LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A 40-year-old Kan. man has been sentenced to 27.5 years in prison for repeatedly raping a girl for more than six years.

Andrew Tribble was sentenced Thursday for two counts of rape and one count of aggravated criminal sodomy. He was originally charged with a dozen felonies.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports the victim, who is now 17, read a statement before sentencing saying Tribble stole her childhood from her.

She said by the time she was 9, she wanted to die but she eventually decided she had to speak up.

Tribble’s attorney read a statement from him apologizing for his actions.

Before his arrest, Tribble was a maintenance worker for the city and had coached youth sports in Lawrence.

PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — Police in the southeast Kansas community of Pittsburg are investigating the alleged assault of a disabled man in one of the city’s parks.

Pittsburg police Maj. Brent Narges says police were notified Monday that two videos were circulating on social media that showed a man being slapped and choked in Schlanger Park last week.

Narges says the victim is a dependent adult and the suspect is a 15-year-old boy.

The juvenile was arrested. Investigators have recommended charges of aggravated battery.

The videos prompted at least six complaints to Pittsburg police.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Pittsburg City Manager Daron Hall thanked those who notified police of the video, which he said shocked and sickened him.

Crawford County Attorney Michael Gayoso said he expects to file formal charges shortly.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A well known storm chaser wants his friends to launch his ashes into a tornado and ended his obituary saying, “That’ll be fun!!!!”

Jim “Mad Dog” Sellars, of Springfield, spelled out his unique wishes in the obituary he wrote before he died Tuesday.

Greenlawn Funeral Home said on its website that Sellars was 64. He had lived with a heart condition for several years.

Sellars’s older brother, John Sellars, described his brother as a “Renaissance Man.” Jim Sellars worked more than three decades for a telephone company, served as a reserve police officer and had a lifelong passion for weather and HAM radios. For years he chased storms.

John Sellars says his brother could “look at the radar and just know where the storm was headed.”

SPRINGFIELD—Drury University alumnus Bob Barker has given another significant gift to bolster the school’s Animal Studies Program.

According to a media release, Barker, who graduated from Drury College in 1947 and went on to a long and successful career in broadcast television, has given a $1 million gift to the university to support the program in two ways:

• A $600,000 gift to create the Dorothy Jo Barker Endowed Scholarship Fund. The purpose is to provide scholarships to students pursuing a minor or credential in Animal Studies at Drury.
• A $400,000 gift to create the Dorothy Jo Barker Endowed Internship Fund. The purpose is to provide funding for experiential learning grants for students pursuing a minor or credential in Animal Studies at Drury.With this gift, Barker has generously donated a total of $3.1 million to his alma mater since 2008 to establish and support the interdisciplinary Animal Studies Program – one of the first such programs at the undergraduate level in the United States. Drury’s program is entirely funded by Barker’s gifts. Barker’s generous contributions have also established the Dorothy Jo Barker Endowed Professorship of Animal Rights, currently held by Dr. Patricia McEachern.

  “The scholarships and internships Bob Barker has established by this very generous gift will change the lives of our students immeasurably, and they will improve the lives of animals,” McEachern says. “I am so grateful.”

  “Drury is honored and thankful to receive this gift from Mr. Barker,” says Drury President Dr. Tim Cloyd. “We are fortunate to be able to help make real Bob’s passion for animals. Drury University is able to place bright young minds into this important field thanks to his support. Gifts such as these have a ripple effect – on the lives of our graduates, and the world around them.”

  About Bob Barker

  Bob Barker earned a B.A. in economics from Drury College in 1947, after returning to school following training as a Navy fighter pilot in the waning days of World War II. After graduation, he pursued a career in broadcasting that included a stint on Springfield radio station KTTS before eventually moving to California with his wife, Dorothy Jo. He went on to host and star on audience participation television shows, including “Truth or Consequences” and a 35-year run on “The Price Is Right.” Barker has been an animal rights advocate for decades and has supported animal issues through both personal activism and funding over the years.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man involved in a fatal road rage incident has been sentenced to life in prison.

Shawnee County District Court Judge David Debenham on Thursday sentenced 23-year-old Andre Rhoiney Jr., for first-degree felony murder in the October 2016 road-rage shooting death of 28-year-old Michael Stadler He was sentenced to life plus 13 months.

Rhoiney was convicted in March after a mistrial was declared in an earlier trial.

A co-defendant, Daniel Askew, previously testified that Rhoiney fired two shots at a van Stadler was in after people in the two vehicles had exchanged words and rude gestures. Askew said Rhoiney meant to scare the people in the other car.

Askew has been charged but has not gone to trial.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Latest on the investigation of Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (all times local):

10:20 a.m.

An attorney for the ex-husband of a woman who had an affair with Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens says he was paid $100,000 cash that he was told originated from a wealthy out-of-state Republican.

Lawyer Al Watkins testified Thursday to a legislative investigatory committee that The Missouri Times publisher Scott Faughn provided the cash in January 2017.

The payments occurred as Watkins was working with other media to publicize an audio recording the husband made in which his wife described a sexual encounter with Greitens.

Faughn testified Wednesday that he paid the money to purchase the recording but declined to say how he got the money.

Watkins testified that Faughn implied it was to help cover the husband’s legal fees and hopefully to help provide a soft landing for the man.

___

10 a.m.

The chairman of a special legislative committee investigating Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens says it is “disgusting” that defense lawyers asked a woman involved in a 2015 affair with Greitens if she sent photos to a porn site.

