JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is planning to travel to Missouri colleges and universities to discuss ways of addressing sexual violence on campuses.
McCaskill’s office says she will hold events at schools in 10 cities next week to listen to opinions about her legislation on the topic.
The bill would require campuses to designate advocates to confidentially discuss options with victims and to develop agreements with local law enforcement agencies on handling sexual assaults. Schools that don’t comply with new standards for training and data collection could face penalties.
This summer, McCaskill released survey results showing that 40 percent of campuses reported no sexual assault investigations in the past five years.
McCaskill’s events will be in Cape Girardeau, Columbia, Kansas City, Kirksville, Maryville, Rolla, St. Joseph, St. Louis, Springfield and Warrensburg.
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – Missouri state representatives will hold a hearing Wednesday to review management, trooper training and a 2011 merger between the state highway and water patrols.
The review follows the death of a 20-year-old handcuffed man who drowned May 31 in the Lake of the Ozarks. A state trooper had arrested the man for drunken boating and handcuffed him before the man slipped into the water.
The trooper says he wasn’t trained to handle the situation.
Lawmakers now question whether the merger overwhelmed troopers while saving the state money. Combining the departments was supposed to save the state about $3 million a year.
The merger is in place despite concerns from water patrol officials who warned lawmakers that it could hurt services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fastest and surest path to marriage for same-sex couples in some states would be for the Supreme Court to surprise everyone and decline to get involved in the issue right now.
A Supreme Court decision to reject calls from all quarters to take up same-sex marriage would allow gay and lesbian couples in 11 more states to get married because appellate rulings affecting those states would take effect immediately. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Yet legal experts think the court will step in and decide gay marriage cases this term. The cases were on the agenda for the justices’ private meeting Monday about new cases to hear this term. The court could announce a decision as early as this week.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas authorities are warning residents to beware of a new scam that’s using the names of judges in an attempt to solicit money.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office says a person has been calling people claiming to be a command officer from a fictitious Federal Warrants Division at the Johnson County Courthouse.
The caller tells potential victims they have a federal warrant and will be arrested if they don’t pay the fine. The sheriff’s office says the scammer names an actual judge by name and claims the judge is angry so they need to pay with a prepaid debit card.
The office says the procedure for contacting people with warrants does not include demanding immediate bond payment.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Overland Park police are looking for a taxi driver after a woman told them he sexually assaulted her in his cab.
Spokesman Gary Mason tells KCTV-TV the woman in her early 20s took the cab Tuesday after drinking with friends. The woman sat in the front seat and says the driver sexually assaulted her on her way home.
Mason says authorities are concerned the driver could have harmed others. Police haven’t released information about the suspect.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A new government report says this year’s winter wheat production in Kansas is at the lowest level since 1989.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service reported Tuesday winter wheat production is estimated at 246 million bushels, down 23 percent from a year ago.
Kansas farmers planted 9.6 million acres for the 2014 wheat crop. That was about 1 percent more wheat acreage than a year earlier, but production was still down in part because farmers actually harvested just 8.8 million acres.
Also affecting production were lower yields averaging 28 bushels an acre — 10 bushels an acre below last year.
The report also estimates this year’s Kansas oat production at 840,000 bushels, about the same as last year. Barley production is estimated at 350,000, down 32 percent from a year ago.
About 100 people attended Tuesday night’s forum in Prairie Village that was sponsored by the Johnson County League of Women Voters-Photo by Andy Marso
By Andy Marso
KHI News Service
PRAIRIE VILLAGE — Legislators who passed a health care compact in Kansas said changes to Medicare were not the impetus, but a “Medicare coach” told a Johnson County crowd Tuesday that the originator of the multi-state compact favors Medicare privatization.
Larry Weigel of Manhattan, who provides Medicare advice to seniors, told about 100 people gathered at a League of Women Voters event that the compact was the brainchild of Leo Linbeck III, a co-founder of the Health Care Compact Alliance who comes from a wealthy family with a history of advocating for right-wing Libertarian causes.
“Linbeck wants to privatize Medicare,” Weigel said. “This is the hidden agenda. This is the part that’s not getting out to the public.”
Weigel pointed to a 2011 Mother Jones interview from shortly after the alliance formed, in which Linbeck said one of the goals of the compact was to allow each state to run Medicare as it wishes.
He also noted the involvement of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that connects legislators with private sector representatives, which adopted the compact in 2011 as model legislation to be introduced by its members in their states.
Weigel said legislators who made Kansas the ninth state to sign the compact probably did so – as they stated – as a repudiation of the federal health care reforms spearheaded by President Barack Obama, but they overlooked the potential Medicare implications when they did so.
“I think it’s primarily to poke more holes in the Affordable Care Act,” Weigel said. “But the big mistake was when Medicare was dragged into it.”
-Larry Weigel, left, who advises seniors on Medicare, and Linda Sheppard, of the Kansas Health Institute, discussed the health care compact at a Tuesday night forum in Prairie Village.Photo by Andy Marso
During Tuesday evening’s event at Asbury United Methodist Church, Weigel sat on a panel with Linda Sheppard, formerly special counsel and director of health care policy and analysis for the Kansas Insurance Department who now works for the Kansas Health Institute. The Kansas Health Institute is a nonpartisan policy and research organization that also houses the editorially independent KHI News Service.
League of Women Voters-Johnson County organizers said legislators who supported the compact were invited to sit on the panel but did not respond.
The event was moderated by Kansas City Star columnist Dave Helling, who steered the discussion toward whether the compact was even constitutional.
The agreement would allow member states to opt out of federal health care regulations while continuing to receive a promised allocation of federal health care funds each year as a block grant.
