CareerCast.com has issues its annual listing of the Most Endangered Jobs of 2015. The list includes mail carriers, newspaper reporters and farmers.

Click HERE for the complete list.

LIBERAL – Law enforcement authorities in Seward County are investigating a car accident that involved the death of a Kansas man.

Just after 8:30p.m. on Monday emergency responders were dispatched to 1350 Jewell Avenue for a reported injury accident where a vehicle had struck a house and the driver was not breathing, according to a media release from Liberal Police.

Responding officers arrived to find a woman standing at the driver’s side door attempting chest compressions on the driver.

The driver was later identified as a 36-year-old man.

He was transported to Southwest Medical Center in serious condition and died.

Investigating officers later learned that the driver was not feeling well and pulled over to switch places with the passenger.

As the passenger made her way around to the driver’s door, the driver pressed on the accelerator and proceeded eastbound in the 1300 block of Jewell Avenue before coming to rest against the front porch of a house.

Authorities are waiting for results of an autopsy. The victim’s name has not been released.

BY BRYAN THOMPSON

Climate change is real and must be addressed head-on to prevent future food shortages. That’s the message Cargill Executive Director Greg Page delivered Monday night to an audience at Kansas State University in Manhattan.

“Climate change is not a particularly popular subject in much of the heartland,” he said. “But at Cargill, we have come to believe that it is important to have serious conversations about what we can do now to accommodate a range of climate scenarios, and for agriculture to take part in those conversations and in making reasonable preparations.”

In an interview after his talk, Page spoke about the need to err on the side of caution when dealing with a global issue like climate change.

“If this is about flooding the basements of some resort hotels in Florida, that’s one kind of a problem,” he said. “But when it starts to impact the potential for us to feed the 9 billion people that we could be confronting (by 2050), I think it’s important for people at both extremes to realize they don’t know the answer. And the fact we don’t know the answer does not permit us to do nothing.”

Page co-chaired a group of business leaders who looked at the economic risks under various climate change scenarios. Their report, “Risky Business,” concluded that farmers in northern states likely would benefit from a longer growing season. But that would be more than offset by lost production in the southern grain belt.

“U.S. production of corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton could decline by 14 percent by mid-century, and by as much as 42 percent by late-century,” he said.

But Page said that scenario doesn’t have to come true if farmers adapt to the changing climate — as he’s confident they will. He noted that adaptation already is happening in his home state of North Dakota. As the climate has warmed there, farmers have been able to take advantage of an average of nine additional frost-free days a year. That longer growing season means they can now grow 30 crops.

“At this stage, the good that’s happened in the top 2 degrees of latitude, basically central North Dakota and up, has not come at the expense of any other place,” Page said. “The most likely scenario in the study that Risky Business published is that we are going to cross that sometime in the next 20 years, the point at which there will be places that will start giving up productivity.”

Page noted that farmers already have technology that might be able to overcome those projected productivity losses.

“The temperatures that are predicted in the ‘Risky Business’ study are actually lower than the temperatures faced by our corn-farming customers in Mato Grosso, Brazil, or in Thailand,” he said. U.S. Midwest farmers could adopt some of their methods when facing possible temperature increases in the coming decades, Page said.

The debate over whether climate change is caused by human activity — like burning fossil fuels — is beside the point, he said.

“If we thought, based on seismology, that we were going to have a period of increased volcanic activity that was going to impact the climate, would we then say that because we didn’t cause it we don’t need to do anything to prepare? What difference does it make, other than on the issue of trying to make people stop certain behaviors? From an agricultural standpoint, we have to prepare ourselves for a different climate than we have today,” Page said.

While Cargill has faced some criticism for addressing climate change, Page said neither he nor the company regrets the decision.

“Should agriculture remain — in the perception of many consumers and many of the world’s biggest packaged-foods companies — deniers and people that are unwilling to engage?” he asked. “Is that a good brand for us, collectively, to carry to consumers, who increasingly, by survey, think to some degree or another this is happening, and that it’s true?”

It’s only natural for Cargill to play a leading role in agriculture’s response to climate change, he said, because the company has operations all over the world.

Page spoke at K-State as part of its Henry C. Gardiner Global Food Systems Lecture Series. He started at Cargill in 1974 as a trainee in its feed division. In 2007 he became CEO of Cargill and later that year also was named chairman. He retired as Cargill’s CEO in 2013 but continues to serve as executive director.

Bryan Thompson is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A 51-year-old Lawrence man has been convicted on charges accusing him of attempted human trafficking at a massage parlor.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Chen Li reached a plea deal and pleaded no contest Tuesday to attempted human trafficking and promoting the sale of sexual relations. He was originally charged with aggravated human trafficking and promoting the sale of sexual relations.

He was scheduled for a jury trial Oct. 26.

Assistant Douglas County District Attorney Mark Simpson says women were recruited to work at the massage parlor under the guise of a legitimate job and were then coerced into involuntary sexual services.

In 2013, Li and a co-defendant pleaded no contest to promoting prostitution after a police raid on two massage businesses in Bonner Springs.

