SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a car theft and have a suspect in custody.

Just after 9:30 p.m. Saturday, police responded to the area of 20th and SW Clay in Topeka on the report of a stolen car, according to Lt. John Trimble.

While there, officers saw the suspect identified as 38-year-old Larry James drive by in a stolen car.

Officers on scene then attempted to stop the suspect and stolen car. The suspect initiated a slow-speed pursuit that  lasted approximately 4 minutes until he crashed into a parked car near 16th and SW Buchanan.

Police took James into custody without incident. He was booked into the Shawnee County Department of Corrections on requested charges of Felony Theft of a Motor Vehicle, Felony Fleeing and Eluding, 2 Felony Warrants for Burglary, 1 Misdemeanor Warrant and 6 Traffic Offenses, according to Trimble.

MCPHERSON COUNTY —A small earthquake shook central Kansas Monday morning.

The quake at 1:44a.m. measured a magnitude 2.7 and was centered approximately 7 miles west of Lindsborg, according to the Kansas Geological Survey.

Monday’s quake follows a pair of small quakes in Harper County Sunday and a 2.8 magnitude quake southeast of Salina on Sunday.

There are no reports of damage of injury from Monday’s quake.

KANSAS CITY, KAN. – A Kansas man whose DNA was found on a handgun was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

Jason M. Trevillion, 33, Kansas City, Kan., pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm following a felony conviction. The investigation began when members of the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department’s Violent Crime Task force heard shots fired in the area of 8th and Parallel Avenue. Police attempted stop a Dodge Caravan but the vehicle fled. When police blocked the car from the front and behind, the van rammed both police cars. Trevillion was one of the defendants who eventually got out of the van.

In the van, police found a .40 caliber pistol with a 50-round drum magazine, two .223 caliber pistols, a 9 mm pistol, and a .45 caliber pistol, as well as spent shell casings and live rounds. Trevillion’s DNA was found on the 9 mm pistol. He had a 2015 conviction in Wyandotte County for aggravated assault.

Co-defendant Ernest A. Jones was sentenced to 12 months and a day. Co-defendant Taurez L. Adams is set for sentencing Nov. 13.

Kansas Department of Education

WICHITA – Whitney Morgan, an English language arts and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher at Wyandotte High School, Kansas City, Kansas, Unified School District 500, was named the 2019 Kansas Teacher of the Year on Saturday, Nov. 17, during a special ceremony in Wichita.

Kansas Commissioner of Education Dr. Randy Watson made the announcement at a gathering of 400 people during the Kansas Teacher of the Year Banquet at the Marriott Hotel, 9100 E. Corporate Hills Drive, in Wichita.

“It is my honor to present the 2019 Kansas Teacher of the Year designation to Whitney,” Watson said. “She is truly a remarkable teacher and very deserving of this honor. Whitney uses collaborative learning to engage students from all backgrounds and abilities. She has demonstrated strong leadership skills at Wyandotte High School and is working closely with her colleagues on school climate. Whitney is a great example of the quality teachers we have in Kansas. I want to wish Whitney and the members of the 2019 Kansas Teacher of the Year team success as they represent Kansas education in the coming year.”

Morgan was named the 2019 Kansas Teacher of the Year from a field of eight finalists.

Throughout the coming year, all of the finalists will work as a team to advocate for education and teaching.

Selected from a pool of more than 100 nominations, the other 2019 finalists are: Signe A. Cook, a fifth-grade teacher at Park Elementary School (Great Bend USD 428); Jennifer S. Brown, a first-grade teacher at Sheridan Elementary School (Geary County USD 475); Nicole L. Corn, a kindergarten teacher at Sunset Hill Elementary School (Lawrence USD 497); Sharon L. Kuchinski, a social studies teacher at Leavenworth Senior High School (Leavenworth USD 453); Megan Clark, an art teacher at Clear Creek Elementary School (De Soto USD 232); Lan T. Huynh, a third-grade teacher at Christa McAuliffe Academy (Wichita USD 259); and Tim “T.J.” Warsnak, a social studies teacher at Halstead High School (Halstead-Bentley USD 440).

Morgan began her career as an English and ESOL teacher at Wyandotte High School in 2013. She received her bachelor’s degree in secondary education with a minor in nonprofit leadership in 2012 from Kansas State University. She currently is working on obtaining her master’s degree in English from the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, Vermont.

