LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas’ chancellor and 70 of the school’s distinguished professors have formally spoken out against the concealed carry of guns on campus.

Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little addressed the issue in her chancellor’s message to faculty and staff on Monday. The professors, including outgoing Provost Jeff Vitter, issued a statement voicing their opposition on Friday. The professors said universities should be able to restrict firearms on their campuses.

Under state law, Kansas universities must allow concealed weapons on campus beginning July 1, 2017.

The Kansas Board of Regents has drafted a policy to implement the new law on campuses.

Gray-Little encouraged employees to attend an information session on weapons on campus Tuesday and to respond to a weapons survey emailed to faculty and staff last week.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A farm economist with the Kansas Farm Management Association says gross income for farms is down by at least 20 percent in the state.

The Hutchinson News reports that last year southwest Kansas farmers averaged about $56,000 in accrual net farm income, a $50,000 drop from 2013.

Doug Stucky is currently visiting farms across the region working on year-end planning.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted in November that net farm income in the country will drop about 40 percent to $55.9 billion this year, reflecting depressed crop prices and a softening livestock market.

The decrease in income has affected companies that manufacture equipment as well. Randy Veatch, vice president of sales for Straub International, says agricultural manufacturers are reporting a nearly 30 percent decline in sales since about 2013.

OSKALOOSA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man who had served more than 15 years of a life sentence for the 1999 shooting death of his sister-in-law is a free man, after a county judge overturned his conviction.

Floyd Bledsoe was ordered released Tuesday after attorneys presented new evidence that implicated his late brother in the death of 14-year-old Camille Arfmann.

A Jefferson County Sheriff’s investigator testified that Bledsoe’s brother, Thomas, committed suicide last month after DNA evidence implicated him in Arfmann’s death. Thomas Bledsoe left behind suicide letters admitting his responsibility in the killing.

Tom Bledsoe had initially confessed to the killing before blaming his brother. Floyd Bledsoe had always maintained his innocence.

Prosecutor Jason Belveal has the option of pursuing the case but said it is unlikely that will happen.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — The mother of a sex exploitation victim has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Sioux City school district. The complaint filed last week says the negligence of Sioux City Community Schools and IowaJAG Inc. was responsible for Erick Deleon’s ability to have contact with the girl after school hours.

The lawsuit includes a claim against the former high school soccer coach for assault and battery or sexual exploitation. Thirty-year-old Deleon, the district and iJAG face a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The mother, who isn’t named in order to protect the girl’s identity, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. Deleon has been sentenced to three years of probation and a suspended five-year prison sentence in the case.

District spokeswoman Alison Benson declined to comment on pending litigation.

NEOSHO, Mo. (AP) — A student at Crowder College in Neosho is being held in jail after allegedly making threats that prompted the school to close Monday.

Neosho police officers went to the campus Sunday morning to investigate “concerning comments.” A 17-year-old male who takes online courses made comments about shooting other people and suggested he had explosive devices. The suspect was found in a van in a dormitory parking lot and was taken into custody.

A possible explosive device was found in the suspect’s vehicle. The Springfield police bomb squad rendered it safe. The suspect is being held in the Newton County jail pending charges.

Crowder spokeswoman Cindy Brown says students on campus were evacuated overnight to Davidson Hall. They were released Monday morning.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A man has been ordered to spend a year and a half in federal prison for a cyberattack that disabled a St. Louis-area police union’s website during unrest related to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

Thirty-three-year-old Justin Payne was sentenced Monday in St. Louis. That’s where he pleaded guilty in September to a felony count of possessing an unregistered firearm and a misdemeanor count of damaging a protected computer.

Investigators say the unregistered firearm was a crude incendiary device commonly called a Molotov cocktail.

Payne was accused of using Twitter accounts to unleash the December 2014 cyberattack that overwhelmed the St. Louis County Police Association website. Authorities say his actions were part of the “Operation Ferguson” effort supporting protesters of last year’s shooting death of Brown in Ferguson.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Monday that six people wrongly convicted in a 1985 slaying of a woman in southeast Nebraska should have a chance to argue that the officials who prosecuted them acted improperly.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the group’s complaint against Gage County and the officials who built the case against the six in the 1985 killing of Helen Wilson in Beatrice. The initial trial of the $14 million lawsuit ended in mistrial in January.

The wrongly convicted individuals — known as the Beatrice Six — served a combined 77 years in prison before DNA testing cleared them in 2008. It’s a crime that has since been linked to Bruce Allen Smith, who grew up in Beatrice and returned to town days before the slaying and then quickly went back to Oklahoma. He died in 1992.

James Dean, Kathleen Gonzalez, Debra Shelden, Ada JoAnn Taylor, Thomas Winslow and Joseph White were the wrongly convicted individuals. White died in 2011.

Lawyers representing county officials didn’t immediately respond to messages Monday.

Jeff Patterson, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said the appeals court sided with all the arguments they raised.

The individuals have argued that Gage County investigators recklessly strove to close the case despite contradictory evidence, rather than seek justice.

In its ruling, the court said there is substantial evidence to support the idea that Gage County officials conspired to convict the six individuals. Investigators suggested that Dean, Shelden and Gonzalez had repressed memories of the crime. They also conducted unreported interrogations and ignored verifiable alibis.

These six individuals were the first people in the state cleared by DNA evidence, which was made possible by a 2007 Nebraska Supreme Court ruling.

The case will likely move toward a new trial sometime next year, but the schedule won’t be set until both sides meet with the district court judge.

KINGMAN, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas hunter has taken down an antlered doe in Kingman County.

The Wichita Eagle reports Jerika Francis thought she shot a 10-point buck on Saturday afternoon on land owned by her husband’s family. She said that her husband, Russell Francis, realized the animal was a doe with antlers as he prepared to clean it.

Grant Woods, a Missouri-based biologist who researches whitetail deer, said antlered does are females with unusually high levels of testosterone.

Woods said that all does have testosterone, but some have enough to grow male-like antlers.

Keith Sexson with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism last year estimated he’d heard of fewer than 15 antlered does in the 50 years the state has had deer seasons.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The case of a missing 7-year-old Kansas boy who is believed to be dead has renewed calls for better oversight of home-schooled children, but state lawmakers say there’s no reason to make any changes to home-schooling laws.

Earlier this year two home-school children were found in a freezer in Detroit two years after they vanished, while an 11-year-old Florida girl also turned up in a family freezer after being missing more than a year.

Home-schooling researcher Rob Kunzman says such horrific events often create a short-term effort to increase regulations in states where they happen, but rarely lead to new restrictions.

Kansas House Education Committee Chairman Ron Highland, a Wamego Republican, says no matter how many regulations are in place, people are going to do some bad things.