MANHATTAN – Law enforcement authorities in Riley County are investigating a fatal accident just before 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

The Riley County Police Department reported a 2010 Cadillac SRX driven by a 34-year-old woman hit a pedestrian, Ruby Johnson, 93, Manhattan, in the parking lot of the First Lutheran Church, 930 Poyntz Avenue.

Johnson was transported Via Christi Hospital where she died.

The accident remains under investigation. Police do not anticipate any arrests to be made or citations to be issued.

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas would increase its vehicle registration fees to help its Highway Patrol put more troopers on the state’s highways under a bill the state Senate approved.

The Senate on Tuesday voted 24-14 for a measure that boosts the fee for each vehicle’s registration by $3.25. The measure goes next to the House.

Of the increase, $2 will go to the patrol and $1.25 to the state’s center in Hutchinson for training law enforcement officers.

The measure would allow the patrol to hire an additional 75 troopers.

Thirty-five of the state’s 105 counties have no assigned trooper, and the patrol has about 80 fewer troopers than it did a decade ago.

Critics of the bill said the state should use general tax dollars to pay for public safety needs.

MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials are investigating more than a dozen possible Zika infections that may have been spread through sex.

The 14 cases all involve men who visited areas with Zika outbreaks, and who many have infected their female sex partners, who had not traveled.

Zika virus is mainly spread by mosquito bites. But there have been at least two reported cases of sexual transmission, including a recent case in Texas.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the 14 cases include two pregnant women whose infections have been confirmed. Tests are pending for their male partners.

Zika virus causes — at worst — only mild symptom in most people. But in Brazil, health officials have reported an apparent link between Zika infection and a rare birth defect.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas House members are comfortable raising the speed limit on some highways to 70 miles per hour, but they aren’t ready to increase it to 80 on interstates.

The House approved a bill on a 106-19 vote Tuesday to allow the state’s secretary of transportation to increase the speed limits on non-interstate highways another 5 miles per hour, from the current 65. The measure goes next to the Senate.

The House’s action came after it voted 90-24 against a proposal from Republican Rep. John Bradford of Lansing to increase the speed limit on interstates to 80 mph from the current 75.

Bradford noted that seven other states have top speed limits of 80 or 85 miles per hour. But opponents cited safety concerns in rejecting his proposal.

KANSAS CITY, KAN. – A man who managed a restaurant in Ottawa, Kan., was sentenced Tuesday for harboring undocumented workers, according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom.

He was sentenced to six months in federal custody, followed by six months home confinement and a fine of $4,000. After serving his sentence, he will be on supervised release for three years.

Alex Sanchez, Jr., 36, who was the manager of El Mezcal Mexican Restaurant in Ottawa, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of harboring undocumented workers for commercial advantage. In his plea, he admitted that in 2011 he paid a fine of $22,589 fine when Immigration and Customs Enforcement found him in violation of rules for I-9 employee eligibility verification forms.

Despite the fine, he continued to employ workers in 2012 who he knew were not legally in the United States. He provided housing for the undocumented workers and paid them in cash.

Grissom commended Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Oakley and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Colin Wood for their work on the case.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The federal Justice Department is refusing to support a U.S. elections official who sided with Kansas, Alabama and Georgia in a fight over whether voters should have to show proof of citizenship.

The government contends in a court filing that the executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission strayed from federal law when he required citizenship proof for people in those three states who register using a national form.

Residents of other states only need to swear that they are citizens, not show proof.

The Justice Department is siding with voting rights group in urging a federal judge to temporarily block the proof-of-citizenship requirements for residents in the three states.

The election assistance commission’s director Brian Newby had granted the states’ request to change form’s instructions for their residents.

PERRY, Kan. (AP) — The head of a northeast Kansas school district is among three administrators who won’t return next year amid a student drug-testing controversy.

The Lawrence Journal-World  reports that Perry-Lecompton Superintendent Denis Yoder’s decision to retire comes after the school board decided not to renew the high school principal and assistant principal’s contracts.

One issue is a drug-testing policy that took effect at the high school as the new semester began. District officials confirmed at the time that teachers and most school district staff wouldn’t undergo drug testing and that the assistant principal was twice convicted for drunken driving.

Yoder says publicity surrounding the new policy affected the board’s decision not to renew the contracts of the high school officials. But he says it “isn’t necessarily” the reason he’s leaving.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A state medical board has accused the former head of a Topeka birthing center with “gross negligence” in a settlement.

Josie Norris was leading the Topeka Birth and Women’s Center last February when it was temporarily suspended amid complaints about an unusually high number of medical problems in women and their newborns. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that a consent order filed in December says Norris “engaged in conduct likely to harm the public.” The settlement adds that she “denies any unprofessional conduct.”

