TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that science standards for Kansas public schools promote atheism and violate the religious freedoms of students and parents.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled Tuesday that a nonprofit group and individuals challenging the standards did not claim specific enough injuries to allow the case to go forward.
The State Board of Education last year adopted standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council. The guidelines treat both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts.
The lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Objective Public Education, a group based in the small town of Peck. Parents and taxpayers joined the group.
Crabtree noted that even with the standards, local school districts still control what’s taught in classrooms.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts says in a Supreme Court argument that federal prosecutors are using part of the federal bank robbery law to “extort” a guilty plea from defendants.
The comment Tuesday from the conservative lawyer and former Justice Department official is the latest criticism of federal prosecutors that Roberts has voiced recently.
Roberts spoke from the bench during an argument over imposing a mandatory 10-year minimum prison term on a suspect who forces someone to accompany him during the robbery or in trying to flee. The justices were wrestling with whether the distance traveled matters in figuring out whether the provision applies.
Roberts wrote the court’s opinion in June holding that prosecutors overreached in convicting a woman involved in a love triangle under an anti-chemical weapons law.
The St. Louis Cardinals announced Tuesday that they have agreed on a one-year contract for the upcoming 2015 season with free-agent right-handed pitcher Matt Belisle.
Belisle, 34, brings added veteran experience to the Cardinals bullpen, having made 70 or more relief appearances in four of the last five seasons, including a National League-leading 80 in 2012. Belisle ranks 2nd in the majors in games pitched (367) since 2010 and his 91 Holds in that five-year span rank 10th in all of baseball.
The 6-4, 225-pound Belisle was 4-7 with a 4.87 ERA in 66 games for the Colorado Rockies last season, allowing just 19 walks in his 64.2 innings pitched. He has compiled a career mark of 48-54, 4.41 ERA in 524 games (724.1 IP) with Cincinnati (2003, 2005-08) and Colorado (2009-14) and his 92 career Holds with the Rockies rank 2nd in franchise history.
A native of Austin, Texas, Belisle has shown excellent command, allowing fewer than 20 walks in each of the past seven seasons and he’s posted a 2.2 walks/9 IP ratio over his career. Belisle was used exclusively as a starter by Cincinnati in 2007 when he made 30 of his 44 career starts. He won a career single-season high 10 games for the Rockies in 2011 to lead all Major League relievers.
Belisle joins recently-acquired right-handed reliever Jordan Walden (trade with Atlanta) in the Cardinals bullpen plans for 2015.
Judy Bellome, of Lawrence, helped cared for her diabetic mother until her death. Bellome is now among those supporting a bill to require more instruction for caregivers before patients are discharged from the hospital. She’s holding a picture of her mother, Eleanor Francis.-photo by Andy Marso
By Andy Marso
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — When diabetes began to steal her mother’s legs and vision three decades ago, Lawrence resident Judy Bellome and her family joined the ranks of thousands of caregivers across Kansas.
Bellome had advantages others don’t, but even so she found it challenging.
“If I hadn’t been a nurse — and my sister is a physical therapist — there’s a very good chance we would not have been giving my mother the right insulin doses,” said Bellome, former CEO of the Douglas County Visiting Nurses Association. “Because nobody trained us.”
Bellome has added her voice to an effort by the senior advocacy group AARP Kansas to pass a bill requiring hospitals to demonstrate follow-up care instructions for caregivers before their loved ones are sent home.
605,000 Kansas family caregivers
AARP Kansas leaders hope to introduce the Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act in the upcoming legislative session. The bill is still in draft form, but it is intended to allow patients to designate a caregiver upon admission to the hospital.
Hospital staff would then be required to notify that caregiver if the patient is to be discharged to another care facility or home. If the patient is being sent home, the hospital must “provide an explanation and live instruction of the medical tasks” that will have to be performed at home.
“Family caregivers are also required to undertake tasks that were once in the domain of only doctors and nurses,” AARP Kansas Director Maren Turner said. “Complex medication management, wound care, injections. Yet, most receive little or no training for these duties.”
Turner’s group celebrated November as National Family Caregivers Month. There are 605,000 Kansans looking after an aging spouse, family member or friend, the group said, providing unpaid medical care with an estimated value of $4.1 million.
There are 42 million family caregivers nationwide, according to AARP.
“Other states in our AARP network are working on caregiving issues, but ours will be Kansas-specific,” Mary Tritsch, associate director of communications for AARP Kansas, said of the CARE Act.
Financial incentives for hospitals
The Legislature reconvenes in January, and AARP Kansas has been meeting with some legislators to brief them on the proposal.
Rep. Barbara Bollier, a Republican from Mission Hills who is also a retired physician, said she has asked legislative research staff for more information on what state law currently requires when it comes to discharging patients from the hospital.
She said the Missouri hospital where she worked had protocols in place to ensure safe discharge.
Bollier said she did not know if those protocols were standardized across Kansas’ health care system, but Medicare provides financial incentives for hospitals nationwide to discharge patients safely by penalizing quick readmissions.
While she respects the goal of AARP Kansas proposal, Bollier said she wants to investigate further to see if changing the law is the right path to reach it. Hospital data can help determine whether the current system is truly leaving discharged patients without the level of care they need, she said.
