JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is drawing on his experience as a Navy SEAL to assert that he won’t quit or back down despite various allegations of misconduct against him.

During a speech Thursday in Jefferson City about agricultural funding, Greitens recounted how he once felt like quitting during Navy SEAL training but kept going for the good of his team.

He then declared: “No matter what they throw at me, no matter how painful they try to make it … we are going to continue in our mission to fight for the people of Missouri.”

Prosecutors in St. Louis dropped a felony invasion-of-privacy charge against Greitens earlier this week. But he still faces another felony charge and the potential of impeachment during a special legislative session that starts Friday.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Federal prosecutors in Kansas have agreed to address issues arising from the furor over their use of recordings of phone conversations between attorneys and clients at the pretrial facility in Leavenworth.

Details remain to be worked out, but after a highly charged day-long hearing Tuesday in federal court, U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said Wednesday that his office was prepared to work out an agreement with the Federal Public Defender’s Office and the special master appointed to look into the tapings.

David R. Cohen, the Cleveland attorney who had been appointed special master by the court, said he hoped the agreement meant defense attorneys and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would begin acting “more openly and professionally” with each other.

“If that happens,” Cohen said, “the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, are the big winners, as they will enjoy an increased quality of justice for the entire community.”

The disclosure nearly two years ago that attorney-client calls had been recorded triggered an uproar among defense attorneys, who said it struck at bedrock principles of due process and the right to counsel under the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.

McAllister’s dramatic announcement came after the parties asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson to delay the resumption of Tuesday’s hearing and met informally in the courthouse for nearly two hours to see if they could reach some kind of accord.

In a highly unusual move, the Federal Public Defender had subpoenaed more than a dozen current and former employees of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to testify after Cohen reported that prosecutors had ceased cooperating with his investigation.

At Tuesday’s hearing, a current federal prosecutor, Scott Rask, declined to answer dozens of questions after the U.S. Attorney’s Office invoked a rule governing the extent to which federal agencies can release information.

“I’m not authorized to answer that question,” Rask repeatedly responded to questions by Cohen and attorneys with the Federal Public Defender.

The hearing also exposed the degree to which prosecutors, while initially claiming to cooperate with the special master’s inquiry, were directing their subordinates to withhold information from Cohen.

That may have prompted McAllister, who was confirmed as U.S. Attorney last year, after the tapings had been revealed, to reconsider his office’s position.

McAllister, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

Any agreement would have to address the volatile issue that led Robinson to appoint Cohen: the recording of attorney-client phone calls at the Leavenworth Detention Center and their use by prosecutors.

Criminal defense attorneys inadvertently learned of the recordings in mid-2016 in a criminal case accusing inmates and guards at Leavenworth of trafficking in drugs and other contraband. After a video recording surfaced of an inmate who had just met with his attorney, criminal defense attorneys discovered that their calls and meetings with clients may have been taped.

Evidence at a hearing in August 2016 revealed that the private contractor operating the facility, then known as Correction Corporations of America and since rebranded as CoreCivic Inc., had made recordings of confidential conversations between inmates and their attorneys and may have passed some of it on to government prosecutors in response to a grand jury subpoena.

As a result, Robinson appointed Cohen, a neutral third party, to investigate, later expanding the scope of his investigation to look into whether the government obtained and used such recordings. After initially cooperating, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in October said it would no longer provide Cohen with the information he was seeking, triggering the hearing that began on Tuesday.

A 24-page letter written by Steven D. Clymer, a federal prosecutor in New York who was appointed to act as the contact with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, asserted that there was no evidence suggesting any Sixth Amendment violations.

Moreover, Clymer wrote, “There is no evidence that the recording of attorney-inmate meetings or outgoing inmate telephone calls to attorneys was conducted at the direction of the OUSA (U.S. Attorney’s Office).”

Cohen, in the course of his investigation, found that 188 attorney-client phone calls had been recorded at Leavenworth and 700 meetings videotaped.

Any agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office would likely require that procedures be put in place to ensure that attorney-client phone calls and meetings at Leavenworth are not recorded.

Cohen told KCUR after the hearing that McAllister “deserves credit for seeing this as an opportunity and not a problem; in particular, an opportunity to reach across the aisle and work hand-in-hand with the Public Defender to find ways to improve and to increase mutual trust.”

“The willingness to say, ‘Let’s sit down and see if we can work things out’ is the first step toward rapprochement,” Cohen said.

An agreement probably would include retrospective relief as well. On Wednesday, McAllister agreed to dismiss the charges against one of the contraband defendants and to file a motion to dismiss the charges against another.

The contraband case, known as U.S.A. v. Black et al, was announced with great fanfare in early 2016, but has been overshadowed by the uproar over the tapings.

Last June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office belatedly disclosed that a prosecutor in the office, Erin S. Tomasic, who is no longer employed there, had listened to recorded calls between a defendant and his attorney.

Tomasic testified on Tuesday that she had filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility against her supervisors, including former acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall. The OPR is an office within the U.S. Department of Justice that examines attorney misconduct by prosecutors.

Tomasic, who was at the center of the tapings controversy, blamed her superiors for authorizing her after-hours entry into Robinson’s chambers in August 2016 to deliver evidence. She was later excoriated by Robinson, and said her supervisors failed to correct the record that she had not acted on her own.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor for the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a man has been fatally shot in Kansas City while leaving a health club.

The shooting happened Wednesday night outside a Genesis Health Club, which is located in the Ward Parkway Center.

Officers found the victim, who was believed to be in his late 20s, lying on the sidewalk. Police say he was soon pronounced dead.

The man’s name wasn’t immediately released.

NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. birth rates declined last year for women in their teens, 20s and – surprisingly – their 30s, leading to the fewest babies in 30 years, according to a government report released Thursday.

