TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas woman who took her children to perform for occupiers during the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge says authorities have removed seven of the children from her home and arrested her for assaulting an officer.
Jail officials told The Kansas City Star Odalis Sharp of Auburn was booked into the Shawnee County jail Friday for battery of an officer and interfering with a law enforcement officer. No charges had been filed as of Tuesday morning.
Sharp and her children, who have a family gospel band, traveled to Oregon to support the 41-day occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year. She says the arrest and removal of the children happened after a dispute involving her landlord.
Neither the state Department of Children and Families nor the local prosecutor could be reached for comment.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A man who left a Joplin hospital against medical advice after he was wounded by police is jailed in Kansas.
Police in Wichita arrested 50-year-old Jeffrey L. Hill last month on charges of interference with a law enforcement officer, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. The Joplin Globe reports that he is jailed without bond in Sedgwick County.
He could be brought back to face charges in Missouri once the Kansas charges are resolved.
Joplin police said officers shot Hill, who is white, on Nov. 30 when he attempted to run over an officer with a vehicle during a domestic disturbance call. No attorney is listed for him in Missouri court records. It wasn’t immediately known if he had an attorney in the Kansas case.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — An international rating agency has revised its credit outlook for Kansas to negative from stable because of its ongoing budget problems.
Tuesday’s announcement from Moody’s Investors Service came a day after lawmakers approved a plan leaving most of the work of balancing the budget through June 2017 to Gov. Sam Brownback.
Even as Moody’s changed its outlook, it reaffirmed its Aa2 rating for Kansas for issuing bonds.
Its report cited the state’s problems in balancing its budget since lawmakers slashed personal income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging to help stimulate the economy.
Standard and Poor’s Rating Services last week put Kansas on a “credit watch.”
Brownback told reporters Tuesday that Kansas faces financial strains because of slumps in agriculture and energy production, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
NEWTON – Fire officials are investigating the cause of a fire at a residence in Newton.
Just before noon on Monday, Newton Fire/EMS crews responded to reports of residential fire in the 300 block of South Main Street, according to a social media report.
Fire crews found a small garage fully involved with heavy fire that had spread to the exterior siding and roof of a nearby house.
Fire crews used heavy-caliber handlines and compressed-air foam to control the garage fire, while stretching a hoseline into the house to check for victims and to extinguish interior fire spread.
Fire damage was held to the garage, which was a total loss, and the outside of the house.
Fire crews made a quick knockdown of the fire, and removed pieces of siding and roofing material to locate and extinguish hidden fire in the house.
Fireground operations were complicated by the presence of energized electrical power lines that had fallen onto a metal fence surrounding this, and adjacent properties, creating life safety hazards for firefighters and citizens.
Westar was requested to the scene to disconnect electricity at the pole.
SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A preliminary hearing is set for next week for two people charged in the killing of a Nebraska man in a Salina motel parking lot.
The Salina Journal reports that 21-year-old DiAntre Lemmie and 24-year-old Amber Craig appeared Monday in Saline County District Court. They are scheduled to return to court May 10.
They are charged with first-degree murder in the death last week of 21-year-old Adonis Loudermilk, of Lincoln, Nebraska. Both also are charged with aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. Lemmie faces additional charges of fleeing and eluding and criminal possession of a firearm.
Lemmie’s attorney, Jeff Adam, declined to comment. Craig’s attorney, Julie Effenbeck, didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A former student body president of a small Christian college in Kansas who escaped capture in a killing for more than two decades is about to be freed.
The Kansas City Star reports that 56-year-old Mark Mangelsdorf, of Pelham, New York, has served 10 years in a Kansas prison for the fatal beating of 25-year-old David Harmon. He is scheduled to be released Saturday.
Harmon’s wife, Melinda Raisch, worked at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe while Mangelsdorf was a student there. Prosecutors claimed Mangelsdorf and Raisch were romantically involved and conspired to kill Harmon.
Before his arrest, Mangelsdorf got married and moved to New York, where he worked as a marketing executive. Raisch moved to Ohio before she was convicted in the killing. She was paroled last year.
Gene Policinski is senior vice president of the First Amendment Center.
“World Press Freedom Day” is today — and let’s be blunt: Most of you didn’t know, and it’s likely a substantial number of you don’t care, even now that you do know.
Is it in the name?
“World” may seem too distant. “Press” has become an ugly word and many politicians’ punching bag in this presidential campaign year, or a disrespected occupational category. “Freedom” as a word may have some appeal — but most of us in this nation, in survey after survey, appear to take our freedoms for granted. So, even that word is not that big a grabber.
And with all of those lackluster bummer words ahead of “Day,” admittedly the entire title lacks the cultural sizzle of New Year’s Day or Independence Day, the sentimental tug of soon-to-be observed Mother’s Day, or even the kitschy zing of Groundhog Day.
So, how to get people to care?
Perhaps a little campaign to rename it something closer to the truth: “Rapidly disappearing around the globe, endangered even here in the United States, increasingly threatened by demagogues and dictators, digital disruption and disappearing advocates, Press Freedom Day.”
A mouthful, to be sure. But an accurate reflection of the just-updated World Press Freedom Map at the Newseum which now shows — based on the new report by the nonpartisan group Freedom House — that six of every seven people live in nations where the press is not free.
