SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — The son of the founder of a popular Missouri restaurant has been indicted on several sex crimes.

50-year-old Benjamin Lambert, who was previously involved in running the Lambert’s Cafe location in Ozark, Missouri, was indicted on five charges by a grand jury earlier this month.

Prosecutors say Lambert had a nude photo of a child posing in front of a mirror at his home. The charges relate to actions in 2015.

Lambert was arrested last week and was being held in lieu of $100,000 bond. Court records don’t list an attorney for him.

Lambert’s Cafe says Ben Lambert has not been active in managing the store in recent years. The business said it would cooperate with authorities and doesn’t condone the behavior Lambert is accused of.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City University medical students are pushing for a partner treatment plan for sexually transmitted diseases amid rising local and national STD rates.

Students Mianna Armstrong and Megan McMurray are bringing attention to the legal limits of expedited partner therapy in seven states, including Kansas and Oklahoma. The medical students and their professor John Paulson published research this year about the treatment plan to write prescriptions for both a patient diagnosed with an STD and their sexual partners.

The treatment outlines that STD patient’s sexual partners can get prescriptions even if the doctors or nurses haven’t personally examined them.

Missouri law explicitly allows licensed doctors to use expedited partner therapy to treat chlamydia and gonorrhea, though health officials still tread carefully. The practice is limited in Kansas law, which doesn’t address whether doctors can prescribe drugs to patients they haven’t seen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that doctors and nurses practice expedited partner therapy for chlamydia and gonorrhea.

The American Osteopathic Association this summer drafted a resolution in line with the CDC recommendation. The association endorsed the legalization of expedited partner therapy in all states for doctors, in part due to Armstrong and McMurray’s research.

“We can advocate for (it), as an organization,” said Bill Mayo, the association’s president. “But we cannot draft legislation and pass laws.”

Mayo said the students’ research would inform state osteopathic associations’ positions on legislation.

Armstrong recommended that Congress standardize the patchwork of state laws by enacting federal legislation that allows expedited partner therapy.

“It can give people who don’t have access to health care access to the medications they need to treat the infection,” she said.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach is proposing capping property appraisal increases, which he said would give taxpayers a more predictable property tax bill, but some experts say the change likely would require changes to the state constitution.

Kobach’s plan would cap property appraisal increases at no more than 2 percent a year, regardless of how much the property increases in actual fair market value,  He said the change would especially help the elderly and those on fixed incomes.

“Those individuals need to be able to plan out their retirement and have some knowledge that their home value is not going to be jacked up by 50 percent over a four- or five-year period, which is not unusual in some parts of the state,” Kobach said.

Property taxes determine how much tax each property owes, with the higher values meaning higher tax bills for property owners. The taxes are based on annual property appraisals.

Linda Terrill, a Johnson County attorney who has practiced property tax law for about 40 years, said Kobach’s plan might violate a constitutional amendment that requires the state to have “a uniform and equal basis of valuation and rate of taxation of all property subject to taxation.”

She said capping increases would mean properties that appreciate in value over time would no longer be valued or taxed at their actual fair market value, while others would be, and that could cause problems for local governments and some taxpayers.

“The more you move away from uniform and equal, the more difficult it is to fix it when you finally realize it wasn’t a good idea,” she said.

Kobach said he hasn’t decided whether his plan should cap appraisal increases for all time, or whether the state should allow the sale of a property to trigger a new appraisal. He said the Legislature should make that decision.

It is also unclear whether the Kansas Supreme Court would allow any kind of variation from the fair market standard for any extended period of time. In 2016, the court struck down a law that imposed a similar kind of cap for people who successfully protested their appraisal values and had the values lowered.

Kobach said he doesn’t believe that case would apply to his proposal

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration would be required to set new minimum requirements for seats on airplanes under legislation to be considered in the House this week, possibly giving passengers a break from ever-shrinking legroom and cramped quarters.

The regulation of seat width and legroom is part of a five-year extension of federal aviation programs announced early Saturday by Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate committees that oversee the nation’s air travel.

