High school students from across Kansas are attending the Kansas Highway Patrol’s Cadet Law Academy this week in Salina.

The camp gives students a condensed version of the patrol’s training.

The Salina Journal reports many of the students, who will be seniors in the fall, are considering a career in law enforcement.

While at the camp, the students experience traffic stops, pursuit driving, as well as firearms and defense training. On Tuesday, they were flying over Saline County in patrol airplanes. They also are required to do daily exercise and have their rooms inspected for cleanliness.

The camp is a nationally sanctioned program sponsored by the American Legion and Legion Auxiliary.

More allegations of abuse at a Kansas military boarding school have been raised by parents of former cadets from across the nation. Officials of St. John’s Military School in Salina strongly deny the claims.

A motion filed in federal court in Wichita seeks to add four more plaintiffs to the case against the school. The families also want to amend the lawsuit to add St. John’s president as a defendant, and to add a claim that evidence was destroyed after the lawsuit was originally filed.

St. John’s issued a three-page statement Wednesday denying the latest allegations of abuse. The school also says claims that it destroyed evidence are untrue.

In addition, St. John’s argues that federal law prevents its president from being personally named in a civil lawsuit.

Sedgwick County authorities and two Wichita lawyers are investigating allegations that a county deputy raped a male inmate in his cell in early June.

Sheriff Robert Hinshaw confirmed a rape allegation is being investigated. He said the deputy has been reassigned to a job in which he has no contact with inmates.

The lawyers, Kurt Kerns and Mark Schoenhofer, say they plan to file a notice with the county. That’s the first step toward a possible lawsuit alleging multiple civil rights violations and negligence.

Kerns says the inmate is a younger man who was jailed on a non-violent drug offense.

The Wichita Eagle reports the rape allegation comes at a time when the jail has been sued in federal court over treatment of mentally ill inmates.

A new Kansas law will require jail time for repeat drunken drivers who refuse breath and blood tests.

The law takes effect July 1. First-time offenders are exempted from the law.

The Kansas City Star reports under current Kansas law, refusing the tests generally leads to a driver’s license being suspended.

Supporters of the new law say that doesn’t deter chronic offenders who drive with or without a license. They say the new law takes away incentives to refuse the tests. Drivers will face the same penalties as a DUI conviction, up to a year in jail for those with multiple convictions.

But critics say it will cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased costs for incarcerations and potential court challenges.

A three-week search for the suspect in the botched theft of a cash machine outside an eastern Kansas bank has ended.

Franklin County authorities had identified a person of interest shortly after an ATM was removed the morning of May 20 outside Patriots Bank in Princeton. The Lawrence Journal-World reports the 33-year-old man was arrested Tuesday outside a hospital in Emporia.

The suspect was being held on several charges including felony theft, criminal damage and fleeing.

Franklin County deputies responded to a bank alarm the morning of the crime and arrived to see the ATM being slowly pushed along a street by a pickup truck.

The driver abandoned the cash machine and sped away, then crashed the truck several miles away and ran off.

Authorities in a small, south-central Kansas town are investigating the shooting death of a 31-year-old man as a homicide.

The Hutchinson News reports reports a woman was also shot and wounded at the home in the town of Hardtner. Barber County Attorney Richard Raleigh says the woman’s injuries were not life-threatening.

The man that was killed has been identified as Tony Rosenbaum.

Authorities said the woman called 911 from the nearby home of relatives around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Sheriff’s officers and Kansas Highway Patrol troopers quickly arrived at the house where the shootings occurred but didn’t enter until about 8 a.m., fearing a suspect might still be inside.

The investigation is ongoing. We will update this story as more information is released.

Kansas National Guard helicopters are heading to Colorado to assist crews fighting wildfires.

The adjutant general’s department said Tuesday that helicopters from the 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation Regiment are being deployed to help fight the fires that have forced hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes.

The fires cover 64 square miles in an area 15 miles from Fort Collins. The fires have already destroyed more than 100 structures.

The Guard’s Black Hawk helicopters are equipped with buckets that can carry 660 gallons of water to dump on fires. The water can be scooped from local sources, such as ponds and lakes.

The Kansas soldiers are expected to be deployed as long as 15 days.

A 77-year-old former mail carrier who did not deliver thousands of pieces of mail was fined $1,000 but was spared from prison.

A court filing Tuesday shows Dixie Bontrager, of Whitting, also will not serve any probation on the mail theft conviction.

Her route included Holton and Circleville in northeast Kansas.

Agents searching abandoned vehicles on her property in 2010 found 496 first-class items and 2,786 standard mail items dating back to 2002 that she didn’t deliver on her 115-mile route. They also found 151 periodicals, 121 telephone books and two parcels.

Her attorney, Richard Lake, wrote Bontrager discarded undeliverable junk mail. He said she has been devastated and reluctant to show her face in the community.

Bontrager was fired in 2010 after 30 years on the job.

The government is sticking with its earlier forecast on the projected size of the Kansas winter wheat harvest.

The Kansas Agricultural Service on Tuesday projected Kansas farmers would harvest 387 million bushels. That estimate is unchanged from last month’s report.

If the agency is right, that would make it the highest wheat production since 2003 in Kansas. This year’s crop is expected to be 40 percent bigger than the drought-devastated 2011 harvest.

The service predicted yields will average about 43 bushels per acre, also unchanged from a month ago.

Nationwide, winter wheat production is forecast at 1.68 billion bushels. That is down 1 percent from last month’s projections.

All the newest estimates are based on crop conditions as of June 1.

The Kansas State Board of Education is preparing to review the first draft of proposed science standards that could renew the debate over teaching evolution.

The standards on the board’s Tuesday afternoon agenda are being drafted by 26 states, including Kansas, along with the National Research Council. The goal is to create guidelines that can be used by all states, and Kansas is likely to consider whether to adopt them next year.

State Board of Education member Ken Willard, a Republican from Hutchinson, said last week he considers the initial draft problematic. That document was released in May and describes evolution as a well-established, core scientific concept.

Kansas has switched multiple times between standards expressing skepticism about the theory and evolution-friendly guidelines like the ones now in place.

Wichita police say gang members have been using social media to organize, recruit members and just to get their messages out.

Detective Chad Beard of the Wichita Police Department’s gang and felony assault unit says gangs like the Crips and the Spanish Gangster Disciples have their own Facebook fan pages and have been posting pictures of social events, adding friends and commenting on posts.

Police say monitoring the social media activity of known and suspected gang members has become a key component of tracking gang activity and the sites can also provide police with useful information.

The Wichita Eagle reports that police say the move to social media has also apparently led to less graffiti around Wichita.