Experts said several factors may be combining to drive the declines, including shifting attitudes about motherhood and changing immigration patterns.

The provisional report, based on a review of more than 99 percent of the birth certificates filed nationwide, counted 3.853 million births last year. That’s the lowest tally since 1987.

Births have been declining since 2014, but 2017 saw the greatest year-to-year drop – about 92,000 less than the previous year.

That was surprising, because baby booms often parallel economic booms, and last year was a period of low unemployment and a growing economy.

But other factors are likely at play, experts said.

One may be shifting attitudes about motherhood among millennials, who are in their prime child-bearing years right now. They may be more inclined to put off child-bearing or have fewer children, researchers said.

Another may be changes in the immigrant population, who generate nearly a quarter of the babies born in the U.S. each year. For example, Asians are making up a larger proportion of immigrants, and they have typically had fewer children than other immigrant groups.

Also, use of IUDs and other long-acting forms of contraception has been increasing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report also found:

-The rate of births to women ages 15 to 44, known as the general fertility rate, sank to a record low of about 60 per 1,000.

-Women in their early 40s were the only group with higher birth rates in 2017, up 2 percent from the year. The rate has been rising since the early 1980s.

-The cesarean section rate rose by a tiny amount after having decreased four years. Studies have shown C-sections are more common in first-time births involving older moms.

-Rates of preterm and low birth weight babies rose for the third straight year, possibly for the same reason.

-Birth rates for teens continued to nosedive, as they have since the early 1990s. In 2017, they dropped 7 percent from the year before.

-Rates for women in their 20s continued to fall and hit record lows. They fell 4 percent.

-Perhaps most surprising, birth rates for women in their 30s fell slightly, dipping 2 percent for women ages 30 to 34 and 1 percent for women 35 to 39.

Birth rates for women in their 30s had been rising steadily to the highest levels in at least half a century, and women in their early 30s recently became the age group that has the most babies.

That decline caused some experts’ eyebrows to shoot up, but they also noted the dip was very small.

“It’s difficult to say yet whether it marks a fundamental change or it’s just a blip,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania demographer who studies birth trends.

Another notable finding: The current generation is getting further away from having enough children to replace itself.

The U.S. once was among a handful of developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace it.

The rate in the U.S. now stands less than the standard benchmark for replacement. It’s still above countries such as Spain, Greece, Japan and Italy, but the gap appears to be closing.

A decade ago, the estimated rate was 2.1 kids per U.S. woman. In 2017, it fell below 1.8, hitting its lowest level since 1978. “That’s a pretty remarkable decline,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics.

CASS COUNTY — A Missouri man was arrested for alleged DUI after a fatal crash just after 7p.m. Tuesday in Cass County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Dodge passenger vehicle driven by Zachary A. St. George, 31, Belton, was northbound on Route D just south of 164th Terrace.

The vehicle swerved into the southbound lanes and struck a 2012 Honda passenger vehicle driven by John H. Henning, 80, Village of Loch Lloyd, head-on.

Henning and a passenger Nancy L. Henning, 78, Village of Loch Lloyd, were pronounced dead at the scene. St. George was transported to Research Medical Center.  He faces charges of felony driving while intoxicated and two counts of involuntary manslaughter, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

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CASS COUNTY — Two people died in an accident just after 7p.m. Tuesday in Cass County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Dodge passenger vehicle driven by Zachary A. St. George, 31, Belton, was northbound on Route D just south of 164th Terrace.

The vehicle swerved into the southbound lanes and struck a 2012 Honda passenger vehicle driven by John H. Henning, 80, Village of Loch Lloyd, head-on.

Henning and a passenger Nancy L. Henning, 78, Village of Loch Lloyd, were pronounced dead at the scene. St. George was transported to Research Medical Center.

The drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the MSHP. It is unknown if Nancy Henning was wearing a seat belt.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Missouri Legislature has passed a measure that could allow the biggest electric companies in the state to recover more of their costs for infrastructure improvements from customers.

The bill, approved by the House Wednesday 125-20, affects the nearly 2 million people who use The Empire Electric District, Ameren Corp. and Kansas City Power & Light Co. across the state. Companies would be given more flexibility as to when and how they changed their rates, in response to declining electricity usage.

Proponents say this change will help modernize the state’s electrical grid.

Opponents say this could dramatically increase what customers are paying.

The bill next goes to the governor.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A former business owner in southwest Missouri will serve two years in federal prison for fraud committed to receive a $1.45 million loan.

Federal prosecutors say 44-year-old Clinton Tackitt, of Republic, was sentenced Wednesday for providing false information and failing to pay employment taxes.

He also was ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration, Guaranty Bank and the IRS.

Tackitt admitted he submitted false and incomplete information on an application for a $1.45 million SBA-guaranteed loan for his business, Allied Roofing Systems, in May 2012. He also failed to disclose that his company was heavily in debt and about to file for bankruptcy.

Tackitt also admitted that he didn’t pay $262,000 in payroll taxes and $395,000 in the employer’s share of FICA taxes.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A 20-year-old Kansas man has admitted being part of a group that shot and killed several cows in Leavenworth County.

Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson says Christopher Wright, of Overland Park, pleaded no contest Wednesday to criminal damage to property and animal cruelty.

Wright was one of four people who have been found guilty in the shootings. Twenty-year-old Marcel Timmons, of Manhattan, and two others whose names were not released because they are juveniles, pleaded guilty last year.

Investigators say the shootings occurred in August 2016 in rural Leavenworth County. Several cows on two separate properties were found dead of gunshot wounds.

The damage was estimated at more than $16,000.

Police say the four admitted to shooting the cows but offered no justification.