The committee is investigating allegations related to the affair that took place before Greitens was elected, including allegations that he took a partially nude photo of the woman during an encounter in the basement of his St. Louis home in March 2015. The Legislature is meeting in special session to consider impeachment of the Republican governor.

On Wednesday, the committee reviewed questioning of the woman by Greitens’ lawyers about photos on a porn site. The woman said she never uploaded photos to a porn site, and the committee said the photos were clearly not her.

Chairman Jay Barnes, a Republican, called the questioning “disgusting.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is canceling the planned June 12 summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a recent statement from North Korea.

A letter from the President to Chairman Kim Jong Un: “It is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.” pic.twitter.com/3dDIp55xu1

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 24, 2018

Trump says in a letter to Kim released Thursday by the White House that based on the statement, he felt it was “inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

The president says the North Koreans talk about their nuclear capabilities, “but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A Kansas City man will serve time in federal prison after admitting that he helped smuggle contraband into the Jackson County jail.

Federal prosecutors say 36-year-old Marion Lorenzo Byers was sentenced Wednesday to two years and three months without parole for smuggling cell phones and other items into the jail.

Byers admitted he conspired with others to get contraband to inmates between May and June of 2016. Byers delivered the items to a co-conspirator, who gave them to a corrections officer at the jail.

A former jail guard, 30-year-old Jalee Caprice Fuller, of Independence, and two other people are awaiting sentencing in the scheme.

Another former guard, Andre Lamonte Dickerson, is awaiting sentencing in a separate but related case for taking a bribe to violate his duties.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration launched an investigation into whether tariffs are needed on the imports of automobiles into the United States, moving swiftly as talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement have stalled. President Donald Trump predicted earlier that U.S. automakers and auto workers would be “very happy” with the outcome of the NAFTA talks.

The White House said in a statement Wednesday that the president had asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to consider whether the imports of automobiles, including trucks, and automotive parts threaten U.S. national security. The president said in the statement that “core industries such as automobiles and automotive parts are critical to our strength as a Nation.”

The U.S. remains far apart on the talks over rewriting the trade pact with Canada and Mexico, with the discussions at an impasse over rules for car production. The initiation of the trade investigation could be seen as an attempt to gain leverage in the talks with the two U.S. neighbors. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that efforts to renegotiate the trade agreement could spill into next year.

Nearly half of the vehicles sold in the U.S. are imported, with many coming from assembly plants in Mexico and Canada. During a meeting with auto executives earlier this month, Trump said he would push for an increase in the production of vehicles built at U.S. plants. He has also criticized European Union auto imports and tariffs and earlier this year threatened a “tax” on European imports.

A person familiar with the discussions said the president has suggested seeking new tariffs of 20 to 25 percent on automobile imports. The person spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak about private deliberations.

Trump brought a little-used weapon to his fight to protect auto workers: Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The provision authorizes the president to restrict imports and impose unlimited tariffs on national security grounds.

The Trump administration used that authority in March to slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports. Until then, the United States had pursued only two such investigations since joining the World Trade Organization in 1995. Both times — in a 1999 case involving oil imports and a 2001 case involving iron ore and steel imports — the Commerce Department refused to recommend sanctions.

Critics fear that other countries will retaliate or use national security as a pretext to impose trade sanctions of their own.

Daniel Ujczo, a trade lawyer with Dickinson Wright PLLC, said the tariff threat is likely meant to pressure Mexico into accepting U.S. demands for NAFTA changes that would shift more auto production to the U.S. from Mexico. But he questioned whether it would work.

“I do not believe that it will have the desired effect,” Ujczo said. “Everyone knows that (the investigation) will take too long and has no chance of surviving any legal challenge.”

Trump offered a hint about the move earlier in the day on the South Lawn, telling reporters that “you’ll be seeing very soon what I’m talking about.” He noted that both Mexico and Canada have been “very difficult to deal with” during the negotiations.

“I am not happy with their requests. But I will tell you in the end we win, we will win and will win big,” Trump said before departing for New York. He said America’s neighbors have been “very spoiled because nobody’s done this but I will tell you that what they ask for is not fair. Our auto workers are going to be extremely happy.”

Mexico has so far resisted U.S. attempts to get higher regional content rules in the auto industry and move production to higher-wage U.S. and Canadian factories. The U.S. has also sought to change NAFTA’s dispute-resolution system, and include a sunset clause that would allow countries to exit after five years.

The Trump administration has already missed an informal deadline that had been set by House Speaker Paul Ryan to get a revamped deal to Congress in time for lawmakers to vote on it in a midterm election year. Mexico, meanwhile, will hold presidential elections on July 1 and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist candidate who has led in polls, has said the re-negotiation shouldn’t be rushed through and should be left to the winner of the election.

If the negotiators fail to agree to a revamped version of NAFTA, the discussions could be extended into 2019. Trump could also carry out his threat to abandon the agreement that he has long railed against, throwing commerce among the three countries into disarray.

Trump has sought to overhaul NAFTA in an effort to return auto production to the United States and reduce America’s trade deficit. The U.S. has been demanding that a percentage of a car’s content of auto parts originate in a country — the U.S. or Canada — with average auto worker wages of about $15 an hour to qualify for NAFTA’s duty-free status.

But companies have built supply chains that straddle NAFTA borders and changing the rules could disrupt their operations, raise costs and potentially put them at a competitive disadvantage with manufacturers in Asia and Europe.