Morgan is involved in several leadership roles and professional organizations, and she is a Stanford Graduate School of Education Hollyhock Fellow.

Mary Stewart, principal of Wyandotte High School, called Morgan an “exemplary educator” who “develops effective relationships with students by working to understand their interests and cultural backgrounds.”

“On a daily basis, Mrs. Morgan – both verbally and nonverbally – shows her students that she cares,” Stewart said. “She is firm in holding all students to a high level of performance expectation, yet interacts with each of them with a calm and nurturing approach. She knows each of her students as individuals. She values their uniqueness and sees their potential.”

Kurt Auleta, senior vice president of distribution and sales operations for Security Benefit Corp., presented Morgan with a $4,000 cash award.

In addition, Morgan will receive the Kansas Teacher of the Year Lifelong Learning Scholarship to attend participating universities free of charge as long as she continues teaching in Kansas; and The Hubbard Foundation Kansas Teacher of the Year Ambassadorship. The ambassadorship provides funds for travel and other necessary expenses incurred by the Kansas Teacher of the Year.

Morgan also will receive the use of a rental car from Enterprise Rent-a-Car for Kansas Teacher of the Year travel. Jostens Inc. also provided Morgan with a Leader in Education ring.

All eight members of the 2019 Kansas Teacher of the Year team received a $2,000 cash award from Security Benefit and a red marble apple from the Master Teacher in Manhattan. In addition, each will receive Capturing Kids’ Hearts training from The Flippen Group, of College Station, Texas, and a one-year membership in the Kansas State Teachers of the Year organization.

The Teacher of the Year program has state and national competitions. The national program, presented by Voya Financial, is a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Kansas program is sponsored by the Kansas State Department of Education.

Morgan is now a candidate for National Teacher of the Year.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Food safety officials are stressing the importance of proper handling and cooking practices amid a nationwide outbreak of drug-resistant Salmonella found in raw turkey, with Thanksgiving approaching.

The Centers for Disease Control last week said the number of reported illnesses has nearly doubled since July to 164. Minnesota has the most cases at 16. There’s been one reported death  linked to tainted turkey.

The USDA hasn’t named the suppliers associated with the tainted meat or identified a single, common source.

In addition, Jennie-O Turkey recalled ground turkey as part of the salmonella outbreak, and regulators say additional products from other companies could be named as their investigation continues.

The products being recalled include 1-pound packages of raw, ground Jennie-O turkey and were sold nationwide. The more than 91,000 pounds of turkey had use-by dates of early October and shouldn’t be in stores anymore, but could still be in freezers. Regulators say it should be thrown away.

Hormel said in a statement that government agencies have found the strain in the outbreak in 29 manufacturing plants from 19 companies.

Officials say consumers should always wash their hands and all surface areas where turkey is prepared, never leave it to thaw on the counter, and use a meat thermometer to cook it to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

University of Kansas Athletics

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Les Miles, a national championship-winning former coach at Louisiana State and Oklahoma State, has been named the new head football coach at the University of Kansas, Kansas Athletics Director Jeff Long announced Sunday.

Miles will be formally introduced at a press conference today at 5 p.m.  He will then do a special “Hawk Talk” radio show at 7 p.m. from Johnny’s West restaurant in West Lawrence.

With Miles’ hiring, Kansas becomes the only university in the country that can boast a current men’s basketball coach with an NCAA Division I Championship and a football coach with an FBS Championship.

Miles will receive a five-year contract that will pay him $2,775,000 annually, with additional retention bonuses due in Nov. 2020 and Nov. 2022.

“Since the beginning of our search, we focused on identifying and recruiting an experienced head coach with a strong track record of success on and off the field,” Long said.  “Les Miles is exactly what we need for our program right now.  His national reputation as a great recruiter and as a coach who student-athletes love playing for will enable us to break the cycle and return a winning tradition to the Kansas Jayhawks.  We are thrilled to have Les and his family as Jayhawks.”

Miles brings to Lawrence 142 victories, a BCS national championship and two SEC titles in 15-plus seasons as a head coach, the most career wins of anyone who has coached football at Kansas in the modern era.

Most recently, Miles served as the head coach at LSU (2005-16), where his teams averaged 10 wins per year in his 11 full seasons.  He led LSU to bowl games in each of those 11 seasons (winning seven), and won 42 games against Top-25 teams and 16 over Top-10 teams.  Miles’ teams won 10 or more games seven times, reached the SEC title game three times (winning twice) and led LSU to five Top-10 and three Top-5 finishes.

“I am humbled by the opportunity to lead the KU football program and I am grateful to Chancellor Girod and Jeff Long for the opportunity,” said Miles.  “We will bring Jayhawk Football back and we will do it with outstanding coaches, tremendous student-athletes of character and ability and an unrelenting drive for excellence.  My family and I cannot wait to be a part of the KU family!”

During his tenure at LSU, Miles coached an SEC-leading 69 NFL draft picks, 13 of them first-round selections. He coached 22 first-team All-Americans and 11 players who won national awards. He is the second-winningest coach in LSU history in overall wins (112) and SEC regular-season wins (63).

In the classroom, more than 240 players earned degrees under Miles and during his tenure, LSU Football’s graduation rate ranked as high as No. 2 in the SEC multiple times.  As part of LSU’s Project Graduation established in 2010, more than 30 players who had left school without a degree returned to earn their college diploma before Miles left in 2016.  Nearly 190 LSU players were named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll during Miles’ time there.

“I want to thank Jeff Long for his outstanding work and leadership of our Athletics’ program. I also want to thank the student-athletes in our football program for the mature way in which they have handled this challenging circumstance. I have no doubt that Coach Miles will have an immediate impact on our football program, and on our university,” Chancellor Girod said.  “Together as Jayhawks, we will rebuild our football program the right way, winning championships and continuing to graduate young men of character.  Today is an exciting day for the KU Family.”

Miles went to LSU after a four-year tenure as head coach at Oklahoma State. The OSU program he took over in 2001 had registered only one winning season since 1988. The Cowboys went 4-7 his first year, then had three-straight winning seasons (8-5, 9-4, 7-5). He led OSU to three-straight bowl games, a first for the program since 1983-85.

Miles’ four-year winning percentage of 57 percent is the best career winning percentage for an OSU coach since 1949. OSU was the only team in the nation to beat Oklahoma twice during Miles’ four-year tenure there.

Prior to OSU, Miles spent three years as tight-ends coach with the Dallas Cowboys (one divisional title, two playoff appearances).  He went to Dallas after serving as offensive coordinator at OSU for three seasons (8-3, Alamo Bowl berth in 1997).

Miles served two stints (total of 10 seasons) as an assistant coach at Michigan, several of them under legendary head coach Bo Schembechler. During Miles’ second tenure there, from 1987-94, Michigan won 71 games, made eight-straight bowl appearances, including four Rose Bowls, and finished no lower than No. 21 in the final Associate Press national rankings.

Between tenures at Michigan, Miles spent four seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Colorado.

Miles graduated from Michigan in 1976 with a degree in economics. He was a two-year football letterman, playing on two Big Ten championship teams.  He earned all-state honors in football at Elyria High School in Ohio, where he also earned letters in baseball and wrestling.

Miles’ wife, Kathy, was a point guard at Central Michigan University and later an assistant basketball coach at Michigan. They have two daughters, Kathryn (nickname “Smacker”), a former swimmer at Texas and currently a TV sports personality who hosts Les’ podcast), and Macy, a youth softball pitching standout. They also have two sons, Manny, a quarterback at North Carolina, and Ben, who won a high-school football state title in 2015 and is currently a fullback at Texas A&M.

SHAWNEE COUNTY— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a burglary and have suspects in custody.

Just after 3p.m. Thursday, police were summoned to 106 SW Clay in Topeka after witnesses reported someone kicking in the back door of the residence, according to Lt. Aaron Jones.

As officers entered the area the witness reported seeing the suspect truck, a red Dodge Ram, leaving the case address after loading items from the house into the truck.

Police stopped the truck  in the 900 block of SW Wayne.

Andrew C. Akard 29, and Catrien A. Van Petten 30, both of Topeka were located in the truck along with two handguns and items from the reported burglary.

Police booked Akard  into the Shawnee County Department of Corrections under suspicion of open container, possession of a stolen firearm, criminal possession of a firearm, possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell, possession of stolen property, theft and burglary.

