A collision between a motorcycle and a buffalo has landed a southeastern Kansas man in the hospital with serious injuries.

Montgomery County sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Hand told The Independence Daily Reporter the collision happened around 4:25 a.m. Thursday on a county road southwest of the city.

The deputy says a 49-year-old Independence man was riding his motorcycle when he ran into a buffalo that was in the roadway.

The man was airlifted to Freeman Hospital in Joplin, Mo., for surgery. Sheriff Robert Dierks told the newspaper the man was in critical condition Thursday afternoon.

Gov. Sam Brownback has signed his first batch of bills that repeals a number of Kansas laws identified by his administration as outdated.

The four bills signed Thursday were the first group to make it to the Republican governor’s desk out of 51 individual statutes recommended for removal. He was joined by Secretary of Administration Dennis Taylor, who has been assigned to identify specific items for repeal.

Brownback created the repeal office within Taylor’s agency in 2011, saying there was a need for the state to identify and remove statutes and regulation that were unnecessary and viewed as an impediment to government efficiency.

The governor said Thursday the changes would streamline licensing and application processes so the state can focus on growing business and families.

The Repealer bills signed into law are:

·HB 2669 repeals statutes concerning the matron of a county jail. The statutes, which were enacted in 1913, are outdated and no longer reflect contemporary jail operations, civil service ordinances, state and federal employment law, or the role of female law enforcement officers.

·HB 2675 revises a statute concerning the duties of county clerks and county appraisers with regard to the listing and valuation of real estate. The Secretary of Administration indicated the statute is out-of-date, as most of the processes associated with completing the real estate assessment rolls is done electronically.

·HB 2677 eliminates the distinction that counties with a population greater than 25,000 must appoint a full-time county appraiser, while counties with a population of 25,000 or less may appoint either a full-time or part-time appraiser.

·HB 2683 amends one statute and repeals several other statutes concerning the Director of Penal Institutions which are outmoded.

The lack of rainfall in Kansas in 2011 led to intense declines in groundwater levels around the state.

The Hutchinson News reports that the Ogallala Aquifer in southwest Kansas usually sees annual declines, but its decline in 2011 was one of the worst in decades. Officials with the Kansas Geological Survey said the aquifer there dropped an average 3.78 feet in 2011. That’s compared to a drop of about 3 feet in 2010 and 1.39 feet in 2009.

Much of Kansas received 25 to 50 percent of normal precipitation last year.

In central and south-central Kansas where groundwater levels usually show gains or only modest declines, the water table in the Equus Beds decreased an average 3.17 feet, and Big Bend district No. 5 dropped an average 3 feet.

A former assistant prosecutor in southeastern Kansas has been convicted of methamphetamine-related charges stemming from a search of his former Galena law office.

A Cherokee County jury on Wednesday found 47-year-old Jeffrey Pittman, of Carterville, Mo., guilty of conspiracy to possess meth and to traffic contraband into a correctional institution. He was also convicted of 2 counts of using a communication facility in a conspiracy to possess methamphetamine.

Pittman was stopped in Galena for a defective brake light in June 2009 and arrested on an Oklahoma warrant for possessing meth ingredients.

Authorities said a search of his former law office in Galena turned up meth ingredients, items used to make the illegal drug and drug paraphernalia.

Pittman was assistant Cherokee County attorney from March 2001 to February 2002.

A bill aimed at giving Kansas health care providers more legal protection if they want to avoid any involvement in abortions is moving toward House passage.

The House gave the bill first-round approval Wednesday on a voice vote. A final vote is set for Thursday, and the measure is expected to pass and go to the Senate.

Supporters brushed aside criticism that the bill is broad enough to let doctors and pharmacists refuse to provide birth control.

Kansas already has a law that says that no one can be forced to participate in an abortion or penalized for refusing. This year’s measure says health care providers couldn’t be required to refer patients for abortion care or to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs.

A bill that supporters say enshrines religious freedom in state statutes has won first-round approval in the Kansas House.

The 89-27 vote Wednesday sent the measure to final action, set for Thursday.

Conservative Republicans drafted the bill to protect Kansas residents from laws that they say infringe upon their rights to religious freedom.

The bill declares that state and local government policies shall not “substantially burden” people’s right to exercise their religious beliefs without showing a compelling interest and imposing the burden in the least restrictive way possible.

It also declares that people have the right to sue state and local government agencies if they feel their religious freedoms have been abridged.

Critics argue the bill would allow discrimination under the guise of protecting religious beliefs.

Attorneys have finished narrowing the field of prospective jurors for the trial of a Kansas man accused of killing a Great Bend girl and burning her body at the asphalt plant where he worked.

Jury selection for the trial of 38-year-old Adam Longoria began Monday in Barton County District Court. From an initial group of about 400, lawyers settled Wednesday on a final pool of 44 prospective jurors.

Longoria, of Great Bend, faces life in prison without parole if he’s convicted of capital murder in the death of 14-year-old Alicia DeBolt in August 2010.

The final panel of 12 jurors and two alternates will be selected Thursday, when opening statements are also expected.

Proposals for cracking down on illegal immigration in Kansas are foundering because of a split among majority Republicans in the state House.

But House GOP leaders were under pressure Wednesday to get legislation moving.

House Speaker Mike O’Neal, of Hutchinson, told fellow Republicans during a caucus meeting that he’d prefer to avoid a debate on immigration because it would be divisive.

Some conservatives want the House to debate proposals favored by Secretary of State Kris Kobach (KOH’-bahk), who helped draft tough immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona. Some rural Republicans back a proposal from influential business groups to create a program to place some illegal immigrants in hard-to-fill jobs in agriculture and other industries.

Bills taking both approaches have stalled in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.

A Russell native who died when part of a grain elevator collapsed will have a permanent memorial in his hometown.

Russell High School has named a memorial patio and shelter house for Sean Banks, who graduated from the school.

The 19-year-old Banks died June 24, 2010, when part of the Russell grain elevator collapsed.

The memorial was introduced between the school’s baseball games Monday.

The Sean Banks Memorial Patio and Shelterhouse is between the football field and baseball field. It was built using funds from Banks’ memorial, with some funds coming from the school.

Banks was a three-sport athlete at Russell, competing in football, wrestling and baseball.

It’s almost unimaginable. No one picked the six correct numbers in the latest multi-state Mega Millions lottery game, sending the jackpot to a record $476 million for the Friday drawing.

Tuesday night’s jackpot was $363 million, fed by weeks of drawings without a top winner. The previous record jackpot in the Mega Millions game was $390 million in 2007, split by two winners in New Jersey and Georgia.

In Tuesday night’s game, 47 players came very close, matching 5 of the 6 winning numbers. Each of those tickets is worth at least $250,000.

Mega Millions is played in more than 40 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The winning numbers Tuesday night were: Nine, 19, 34, 44 and 51. The Mega Ball was 24.

The Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in eastern Kansas has resumed producing electricity.

The plant was brought back on line Tuesday following a shutdown of about two months.

Problems at the plant began Jan. 13 when an electrical circuit breaker failed. Wolf Creek employees tried to switch to power coming in from the electrical grid, but a transformer failed and the plant lost its connection to the grid.

It was the third time in four years that Wolf Creek lost all off-site power.

Wolf Creek is owned by Kansas City Power & Light Co., Topeka-based Westar Energy and the Kansas Electric Power Cooperative. During a shutdown, the companies rely on other generating plants they own or buy electricity from other utilities.