ATHERTON, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a woman died and her 6-year-old daughter and boyfriend were injured when their pickup truck collided with a train in a rural area east of Kansas City.

The Kansas City Star reports that 41-year-old Jennifer Norris died Friday night when the truck she was driving was hit by an Amtrak train at a crossing in the unincorporated village of Atherton. Investigators say Norris’ 6-year-old daughter and her boyfriend, Daniel Infranca, were thrown from the truck in the crash. Infranca was taken in critical condition to a hospital. The girl suffered only minor scrapes and bruises.

Investigators say Norris’ drove around the crossing gate that had not lifted after a train passed. Officials believe the passing train blocked Norris’ view of a second train approaching that hit the truck

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas, has been chosen to a leading role in the Catholic Church’s fight against abortion.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann will be the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

R. Andrew Chesnut, chairman of Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, says it was the first time in four decades that a cardinal was not elected to the position.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, has known Naumann for years. She says he has always cared deeply about the abortion issue and is “the right man for the right job.”

Naumann joined more than 2,000 Kansans in Washington, D.C., this week for the March for Life. He is expected at the Rally for Life Monday in Topeka.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — In his first interview since acknowledging an extramarital affair, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said Saturday that there was “no blackmail” and “no threat of violence” by him in what he described as a months-long “consensual relationship” with his former hairdresser.

Greitens told The Associated Press that he has no plans to resign from office as a result of the affair, despite calls to step aside from several Republican and Democratic state lawmakers.

“I’m staying. I’m staying” he said twice for emphasis, adding about his relationship with his wife, staff and supporters: “We’re strong.”

Greitens has remained out of the public eye since shortly after delivering his State of the State address on Jan. 10. Later that night, St. Louis television station KMOV reported that Greitens had an extramarital affair in 2015 as he was preparing to run for governor.

The report included an audio recording of a conversation between a woman and her then-husband — recorded secretly by the husband — in which the woman said Greitens had bound her hands and blindfolded her, taken a photo of her partially nude and warned her to remain silent during an encounter in his home.

Grietens did not directly say “yes” or “no” when asked Saturday if he had bound and blindfolded and taken a photo of the woman. But he firmly denied that he had attempted to coerce the woman.

“This was a consensual relationship,” Greitens said. “There was no blackmail, there was no violence, there was no threat of violence, there was no threat of blackmail, there was no threat of using a photograph for blackmail. All of those things are false.”

Greitens added: “The mistake that I made was that I was engaged in a consensual relationship with a woman who was not my wife. That is a mistake for which I am very sorry.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Kansas City police have made an arrest in a double shooting that left a 46-year-old woman dead and her boyfriend critically injured.

The Kansas City Star reports that the body of Rhonda Evans was found in a north Kansas City home by police investigating a report of a shooting. Police say Evans had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene. Her boyfriend, a 58-year-old whose name has not been released, was also shot in the head, but managed to knock on doors to seek help.

On Friday, the Clay County prosecutor’s office announced that it had charged 38-year-old Thomas Farris Jr., of Independence, with first-degree murder, assault and other counts. He remains in custody on $1 million bond.

Authorities say they’ve tied the gun used in the shootings to Farris.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans awoke Saturday to learn that bickering politicians in Washington had failed to keep their government in business, halting all but the most essential operations and marring the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Social Security and most other safety net programs are unaffected by the lapse in federal spending authority. Critical government functions will continue, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. But if no deal is brokered before Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed.

The shutdown is a result of the striking display of Washington dysfunction, and the finger-pointing came quickly. Trump tweeted that Democrats “wanted to give me a nice present” to mark the start of his second year in office.

The Republican-controlled Congress scheduled an unusual weekend session to begin considering a three-week version of a short-term spending measure and to broadcast to the people they serve that they were at work as the closure commenced. It seemed likely that each side would push for votes aimed at making the other party look culpable for shuttering federal agencies.

The fourth government shutdown in a quarter-century began at the stroke of midnight Friday, last gasp negotiations crumbling when Senate Democrats blocked a four-week budget extension. Behind the scenes, however, leading Republicans and Democrats were trying to work out a compromise to avert a lengthy shutdown.

The closure began at the start of a weekend, so many of the immediate effects will be muted for most Americans. Damage could build quickly if the closure is prolonged. And it comes with no shortage of embarrassment for the president and political risk for both parties, as they wager that voters will punish the other at the ballot box in November.

Trump said Democrats “could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead.” In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans in November “in order to power through this mess.” He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation.

Social Security and most other safety net programs are unaffected by the lapse in federal spending authority. Critical government functions will continue, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. But if no deal is brokered before Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed.

