(AP) — As residents of Reading continue to recover from last spring’s tornado, they’re getting help from a “sister city” in Massachusetts.

Residents of Reading, Mass., decided to collect money to help their Kansas counterparts.

A May 21 tornado killed one and destroyed 54 of the 101 homes in the Kansas town, which has only 250 people.

A resident of the Massachusetts town, Donna Toole, visited Reading this week to learn what it needed. She plans to return to Massachusetts and share that information with that city’s 25,000 residents.

Toole says the town is collecting money and will decide how to best help the Kansas community.

The help began this summer, when several youth organizations in Massachusetts sent $3,500 to rebuild Reading’s park area.

(AP) – The Kansas attorney general’s office has charged former Dodge City police chief Robin James with one count of criminal hunting.

Deputy chief of staff Jeff Wagaman said the charge stems from a Dec. 5, 2010 incident that led the Department of Wildlife and Parks to ticket James for the violating deer hunting laws.

James said he has not received the notice of the violation.

The department has been investigating since December whether James used a spotlight and whether he had permission to be on the
landowner’s property. He was not charged with spotlighting.

James resigned in April, saying the investigation was causing issues in the police department.

No phone number was listed for James and it was unclear whether he had an attorney.

(AP) – Three conservation groups are suing to halt preliminary work on a proposed 1,700-mile-long oil pipeline from the tar sands of western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline would pass through Kansas.

The lawsuit to be filed Wednesday in federal court in Nebraska contends that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service broke the law by allowing  Canadian pipeline operator TransCanada to start preparing the route for its Keystone XL pipeline.

The groups say federal officials allowed TransCanada to clear a 100-mile pipeline corridor through the Nebraska Sandhills, despite a federal law barring projects from launching before they receive approval.

The project would cross the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies groundwater to Nebraska and seven other states.

The lawsuit also names the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

(AP) – The state is asking Saline County to consider leasing 830 acres of land, part of which would be used for public-access hunting.

The Salina Journal reports the proposal from the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism would bring the county more than $38,600 during a 10-year period.

Pat Riese, a wildlife biologist with the department, told commissioners Tuesday that the state wants to allow public hunting on the land and plant native grass to improve animal habitat.

The grass would be planted on 137 acres, with the rest of the 830-acre tract available for farming.

Commissioner Randy Duncan said the county brings in more than $73,000 from farm leases on the property.

Commissioners said they would research the issue and get back to Riese.

(AP) – The University of Kansas has received a federal grant to help public school students become more proficient in the arts.

The three-year, $777,000 grant comes from the U.S. Department of Education. The money will fund a joint effort between the schools of music and education at the university and the Kansas City, Kansas school district.

The initiative is called Project Starts – short for Skillful Thinking in the Arts. It’s intended to enhance arts-based education and to help students apply their knowledge of the arts to problems in other areas.

University staff will train Kansas City arts teachers the new skills through summer workshops and follow-up sessions.

(AP) – The state of Kansas is arguing that a federal judge’s order blocking a law that effectively strips Planned Parenthood of family planning funds “emasculates” the state’s autonomy and sovereignty rights.

The argument is included in a 144-page pleading filed Tuesday with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten has issued a preliminary injunction ordering Kansas to continue federal funding to Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri until the case is resolved.

Kansas argues the preliminary injunction should be overturned because the court’s conclusions about the merits of Planned
Parenthood’s claims are incorrect.

A new Kansas law requires the state to allocate federal family planning dollars first to public health departments and hospitals. The result has been to leave no money for smaller clinics that rely on the funding.

(AP) — Kansas health officials say two additional cases of listeria have been linked to tainted cantaloupes from Colorado, bringing the total to seven.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said Tuesday the seven cases include two resulting in deaths. The agency did not say when or where the cases occurred.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 100 confirmed illnesses and 18 deaths nationwide linked to bacteria in cantaloupes from a single Colorado farm.

Symptoms of a listeria infection include fever, muscle aches, diarrhea and vomiting and can show up two months after the tainted fruit has been consumed.

by Randy Picking ~ Salina Post

A Kansas truck driver was not hurt, when his semi struck an elk that was going across I-70 early Monday morning about a mile east of the Niles Road exit, or about 10 miles east of Salina.

Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ben Gardner says the driver was westbound in a empty cattle hauling semi about 4:15 am Monday morning, when he saw the elk going from north to south across the highway, tried to avoid hitting it, but was not able to do so.

The impact with the elk damaged the radiator of the semi, disabling the truck. Trooper Gardner says it is very unusual for accidents involving elk in central Kansas. There are some small herds of elk around Ft. Riley.

The driver of the truck Todd Crome driving for TC Trucking LLC.

(AP) – Osawatomie State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital operated by the state of Kansas, has been over its capacity several times this year.

The Wichita Eagle reports that the hospital was over its 176-bed capacity for the first nine months of this year, and by as many as 24 residents in July.

But the State Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services points out that the hospital’s average daily census for fiscal year 2011 was 173.

Marilyn Cook, director of Comcare, which provides mental health services for Sedgwick County, has expressed concern about whether patients are receiving adequate treatment because of the high capacity. Cook recommends regional treatment centers so patients can get help closer to their homes.

SRS, however, says there’s no plan to move toward a regional system.

(AP) – Environmental groups are asking President Barack Obama to reject what they call State Department “bias” in favor of a proposed oil pipeline from Canada. The groups want Obama personally to decide on a Canadian company’s plan to pipe oil from tar sands in western Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast.

A letter signed by environmental and public interest groups cites internal State Department documents that the groups say demonstrate an overly cozy relationship with executives of Calgary-based TransCanada. The groups are especially concerned about the role played by TransCanada executive Paul Elliott, a former aide in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The State Department has authority over the 1,700 mile pipeline because it would cross the U.S. border, traveling through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

(AP) – Kansas emergency management officials are urging residents to prepare for an invasion of zombies as part of a national disaster readiness campaign.

October is Zombie Preparedness Month, a tongue-in-cheek campaign to get people nationwide to prepare for any type of disaster – including attacks by killer zombies.

The point is to get people to take an all-hazards approach to preparing themselves for things like tornadoes, floods, and terrorist attacks.

The Kansas Division of Emergency Management says if people are prepared for zombie attacks, they’re ready for anything.

(AP) – Two U.S. citizens are reportedly among four people who were killed when gunmen attacked an SUV in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The El Paso Times reports that an official with the U.S. Consulate in Juarez on Monday identified the U.S. citizens killed over the weekend as 19-year-old Pablo Noe Williams and his mother, 35-year-old Rosa Williams. They are listed as being from Kansas.

A spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office told the newspaper the young man was from El Paso.

The others killed were identified as 24-year-old Alberto Nieto Nieto, and 21-year-old Alma Yesenia Flores.

The Chihuahua state attorney general’s office said the SUV with Texas plates the four were in Friday evening in Juarez was hit with gunshots from assault rifles.