TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas says it collected $7.6 million more in taxes than anticipated in July during its first month under an income tax increase approved by legislators.

The Department of Revenue reported Tuesday that the state collected $453.5 million in taxes. That’s 1.7 percent more than the official projection of almost $446 million.

The surplus in July collections came after the state ended its 2017 fiscal year on June 30 with tax collections exceeding expectations by $72 million, or 1.3 percent. Total tax collections for fiscal 2017 surpassed $5.8 billion.

Lawmakers enacted the income tax increase over Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto to raise an additional $1.2 billion over two years.

Brownback budget director Shawn Sullivan tweeted that it’s too early to tell whether the tax increase will generate what is expected.

PINEVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri woman charged with assaulting a Somali woman pleaded guilty to a reduced charge.

Deanne Rodarmel pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor assault charge. She was originally charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

The Joplin Globe reports the 44-year-old Rodarmel was placed on two years’ probation.

The victim, 20-year-old Fatima Mohamed, of Noel, said the three people shouted racial slurs at her and hit her at a Noel park while she was on a break from her job in October 2016.

Another woman, 23-year-old Ashli Helmuth, of Noel, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in April. The third defendant, 34-year-old Michael Miller, of Noel is accused of shooting a handgun at the ground and the air to intimidate Mohamed. His pretrial conference is scheduled for Aug. 15.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — An appeals court has revived a man’s lawsuit claiming police violated his civil rights in 2014 when they arrested him during protests of the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting death of Michael Brown.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed a judge’s dismissal of Dwayne Matthews Jr.’s case against police. Matthews says police beat him, held his head under water in a culvert and used pepper spray on him.

He was among 10 people who alleged in the lawsuit that police used excessive force against Ferguson protesters in the days after 18-year-old Brown, who was black and unarmed, was shot and killed by white officer Darren Wilson.

A judge last year threw out the lawsuit. The 8th Circuit revived only Matthews’ claims.

EUREKA, Mo. (AP) — Police in suburban St. Louis are investigating the case of a woman suspected of shaving a neighbor boy’s head and writing “pervert” on his forehead in retaliation for his interaction with her daughter.

Police in Eureka tell KMOV-TV the woman apparently was upset after her daughter told her the boy had had pulled her hair and touched her inappropriately while she was spending the night with the boy’s sister. The boy and the girl are both 9.

Police Lt. Dave Wilson says the 34-year-old woman took action when the boy came to her apartment the next day looking for his sister. Wilson says the woman pulled the boy inside, shaved his head and wrote on his forehead using a felt-tip pen.

There was no immediate word Wednesday about charges.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to discuss the impact of the country’s opioid epidemic during a speech in hard-hit Ohio, where about eight people a day are dying of accidental overdoses.

ARNOLD, Mo. (AP) — A furnace is suspected of sparking a five-alarm fire that damaged an Anheuser-Busch can-making factory in the St. Louis suburb of Arnold, Missouri, and sent a firefighter to the hospital with heat exhaustion.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking to avoid answering questions under oath about plans to change U.S. election law.

The Kansas Republican filed a notice late Monday saying he is appealing to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals an order to submit to a deposition by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ALCU called Kobach’s appeal of the deposition order “bizarre.”

Two federal judges have each twice ruled Kobach misled the court about the contents of documents he took into a November meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump and a separate draft amendment to the National Voter Registration Act.

The court fined Kobach $1,000 and ordered him to testify on Thursday about the documents.

Kobach is vice chairman of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A monthly survey of business leaders suggested a drop in business conditions but still indicated the economy will pick up over the next few months in nine Midwest and Plains states.

A report released Tuesday says the Mid-America Business Conditions Index dropped to 56.1 last month from 62.3 in June. The May figure was 55.5.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss oversees the survey, and he says it “points to solid growth for both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing for the second half of 2017.”

The survey results are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth in that factor. A score below that suggests decline.

The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s top law enforcement official is fighting a lawsuit seeking to block him from investigating Backpage.com.

Attorney General Josh Hawley filed a motion Tuesday against Backpage, saying its lawsuit is frivolous and should be tossed.

Hawley launched an investigation of the company this year and in May issued civil investigative demands seeking documents from Backpage, which hasn’t complied.

Backpage sued Hawley in response, saying it doesn’t have control over sex-related ads posted on the website and has immunity from potential lawsuits over such ads.

NBC News has reported that documents show that a Backpage contractor has been involved in creating or developing third-party content for Backpage ads overseas. Hawley contends that evidence uncovered by his office supports that.

An attorney for Backpage didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Backpage currently faces various criminal cases and civil lawsuits around the country.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City, Missouri, has a new police chief, and stemming a surge in the city’s homicides appears certain to be high on his agenda.

Maj. Rick Smith was promoted Friday to the helm of the department he joined 29 years ago in a city that has recorded 86 homicides so far this year. That’s 26 more than the same stretch in 2016. That year ended with 130 homicides, the most here since 1998.

The city’s 81 homicides in 2014 were the fewest in 42 years.

While explanations of the rising homicide numbers are elusive, the federal government has Kansas City on a list of communities to help. And the city soon hopes to do what a task force recommended months ago — hire someone to align local violence-prevention efforts among advocates, law enforcers, researchers and activists.