Van Petten has been booked into the Shawnee County Department of Corrections under suspicion of possession of stolen property, theft and burglary.

By JIM MCLEAN

With Democrat Elected Governor, Kansas A Whole Lot Closer To Medicaid Expansion

If elections have consequences, the top-of-the-ticket win for Democrats in Kansas likely carries no more obvious upshot than the probable expansion of Medicaid in the state.

After years of unyielding opposition from former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and his successor — Gov. Jeff Colyer — Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly looks positioned to broaden public health insurance coverage to tens of thousands more Kansans.

Kelly campaigned on expansion and listed it among her priorities in an election night victory speech.

“It’s long past time to expand Medicaid so that more Kansans have access to affordable health care,” Kelly said to cheers from supporters.

Kelly, a veteran state senator from Topeka, defeated Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. A conservative Republican, he opposed expansion with at least as much vigor as Brownback and Colyer.

Kelly’s decisive five-point win has made longtime advocates of expansion optimistic that they can get it signed into law during the 2019 legislative session, which begins Jan. 14.

“We’re hopeful,” said Tom Bell, president and CEO of the Kansas Hospital Association. “But we’re also not taking anything for granted.”

Bell and other supporters fear that the defeat of some moderate Republicans by conservatives may have softened support for expansion in the Kansas House. However, with Kelly in the governor’s office, they would no longer need a veto-proof majority.

The Legislature approved expansion in 2017, but Brownback vetoed the bill.

Advocates can’t take it for granted that expansion is “automatically going to happen,” Bell said, “but bottom line, we’re much more encouraged than we have been the last few years.”

Some Republican legislative leaders who have spearheaded opposition to expansion appear ready to move on.

Rep. Dan Hawkins, the Wichita Republican who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee, recently told the Wichita Eagle that expansion is a “foregone conclusion.”

Republican lawmakers shouldn’t waste energy opposing expansion, said Jim Joice, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party.

“I’m not sure if that (opposition) would be the best political strategy, if that’s the hill you want to die on this year,” Joice said.

The priority for Republicans should be holding Kelly to her pledge to balance the budget, fund schools, re-start the highway program and expand Medicaid without a tax increase, Joice said.

Currently, eligibility for KanCare, Kansas’ privatized Medicaid program is limited to children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and seniors in need of long-term care who have exhausted their financial resources. Parents are eligible only if they earn less than a third of the federal poverty level, less than $10,000 for a four-person family.

Single adults without children currently are not eligible no matter their income.

Expansion would extend eligibility to all Kansans who earn up to 138 percent of the poverty level, or about $17,000 annually for an individual and approximately $34,000 for a family of four.

In addition to extending coverage to an estimated 150,000 low-income Kansans who are now not eligible for KanCare, expansion would draw billions in additional federal funding. Advocates say that would help struggling hospitals across the state, many in rural areas.

“Medicaid expansion would certainly help them,” said Bell, noting that higher Medicaid reimbursements would help cover some of the losses caused by reductions in Medicare payments.

The Affordable Care Act requires the federal government cover 90 percent of the cost of expansion. The state’s costs would increase by an estimated $68 million a year, according to an estimate compiled by the Kansas Health Institute.

Expansion opponents insist the price tag will be much higher, but supporters contend it could be implemented at relatively little additional cost if federal dollars are used to cover services now funded with state dollars.

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. 

By JOCELYN NOVECK
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Hey, remember Gary Hart?

Ask most people, and if they’re old enough to remember anything at all, it’s that famous photo of the doomed candidate with a smiling Donna Rice in his lap, on perhaps the most unfortunately named yacht in American political history: “Monkey Business.”

What most people don’t recall, or never even knew, is that the photo emerged two weeks after the 1987 scandal had ended in Hart’s withdrawal from the Democratic race, his hugely promising political career destroyed over suspicions — never confirmed — that he’d had an affair with Rice.

The fact that people assume the photo led to Hart’s humiliating downfall is just one of many ways in which the whole ordeal is mis-remembered, says Jason Reitman, director of “The Front Runner,” which stars Hugh Jackman in an appropriately tense, anguished turn as the Colorado senator who rose fast and fell faster.

