SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A retired Springfield police officer has been ordered to spend four years in federal prison for possessing child pornography.

The U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release that 60-year-old Steven Robert Magruder was sentenced Thursday. He entered a guilty plea in October.

Magruder retired as a corporal from the Springfield Police Department in 2005. He worked part-time from 2006 to 2014 as a security officer for Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield and as a bailiff for the Greene County Circuit Court in 2013.

Prosecutors say a Jasper County Sheriff’s Department detective determined in January 2013 that Magruder’s computer had been used to share child pornography over the Internet. His computer was seized, and prosecutors said it contained child pornography.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A new monthly survey report says April results suggest that slow economic growth remains ahead for nine Midwestern and Plains states.

The survey report issued Friday says the overall Mid-America Business Conditions Index rose to 52.7 last month from 51.4 in March.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss oversees the survey, and he says rising economic expectations from nonenergy firms, resulting from lower energy prices, “more than offset economic pessimism stemming from weakness in firms directly tied to energy.”

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.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Construction workers in confined spaces like manholes and tanks will come under a new federal rule intended to give them similar protections to workers in manufacturing and other industries.

The rule is being issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Officials say it will prevent about 800 serious injuries and deaths each year. It takes effect Aug. 3.

Workers in confined spaces face risks of exposure to toxic substances, electrocution, asphyxiation and explosions. Under the rule, multiple employers at a work site such as contractors will be required to share safety information and continuously monitor hazards.

Officials say the rule likely would have prevented the deaths of two workers in Ohio last year who were overcome by fumes and asphyxiated while repairing leaks in a manhole.

OSCEOLA, Mo. (AP) — A growing number of rural hospitals are closing their doors, forcing many Americans in small communities to travel much farther for medical care.

The hospitals cite changing demographics, medical practices and management decisions. They have also been affected by federal policies that have put more financial pressure on facilities that sometimes average only a few in-patients a day.

Chris Smiley is a former operating-room nurse who was the last chief executive of Sac-Osage Hospital in Osceola, Missouri. He says money “just kept drying up.”

The National Rural Health Association says a total of 50 hospitals in the rural U.S. have closed since 2010, and the pace has been accelerating. More hospitals have closed in the past two years than in the previous 10 years combined.

SEDALIA, Mo. (AP) — A central Missouri woman told police that her boyfriend held her captive in their home, sometimes confining her in a wooden box.

Authorities are searching for 47-year-old James Barton Horn Jr.

Sedalia police Chief John DeGonia said in a news conference Friday that a “hysterical” woman called police Thursday night after escaping a home she shared with him. She told police the suspect routinely locked her inside the box. He says officers found a box in the home that matched the woman’s information.

DeGonia said the man and woman’s relationship began as consensual but eventually the man became very controlling.

The Sedalia Democrat reports the victim is being kept at an undisclosed location and is doing well considering the circumstances.

FAIRDALE, Ill. (AP) — A Missouri veteran who survived Hurricane Katrina has donated part of his vacation money to the victims of tornados that struck northern Illinois.

The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle reports that 78-year-old Dan Moyle of Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, sent $250 for disaster relief. A tornado killed two people in the town of Fairdale on April 9.

Moyle says “it’s totally devastating” and he know it from experience. Moyle lived in New Orleans in 2005 when Katrina struck. He lost his trailer and other property.

Moyle planned to use the money to attend a reunion this summer. He says he hopes the best for the tornado victims in Illinois. He says he has “no idea the number of people that need help, but if there’s one, that’s one too many.”

WILLIAMSVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A southeast Missouri man is recovering after being shot by another hunter, who mistook him for a turkey.

The Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic reports that the accident happened Tuesday in Wayne County, injuring 35-year-old James Clubb of Williamsville. He was struck with about 18 pellets in the face, neck, left arm and left thigh, but has been released from the hospital.

The Missouri Department of Conservation is investigating.

Conservation authorities say a 51-year-old man from Paris, Arkansas, was turkey hunting when he fired bird shot on U.S. Forest Service land in a remote area. The men were not hunting together but both were with other hunters.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Eighteen black women told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at the old Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis are now questioning if their children weren’t instead taken from them while alive.
A video that went viral last month shows Melanie Gilmore reuniting with her birth mother, Zella Jackson Price. DNA confirmed with near 100-percent certainty that the two are mother and daughter.
Price was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth, only to be told hours later that her daughter had died.
Media attention about the reunion led to other women reaching out to Price’s attorney, Albert Watkins. He says city officials are trying to help investigate, but that no one can locate birth records from the hospital that closed in 1979.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court plans to wait to take up a school funding lawsuit against the state.

The high court issued an order Thursday saying a three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court must finish hearing the lawsuit first. The lower court has scheduled a May 7 hearing.

The lower-court panel ruled in December that the state must spend at least $548 million more a year on aid to public schools to provide a suitable education for every child. The state has appealed.

Lawmakers in March enacted a new school funding law promising additional aid for each of the next two school years, but far short of what the lower court specified.

The four school districts suing the state asked the lower-court panel to strike down the new law.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas says it collected $4.4 million less in taxes than anticipated this month.

But the Department of Revenue said Thursday that the lower-than-expected collections may be due to how tax returns have been processed since the April 15 filing deadline. Spokeswoman Jeannine Koranda said the agency can’t predict which returns will be processed first.

The state expected to collect nearly $516 million in taxes for the month. Instead, it collected $511.5 million. The shortfall was 0.9 percent.

It was the first monthly report on tax collections since state officials issued a new, more pessimistic fiscal forecast earlier this month.

Since the current fiscal year began in July, the state has collected about $4.5 billion in taxes. That’s also $4.4 million less than expect, for a shortfall of 0.1 percent.