CRAWFORD COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Crawford County are investigating a deputy involved shooting.

Two Crawford County Deputy Sheriffs were involved in the shootout with a suspect after a pursuit that originated in Cherokee County on Tuesday, according to a media release.

The subject was transported to an area hospital with a gunshot wound.

The deputies involved were not injured.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation was processing the scene on Tuesday

As of Wednesday morning, a two-mile section of Kansas 47 remains closed from U.S. 69 to 200th Street due to the investigation.

No additional details are being released.

NEW YORK (AP) — Aeropostale, once the vibrant epicenter of the U.S. mall scene, is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The New York company said Wednesday that it is closing 113 of its 739 U.S. stores and all 41 locations in Canada. Going-out-of-business sales at those U.S. stores will begin this weekend.

The Company has two stores in Wichita and four in the Kansas City area. The Zona Rosa location is scheduled to close.

Aeropostale expects to emerge from bankruptcy protection within six months as a smaller company after renegotiating contracts and resolving an ongoing dispute with the investment firm Sycamore Partners, a major shareholder that pushed through changes in company leadership.

The company’s shares traded for more than $30 six years ago, when annual sales exceeded $2 billion. Two weeks ago, it was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange with shares having failed to break the $1 barrier since last year.

RILEY COUNTY -Voters of school district USD 378 in Riley County voted overwhelmingly against a $22.5 million bond issue on Tuesday.

The bond issue included upgrades to both the grade school in Riley and the high school just outside of town, northwest of Manhattan.

Exterior improvements at the grade school included the removal of modular homes, which are currently being used as classrooms but provide limited safety in terms of natural disasters.

In addition, the construction of a new car loop in front of the grade school and more parking space to help provide a safer spot for parents to drop their children off, and relieve some of the congestion with buses.

The plans also included moving the middle school grades to the high school campus, which would expand by 11 classrooms and 7 refurbished rooms to accommodate the extra grades.

A total of 1,276 voters out of a possible 2,800 who were registered showed up to vote.

The unofficial results according to rileycountyks.gov showed the votes at 63.18%, or 803 votes going against the bond issue, with 468 votes, or 36.82% being for the proposal.

KANSAS CITY – An Arkansas man pleaded guilty Tuesday to selling counterfeit Garmin maps over the Internet, according to acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall.

William Yates, 26, Fort Smith, Ark., pleaded guilty to one count of copyright infringement. In his plea, he admitted selling map products that were copyrighted by Garmin. Garmin International, Inc. is located in Olathe, Kan.

Yates sold counterfeit Garmin map cards on eBay, Amazon and Craigslist. An investigator with the FBI purchased cards from Yates.

He sold at least 874 counterfeit map products for more than $23,000. The products were valued at more than $67,000.

Sentencing will be set for a later date. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000. Beall commended the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Rask for their work on the case.

FRANKLIN COUNTY- Two people died in an accident just before 7 p.m. on Tuesday in Franklin County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1991 Toyota Camry driven by April L. Brown, 28, Kansas City was southbound on Interstate 35 four miles north of Ottawa.

The driver lost control of vehicle. It crossed the median.

A northbound 2006 Infiniti G-6 driven by Courtney J Houston, 28, Wellsville, struck the Toyota broadside.

Brown and a passenger Jeremiah “JJ” Persinger, 9, Kansas City, were pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Frontier Forensics.

Another passenger in the Toyota James F. Whitfield, 46, Kansas City, was transported to Overland Park Regional.

Houston was transported to KU Medical Center.

Brown was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Saline County and a former interim director of the Saline County Health Department have reached a $75,000 settlement over a sexual discrimination claim.

The Salina Journal reports the county said Tuesday that it denied liability associated with the claim, and that it would allow its insurance company to resolve the matter to avoid further litigation costs.

Suzette Brotton filed a claim against the Salina Human Relations Commission after it chose Bronson Farmer to direct the health department in 2014. Brotton claimed that she was not chosen because she is a woman.

Farmer was chosen despite having previously been fired from the health department after being accused of falsifying mileage reports. He has denied that charge.

The Kansas Human Rights Commission had ruled there was “probable cause” to believe Brotton’s allegations of sexual discrimination in hiring and pre-employment testing.

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii (AP) — A new commander is taking over as the leader of Army soldiers in the Pacific.

Lt. Gen. Robert Brown is succeeding Gen. Vincent Brooks as the commander of U.S. Army Pacific. Brooks is becoming the new commander of U.S. Forces Korea.

Brown will lead about 80,000 soldiers from Washington state, Alaska and Hawaii to Japan.

Brooks will hand over command to Brown during a ceremony at U.S. Army Pacific headquarters in Hawaii on Wednesday. Brown will be promoted to a four-star general just before the ceremony.

The West Point graduate comes to Hawaii from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he commanded the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center. He experience commanding the I Corps in Washington state and serving as a U.S. Army Pacific plans officer and U.S. Pacific Command staff officer.

BUTLER COUNTY – A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 10p.m. on Wednesday in Butler County

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Toyota Avalon driven by Keith Arlen Urbanek, 79, was northbound on S.W. Santa Fe Lake Road from U-54.