Norris is required to divest of financial interests with the center under the settlement with the Board of Healing Arts. It also bars her from performing obstetrical or gynecological surgical care and chronic pain management care. But she is still allowed to conduct non-surgical gynecological care.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Senate has approved a proposal for a pilot program to have married couples who don’t smoke or drink alcohol serve as foster parents for abused and neglected children.

The vote Tuesday was 24-15 on a bill from conservative Republican Sen. Forrest Knox of Altoona. The measure goes next to the House.

Knox’s bill sets up a program in which couples in “stable” marriages for at least seven years volunteer to be foster parents. Only one spouse in a so-called CARE foster family could work outside the home.

But such couples could be reimbursed by the state for up to $4,000 a year in home or private schooling expenses.

Critics predicted the measure would siphon money from public schools and said passing it suggests other families aren’t as good.

The Senate has also passed a bill to lessen the penalties for sexting by middle and high school students in hopes that prosecutors will be willing to combat the practice.

The vote Tuesday was 40-0. The bill goes next to the House, and its members approved their own version of the legislation earlier this month.

Both measures focus on 12- to 18-year-olds accused of transmitting images of a nude child. Under existing state law, prosecutors are restricted to filing a felony charge that carries a prison sentence up to 11 years and four months and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Both chambers’ bills make a first offense by someone 18 or younger a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

 

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Pat Roberts, Jerry Moran and Congressman Mike Pompeo were not happy with President’s Obama’s  announcement Tuesday to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer detainees to the United States:

“The president’s move down the unlawful path to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is reckless – especially after numerous Department of Defense officials and his own Attorney General confirmed it is against the law, said Moran.

 

Terrorists who want to destroy US shouldn’t be brought to our shores—period. #Gitmo is the right place to keep them https://t.co/RhpnO1byYq

— Mike Pompeo (@RepMikePompeo) February 23, 2016

 

Senator Pat Roberts agreed, “The absence of a specific recommendation for an alternative location proves that there is no suitable location. The Congress and the American people are against the President’s desire to move these terrorists to the heart of any American community. It is against the law. Like most of the President’s attempts to skirt the law and enact his agenda, doubtlessly this action will end up in the courts.

“The plan leaves the details to Congress, which has overwhelmingly and time after time, opposed this action in the first place.

“I reject the President’s rational that closing GITMO will stop the ability of terrorists to recruit new jihadis. This notion is ridiculous. It will simply establish a GITMO north. Given the ever growing threat of ISIS and reports that future battlefield captures are inevitable, the President cannot prove closing the facility will improve our security, no matter how much he wishes it so. Nothing in this report substantiates his assertions.

“There is no intelligence estimate of the threat it may pose to those living and working in these communities. It will be at great cost to the American people both in precious taxpayer dollars and most important, in their safety and peace of mind.

“Kansans and those in Fort Leavenworth are against this transfer and are angry at this President who risks their security in forcing this threat upon them. In fact, most Kansans say this action is further grounds for impeachment. I will continue to fight the President no matter where he wants to send terrorists to our shores.

Sites in Kansas, South Carolina and Colorado have been surveyed as potential replacements for Guantanamo. Senators Roberts, Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Cory Gardner (R-Co.) have been outspoken opponents of President Obama’s intentions to close Guantanamo Bay.

 

 

SHAWNEE COUNTY- A Kansas teen was injured in an accident just before 9a.m. on Tuesday in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2013 Honda CRV driven by Genevieve M. Cancelada, 19, Wamego, was eastbound on U.S. 24 at 54th Street.

The vehicle traveled off of the edge of the roadway. The driver over corrected and the vehicle rolled into the south ditch

Cancelada was transported to St. Francis Medical Center. She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City corrections worker is accused of having sexual contact with an adult offender in an intensive drug treatment program.

The Kansas City Star reports that 24-year-old Alyssa Jo Staats, of Olathe, made a first appearance Monday in Johnson County District Court on three felony counts of unlawful sexual relations. She was released on $15,000 bond. Her attorney, Tom Bath, didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.

The charges allege that the sexual contact occurred last year while Staats was working for the Johnson County Department of Corrections. Department officials said they couldn’t comment further because it’s a personnel matter.

Kansas law bars an employee or volunteer of a corrections facility or jail to have sexual contact with an offender, even if it’s consensual.

LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press
KATHLEEN HENNESSEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says the detention center at Guantanamo Bay undermines America’s national security and needs to be closed.

Watch the President’s statement here.

Obama says the detention center is counterproductive in the fight against terrorism because it’s used as propaganda to recruit terrorists and drains military resources.

The White House released Obama’s plan to close the facility on Tuesday, but the plan faces stiff opposition from the GOP-led Congress.

The plan calls for transferring remaining detainees to the United States and seeks up to $475 million in construction costs that would ultimately be offset by as much as $180 million per year in operating cost savings. It does not specify where in the U.S. the detainees would go.