GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — A suspicious package that turned out to be an accordion in a box led to the evacuation of 900 students and staff members from a Grand Island school.

Capt. Robert Falldorf says a school safety officer was contacted Wednesday after a staff member spotted a suspicious box in the Walnut Middle School band room.

A school safety officer was contacted who agreed the school should be evacuated as a precaution.

All students and staff walked to Grand Island Senior High, a few blocks north.

A call to Grand Island Police came in around 1:50 p.m. Nebraska State Patrol and the Grand Island Fire Department both responded to the scene. After investigating the claim, officials found an accordion in the box.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate has given initial approval to a ban on traffic ticket quotas. Senators voted Wednesday to finalize the language of a bill forbidding law enforcement agencies or other government entities from requiring employees to write a certain number of citations.

The bill would also prohibit supervisors from encouraging employees to write more tickets. Bill sponsor Senator Eric Schmitt said the number of tickets written per month shouldn’t be a political decision. The St. Louis County Republican added that municipal courts still need more changes.

Democratic Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal said this was a good bill.

The bill still needs final approval in the Senate before going to the House.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Governor Sam Brownback is hoping there’s only a short delay in starting construction on a new power plant for the Kansas Statehouse and four nearby government office buildings.

The Republican governor’s administration announced Wednesday that the $20 million project is temporarily on hold amid bipartisan legislative concerns about how it is being financed.

The state is financing the project through a 15-year lease-purchase agreement with Bank of America, paying about 2.3 percent interest.

Brownback said a number of legislators wanted additional information.

He told reporters, “I said, ‘Sure.'”

But the governor also said the state could face penalties if it doesn’t begin construction soon. The Department of Administration hopes to finish the plant this year.

Brownback suggested the delay in construction would last only “for a couple of days.”

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri’s governor board says it’s suspended an assistant professor accused of assault stemming from a campus run-in with student journalists during protests in November.

Melissa Click is suspended “pending further investigation.”

Pam Henrickson, chair of the University of Missouri system’s Board of Curators, said in a statement after a special board meeting Wednesday night that the board called for its general counsel to conduct an investigation to determine whether additional discipline “is appropriate.”

Click had a confrontation with a student photographer and a student videographer on Nov. 9 during protests at the Columbia campus over what some saw as university leadership’s indifference to racial issues. Click called for “some muscle” to help remove the videographer from the protest area on the Columbia campus.

Click has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An explosive feud between Donald Trump and Fox News is overshadowing the final sprint to Iowa’s presidential caucuses, injecting a new sense of chaos into the already turbulent 2016 Republican contest and forcing rival campaigns to adjust on the fly.

On the eve of the final debate before Iowa voters weigh in, Trump refused to back off his vow to boycott Thursday’s primetime faceoff. The campaign insisted Wednesday that debate host Fox News crossed a line with a sarcastic statement and continued to criticize moderator Megyn Kelly, prompting Fox to accuse Trump’s camp of trying to terrorize its employees.

“They think they can toy with Mr. Trump,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Mr. Trump doesn’t play games.”

As the public clash intensified, Trump’s Republican competitors hunkered down for a day of private debate preparations plagued by uncertainty. Skeptical that he would follow through on his boycott, the other campaigns held practice sessions with and without someone playing the brash billionaire.

Some prepared for the possibility that a Trump-less debate could make another leading Iowa contender, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a prime target for campaigns eager to spark a last-minute shakeup. Cruz has challenged Trump to a separate one-on-one debate, a challenge that was mocked by the billionaire businessman.

“Even though I beat him in the first six debates, especially the last one, Ted Cruz wants to debate me again. Can we do it in Canada?” Trump tweeted, referencing Cruz’s birthplace.

Other campaigns saw the shakeup as opening to rise above the ruckus.

“These kinds of theatrics by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are an entertaining sideshow, but they have nothing to do with defeating Hillary Clinton,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said. “I’m going to stay focused on uniting the Republican Party … We don’t have time for these kinds of distractions.”

Despite the attention, there was little sense that Trump’s move would significantly change the trajectory of the Republican contest on the ground in Iowa. While the former reality television star holds a big lead in most national polls, he and Cruz are locked in a tight race for the lead in Iowa.

“My sense is those Iowa Republicans who weren’t fans of Donald Trump before yesterday, this has only validated their opinion of him, and those Iowans who have been drawn to his passionate attack on the media and political elites in our country are even more emboldened by their guy today,” said former Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn.

Trump’s decision is part of a larger pattern of turning typical campaign convention on its head.

He has substituted typical meet-and-greet events with mass rallies, made inflammatory statements that would have sunk other candidates, and spent much of his time opining on television news shows and Twitter.

Instead of debating Thursday night, Trump has promised to hold a simultaneous event to raise money for wounded veterans.

“I think it’s typical Trump. He’s betting on him making a bigger splash,” said Don Kass, chairman of Iowa’s Plymouth County GOP, who predicted the decision to skip the debate would benefit the real estate mogul.

