OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A report on a May survey says slower economic growth likely is ahead for nine Midwestern and Plains states.

The survey report issued Monday says the overall Mid-America Business Conditions Index dropped to 50.4 last month from 52.7 April.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss oversees the survey, and he highlighted drops in economic activity for companies linked to energy production and agriculture.

The survey results from supply managers are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests economic growth, while a score below that suggests decline.

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

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — An abortion rights group is challenging Kansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on a commonly used procedure to end second-trimester pregnancies.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Shawnee County District Court by the Center for Reproductive Rights asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional. It also seeks to block implantation of the law, which is to take effect in July. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of doctors Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser of the Center for Women’s Health in Overland Park.

A spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said his office would issue a statement later.

Anti-abortion activists describe the method as dismembering a fetus.

The lawsuit contends it is the most commonly used procedure to end a pregnancy after 14 weeks, and is used in 95 percent of abortions nationwide.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri’s top law enforcer says the disparity last year between the number of black drivers pulled over, versus motorists stopped who are white, was the highest since 2000.

Attorney General Chris Koster says the state’s African-American drivers were 75 percent more likely than their white counterparts to be stopped on Missouri’s roads based on their proportionate share of the driving-age population.

Koster says that disparity is the highest since the state’s data collection began in 2000.

The report is Missouri’s first released since the racial uproar that followed last August’s shooting death of a black, unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white Ferguson police officer.

Koster’s report shows that black drivers were pulled over in Ferguson at a lower rate than the statewide average.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri hospital has to repay the federal government about $123,000 after filing scores of erroneous Medicare claims for treating a form of malnutrition typically found in tropical countries.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says in a report that Cox Medical Center in Branson used a diagnosis code for Kwashiorkor when it should have used a different code. HHS says Kwashiorkor is a severe type of malnutrition that’s rare in the U.S. and found most commonly among children in tropical countries during famine.

The report says the Cox Branson errors resulted in overpayments to the hospital of about $123,000, which Cox is repaying.

The hospital attributes the errors to software and coding problems and says Cox helped with the review and has fixed the problems.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri conservation officials say that although fatal snakebites are rare in the state, people still need to take precautions when they are out in the wild.

A southwest Missouri man died last week after being bitten in both legs by a venomous snake and going home, instead of heeding his girlfriend’s plea to go to the hospital.

Christian County Coroner Brad Cole says it will take eight weeks before lab tests come back with a cause of death, but he says no signs indicate it was anything other than snakebites.

The Missouri Conservation Department website says only two other deaths have been officially attributed to snakebites. But the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services says five deaths since 2010 had snakebites as an underlying cause.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City police say a child has been shot and killed by gunfire outside the home where the child lived.

Detectives are investigating the shooting death, which was reported Sunday on the city’s east side.

Police spokesman Capt. Tye Grant said in an email that police were notified of the shooting at about 10 a.m. He says the child was inside the home when the house was shot at from outside. The child was confirmed dead at the scene.

The child’s name and age have not been released.

Grant says the child is a toddler, and that the other children and adults in the home were not injured. Officers are processing the scene for evidence, but Grant says there is no information about the suspect to release.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Republican lawmakers are pressing ahead with plans to enact one of the nation’s most restrictive unemployment laws later this year — even though Missouri’s governor and a former Supreme Court judge says they can’t.

Senators ended their session in May without taking the final vote needed to override Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill cutting unemployment benefits to as few as 13 weeks.

Nixon says that means his veto has been upheld.

But top Republican senators say they can do it during a September session.

Nixon and former Missouri Chief Justice Michael Wolff both say the state constitution doesn’t allow that. They say a provision permitting September overrides only applies to bills vetoed in the final week of the session. Nixon vetoed the unemployment bill before then.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Mississippi River has been reopened to traffic after more than 100 barges broke loose just north of the Jefferson Barracks Memorial Arch Bridge near St. Louis.

St. Louis media outlets report the U.S. Coast Guard said the barges became loose around 7 a.m. Saturday and were rounded up several hours later. The river reopened to traffic just after 4 p.m.

No injuries or significant damage were reported.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Jonathan Berry said backup of traffic was minimal, and many vessels assisted in securing the barges.

According to Berry, how the barges got loose is under investigation.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Advocates for human trafficking survivors, law enforcement, state officials and lawmakers will be meeting over the next 18 months to evaluate Missouri’s policies to combat human trafficking.

Deborah Hume is a founding member of the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition. She says she hopes the group can provide more comprehensive, informed services to victims of trafficking.

The measure’s sponsor, Republican Representative Elijah Haahr of Springfield says he wants Missouri to be a top state in fighting trafficking.

Haahr also wanted to include advertising sex with a trafficking victim to the state’s human trafficking law, but the measure did not advance.

Haahr says he’s not ruling out reintroducing the bill, adding that the provision was approved at the national level by Congress earlier this month.