Across Kansas and around the nation thousands of students  walked out of school Wednesday morning to protest gun violence, one month after the deadly shooting inside a high school in Parkland, Florida.

#NationalWalkoutDay Washburn Rural High School walkout pic.twitter.com/ZBp7RRYeGv

— Aylin A.. (@smallavacado) March 14, 2018

#NationalWalkoutDay at Free State High School in Lawrence, Kansas. pic.twitter.com/TkmQ726Pd8

— John Hoopes (@jwhoopes2) March 14, 2018

Organizers say nearly 3,000 walkouts are set in the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged following the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Students from the elementary to college level are taking up the call in a variety of ways. Some planned roadside rallies to honor shooting victims and protest violence. Others were to hold demonstrations in school gyms or on football fields. In Massachusetts and Ohio, students said they’ll head to the statehouse to lobby for new gun regulations.

The coordinated walkout was organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women’s March, which brought thousands to Washington, D.C., last year. The group urged students to leave class at 10 a.m. local time for 17 minutes — one minute for each victim in the Florida shooting.

Although the group wanted students to shape protests on their own, it also offered them a list of demands for lawmakers, including a ban on assault weapons and mandatory background checks for all gun sales.

“Our elected officials must do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to this violence,” the group said on its website.

It’s one of several protests planned for coming weeks. The March for Our Lives rally for school safety is expected to draw hundreds of thousands to the nation’s capital on March 24, its organizers said. And another round of school walkouts is planned for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.

After the walkout Wednesday, some students in Massachusetts say they plan to rally outside the Springfield headquarters of the gun maker Smith & Wesson. Students and religious leaders are expected to speak at the rally and call on the gun maker to help curb gun violence.

At Case Elementary School in Akron, Ohio, a group of fifth-graders have organized a walkout with the help of teachers after seeing parallels in a video they watched about youth marches for civil rights in 1963. Case instructors said 150 or more students will line a sidewalk along a nearby road, carrying posters with the names of Parkland victims.

The walkouts have drawn support from companies including media conglomerate Viacom, which said it will pause programming on MTV, BET and all its other networks for 17 minutes during the walkouts, and students will temporarily take over MTV’s social media accounts.

The planned protests have drawn mixed reactions from school administrators. While some applaud students for taking a stand, others threatened discipline. Districts in Sayreville, New Jersey, and Maryland’s Harford County drew criticism this week when they said students could face punishment for leaving class.

In suburban Atlanta, one of Georgia’s largest school systems announced that students who participate might face unspecified consequences.

But some vowed to walk out anyway.

“Change never happens without backlash,” said Kara Litwin, a senior at Pope High School in the Cobb County School District.

The possibility of being suspended “is overwhelming, and I understand that it’s scary for a lot of students,” said Lian Kleinman, a junior at Pope High.

“For me personally this is something I believe in, this is something I will go to the ends of the Earth for,” Kleinman said.

Other schools sought a middle ground, offering “teach-ins” or group discussions on gun violence. Some worked with students to arrange protests in safe locations on campus. Officials at Boston Public Schools said they arranged a day of observance Wednesday with a variety of activities “to provide healthy and safe opportunities for students to express their views, feelings and concerns.” Students who don’t want to participate could bring a note from a parent to opt out.

Meanwhile, free speech advocates geared up for a battle. The American Civil Liberties Union issued advice for students who walk out, saying schools can’t legally punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their message. In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, some lawyers said they will provide free legal help to students who are punished.

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DETROIT (AP) — Ford is recalling nearly 1.4 million midsize cars in North America because the steering wheel can detach from the steering column and drivers could lose control.

The recall covers certain Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ cars from the 2014 through 2018 model years.

Ford says steering wheel bolts can loosen over time. The company says it knows of two crashes and one injury caused by the problem.

Dealers will replace the bolts with longer ones that have more aggressive threads and a nylon patch to stop them from coming loose.

Just over 1.3 million cars in the U.S. are being recalled. The rest are in Canada and Mexico.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Pompeo’s hawkish instincts may seem at odds with traditional diplomatic norms. But after 14 demoralizing months of budget cuts and staffing reductions for the State Department, his conservative political bent and closeness to President Donald Trump could breathe new vigor into an agency all too often sidelined on many of the nation’s most pressing national security matters.

Pompeo, the outgoing CIA chief, will bring a new, blunt-speaking style to the job of secretary of state, strikingly different from Rex Tillerson’s understated approach. Pompeo’s arrival in Foggy Bottom also promises far more aggressive stances on Iran and North Korea, and he’ll at least start with Trump’s full confidence — something Tillerson never enjoyed.

“One of the most important jobs for the secretary of state is to make clear to the world the president’s policies and priorities,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, an establishment Republican and initial Tillerson backer, said Tuesday, after Trump announced via tweet that Pompeo would replace Tillerson. “No one has a stronger relationship with President Trump than Mike Pompeo. This relationship will empower him throughout his tenure as secretary of state.”

Tillerson had been widely criticized for an aloof management style, which had alienated droves of career diplomats and driven many of the agency’s senior brass into early retirements. But his foreign policy was far less controversial, as he hewed to much of the agency’s pragmatic approach, from climate change to free trade agreements, and to preserving the Iran nuclear deal, even when that put him at odds with his president and his most conservative supporters.

In Pompeo, the diplomats and civil servants who make up the 70,000-strong department may now encounter the opposite: a fiercely partisan veteran of some of the most bitter battles in Congress while he was a House Republican, and someone willing to jeopardize his reputation to defend Trump, as evidenced when he called up journalists to try to discredit a New York Times story outlining Trump campaign connections to Russia.