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to keep FAA programs running. The Senate will also need to take up the bill this week or both chambers will need to pass a short-term extension.

The bill would prohibit the involuntary bumping of passengers who have already boarded a plane. But in a nod to the power of the commercial airliners, lawmakers declined to include language that would have prohibited airlines from imposing fees deemed “not reasonable and proportional.”

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said lawmakers from both chambers agreed it was time to take action on “ever-shrinking seats.”

“Relief could soon be on the way for weary airline passengers facing smaller and smaller seats,” Nelson said.

In July, the FAA rejected the idea of setting minimum standards for airlines seats and legroom as a safety measure. But Congress appears determined to require the FAA to do so.

The room between rows — measured from a point on one seat to the same point on the seat in the next row — has been shrinking for many years as airlines squeeze more seats onto their planes. It was once commonly 34 or 35 inches, and is now less than 30 inches on some planes.

Lawmakers also included several provisions to address concerns about increased airport noise levels caused by new flight paths. The bill would require the FAA to study the potential health impacts of flight noise and the feasibility of amending existing departure procedures.

The bill would also mandate that flight attendants get a minimum of 10 hours of rest between their work shifts and require airlines to communicate better with customers during mass flight cancellations and groundings.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he expects the House and Senate to move quickly to send the bill to the president’s desk.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Kansas could end up handing out fewer felonies — and more misdemeanors —  for certain property crimes.

That could mean sending fewer people to state prison, though some might end up in county jail instead.

Until 2016, stealing $1,000 worth of property was the threshold between misdemeanor and felony theft. Then Kansas raised the dividing line to $1,500.

A criminal justice commission looking at prison overcrowding in the state voted this week to ask the Legislature to do the same for a host of other crimes. They include criminal property damage, stealing mislaid property, counterfeiting and Medicaid fraud.

As of August, both the male and female prison populations were above capacity. The proposed changes would free up an estimated four beds a year and spare people a black mark that can make finding work difficult for the rest of their lives, says Scott Schultz, executive director of the Kansas Sentencing Commission.

It can be harder to find employment with a felony record because many employers require disclosure of felonies.

Getting a misdemeanor instead of prison means potential time in county jail, but not state prison. That doesn’t necessarily translate to less incarceration time. In some cases, people could spend more time behind bars in a county jail than they would have in a state prison.

The Kansas Sentencing Commission is making its case for the change based on research from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Pew found dozens of states have made similar changes since 2001. That didn’t lead to more crime. Rather, property crime and larceny rates fell in states that changed their thresholds. It dropped slightly more in states that didn’t change, but the difference was statistically insignificant.

Kansas has raised its threshold for felony theft before — in 2004 — and related crime continued to decline, Pew says.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A 46-year-old woman who set a fire that resulted in the deaths of two Kansas City firefighters has been sentenced to 74 years in prison.

Thu Hong Nguyen was sentenced Friday for second-degree murder, arson and assault. She was convicted in July of setting a fire to her nail salon in October 2015.

Firefighters Larry Leggio and John Mesh died when a wall near the salon collapsed on them. Two other firefighters were seriously wounded.

Ngyuen’s sentencing was briefly delayed Friday when she began having breathing problems during victim impact statements. Emergency responders came to the courthouse to treat her and the sentencing eventually was completed.

Prosecutors say Nguyen had a history of burning businesses for insurance money. Nguyen was convicted of arson for a 2013 fire at a previous nail salon.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A Missouri was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday  for receiving child pornography.

Steven D. French, 60, of Columbia, Mo., was charged by a federal grand jury in Jefferson City, Mo., with one count of receiving or distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography.

The federal indictment charges French with downloading child pornography from, and uploading child pornography to, the internet. Law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at French’s residence on Aug. 29, 2018. Officers seized computers and other electronic media from his residence and submitted them for forensic examination. Forensic examination revealed images depicting child pornography as well as evidence of receipt of child pornography.

The charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.