in TV time reserved in Kansas City.
In a tweet, University of Kansas Political Science Professor Patrick Miller said the NRCC pulling back money from Yoder is “not a sign of confidence in his re-election odds.” He also said that the NRCC has been “triaging several vulnerable Rs (Republicans) in the last week” whose poll numbers look similar to Yoder’s.
The NRCC story also comes at the end of the fundraising quarter for candidate committees. The news could discourage some Republicans from putting money into the race. Sunday marks the close of the latest fundraising period for congressional campaigns. Federal Election Commission reports for candidates are due Oct. 15.
TOPEKA—Fiscal year tax collections have exceeded previous year’s totals by $172.78 million according to data from the latest revenue report released Monday, according to a media release from the Kansas Department of Revenue.
Fiscal year 2019 tax collections so far total $1.69 billion.
September tax collections were up $93.29 million, or 15.48 percent over last year. September’s tax collections exceeded expectations for the month by $81.04 million.
Individual income tax collections totaled $346.97 million in September which is $76.46 million or 28.26 percent above the same month last year. September sales tax collections fell short of last September’s collections by $1.11 million.
Dorothy M. Thrasher, 82, passed away September 24, 2018 at the Hodgeman County Health Center, Jetmore.
She was born June 12, 1936 in Scott City, KS. the daughter of Franklin Howard and Esther Julia Armantrout Baker. An area resident of Tribune, KS, she was a Homemaker and Secretary.
She was of the Christian Faith. She graduated from Wichita County High school. She enjoyed playing card games as she was very competitive at them. She also loved square dancing, trips to her second home in Texas and her annual family reunion that she never missed, but most of all she cherished her family as they were everything to her.
In August of 1954 she married Leroy Mai. They later separated and she married Don L. Thrasher on July 21, 1969 in Tribune, KS. He survives.
Survivors Include: one daughter, Sheryl (Michael) MacNair, Jetmore, KS; one son, Randall Mai, Manhattan, KS; one brother, Donald (Carnie) Baker, Deerfield, IL; one sister, Marjorie Kuhn, Poteau, OK. and five grandchildren, Katherine Mai, Courtney Mai, Shane MacNair, Erin Delmar, Andrew MacNair, four great grandchildren and several nieces and nephews.
Cremation has taken place and a memorial service will be held at 10:00 am on Friday, October 12, 2018 at the Prairie View Church-Brethren, 4855 W. Finney Scott Rd., Scott City, KS. 67871, with Pastor Jon Tuttle presiding. Burial will be at 2pm Central, 1pm Mountain time at the Greeley County Cemetery, Tribune, KS. following the service.
Memorials may be given to the Dorothy Mae Thrasher Scholarship Fund for Women Cancer Survivors attending Kansas State University in care of Beckwith Funeral Home, PO Box 663, Jetmore, KS. 67854.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday celebrated a revised North American trade deal with Canada and Mexico as a return of the United States to a “manufacturing powerhouse,” vowing to sign the agreement by late November.
President Trump Delivers Remarks on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement https://t.co/hZFMxLBTi9
But the president noted that the deal would need to be ratified by Congress, a step that could be complicated by the outcome of the fall congressional elections. When told he seemed confident of congressional approval, he said he was “not at all confident” but felt ratification would be granted if lawmakers took the correct action.
“Anything you submit to Congress is trouble no matter what,” Trump said, predicting that Democrats would say, “Trump likes it so we’re not going to approve it.”
Trump embraced the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement during a Rose Garden ceremony, branding the pact the “USMCA.” The president said the name has a “good ring to it,” repeating U-S-M-C-A several times.
A good day for Canada & our closest trading partners. More tomorrow… https://t.co/qOowhvYW2B
The agreement was forged just before a midnight deadline imposed by the U.S. to include Canada in a deal reached with Mexico late in the summer. It replaces the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has lambasted as a job-wrecking disaster that has hollowed out the nation’s industrialized base.
