KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Zoo’s male polar bear will be leaving the zoo for North Carolina.

The 8-year-old bear, named Nikita, has been at the Kansas City Zoo for five years. He’ll be there until the end of the year, when he will be sent to the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Zoo officials said Wednesday Nikita will be paired with a 15-year-old female named Anana in North Carolina, as part of species survival plan agreed to by North American Zoos.

A female bear, 26-year-old Berlin, will remain in Kansas City. She is at or near the end of her breeding ability.

The Kansas City Star reports the North Carolina Zoo recently expanded its polar bear exhibit with the goal of breeding cubs.f

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — An eastern Missouri construction worker is accused of hitting a colleague on the back the head with a shovel during a dispute, causing the victim to fall face-first and unconscious into wet cement.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports St. Charles County prosecutors have charged 46-year-old Kevin Givens of Wright City with felony assault.

Police say the men were laying concrete Tuesday when the victim found mud in his tennis shoes and believed Givens had put it there. Police say the victim dumped the mud into Givens’ lunchbox before co-workers broke up the dispute.

Investigators say that while the victim later was smoothing concrete, Givens whacked him from behind with the shovel, then again when he fell into the concrete.

Online court records don’t show whether Givens has an attorney.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.

The justices said in a 6-3 ruling Thursday that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.

The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement. Chief Justice John Roberts has again voted with his liberal colleagues to uphold a key portion of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Roberts also was the key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy was a dissenter in 2012, but was part of the majority on Thursday.

 

Roberts says in the majority opinion “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”

SJustice Antonin Scalia has a new name for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul: “SCOTUScare.” Scalia summarized from the bench his dissent to the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling to uphold the law’s nationwide tax subsidies. He says, quote, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The conservative justice used the acronym for the Supreme Court.

He says his colleagues have twice stepped in to save the law from what Scalia considered worthy challenges.

President Barack Obama says his signature health care law “is here to stay.”

Obama spoke in the Rose Garden shortly after the Supreme Court upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under the health overhaul. The president noted the multiple challenges to the law, both in Congress and the courts. But he says the law is no longer about politics, but is about the benefits it is having on extending coverage to Americans and making health insurance more affordable.

Obama says that while there is still work to be done to make health care in the U.S. better, “this law is working.”

Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help pay their insurance premiums.

Of those receiving subsidies, 6.4 million people were at risk of losing that aid because they live in states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.

Republican presidential candidates are reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a key part of the health care law. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee calls the ruling judicial tyranny. He says the court can’t “legislate from the bench” and “ignore the Constitution.”

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry says it’s not up to the Supreme Court to knock down the law — he says the nation needs leaders who would reject what he calls a “heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all policy.” Perry says the law “does nothing to help health outcomes for Americans.”

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis judge has ruled that a Pakistani Muslim taxi driver can wear religious attire while driving his cab.

For years, Raja Naeem of St. Louis and the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission have done battle over his clothing. The commission requires drivers to wear black pants and a white, button-down shirt.

After a 2013 court ruling, the commission offered to allow Naeem to wear a kurta, the loose-fitting clothing worn on the torso, but it must be white.

He was also allowed to wear the kufi, a head garment.

Naeem went back to court last year, saying the parameters violated his freedom of religious expression.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Judge Robert Dierker on Monday agreed with Naeem.

A spokesman for the taxicab commission declined immediate comment.

VERSAILLES, Mo. (AP) — Police say a missing 16-year-old central Missouri girl has been found safe.

Versailles police issued an endangered person advisory Tuesday for Kiaira Lazae Burris after she left a McDonald’s in Versailles with an unknown person and her mother received a call in which Burris sounded distraught.

Police canceled the advisory early Wednesday after Burris was found. No other details were released.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  A state appeals court has ruled that Missouri corrections officials didn’t violate an inmate’s rights when they prevented him from taking part in some of the 2010 Ramadan observances.

Inmate John Jones at the Jefferson City Correctional Center had filed a lawsuit, claiming that employees and officials had infringed on his religious liberties.

Prison officials said they had made plans for Muslim inmates to observe Ramadan, but reminded inmates that those who were placed on cell restriction would be limited in participating in “congregational aspects” of the holiday.

The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that Jones was placed on cell restriction after receiving a conduct violation. When his restriction ended, he went to the kitchen for his pre-dawn meal but was told he was removed from the participant list and wasn’t permitted to take pre-dawn breakfast.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A national medical group that represents athletic trainers is calling for more rigorous standards to treat sports-related spine injuries, including the immediate removal of helmets and other equipment before a patient goes to the hospital.

A treatment protocol last revised in 1998 recommends that equipment worn by athletes with potential spinal cord injuries not be removed on the field. Advances in safety equipment technology are among the reasons cited by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association in its updated policy.

The group released its revised guidelines Wednesday at its annual convention in St. Louis. Adherence to the new standards is voluntary.

The trainers’ association estimates that more than 1,100 spinal cord injuries occur each year due to participation in sports and recreational activities.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Monsanto Co. is reporting better-than-expected earnings results for the third quarter. Executives of the huge agricultural business are continuing to make a case for a $45 billion takeover of Swiss competitor, Syngenta AG.

The company based in St. Louis reported earnings of $2.39 per share on stronger revenue from crop chemicals, compared with results of $1.62 per share in the prior-year period.

The average estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was $2.05 per share.

But Edward Jones analyst Matt Arnold says the earnings gain was driven by a one-time licensing payment from Scotts Miracle Gro, which sells Monsanto’s signature weed killer Roundup to consumers.

Monsanto shares have decreased roughly 6 percent since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has increased 3 percent. The stock has dropped 7 percent in the last 12 months.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Federal environmental officials say hundreds have signed up to testify on a renewable fuels proposal that ethanol supporters say would have stifling implications for their industry.

Last month the Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan to reduce renewable fuels requirements by 4 billion gallons in 2015 and more than 3 billion in 2016. The agency says volumes required by a 2007 law are impossibly high.

The EPA is conducting the hearings Thursday in Kansas City, Kansas, with plans to announce its final decision in November.

At least two governors, busloads of FFA members and farmers from several states are planning to rally against the proposal at a nearby park.

Ethanol backers say the EPA caved in to the demands of the petroleum industry, which is generally opposed to the standards.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — An abortion rights group is asking a Kansas judge to block the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on what it says is the most common method for terminating second-trimester pregnancies.

Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks has scheduled a hearing Thursday in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The law takes effect next week. The center contends it will force women to accept higher medical risks or forgo abortions.

Lawyers for the state argue that abortion providers have safe alternatives to what anti-abortion activists describe as dismembering a fetus.

The National Right to Life Committee drafted the ban as model legislation for states. Kansas was the first to enact it.

The center represents father-daughter abortion providers and Drs. Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser of Overland Park.