WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A former Wichita high school music teacher has been sentenced to two years of probation for attempted unlawful sexual relations with a student.

Twenty-six-year-old Alan Martens was sentenced Wednesday. He had pleaded guilty in February. Prosecutors say Martens exchanged text messages that were sexual in nature with a female student at Wichita Heights High School.

It’s illegal in Kansas for teachers to have sexual relationships with students, even if the student is old enough to give legal consent. The age of consent in Kansas is 16. Court records say the student was at least 16.

Wichita public school district spokeswoman Susan Arensman has said that Martens was in his first year of teaching when he resigned in March 2015.

Submitted by the office of Rep. Tim Huelskamp

WASHINGTON – With less than one week until tax day on April 18, today Chairman Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS-01) held a hearing on simplifying taxes for small businesses. As chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access, Huelskamp and his colleagues heard from a private sector panel to examine key tax provisions in a hearing titled “Keep It Simple: Small Business Tax Simplification and Reform.”

Watch full video of the hearing here.

Many small business owners across the country are filing their tax returns. For many small businesses, taxes and the costs involved with complying with the law can drive business decisions. Employers with more than 50 employees face a tax compliance burden of somewhere between $182 and $191, while the smallest employers with 1-5 employees spend between $4,308 and $4,736 per employee, an astronomical difference.

One focus of the hearing was the many people who travel across state lines to do their jobs, whether that might be for farming, sales, or to provide health care services. These employees and their employers are forced to comply with a patchwork of confusing, outdated, and sometimes predatory nonresident state income tax laws.

Huelskamp issued the following statement on the hearing:

“We should be encouraging our small businesses and helping them to succeed, not erecting barriers to block their way. Every dollar that a small employer spends on tax compliance is a dollar that could have been used to invest back in the business or to hire another employee. Every hour that a small employer spends on tax compliance is an hour wasted that could have been spent on their actual business. It’s time to simplify our tax system to help our small businesses.”

 

SHAWNEE COUNTY – A Kansas teen was injured in an accident just after 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday in Shawnee County.

A 1996 Ford Truck, driven by Levi D. Towns, 17, Topeka, was westbound in the 5200 block of SW 69th Street when it left the roadway, entered the north ditch, and hit a tree, according to a media release from the Shawnee County Sheriff.

First responders extricated Towns from the vehicle and he was transported to Stormont Vail.

Towns was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the sheriff’s department.

The accident is still under investigation.

MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials say there’s no longer any doubt that the Zika virus causes severe birth defects.

Experts had been cautious about making a definitive link despite a surge of babies born with a rare birth defect in Brazil during a Zika outbreak. The virus is mainly spread by mosquitoes, and no mosquito-borne virus had ever been known to cause birth defects.

But on Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there’s enough evidence now to declare Zika the cause of a birth defect called microcephaly (my-kroh-SEF’-uh-lee) and other brain abnormalities.

CDC officials said their advice to pregnant women won’t change. Pregnant women should avoid traveling to places where the Zika virus is spreading, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

BUTLER COUNTY – A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just after 5p.m. on Wednesday in Butler County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Dodge van driven by Kathryn Hass, 44, Potwin, was southbound on Kansas 196 two miles south of NW 30 Road.

The van rear-ended a semi that had slowed due to a grass fire on the west side of the roadway and low visibility.

Haas was transported to Susan B. Allen Hospital.

The semi driver Mitchell Collins, 56, El Dorado, was not injured.

Both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A door sales and service company plans to expand and renovate its headquarters in Kansas and add 150 new jobs.

The Kansas Commerce Commission announced in a news release Wednesday that DH Pace Company will spend about $3 million to expand its corporate headquarters in Olathe to accommodate the new employees.

In 2013, DH Pace relocated from four locations in North Kansas City, Missouri, into one plant in Olathe. The construction is expected to be completed about June 30.

DH Pace Company operates facilities in over 25 markets throughout the U.S. It has more than 1,500 employees with annual sales exceeding $300 million.

ELLS WORTH COUNTY –Two people were injured in an accident just before 3p.m. on Wednesday in Ellsworth County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix driven by Shaun Anthony Tanner, 25, Independence, MO., was westbound on Interstate 70 at Elkhorn Creek Bridge.