Please do notice that it’s not called “World Perfect Press Freedom Day.” While we have every right to demand and expect a news report marked by accuracy, clarity, diligence in pursuit of the truth, and unbiased and fair reporting, the failure to meet those standards should bring scorn to the specific practitioner — not abandonment of the principle.
Yet, the Newseum Institute’s annual State of the First Amendment national survey and many others show a regular decline in the public’s view of the press — as a watchdog on government, as a source of news, and even as an essential part of daily life.
Here’s another thing about today that you probably didn’t know, though I cannot imagine not caring. Khadija Ismayilova, journalist and contributor to the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe, today will receive the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2016. She was sentenced last year to seven-and-a-half years imprisonment for “abuse of power and tax evasion” — charges that are just subterfuge for punishing a journalist with the courage to report honestly about government corruption. In more and more nations, governments are dropping the truncheon and picking up the gavel, using trumped-up criminal charges or specious defamation laws to silence journalists. Less bloody. Perhaps even more effective, unless the world calls out the government bullies publicly on the tactic.
On this World Press Freedom Day, there is some good news. The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian was freed in January after spending 18 months in an Iranian jail after he apparently terrified that nation’s leaders simply by reporting on the daily lives of their fellow citizens.
But then there’s Austin Tice, a correspondent missing in Syria since 2012. For those who consider journalists as something other than positive role models, consider this: Tice is a National Merit finalist, an Eagle Scout, was enrolled in the University of Houston’s Honors College before his 16th birthday, and is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer with multiple combat deployments. On Aug. 13, 2012, he went missing — and his family and our government still are searching for him. When he comes home, let’s have “Austin Tice Press Freedom Day.”
Then again, if the Digital Age is really all about the consumers of news rather than the providers, why don’t we just rename this now-annual event something more universal? Much of the world has the ability to instantly reach all of connected humanity with a computer or mobile device, a few keystrokes and a web connection.
In the larger sense, we’re all “press” every time we post, tweet or blog — whether we want that title or not. Media critics and advocates alike are fond of noting “the press” has no more and no less privileges under the First Amendment than any other U.S. citizen.
So let’s call it “OUR World Press Freedom Day.” Have a great day.
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. [email protected]
SALINA -Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a woman for alleged car theft.
Just after 2p.m. on Monday, Saul Cortes-Morales, 45, confronted Dan
nyel Sutton-Feldkamp, 36, Seneca when she attempted to take his bicycle that was in front of Dillons, 2350 Planet Avenue in Salina, according to Police Captain Mike Sweeney
A tug of war over the bike continued south of the store when Christopher Crank, 76, Salina, pulled up into the parking lot in his 2000 Buick LeSabre, and got out of the car to investigate what was going on.
During the commotion, Sutton-Feldkamp jumped into Crank’s car, which was still running, and drove away, traveling west Magnolia Road and then north on Interstate 135.
Several witness called police to report what happened and an officer located the car shortly after it exited onto Crawford Street and pulled into the 24/7 Travel Center, 671 Westport in Salina according to police.
Sutton-Feldkamp was taken into custody and booked into the Saline County Jail on requested charges of theft and felony theft.
Kansas State coach Bruce Weber passes out custard March 9, 2012, (while coach at Univ. of Illinois ) taking everyone in his party to Jarling’s Custard Cup Photo by: Robin Scholz courtesy The News-Gazette
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — Four years after he was fired by the University of Illinois, basketball coach Bruce Weber is making a comeback in Champaign. He’s bringing former Illini football coach Ron Turner with him, too.
According to The News-Gazette in Champaign Weber and Turner are part of a group that has bought local landmark Jarling’s Custard Cup. Weber now coaches Kansas State and Turner is football coach at Florida International.
The Jarling family had said last summer it was looking for a buyer for the seasonal dessert shop.
Tom Siegel was a 1980s Illini basketball and baseball player. He is part of the new buyers’ group and said the menu will essentially stay the same.
After he was fired in 2012, Weber and his family made a last stop at Custard Cup.
Dillard Image -Tallgrass films courtesy Joe Winston
ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas anti-abortion activist is facing trial in federal court this week over a letter she sent to a Wichita physician saying someone might place an explosive under the doctor’s car.
Opening statements are expected Tuesday in the government’s civil lawsuit against anti-abortion activist Angel Dillard under a federal law aimed at protecting access to abortion services. Jurors must decide whether the letter constitutes a “true threat.”
The defense has argued the letter was constitutionally protected speech.
The Justice Department sued Dillard in 2011 for sending the letter to Dr. Mila Means, who had been training to offer abortions. At the time, no doctor was performing abortions in Wichita in the wake of the 2009 slaying of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion zealot.
STUTTGART, Germany (AP) — Defense Secretary Ash Carter says an American serviceman has been killed near Irbil in Iraq.
Carter revealed the death at the outset of a news conference Tuesday in Stuttgart, Germany, where he has been consulting with European allies.
Carter says “it is a combat death,” but he hasn’t offered any further details.
Vice President Joe Biden visited Baghdad last week to exhort leaders of the government in Iraq to resolve internal political strife and concentrate on the effort to defeat the Islamic State group.
Carter, likewise, visited Baghdad recently. The Obama administration has been pressing the effort against IS, which has been slowed down in its quest to overrun Iraq.
Carter presided earlier at a ceremony installing a new commander of U.S. European Command, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti
