The Kansas House is considering a bill that would allow some religious symbols on public lands.

The religious symbols would be permitted if they are part of the community’s history or heritage.

The bill is a reaction to an incident last summer, when a group threatened to sue the town of Buhler because its official city sign included a cross. The town replaced it with similar signs on private land.

The bill would also allow religious displays in public schools, if they are part of a course of study.

Rep. Don Schroeder of Hesston told a House committee Thursday that he believed religious displays like Buhler’s do not violate the U.S. Constitution.

House Majority Leader Arlen Siegfried expects a vote on the bill next week.

Legislation proposed in the Missouri House would outlaw abortions performed solely because of the sex or potential genetic abnormality of the fetus.

The bill is sponsored by Republican Rep. John McCaherty, of suburban St. Louis. It would allow criminal charges and civil lawsuits against doctors for performing abortions on women who they know are seeking to end a pregnancy solely based on gender or potential physical or mental disabilities.

Americans United for Life says the Missouri bill is modeled after a proposal it’s also pursuing in other states. The anti-abortion group says “sex-selection abortions” have become increasingly common in some Asian countries.

McCaherty’s bill was filed this week with more than 40 co-sponsors – about one-fourth of all House members. McCaherty is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Murphy.

A kangaroo at a central Kansas wildlife refuge has undergone a stem cell treatment to repair an injured leg.

Vets at Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure performed the procedure Wednesday on the 6-year-old female red kangaroo.

The operation was performed by Dr. Danelle Okeson, the zoo’s veterinarian, and Dr. Larry Snyder, veterinarian from the University Bird and Small Animal Clinic in Topeka.

The procedure was intended to regenerate a damaged joint that was causing the kangaroo to hobble around on one leg and her tail.

Snyder says stem cell therapy has been a viable treatment for humans for decades but has only recently been used on animals, mostly house pets and horses.

A refuge official says it may take days for zoo officials to notice any improvement.

Kansas City police are investigating the death of a woman who was shot and killed Wednesday during an apparent rush hour road rage incident.

Authorities say the woman was driving in midtown when a maroon SUV pulled up beside her and opened fire.

The killings brought to seven the number of homicides in Kansas City since Monday.

 

Two men were fatally shot at a recording studio in the southern part of the city around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. Witnesses reported an armed man ran from the scene.

On Tuesday, the owner of a barber shop was found shot to death inside his store. And two men were found shot to death Monday night in a vehicle.

Also Monday night, police were called to home where they found a man on a porch with severe head injuries. That man later died. A 33-year-old suspect was charged Wednesday with second-degree murder.

Witnesses said the pair had been drinking when the suspect hit the victim with a handgun.

The Missouri House Budget Committee is demanding answers from the Highway Patrol superintendent over the agency’s purchase of a new $5.6 million airplane.

Lawmakers are questioning the need for the plane and whether its purchase was politically motivated.

Col. Ronald Replogle testified at a hearing Wednesday that the plane was purchased to help the patrol in its homicide and drug investigations.

 

Replogle said other state officials, including Gov. Jay Nixon, use the patrol’s current passenger plane 70 percent of the time.

The patrol purchased a King Air 250 plane in December. House members are asking Replogle for the plane’s flight logs and communications between the patrol and the governor’s office over the plane’s purchase.

The National Weather Service confirms that two small tornadoes touched down in southwest Missouri as a powerful storm system swept across the state.

No injuries were reported from either twister, reported about 20 minutes apart Tuesday.

Survey teams on Wednesday reported evidence of an F1 tornado, with estimated winds of 90 mph, near the Cedar County town of Cedar Springs.

The path was about two miles long and 200 yards. Trees and outbuildings were damaged, and a house lost its roof.

An F1 tornado was also confirmed in nearby St. Clair County, just outside Gerster. Two barns and an outbuilding were destroyed there.

The tornadoes were spawned by a storm system that moved across Missouri with high winds and heavy rain Tuesday and light snowfall into Wednesday.

A southwest Missouri man will spend three years in prison for possessing cartoons showing child pornography.

A federal judge sentenced 36-year-old Christjan Bee of Monett on Monday to three years without parole, followed by five years of supervised probation.

Bee pleaded guilty last October to possession of an obscene image of the sexual abuse of children.

Bee’s wife called police in August 2011 after finding what she believed to be child pornography on her husband’s computer.

The U.S. attorney’s office says in a news release that comics found on the computer found several images of minors engaged in sexual activity.

A Cass County man was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his 4-month-old daughter.

Moreno Antonio Salinas, 22, of Lake Winnebago was sentenced Monday in the April 2010 death of his daughter, Avee Marie Hunter.

Salinas was convicted of first-degree murder in December, after a cousin told authorities that the two conspired to kill the baby by abusing her.

The Kansas City Star reports Salinas repeatedly threw the girl on the bed, hanged her upside down, shook and flipped her around and squeezed the air out of her lungs.

The child had injuries consistent with shaken baby syndrome when taken to the hospital. She had been treated earlier for seizures.

Salina’s cousin is awaiting trial on assault charges.

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment is calling on the state to air quality tests after a foul smell resulted from an underground landfill fire in the Bridgeton area of St. Louis County.

Coalition director Kat Logan-Smith says residents are complaining about health effects but are not getting any official information about what they are breathing.

It isn’t clear how long the fire has been burning, but landfill fires can sometimes burn for years.

The Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill is adjacent to the West Lake Landfill, a site where nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project is stored. Logan-Smith says that makes the underground fire a public safety issue.