The vehicle left the roadway struck the bridge center and rolled.

Tanner and a passenger Steven Tanner, 54, Independence, MO., were transported to Wesley Medical Center.

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

ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has no full-time professional environmental engineers left working in the regulatory agency entrusted with overseeing more than 1,750 large-scale livestock feedlots.

State environmental regulators say four engineering vacancies have put the brakes on anybody getting a new facility started or expanding one because there is a backlog of between 20 and 30 permits and delays of an additional three months to review livestock wastewater permit applications.

The livestock-feeding industry says the lack of engineers at the state regulatory agency is not a pressing issue.

But environmentalists say the public should care because the biggest risks are groundwater and surface water contamination, and avoiding that requires sufficient engineering judgment to ensure feedlots are built correctly.

SALINA – Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a report of a 12-year-old boy threatening 3 children on a school playground.

Just after 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, police officers were sent to the Schilling Elementary School playground in Salina when parents reported a boy chased three children with a brown handled knife with a 4-inch blade, according to Salina Police Captain Mike Sweeney.

The boy also allegedly threatened to stab the children if they did not leave the playground.

After police learned his identity, the boy was taken into custody at his home.

Charges of aggravated assault and criminal threats are being requested. He is being held at the juvenile detention center in Junction City

Sweeney said officers dealt with the same boy just before 3p.m. on Tuesday when police responded to a report about a student with a gun on a school bus.

The bus was stopped at Target and officers found the boy had a 4″ long toy, cap rifle.

Police took the toy gun from the boy and contacted his mother to take him home.

There are no charges requested in connection with the incident on the bus.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A legal fight has ended over the Sedgwick County Zoo’s new African elephants.

The Wichita Eagle reports that animal-rights group Friends of Animals dropped its lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for approving the transport of 17 elephants from Swaziland to zoos in Wichita, Dallas and Omaha.

Friends of Animals’ lawyer Jennifer Best says dropping the suit was a tough decision that came down to how to best use the group’s time and resources.

The Connecticut-based advocacy group filed the suit in February after the agency approved the transfer in January. The group argued that the agency didn’t consider the mental and physical toll on the elephants.

The zoos joined the government’s side and went ahead with the transfer about a month ago as a judge denied the group’s last-ditch effort to stop it.

HUTCHINSON– One of two men charged with the beating of a Reno County Correctional Facility inmate was scheduled to have his trial begin Tuesday, but he avoided trial and entered a plea in the case instead.

William Alexander and his brother Antoine are both charged by the state with a single count of aggravated battery.

They are accused of beating 30-year-old Darrell Beachy in September of 2015, in one of the pods at the new county facility.

Beachy was beaten so severely, he was taken by air-ambulance to a Wichita hospital.

William Alexander entered a plea to a lesser level of aggravated battery meaning at sentencing he will receive less time for the conviction.

Sentencing in this case for June 3.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A suburban dream-home prototype that was built in the 1950s has completed its nine-mile journey to a new location in suburban Kansas City.

The Johnson County Museum’s All-Electric House began its journey Tuesday night in Shawnee. It arrived early Wednesday at the new Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center in Overland Park, where it will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition.

The ranch house was built in Prairie Village as a model show house for Kansas City Power & Light, which later donated the structure. It has been carefully restored.

Johnson County Museum Director Mindi Love says the house was called the “Lazy Man’s Paradise” when it was built. She told KCTV it contained a lot of electrical features and gadgetry that weren’t typical at the time.

GEARY COUNTY- A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just before 10a.m. on Wednesday in Geary County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2015 Mazda passenger car driven by Veronica Marie Mangiaracino, 46, Alta Vista, was eastbound on Old Highway 18 three miles south of Interstate 70.

The Mazda turned north into the path of 2007 Toyota passenger car driven by Mounir G. El- Aasar, 55, Manhattan, that was southbound on Kansas 177.

The vehicles collided in the northbound lanes.

Mangiaracino was transported to the hospital in Manhattan.

El- Aasar was not injured.

Both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.