A bill permitting Kansas to join an interstate compact to end federal rules for health care programs has received first-round approval in the state House.

The measure advanced on an unrecorded 80-37 vote Tuesday. The bill is expected to pass on final action Wednesday and go to the Senate.

It’s a protest from the Republican-dominated Legislature against health care policies championed by Democratic President Barack Obama.

Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have already enacted similar laws encouraging a compact, which would then let states run programs like Medicaid and Medicare as they see fit. The federal government sets rules for the programs for the needy and elderly and provides much of the funding.

But the measure is largely symbolic for now, because Congress would have to approve the compact.

The Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane brought in $21.6 million in gambling revenue through January.

The Kansas Lottery said Monday that the total includes several “soft openings” and a demonstration for state regulators before the casino officially opened in late December.

The casino near Mulvane expects to open a five-table poker room soon, and will expand to 2,000 slot machines, 45 tables and a 12-table poker room when its permanent casino opens in January 2013.

The Lottery says the Hollywood Casino at the Kansas Speedway in Wyandotte County, which opened Feb. 3, brought in just over $6.8 million in its first week of operation.

A sheriff in northeastern Kansas is warning of a new telephone scam from someone claiming to be with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

WIBW-TV reports that several residents of Brown County have received the calls.

A caller tells residents that they’re targets of an investigation into purchases of diet pills and medications from other countries. The victims are then told they’ll be arrested immediately at work unless they wire money to the DEA at a specified address.

Victims have told Brown County authorities that they’ve ordered medications from out of the country in the past. Investigators believe the scammers have somehow got hold of records of those transactions.

A Kansas House committee has endorsed legislation that backers say would protect religious freedom but opponents believe would allow discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Monday’s adoption by the House Judiciary Committee on a voice vote sends the bill to the full House.

Committee chairman Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican, says the bill puts into law the language of Kansas court decisions for determining when government policies place too heavy a burden on practicing religion.

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

Critics, including the Kansas Equality Coalition, claim the bill’s true intent is to discriminate against individuals based on sexual orientation.

A line of powerful storms stretching from the Oklahoma border to near the Nebraska state line has left scattered damage to trees and buildings as it raced eastward across Kansas.

The National Weather Service received reports Monday afternoon and evening of thunderstorm winds blowing roofs off a barn and an out building in the southeastern town of Caney.

The violent weather system also spawned hail in much of the state. In north-central Kansas’ Ottawa County, a 2-inch-deep covering of hail slowed traffic on Kansas 81 around 5 p.m.

Jabara Airport in Wichita reported a thunderstorm gust of 67 mph shortly after 4 p.m., and emergency management officials in nearby Butler County reported a roof torn from a building and cars moved in a parking lot around the same time.

Legislators continue to move forward on changes to Kansas water policy aimed at improving conservation efforts and prolonging the life of water supplies.

On Monday, the House approved a bill that would allow water-rights holders to form a reservoir improvement district on reservoirs. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, establishes a governing body that has the authority to develop plans to extend the life of reservoirs through management or improvement projects.

Several of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s pieces of water policy changes are close to arriving at his desk. One would remove the 1945 policy requiring water-rights holders to use the allotment each year or lose the right to the water. Another change would grant additional flexibility for use of water in dry years.

By Matt Unruh ~ Great Bend Post

A 25-year-old Larned man was sentenced in Pawnee County District Court last week for vehicular homicide stemming from a November 2010 accident that killed 2 people.

In a release from the Pawnee County Attorney’s Office, Larned resident 25-year-old Brett Buckley was sentenced to 12 weeks of house arrest, 24 months of probation, and 1,000 hours of community service after pleading guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide. According to the Larned Tiller and Toiler, the charges stem back from an accident on November 23^rd, 2010, at the intersection of O Road and 120^th Avenue in Pawnee County.