FREDONIA – A Kansas man died in an accident just before 8p.m. on Tuesday in Wilson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2003 Suzuki motorcycle driven by Brian L. Taylor, 37, Fredonia, was westbound on 1400 Road three miles north of Fredonia.

A cat entered the roadway. The driver locked up the brakes to avoid a collision with the animal and was thrown from the motorcycle.

Taylor was transported to Wesley Medical Center where he died.

GARDEN CITY- One man died and four others were injured in an accident just before 5p.m. on Tuesday in Finney County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Chevy Trailblazer driven by Ahmed A. Osman, 33, Garden City, was westbound on U.S. 50 just west of the 83 Junction

The SUV left the right side of the roadway and rolled.

Osman and passengers Ali H. Farah, 29, Yusuf B. Ibrahim, 23,, Abdi Farah, 30, and Mowlid Farah, 24, all of Garden City were transported to St. Catherine’s Hospital.

Yusuf B. Ibrahim died at the hospital.

Mowlid and Abdi Farah were later transported to a hospital in Wichita.

Yusuf Ibrahim, Molwid and Abdi Farah were not wearing seat belts, according to the KHP.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — One of the state’s biggest counties has asked Kansas health officials to block people living in the country illegally from receiving benefits under the federal nutrition program Woman, Infants and Children.

The Wichita Eagle reports three of the five Sedgwick County commissioners supported a letter chairman Richard Ranzau sent to the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment last week seeking the change.

The WIC program issues checks to low-income families for foods like milk, eggs, cereal, cheese and baby formula. Ranzau wrote that the majority of commissioners are “very concerned that the WIC program provides benefits to persons who are not citizens.

Two commissioners opposed asking the state to change its rules, saying the 3-2 consensus doesn’t reflect the feelings of the majority of county residents.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Garden City man has been sentenced to nine years in federal prison for distributing child pornography.

According to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom, 33-year-old Alfredo Franco Jr. was sentenced Tuesday. He had pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography. Prosecutors say Franco downloaded and shared child pornography over the Internet from June 2012 to November 2013.

Grissom says that during the execution of a search warrant at Franco’s home, investigators found images with creation dates that spanned a year’s time on his computer.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas doctor and his wife are appealing decades-long prison sentences for running a clinic linked to 68 overdose deaths.

Their attorneys filed notice Tuesday of their decision to challenge the sentences to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

Dr. Stephen Schneider was resentenced last month again to 30 years, while his wife, Linda, was again given 33 years.

Their resentencing came in the wake of a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the victim’s drug use had to be the actual cause of death, not merely a contributing factor. But the ruling ultimately did nothing to change the length of prison time.

The Haysville couple was convicted in 2010 of conspiracy to commit health care fraud resulting in those deaths, unlawfully prescribing drugs, health care fraud and money laundering.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man has pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a 49-year-old woman in Topeka.

The Topeka Capital-Journal  reports that 30-year-old Jermaine Thomas Brown pleaded guilty Tuesday to intentional second-degree murder, solicitation of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the death of Terri Sims.

Prosecutors say Sims was opening the front door of her house on Sept. 12, 2012, when someone opened fire, striking her nine times. Prosecutors say they don’t believe Sims was the intended target, and that Brown ordered two men to go to the home to shoot the boyfriend of Sims’ daughter.

Brown’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Dec. 3. He faces up to 25 years in prison.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has seen its number of incomplete voter registrations decline by nearly 6,700 in less than two weeks as counties follow a directive from Secretary of State Kris Kobach to cull their records.

Kobach’s office said Tuesday that the state had about 31,000 incomplete registrations as of Tuesday, compared to about 37,700 when the Republican secretary of state’s directive took effect on Oct. 2. The decline is nearly 18 percent.

Most incomplete registrations are for people who’ve failed to comply with a 2013 law requiring new voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when registering.

Kobach imposed a new rule requiring county election officials to cancel registrations that are incomplete for more than 90 days.

He contends the proof-of-citizenship requirement prevents election fraud. Critics say it suppresses turnout.

MARK PRATT, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — With younger generations using cellphones less for actual conversation and more for text messaging, suicide prevention organizations are setting up ways that let distraught youths seek help that way.

The Massachusetts suicide prevention organization Samaritans is now accepting text messages. Executive Director Steve Mongeau says the new option started this month and is specifically aimed at young people who may feel more comfortable communicating via text.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens and college age young adults.

Organizations around the country have used this text prevention option.  Find the suicide prevention hotline in Kansas communities here.

 

DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Responding to a furor over undercover videos, Planned Parenthood says it will maintain programs at some of its clinics that make fetal tissue available for research, but will no longer accept any sort of payment to cover the costs of those programs.

Anti-abortion activists who recently released a series of covertly filmed videos have contended that Planned Parenthood officials sought profits from their programs providing post-abortion fetal tissue to researchers. Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceptively edited and denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement of costs.

The new policy — forgoing even permissible reimbursement — was outlined in a letter sent Tuesday by Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health.