Sheppard said those questions could be litigated if the bill gets action in Congress, which some have said does not appear imminent.
If the compact ends up going to Congress and if the Congress decides to consent to the compact, I think there would be all kinds of legal challenges that would come up at that point,” Sheppard said.
Tuesday’s discussion came on the heels of a controversy between the Johnson County Commission on Aging and state legislators representing Johnson County who voted for the compact.
The commission, a group of volunteer seniors appointed by the Johnson County commissioners to advise on issues pertinent to the aging population, wrote an article critical of the compact in the latest issue of The Best Times, a magazine that goes out to everyone in the county 60 and older.
Legislators who supported the compact saw an advanced draft of the article and took umbrage, calling it inaccurate and unfair.
County commissioners granted the legislators a page in The Best Times for rebuttal, but Weigel said the commission on aging’s article was fair and raised important questions about the compact’s possible effect on Medicare. He commended the commission, drawing applause from the crowd of mostly seniors.
“This is the first I know of in Kansas where somebody has taken a stand,” Weigel said. “This issue has been under the radar screen. Very important issue.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Royals had waited 29 years to reach the postseason. They weren’t going down without a fight.
Salvador Perez singled down the left-field line with two outs in the 12th inning, allowing Christian Colon to score from second base and giving the long-suffering Royals a 9-8 victory over the Oakland Athletics in a wild AL wild-card game Tuesday night.
Quite a start to October baseball — even if this one appeared to be over in September with plenty of time to spare.
The A’s raced out to a 7-3 lead by the sixth inning, but the Royals countered with three runs in the eighth. Nori Aoki’s sacrifice fly off Sean Doolittle in the ninth forced extra innings.
The teams kept trading blows over the next couple innings, as midnight came and went on the East Coast and the tension continued to build. Brandon Finnegan finally cracked after tossing two scoreless innings, but the Royals were there to pick up their pitching one last time.
Eric Hosmer hit a rocket to the wall in left field off Dan Otero for a leadoff triple in the 12th, and Colon hit an infield chopper that he beat out for a tying single. That set the stage for Perez, who lined a pitch from Jason Hammel just inside the third-base line to send the Royals pouring out of their dugout in a mad celebration.
The long-suffering franchise hadn’t played in the postseason since beating St. Louis in the 1985 World Series, and the excitement the permeated the city might best be summed up by a statement posted by the Kansas City Police on Twitter in about the 10th inning: “We really need everyone to not commit crimes and drive safely right now. We’d like to hear the Royals clinch.”
They finally did it in a thrilling start to baseball’s playoffs.
For the Oakland, it was one final collapse in a season full of them. The club that once had the best record in baseball wilted over the second half of the season, and needed a victory on the final day of the regular season just to squeeze into the playoffs.
They had chances to put all that in the past. Instead, it will be dragged up for years.
Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images
A much-anticipated pitching showdown between Oakland ace Jon Lester and Kansas City counterpart James Shields instead turned into a high-scoring game and a battle of attrition between their bullpens.
Brandon Moss helped the A’s strike first, belting a two-run homer in the first inning and a three-run shot in the fifth. The Royals countered by playing small ball, stealing seven bases to tie a postseason record previously shared by the 1907 Chicago Cubs and 1975 Cincinnati Reds, according to STATS.
Kansas City clawed back from a four-run deficit over the final two innings.
The impassioned play by a scrappy bunch of Royals that have rarely tasted success energized a sellout crowd that had been pining for postseason baseball since the 1985 World Series.
Then again, maybe it was the crowd that energized the Royals.
Oakland had built a big lead after the fifth inning, and Lester — long a thorn in the side of Kansas City — had started to hit his stride. But A’s manager Bob Melvin opted to send him out for the eighth inning, and the Royals finally got Lester into a real jam.
Luke Gregerson entered in relief but failed to provide much. By the time he struck out Perez and Omar Infante to leave runners on second and third, the A’s four-run lead had become one.
Doolittle tried to finish the game off in the ninth, but he served up a leadoff single to pinch-hitter Josh Willingham. Pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson was sacrificed to second, and then brashly stole third base, allowing him to score on Aoki’s sacrifice fly to right field.
It was the third time in the last three seasons Doolittle has blown a postseason save.
By that point, a series of blunders by the Royals and manager Ned Yost had become moot.
Sean Doolittle tried to finish the game off in the ninth, but he gave up a bloop single to pinch-hitter Josh Willingham. Pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson was sacrificed to second and then brashly stole third, allowing him to score on Aoki’s sacrifice fly to deep right field.
It was the third time in the last three seasons that Doolittle has blown a postseason save.
By that point, a series of blunders by the Royals and manager Ned Yost had become moot.
The first occurred in the first inning, when slow-footed designated hitter Billy Butler was caught wandering off first base on an attempted steal with a runner on third. Eric Hosmer broke late for the plate and was thrown out easily to end the inning.
In the sixth, Yost yanked Shields — the ace of his staff — and called on Yordano Ventura. The rookie promptly served up Moss’ go-ahead, three-run homer.
All that was forgotten as midnight approached at Kauffman Stadium. And now, none of it will be remembered after one of the most dramatic games in franchise history.
UP NEXT
Yost has refused to discuss who he might pitch in the opener against the Angels. The two best bets are vastly different options: Danny Duffy is a young, hard-throwing left-hander who plays on passion, Jeremy Guthrie is a cerebral right-hander that relies on guile.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Athletics catcher Geovany Soto left the game after hurting his left thumb tagging Hosmer at the plate to end the first inning. Soto started over Norris despite never having caught Lester because he’s better at handling the running game. The Royals led the majors with 153 stolen bases this season, and they had seven more Tuesday night — all but one after Soto left the game.