Flanked by Cabinet members, Trump said the pact is the “most important deal we’ve ever made by far,” covering $1.2 trillion in trade. The president said his administration had not yet agreed to lift tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, a contentious issue between the two neighbors.
For Trump, the agreement reached in the weeks before the November congressional elections offers vindication for his hardline trade policies that have roiled relations with China, the European Union and America’s North American neighbors while causing concerns among Midwest farmers and manufacturers worried about retaliation.
Trump’s advisers view the trade pact as a political winner in Midwest battleground states critical to the president’s 2016 victory and home to tens of thousands of auto workers and manufacturers who could benefit from the changes.
Trump said he would sign the final agreement in late November, in about 60 days, and the pact is expected to be signed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto before he leaves office Dec. 1. Trump said he spoke to Trudeau by phone and told reporters that their recent tensions didn’t affect the deal-making. “He’s a professional. I’m a professional,” Trump said, calling it a “fair deal.”
Pena Nieto will be replaced by President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose incoming administration said the deal would offer more certainty for financial markets, investment and job creation.
Ratifying the deal is likely to stretch into 2019 because once Trump and the leaders from Canada and Mexico sign the agreement, the administration and congressional leaders will need to write legislation to implement the deal and win passage in Congress.
Trump threatened to go ahead with a revamped NAFTA, with or without Canada. It was unclear, however, whether Trump had authority from Congress to pursue a revamped NAFTA with only Mexico.
NAFTA tore down most trade barriers between the United States, Canada and Mexico, leading to a surge in trade among them. But Trump and other critics said it encouraged manufacturers to move south of the border to take advantage of low Mexican wages, costing American jobs.
VICTORIA (AP) — The friary in remote western Kansas that is now home to a disgraced former U.S. cardinal removed from ministry by Pope Francis over allegations of sexual abuse is just one block from an elementary school.
“I was never made aware of it until I found out through social media” on Friday, Victoria Elementary Principal Kent Michel said.
McCarrick, 88, was the retired Archbishop of Washington when he was removed from public ministry in June by Pope Francis after allegations that he sexually abused a teenager while a priest in New York more than 40 years ago were found to be credible by the church.
Bishop Gerald Vincke of the Diocese of Salina, who agreed to McCarrick’s new living arrangement, told the Star he was not aware of anyone with the church notifying the school of McCarrick’s presence.
“Regarding the school, Archbishop McCarrick is not allowed to make any public appearances or visit the school or do any ministry,” Vincke told the newspaper in an email. “He is confined to the friary to do penance and prayer. The friary is in the small town in Victoria. The friary is enclosed.”
The St. Louis-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the move irresponsible.
“It boggles the mind that church officials are this reckless,” said David Closhessy, the former director of the advocacy group. “No cleric who’s been accused of abuse, certainly not one facing multiple allegations, should be anywhere around kids, especially not an elementary school.”
McCarrick was the Washington archbishop from 2000 to 2006, and previously one of the highest, most visible Catholic Church officials in the United States. He was heavily involved in the church’s response to allegations of priest abuse.
At the time of McCarrick’s June removal, the New Jersey archdioceses of Newark and Metuchen revealed that they had received three complaints from adults alleging misconduct and harassment by McCarrick and had settled two of them.
Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation on July 28, effectively stripping him of his cardinal’s title, and ordered him to live a lifetime of penance and prayer pending the outcome of a canonical trial.
A month later a former Vatican ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, rocked the Catholic Church by accusing Francis of rehabilitating McCarrick from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI over reports he slept with seminarians.
Vigano accused more than two dozen current and former Vatican officials, as well as a host of U.S. bishops and papal advisers, of being part of the cover-up and called for Francis to resign over the scandal.
Francis on Saturday asked for daily prayers to protect the Catholic Church from what he says are “attacks by the devil,” in his latest response to the clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal.
Louisville head coach Rick Pitino gestures during the game with Minnesota on December 20, 2008 in Glendale, Arizona. Shutterstock.com
By TOM HAYS Associated Press
NEW YORK — When Brian Bowen Jr., one of America’s brightest high school basketball stars, announced in June 2017 that he would attend the University of Louisville, a school that had not been on anyone’s radar as his possible destination, sportswriters called it a coup that “came out of nowhere.”