“The story really plays with our sense of memory,” Reitman says. “First people recall ‘Monkey Business,’ so they’re remembering a joke, and then it’s, what was that blonde’s name?”

The fact that Rice was a human being (also a Phi Beta Kappa college grad) and not just a blonde on a boat is one point that “The Front Runner,” based on a 2014 book by journalist Matt Bai, seeks to drive home. But the larger point is that the Hart saga, far from a party joke, marked a watershed moment in American politics and culture, with reverberations that continue to this day.

Why? Because it was the moment when politicians became celebrities, and their private lives became our public business, even our property, Bai argues. It changed political journalism, too, he says, and created a different kind of candidate, perhaps forever.

“It’s this moment in 1987 when the worlds of politics and entertainment collide,” says Bai, who co-wrote the screenplay with Reitman and former political operative Jay Carson. “And when you create a process for selecting leaders that treats them like celebrities, you inevitably attract celebrities to your process. So it’s supremely relevant.” The reference to a certain current American leader is implicit.

A quick historical primer: Hart was way ahead in the polls to take the 1988 Democratic nomination and face GOP nominee George H.W. Bush. But rumors of marital infidelity arose, and a tip led Miami Herald reporter Tom Fiedler to stake out an alley near Hart’s Washington townhouse, where the 29-year-old Rice, with whom Hart had connected on a Bahamas cruise, was believed to be staying. Fiedler and his team confronted Hart. He refused to answer questions about his private life. Soon after, amid unrelenting scrutiny on his family, he quit the race.

Hart wasn’t exactly the first American politician to be felled by a sex scandal — seen “Hamilton,” anyone? — but before him, routine sexual peccadilloes were usually considered off-limits. If they hadn’t been, many others, say John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, wouldn’t have survived. But Hart came along at just the wrong time, says Thomas Patterson, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Patterson argues that Watergate, obviously the seminal political scandal of the ’70s, had spawned a more aggressive type of political journalism, tasking reporters with exposing the lies of politicians — big or small.

“If Hart had been luckier, journalists would have been a decade behind where they were at this point,” says Patterson. “But Hart becomes the poster child, the first casualty, of an attack journalism that was really a product of Watergate, and journalists’ sense that they couldn’t trust politicians.”

Each team member behind “The Front Runner,” which will be in wide release on Nov. 21, has their own takeaway from the Hart story. For Carson, who worked on numerous political campaigns including for Hillary Clinton, it’s how “this world where I wanted to effect positive change ended up being so soul-crushingly awful.”

Then there’s Jackman, who confesses he knew little-to-nothing about Hart beforehand: “I was a traveling backpacker on a gap year!” The Aussie actor traveled to Colorado to spend time with Hart, seeking to portray a multi-dimensional human being.

“Certainly my focus was on Gary and the man he was,” Jackman says. “But I’m left thinking about the question of principle and ethics.” For Hart, but also for other characters in the film like campaign workers and journalists, “there were lines not to be crossed,” Jackman says, “and it got simplified down to, ‘Did he have an affair or not?'”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Jackman adds. “For Gary, it was the principle of, if he starts answering those questions, he’s going to sully the process for other people, evermore. He felt like, ‘If I start talking about boxers or briefs, or the name of my dog, it’s over.'”

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who famously answered the boxers-or-briefs question. And for his own canny survival as a candidate, he may have Hart partly to thank, says Patterson at Harvard.

“Jump ahead four years, and Clinton had learned from Hart, from his failure and the damage it had done,” he says.

Now jump ahead to today. If we cared so much about Hart’s affair with Rice, some have asked, why did we elect a president who’d bragged on tape about groping women? (Trump later called it locker room talk.) Did we stop caring?

No, though maybe we’re more jaded, says Patterson. But we also live in a time of unprecedented political polarization: “People increasingly filter this stuff through their partisan lens.”

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that Hart would never survive a campaign in 2018 — mainly because he wouldn’t run under such conditions.

“Not to exalt Gary Hart, but we’re talking about a generation of potentially strong leaders who’ve had to find other ways to serve,” says Bai. “We’ve turned it into a performance process, where shamelessness and lying are rewarded.”

Adds director Reitman: “Hart very clearly said these personal questions were irrelevant, and he walked away. My question isn’t so much about him, but who ELSE isn’t running? What other candidates are we not getting a chance at?