“Frankly, you know, in the past, anytime somebody thought he did something that cost him, it didn’t cost him,” Kass said.

Trump is not the first Republican to skip a pre-caucus debate.

Then-front-runner Ronald Reagan skipped a debate held ahead of the 1980 Iowa caucuses and wound up losing the state to George H.W. Bush. Reagan ultimately went on to win the nomination.

This is also not the first time Trump has threatened to boycott a debate. In December, Trump threatened to skip a CNN debate unless the network paid him $5 million, which he said he’d donate to charity. The network did not pay up, but he participated nonetheless. And in October, he and rival Ben Carson’s campaign penned a letter threatening not to show unless their demands for a shorter run time and other conditions were met. The network adjusted and both candidates appeared.

“He’ll show up. I’ve got a $20 bet on it,” former Florida governor and GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush told reporters as he left a Des Moines campaign stop Wednesday.

Trump’s Fox feud dates back to the first Republican primary debate, when Kelly took Trump to task over derogatory statements he’d made in the past aimed at women. A sarcastic statement from Fox on Tuesday was the final straw.

That statement said the leaders of Iran and Russia “both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president” and that “Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

Trump and his campaign manager have slammed it as taunting and juvenile.

But some Conservative leaders suggest that Trump is taking a risk by skipping Thursday’s primetime affair.

“I think he’s embarrassing himself in this case,” said Mark Meckler, one of the tea party movement’s original leaders. The debate, Meckler added, is “going to be the Donald Trump hate fest.”

While Trump’s supporters are fiercely loyal and won’t be swayed by the decision, Sioux County GOP Chair Mark Lundberg noted there are still plenty of undecided out there to woo. “For him to bail out and not have one more crack at making his case is a mistake,” he said.

Republican operative Ryan Williams offered some perspective on what has been a wild campaign season so far.

“The debate chaos is a fitting end,” he said, “to a caucus process that has been nothing short of a complete circus.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri lawmaker says a colleague upset over a right-to-work bill took a swing at him in an alley outside a Jefferson City restaurant and the two ended up in a fistfight.

Rep. Courtney Allen Curtis released a copy of the restraining order Tuesday that he filed against Rep. Michael Butler. Curtis also asked the House speaker to open an ethics investigation against Butler.

Both are Democratic lawmakers from the St. Louis area.

Curtis alleges Butler verbally confronted him during an AFL-CIO reception at a Jefferson City restaurant Jan. 19 because Curtis had supported a right-to-work bill limiting union powers. He says Butler later took a swing at him in an alley as he was leaving, and Curtis says he fought back.

Butler declined to comment about the incident.

AVA, Mo. (AP) — A second person has been charged in a love triangle killing in southern Missouri.

Thirty-five-year-old Jammie White, of Oldfield, is jailed in Douglas County on a first-degree murder charge in the August stabbing death of her boyfriend, 37-year-old Robert Koch (‘KUK). No attorney is listed for her in online court records.

Investigators say in the probable cause statement that White was having an affair with 28-year-old Cory Walker and knew he was about to kill Koch. Walker was charged earlier with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the killing.

A detective says White never called 911, and heard the stabbing happening in front of her two children. White also is charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Former University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe is criticizing most officials involved in turmoil at the university’s Columbia campus last year that led to his resignation.

The Columbia Daily Tribune obtained an email Wolfe sent to friends after he resigned Nov. 9 following protests aimed mostly at his handling of racial issues on campus.

He says the university is “under attack” by the Missouri Legislature, particularly Sen. Kurt Schaefer, and its Board of Curators is “frozen” in response to the pressure.

Wolfe also criticized former Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, who also resigned, as well as athletic department officials and interim President Mike Middleton.

He asked his supporters to pressure the curators to sweeten a financial package for him that is still being negotiated with the university.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers have begun discussing whether to allow concealed weapons on college campuses.

A Senate committee began hearing testimony Wednesday on a bill that would only allow campuses to ban concealed weapons if the school posts armed guards and metal detectors at every entrance to every campus building.

Other bills in the House and Senate would also expand access to guns on campuses.

Bill sponsor Sen. Brian Munzlinger said mass shooters can kill many people in the time it takes for police to arrive. The Williamstown Republican says law-abiding citizens with proper training can save lives in that situation.

Missouri State University President Clif Smart said binge drinking and mental health crises are more common in college, and adding more guns to that mix would be a bad idea.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two businessmen from Wichita are offering a second proposal for the future of Kemper Arena.

The Kansas City Star reports the proposal from Rodney and Brandon Steven would compete with one submitted by Foutch Brothers of Kansas City.

The Steven brothers own Genesis Health Clubs, car dealerships and have a stake in several hockey teams. A consultant for the brothers, Greg Ferris, says they want to use the arena for smaller concerts, junior hockey club teams, indoor sporting events and smaller entertainment events.

The Foutch Brothers want to use Kemper as a regional complex for amateur youth, family-oriented and adult sports.

Kansas City Councilman Scott Taylor says a selection committee is expected to hear details of the proposals in February.