Louisville coach Rick Pitino agreed.
“In my 40 years of coaching,” he said, “this is the luckiest I’ve been.”
In a trial that begins Monday, federal prosecutors will argue that the signing wasn’t luck at all but the result of a payoff to Bowen’s father.
Former sports agent Christian Dawkins, former Amateur Athletic Union coach Merl Code and former Adidas executive James Gatto have all pleaded not guilty to charges they plotted to pay Bowen’s father $100,000 in exchange for his son’s promise to commit to Louisville.
It is the first trial related to an FBI investigation that exposed the sleazy side of big money in college basketball and led to charges against multiple people involved in making payments to student athletes. Other defendants, including former assistant coaches from Arizona, Auburn, the University of Southern California and Oklahoma State, face separate trials.
Neither Bowen, now 19, nor his father, Brian Bowen Sr., have been charged. Nor has Pitino, who was fired by Louisville along with athletic director Tom Jurich after the investigation became public.
The indictment says Adidas played a role in helping lure star players to its affiliated teams and keep them from going to teams sponsored by competitors like Nike. It also includes allegations that recruiters talked about using money from Adidas to pay two other families of prized high school basketball recruits, besides Bowen.
Lawyers for the defendants say any recruiting issues should have been the NCAA’s problem, not fodder for a federal prosecution.
In one episode central to the case, investigators recorded a meeting at a Las Vegas hotel in which Dawkins met with an assistant coach at Louisville and the director of an amateur team to talk about making backdoor cash payments to players, with the expectation that he could manage their business affairs once they turned professional.
The men didn’t know that another person in the room was an FBI informant.
At the meeting, Dawkins was overheard warning how an Adidas competitor was “coming with a higher number” for Bowen’s family, the criminal complaint said. It said he also claimed he’d been in touch with the Louisville head coach about how to come with more money.
Prosecutors say the defendants settled on a plan to pay the Bowen family four $25,000 installments, with the money coming from Adidas, but disguised by routing it through an amateur team run by Merl Code.
They contend that the secret payments defrauded colleges because Bowen and other young athletes would not have qualified for generous scholarships if they were known to have accepted outside payments. Also, the basketball programs might have to forfeit games or lose tournament eligibility if they were found to have used ineligible players.
Defense lawyers plan to challenge this argument.
The defendants, they wrote in a recent court filing, “were not trying to cause financial harm to these schools, but rather were trying to help them recruit a great basketball team that would bring in millions of dollars in revenue and bolster their national reputation.”
Prosecutors haven’t ruled out calling recruits or their family members as witnesses. And it’s likely that Pitino’s name will come up in testimony at a trial expected to last at least three weeks.
While the case has generated headlines, college basketball largely remained business as usual last season. No teams were declared ineligible for the NCAA Tournament.
Bowen, who has not been accused of having any personal knowledge of payments to his family, may have suffered more than anyone associated with the case so far.
Louisville suspended him before he ever played a game. He transferred to the University of South Carolina, but after it said he couldn’t play this season, he signed with a professional team in Australia, effectively ending his college career and dimming his hope of playing in the NBA.
Pitino has insisted there was nothing suspicious about how the teenager was recruited.
“Some people will believe it, some people won’t,” Pitino told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “That I don’t care.”
___ AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
Friday, October 5, 6-8:30 p.m., Options Domestic & Sexual Violence Services will be hosting our 3rd annual Purple Light Nights® event at Big Creek Crossing, 2918 Vine.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and we are taking this opportunity to spread awareness of the prevalence of domestic violence in our community.
There will be free food, free coffee, children’s activities, and guest speakers from local law enforcement, local government, and other community agencies.
We will also be lighting the tree purple, showing our commitment to spreading the word and to tell our community that we will not stand for domestic violence.
6:00: Event begins
7:00: Guest speakers
8:00 Tree lighting
8:30 Event ends
Food provided by The Press and coffee provided by Breathe.