But Pompeo also helped engineer a detente between Trump and the U.S. intelligence agencies after the incoming president likened them to Nazis. In doing so, Pompeo never lost his access to Trump, or experienced a mass revolt to his leadership like Tillerson faced at the State Department.

“Tillerson’s ouster is a sign of continued turbulence in U.S. foreign policy,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University professor. “A potential silver lining is that the State Department will fare better under someone who has Trump’s ear.”

Immediately, there were calls for Pompeo to abandon Tillerson’s plans to shrink the department and empower marginalized diplomats.

While some opponents lambasted the former Kansas lawmaker for his posturing on a House panel that investigated Hillary Clinton and the 2012 Benghazi attack, some Democrats held out hope he could lead a State Department turnaround.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a harsh critic of Trump and Tillerson, said Pomepo would be wise to let the State Department’s talent “do their jobs.” Referencing the departure of many senior diplomats, Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said Pompeo will “need to recruit and fill the many offices that have been left vacant.”

While Tillerson sought to reduce staffing at embassies and consulates abroad, and seemed to hoard many of the agency’s minutest decisions among a small group of advisers, Pompeo sent more spies to the field and tried to improve the CIA’s agility and speed by cutting bureaucratic red tape and moving decision-making down the chain of command.

Pompeo said his goal as America’s spymaster was to create a culture that says: “If you are in a process and you’re not adding value, get out of the way.”

Pompeo and Tillerson navigated different paths with Trump, too.

While Tillerson survived a tumultuous year amid rampant speculation that the White House wanted him out, he was unable to use a much-touted alliance with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to keep his job. Pompeo took a more direct approach, carefully cultivating Trump and even assuming the previously lower-level responsibility of delivering the daily presentation of intelligence to the president in the Oval Office.

Bigger questions loom about Pompeo’s ability to counteract Trump’s often unpredictable decision-making processes. For all of Tillerson’s bureaucratic stumbles, some of the president’s most bitter adversaries credited the ex-oilman with acting as an adult and serving with dignity even as Trump publicly humiliated him.

And, as Trump noted Tuesday, he and Pompeo have a “similar thought process” on the Iran deal, which Trump has threatened to abandon unless there are significant changes by May.

Tillerson “has been a poor advocate for the State Department, but he served as a Cabinet-level check on some of President Trump’s worst impulses,” said Thomas Countryman, one of the career diplomats who left in early 2017. Countryman, who was assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, said if Pompeo “has a disdain for diplomacy mirroring Trump’s, it will be bad for the department and the country.”

BARRY COUNTY— A Missouri woman died in an accident just before 7:30p.m. Tuesday in Barry County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis driven by Debera L. Heffington, 61, Wheaton, was eastbound on Route W three miles west of Butterfield. The vehicle crossed the center line and struck a 2016 Ford Escape head-on.

Heffington was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Fohn’s Funeral Home.

The driver of the Ford Jacqueline M. Wasson, 60, Purdy, was transported by private vehicle to Cox Hospital in Monett.

The drivers were not wearing seat belts, according to the MSHP.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for causing recurring flooding that damaged farms and property in four Midwest states along the Missouri River.

The ruling Tuesday in Washington says the government must compensate farmers, landowners and business owners for the flood damage in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. The damage has been estimated to exceed $300 million.

More than 300 farmers, landowners and business owners argued in the lawsuit filed in 2014 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that the Corps has altered its practices regarding the river’s water storage, release and flow management. The suit contended the Corps unconstitutionally deprived plaintiffs of their land, essentially taking it without compensation.

On Tuesday, Judge Nancy B. Firestone found in favor of the plaintiffs in five of the six years that the flooding was claimed dating back to 2007, disallowing the flood claims in 2011.

TOPEKA– A man was sentenced Tuesday to 24 years and six months in federal prison for trafficking methamphetamine in Topeka, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

Marco Antonio Cortes-Gomez, 42, Kansas City, was found guilty in a jury trial on one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and one count of attempted possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that over a three-year period Cortes-Gomez distributed no less than 66 pounds of methamphetamine to buyers in Topeka.

The investigation began in 2015 when the Kansas Highway Patrol stopped a car in Ellis County that was bound for Topeka carrying about five pounds of methamphetamine. Investigators set up a controlled delivery at a Walmart parking lot in Topeka, where Cortes-Gomez was arrested when he attempted to pick up the load.

At trial, prosecutors presented testimony from witnesses who said Cortes-Gomez delivered one-pound and two-pound quantities of methamphetamine to them on a regular basis.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – An Arkansas man, formerly of Marshall, Mo., was sentenced in federal court Monday for possessing child pornography, according to Timothy A. Garrison, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Kenneth Larrechea, 48, formerly of Marshall, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips to 13 years in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Larrechea to a 10-year term of supervised release following incarceration.

Larrechea, who pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2017, to possessing child pornography, was identified as one of 158 individuals who received child pornography through Kik (an instant messaging and chat application) from a New York man, who pleaded guilty in a separate case in the Northern District of New York. An FBI agent executed a search warrant at Larrechea’s Marshall residence on Dec. 8, 2015, and seized several electronic media devices, including computers, hard drives and cell phones.

Investigators discovered several images on an SD card in Larrechea’s cell phone of a child victim, approximately 10 or 11 years old, getting in and out of a shower. The images were screen shots taken from a video file. Larrechea was acquainted with the child victim and investigators believed he produced the images with a hidden camera. The child victim told investigators she was not aware that she was being video recorded or photographed.

More than 400 videos and more than 70 images of child pornography and erotica were also located on Larrechea’s cell phone and SD card.