After passing S.W. 90th the vehicle left the roadway, struck a ditch embankment and became airborne.

The vehicle took a nose-dive in the air and impacted the ground with the front bumper. Urbanek was transported to Wesley Medical Center. He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former police officer for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, is accused of sexually abusing two girls in Kansas.

The Kansas City Star (https://bit.ly/1WGW7xx ) reports 38-year-old Sean Acree of Mission, Kansas, was arrested Monday and was being held in the Johnson County jail on $250,000 bond.

He is charged with five felony counts, including aggravated indecent liberties with a child and indecent liberties.

A Veterans Affairs spokesman says Acree had been a training sergeant for the VA police but resigned last month. He made his first court appearance on Tuesday and is scheduled for another next week.

It was unclear after business hours Tuesday if Acree had obtained an attorney.

By MEGAN HART

The Kansas Legislature approved additional restrictions on people who receive government assistance but removed one proposal that would have required women to return to work shortly after giving birth.

The changes, passed late Sunday as part of Senate Bill 402, reduce the lifetime limit for cash assistance through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families from three years to two years. There is a one-year hardship extension.

Gov. Sam Brownback hasn’t made a statement about the bill, but he has supported past reductions to assistance programs. Kansas lowered the lifetime TANF limit from five years to four years in 2011 and to three years in 2015, then as part of the Hope, Opportunity and Prosperity for Everyone (HOPE) Act.

Shannon Cotsoradis, president and chief executive of Kansas Action for Children, said the average Kansas family using TANF receives it for about 18 months. Many have to use it again when an unexpected expense or job loss hits, she said, and the new limit may remove that cushion.

“These are families that are pretty vulnerable,” she said. “Most families don’t just make the leap out of poverty and stay out of poverty.”

Sen. Michael O’Donnell, a Wichita Republican, previously pointed to reduced TANF enrollment as evidence that lower lifetime limits and work requirements have been effective in encouraging Kansans to find a job and improve their incomes.

“We know that these programs work,” he said during a floor debate earlier this session. “We’re getting people off TANF and into the workforce.”

It isn’t clear how many of those people left TANF because they became employed, though data available so far isn’t encouraging.

During negotiations Sunday, a conference committee loosened one provision that would have eliminated the work exemption for mothers who recently gave birth if they had received TANF for one year or longer. Under the version that passed, a parent of an infant would be exempted until that infant was 3 months old unless the parent already hit the lifetime limit of two years.

That was one of the more important changes that KAC sought, Cotsoradis said, because the lower limit would have required some mothers to return to work almost as soon as they left the hospital.

“I think any mom that’s had to find infant care, let alone subsidized infant care, knows that’s very difficult,” she said.

Other changes in the bill will:

· Remove a limit on ATM withdrawals for cash recipients. Federal officials said it violated laws that recipients must have adequate access to their benefits.

· Require the Kansas Department for Children and Families to monitor repeated requests to replace a benefit card.

· Make recipients ineligible if they don’t cooperate with fraud investigators.

· Require the state to cross-check the names of assistance recipients and people who have won $5,000 or more in the lottery.

· Allow the state to recover fraudulently obtained assistance.

· Limit work experience placements to six months for TANF recipients.

· Require Kansans who receive child care assistance to work at least 20 hours per week.

Theresa Freed, spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Children and Families, said the department expects about 155 families per month to hit the two-year limit in fiscal year 2017. If those projections are accurate, about 1,860 families will be removed from TANF over the year. DCF reported 4,941 families received TANF in March 2016.

DCF will begin contacting families in July, Freed said, and plans to remove them starting Jan. 1, 2017.

“The transition to a 24-month time limit for TANF is proposed to begin July 1, allowing for all clients to be contacted by DCF staff and an individual transition plan developed,” she said in an email. “Additionally, cases will be screened to see if they are eligible for a hardship extension.”

Megan Hart is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach her on Twitter @meganhartMC

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Former Bel Air Police Chief John Daily plans to change his plea over his role in a scheme to buy and sell discounted firearms by falsely claiming they would be used for law enforcement purposes.

A notice posted Tuesday notified the court of his intention and set May 31 for the change-of-plea hearing.

Charges against two Bel Air police officers were initially filed in December 2014, and the investigation eventually ensnared the department’s police chief along with a third police officer. The indictment against one officer was dismissed in January.

Most charges involve wire fraud and mail fraud in connection with the alleged scheme.

Prosecutors allege the officers bought and sold numerous firearms by falsely certifying they were for law enforcement use and not resale — thereby avoiding paying taxes.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — University of Kansas architecture graduate students are completing final touches on a newly constructed sustainable house in east Lawrence.

Officials at the university’s architecture school tell the Lawrence Journal-World that the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home with a detached garage is designed to meet two sustainable building standards: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum and the Passive House Institute standards.

The home is the latest design-build project of the Studio 804 class, which concentrates on environmentally-friendly development.

The house includes solar panels on the roof that will supply nearly all of its electricity needs and barn door-style sliding panels on the house’s exterior can be closed to clock sunlight in the hottest months.

There is also a concrete storm shelter in the back of the lot near the garage.