Buckley was driving a 1992 Honda Civic that failed to yield right-of-way and collided with a 2009 F-150 pickup driven by Brian Blide. Two passengers in Buckley’s vehicle, 28-year-old Matthew Hackerott and 20-year-old Miranda Gilliland were ejected from the vehicle. Hackerott died later that evening at Pawnee Valley Community Hospital, and Gilliland died four days later at Via Christi Hospital in Wichita.

A Kansas House committee appears to be backing away from a proposal to start a 401(k)-style plan for new teachers and government workers.

The House Pension and Benefits Committee began work Monday on a new plan for overhauling the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.

Chairman Mitch Holmes, a St. John Republican, and Vice Chairman John Grange, an El Dorado Republican, outlined separate proposals for a retirement plan for new hires.

Their proposals wouldn’t continue existing KPERS plans that guarantee benefits up front based on a worker’s salary and years of experience. But benefits also wouldn’t be based solely on investment earnings, as they are in a 401(k) plan.

Public employee groups saw it as significant movement toward a compromise. The groups strongly oppose creating a 401(k)-style plan.

A McLouth woman is suing a Lawrence residential home for the disabled over her son’s death in a fall.

Josephine VanDruff claims in the lawsuit that an employee of Community Living Opportunity did not follow accepted care standards while transporting her son, Timothy D. Gibson., in February 2010.

She says that caused Gibson, who needed help to walk, to fall. The lawsuit claims he suffered a muscle weakness after the fall and died two months later from the injuries.

Gibson, 51, died in April 2010.

CLO officials denied the allegations. CEO Mike Strouse says Gibson was well cared for in the two decades he lived at the center.

VanDruff is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

While train-related fatalities dropped dramatically across the country in the last 20 years, the numbers in Kansas have remained steady.

The Federal Railroad Administration says Kansas has averaged 16 train fatalities per year in the last 20 years. Last year, 19 people died in train-related fatalities. Across the country, train fatalities dropped from 1,170 in 1992 to 644 last year.

Darlene Osterhaus, director of the train-safety organization Kansas Operation Lifesaver, has helped coordinate hundreds of workshops across the state to increase awareness of the dangers of trains. She says she can’t pinpoint why Kansas train fatalities have not dropped.

She believes that adding lights and gates at railroad intersections might help but even those efforts won’t prevent all fatalities.

A Wichita State University researcher says people fib more while texting.

Assistant professor David Xu is lead author of a study that will appear in the March edition of the Journal of Business Ethics. The paper compares the levels of deceit people use in a variety of media, from text messages to face-to-face interactions.

For the study, 170 students from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia were promised cash awards of up to $50 for performing mock stockt ransactions.

Students designated as “buyers” were given inside knowledge that the stock was rigged to lose half of its value. Buyers who received information via texts were the most likely to report getting deceptive messages. People using video were the least likely to deceive.

Soldiers from the Kansas National Guard are coming home from a yearlong deployment to the Horn of Africa.

A welcoming ceremony was planned Monday at Forbes Field in Topeka for the approximately 175 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 161st Field Artillery and 35th Military Police Company.

The battalion is headquartered in Wichita with subordinate units in Dodge City, Great Bend, Lenexa, Liberal, Hutchinson, Newton, Paola, Pratt and Topeka.

The soldiers spent the past year conducting stability operations in Africa with partner nations and working to maintain regional security.

A legislative proposal designed to prevent Kansas from subsidizing abortions even indirectly through tax credits or deductions is expected to clear a committee in the state House.

The Federal and State Affairs Committee planned to vote Monday on the bill, which also rewrites the state’s so-called informed consent law, requiring doctors to provide certain information before terminating a woman’s pregnancy. It would require doctors to allow their patients to hear a fetal heartbeat.

The committee has an anti-abortion majority, and if it endorses the measure as expected, it would go to the House, where abortion opponents also have a sizeable majority.

The measure also would prohibit schools from incorporating materials for any group that provides abortion services into classes that deal with human sexuality or sexually transmitted diseases.