“You really have to look at outcomes data,” Bollier said.
Connected by caregiving
The early phase of the AARP legislative push has focused largely on the anecdotes of people like Bellome, whose mother, Eleanor Francis, was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s at age 70.
For a while Francis was able to manage the condition through changes to her diet, Bellome said. But after extensive walking during a church trip to China, she returned to the United States with a sore that never healed because her circulation was compromised. Her leg had to be amputated, and insulin injections were prescribed.
Francis also had worked as a nurse, so Bellome said the hospital staff assumed she could handle her written discharge instructions.
But Bellome said her mother had been retired for years and her vision was failing.
“She had a can-do attitude. So you tell her to do something and, by golly, she’s going to do it,” Bellome said. “And what happened was she went home and she wasn’t able to give herself the injections.”
Bellome and her sister served as their mother’s caregiver for much of the next three years, until she died of a heart attack shortly after her 75th birthday.
The experience, Bellome said, connected her to hundreds of thousands of Kansans.
“Just about everybody has either been a caregiver or received care or will be a caregiver,” Bellome said. “It’s a very common characteristic that’s going to bind us all together.”
Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas board is considering whether to continue barring a physician from practicing medicine after scrutinizing her referrals of young patients for late-term abortions and finding that she kept inadequate records.
Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus of Nortonville will be back before the State Board of Healing Arts next week.
She successfully challenged a 2012 board ruling that she conducted substandard mental health exams in 2003 for 11 patients aged 10 to 18. Her opinions about patients’ mental problems allowed the late Dr. George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita to terminate their pregnancies.
A judge earlier this year overturned the board’s revocation of Neuhaus’ license but agreed that she kept inadequate records. The judge sent her case back to the board.
JUNCTION CITY – A Fort Riley soldier, James G. Henning, has been charged in Geary County District Court with five counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Child, two counts Aggravated Criminal Sodomy, and one count of Aggravated Indecent Liberties With a Child.
The Geary County Attorney’s Office confirmed the formal complaint containing the charges against Henning was filed Tuesday in District Court.
Bond for Henning remains at five million dollars.
Henning was arrested Nov. 25 by Junction City police at his residence in connection with the alleged distribution of child pornography.
The County Attorney’s Office confirmed a new status hearing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 30 in District Court as requested by the defense.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Chiefs have signed Richard Gordon and waived Phillip Supernaw in a swap of third-string tight ends heading into Sunday’s game at Arizona.
Gordon played in two games for the Chiefs last season and had appeared in three games for Tennessee this season. The former Miami standout, who has also played for Oakland and Pittsburgh, has only caught four passes for 14 yards while being used primarily as a blocker.
Supernaw began his season in Baltimore and had spent the past three games with the Chiefs, catching his only pass two weeks ago against Oakland.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City couple accused of locking a malnourished 8-year-old girl in a bedroom has been acquitted of assault and child endangerment.
The Kansas City Star reports that Jackson County Judge Robert Schieber determined Tuesday that prosecutors hadn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Jeffrey and Michele Kraft had intended to injure the girl. He said the couple did what they could.
Prosecutors charged the Krafts in 2012 after authorities found the girl in her bedroom, which had been locked from the outside. Police reported she was scrubbing the floor with bleach “because she had to urinate in the room.”
The defense said the girl was skinny, not malnourished, and speculated the case was handled aggressively because it came on the heels of the discovery of a 32-pound 10-year-old.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A judge has found sufficient evidence to try a man and woman in the abduction and rape of an 8-year-old girl in Topeka.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that 28-year-old Jeremy Lindsey and 23-year-old Michelle Harris were bound over for trial Tuesday in Shawnee County District Court. The girl vanished for about six hours in September, setting off a large search that ended when she was found walking along a road about two miles from her home.
Lindsey will be tried on 10 charges, including rape, aggravated kidnapping and unlawful administration of a substance to the child. Harris was accused of transporting Lindsey and the girl to an abandoned house. She will be tried on charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated child endangerment.
The YWCA St. Joseph is seeking a part-time (20 hours/week) administrative assistant for the Women’s Resources Department to work with Encore+ and JUMP programs.
Primary duties and responsibilities:
** Provide basic clerical support and data management services.
** Assist with program outreach, education, and special events.
** Maintain working relationship with primary partner agencies: Social Welfare Board and St. Joseph Youth Alliance.
** Provide screening reminders, follow-up and data entry of intake information for Encore+ program participants.
** Assist with transportation arrangements for program participants.
Applicants should have:
** High school diploma or equivalent; business training preferred.
** Office experience preferred.
** Strong computer and organization skills.
** Ability to work with a team – including staff and volunteers.
** Valid driver’s license and insured vehicle.
** Ability to, on occasion, work flexible hours including evening/weekend.
Competitive salary and fringe benefits.
Apply by December 12, 2014
Send resume to: YWCA, 304 N. 8th St., St. Joseph, MO 64501
Attention: Jean Brown, Executive Director
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that science standards for Kansas public schools promote atheism and violate the religious freedoms of students and parents.
Immediate Opening: