WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure from federal regulators, Honda is expanding a recall of driver’s side air bags to all 50 states.

The air bags, made by Japanese supplier Takata Corp., can explode with too much force, sending metal shrapnel into the passenger compartment.

Takata insists that current recalls covering 8 million U.S. cars in high-humidity areas are sufficient. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants the recalls expanded nationwide after some incidents outside the high-humidity zones.

Rick Schosteck, Honda’s executive vice president for North America, told House lawmakers Wednesday that Honda will expand the regional recall it began in June, but will continue to prioritize high-humidity areas.

He also said Honda is working with other air bag manufacturers to make sure it has enough parts.

LENEXA –A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just before 7 a.m. on Wednesday in Johnson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Toyota passenger car driven by Leonna M. Turner, 58, Lawrence, and a 2003 BMW driven by Holly R. Jester, 24, Shawnee, were both eastbound on Interstate 435 just west of Lackman Road in Lenexa and side swiped each other.

Jester was transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
Turner was not injured.

The KHP reported both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A Springfield man is sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in three deaths in southwest Missouri.

Twenty-six-year-old Jacky Wong was sentenced Tuesday for his role in the 2009 deaths of three Laclede County residents. Wong pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder in 2011 as part of a plea deal that required him to testify against three other suspects in the case. He has been in jail since 2009 and his sentencing was delayed several times.

The four suspects were charged with killing 51-year-old Jeff L. Smith and his 48-year-old wife, Glenda Smith, at their Phillipsburg home. Twenty-five-year-old Zachary Bryan Porter was killed in Lebanon.

The Smiths were the father and stepmother of an ex-girlfriend of one of the other suspects. Porter was dating the woman.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas says it will start offering a bachelor’s degree in applied science in biotechnology.

Classes for the new degree will begin in the spring semester at the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. It will be the university’s first bachelor of applied science degree.

The university said in a news released Tuesday that the new degree program will prepare students for careers in life-sciences by bridging the gap between biology, biochemistry and clinical laboratory sciences.

The university says the Monthly Labor Review report forecasts that jobs in life, physical and social science occupations will increase by 15 percent by 2020. Kansas City is home to 200 life-science companies, including 90 contract research organizations.

The Supreme Court announced it has selected Kathy S. Lloyd to become Missouri’s new state courts administrator, beginning January 1, 2015. Lloyd currently is the court administrator for the 13th Judicial Circuit (Boone and Callaway counties). The state courts administrator, who reports to the clerk of the Supreme Court of Missouri, is responsible for leading a staff of approximately 220 people in supporting the work of all of Missouri’s state courts.

“I am pleased that Kathy Lloyd has accepted the Court’s offer to become its new state courts administrator,” Chief Justice Mary R. Russell said. “After spending most of her professional career working at the circuit court level in a variety of increasingly responsible positions, Kathy has earned the respect of her judges, her staff and local community leaders. I believe Kathy’s proven track record in court management and understanding of our court system will enable her to serve Missouri’s citizens and legal community well in her new role.”

Missouri’s former state courts administrator, Gregory J. Linhares, resigned his position effective June 30 to become clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Since then, Gary Waint has been serving as interim state courts administrator.

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today grilled representatives from the four major sports leagues on the rate of domestic violence in professional sports, and whether the leagues are adequately protecting victims and holding perpetrators accountable.

“The bright light of public attention needs to be turned on at a very high wattage at a problem that exists in the shadows in a very dark and scary place,” said McCaskill, a former sex crimes prosecutor. “With great power and influence comes great responsibility… professional sports must do a better job of setting an example to young people and to victims of domestic violence, who face very difficult decisions as they struggle with holding their abusers accountable.”

McCaskill continued: “There has been little or no effort to independently get the facts, rather just use the predictable outcome that very few who are abused will have an adequate support… to come forward and hold their abuser accountable. And so by and large professional sports teams have relied on the failure of the criminal justice system to get convictions as their excuse as to why very few players have been held accountable.”

At today’s hearing, McCaskill posed a number of questions to representatives from the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League—on whether the leagues are adequately addressing, punishing, and adjudicated cases of domestic violence.

“What we really have to do here is look to see what you are doing independently to investigate these cases, and independently determine what the facts are, because that’s how the NFL got in trouble. Because Roger Goodell didn’t see it as his responsibility to ask the question, ‘is there another tape, and I need to see it before we do punishment?’ And I think we should say for the record that Major League Commissioner Bud Selig had never sanctioned a player for domestic violence. Never, in 22 years. Now, teams have, but at the commissioner level that has never occurred.”

McCaskill has also focused on issues of abuse in college sports, using a recent Commerce Committee hearing to grill NCAA President Mark Emmert on the professionalization of college sports. McCaskill recently sent a letter to the NCAA, along with Senators Jay Rockefeller and Cory Booker, questioning whether the NCAA is exercising proper oversight of its member institutions to ensure that they are taking the necessary steps to protect student-athletes from exploitation. She joined Senators Rockefeller and Booker in sending a separate letter to 65 schools that are members of the top NCAA conferences asking similar questions about school policies.

Earlier this year, McCaskill announced the results of her unprecedented nationwide survey of how sexual assaults are handled on college campuses, which demonstrated a disturbing failure by many institutions to comply with the law and with best practices in how they handle sexual violence against students. The survey, which represented 440 institutions currently educating more than five million students across the country, found that 22 percent of institutions give athletic departments oversight of cases involving athletes.

SPRINGFIELD (AP) – A Springfield high school student has been charged with a misdemeanor after authorities say he threatened a classmate and brought a gun to school.

Greene County Assistant Prosecutor Justin Stanek says the 17-year-old boy was charged this week with unlawful use of a weapon after a Parkview High School officer found a handgun in the student’s car. He says the student would have faced a felony charge if the gun had been loaded.

Authorities say the suspect wrote the words “Boom Boom” to another student on Facebook before the incident.

The suspect tells police he wanted to fight the other student and didn’t intend to shoot him. He was booked into the Green County Jail and released.

The Associated Press typically doesn’t identify juveniles accused of crimes.

MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a pregnancy discrimination case with the potential to affect many American women who continue to work throughout their pregnancies.

The case before the justices Wednesday involves a former driver for United Parcel Service who wanted a temporary assignment to avoid lifting heavy packages after she became pregnant in 2006.

UPS refused to accommodate driver Peggy Young, who was on unpaid leave until two months after she gave birth.

The court is weighing whether the company’s actions violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Young says she should have been offered light-duty work because some UPS workers were.

The Atlanta-based package delivery company says it will voluntarily offer pregnant women light duty starting in January. But the company contends it complied with the law in Young’s case.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri lawmaker is proposing to make it harder to amend the state constitution.
Republican Rep. Elijah Haahr, of Springfield, wants to require a 60 percent vote — instead of a simple majority — to approve constitutional amendments at statewide elections.

Haahr has filed his proposal for lawmakers to consider during the 2015 session. If approved by the General Assembly, it would be referred to the 2016 ballot.
Haahr says he’s proposing the higher standard because the Missouri Constitution is being amended with increasing frequency and has grown to well over 100 pages long.

Voters approved five constitutional amendments this year. But two of those amendments — creating a right to farm and limiting the governor’s budget-cutting powers — didn’t meet Haahr’s proposed 60 percent threshold.