After hours of closed-door meetings and phone calls, the Senate scheduled its late Friday night vote on a House-passed plan. It gained 50 votes to proceed to 49 against, but 60 were needed to break a Democratic filibuster.

Democrats balked in an effort to pressure on the White House to cut a deal to protect “dreamer” immigrants brought to the country as children and now here illegally — before their legal protection runs out in March.

Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. Republicans are holding Democrats responsible after they declined to provide the votes needed to overcome a filibuster over their desire to force the passage of legislation to protect some 700,000 younger immigrants from deportation.

“Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous” border with Mexico, Trump tweeted.

Republicans branded the confrontation a “Schumer shutdown,” after New York Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. He said a “Trump shutdown” was more accurate.

Earlier Friday, Trump had brought Schumer to the White House in hopes of cutting a deal on a short-term spending agreement.

The two New Yorkers, who pride themselves on their negotiating abilities, started talking over cheeseburgers about a larger agreement that would have included greater military spending and money for a southern border wall. But the talks fell apart almost as abruptly as they started.

Nonetheless, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney predicted a deal would be reached by Monday, when most government offices are to reopen after the weekend.

Trump had been an unreliable negotiator in the weeks leading up to the showdown. Earlier this week he tweeted opposition to the four-week plan, forcing the White House to later affirm his support. He expressed openness to extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, only to reject a bipartisan proposal. His disparaging remarks about African and Haitian immigrants last week helped derail further negotiations.

Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon to attend a fundraiser at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate marking the inauguration anniversary but delayed his travel.

The four-week measure would have been the fourth stopgap spending bill since the current budget year started in October. A pile of unfinished Capitol Hill business has been on hold, first as Republicans ironed out last fall’s tax bill and now as Democrats insist on progress on immigration. Talks on a budget deal to ease tight spending limits on both the Pentagon and domestic agencies are on hold, as is progress on a huge $80 billion-plus disaster aid bill.

The last shutdown came in 2013. Tea party Republicans, in a strategy not unlike the one Schumer is employing now, sought to use a must-pass budget bill to try to force President Barack Obama to delay implementation of his health care law. At the time, Trump told Fox & Friends that the ultimate blame for a shutdown lies at the top. “I really think the pressure is on the president,” he said.

Arguing that Trump’s predecessors “weaponized” that shutdown, Mulvaney said his budget office would direct agencies to work to mitigate the impact this time. That position is a striking role-reversal for the conservative former congressman who was one of the architects of the 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act.

ROGERSVILLE, Mo. (AP) – Court records and investigative reports say a southwest Missouri couple’s dogs fatally mauled an elderly bicyclist two years ago and that two unsuspecting families then adopted two of the dogs when the couple got rid of them.

Joseph M. and Lindsay Brink were booked into jail Thursday and released on their own recognizance. They were indicted in October on one count each of second-degree involuntary manslaughter in the death of 85-year-old Werner Vogt. He was attacked in November 2015 while riding his bicycle in rural Rogersville and died three weeks later.

The couple’s attorney, Dee Wampler, said in a news release Thursday that his clients have cooperated with authorities and “deny any guilt or criminal negligence.” The Brings previously settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Vogt’s son for $300,000.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Some states fear that a Kansas voter record system could fall prey to hackers, prompting a delay in the annual collection of nearly 100 million people’s records into a database scoured for double-registrations.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach touts the program, called Crosscheck, as a tool in combating voter fraud. Last year, 28 states submitted voters’ names, birth dates, and sometimes partial social security numbers, to Kobach’s office.

But last fall, the news outlets ProPublica and Gizmodo reported a raft of cybersecurity weaknesses. For instance, Crosscheck relied on an unencrypted server for transmitting all that data.

Election officials in other states told Kansas to fix the problems, a process Kobach’s office says is nearly complete.

“We still have work to do finishing testing everything,” said Bryan Caskey, who handles elections matters in Topeka. “We all just need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to ensure the integrity of the program.”

Normally Kansas starts collecting voter registration records from other states on Jan. 15, but hasn’t started yet this year because of the security weaknesses.

The Illinois election board nearly pulled out of Crosscheck last fall. Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the agency, said his agency gave Kansas with a list of IT problems that need fixing before their state will send any more data.

“They’re not going to be able to just give us a date,” Dietrich said, “and have us give them data — until they address these things that we told them about.”

Kobach’s will no longer rely on that unencrypted data transmission system, which ran through the Arkansas Secretary of State.

“In this year’s version of the program, Kansas is taking all that in-house,” Caskey said.

Though it relied on Arkansas for data transmission — letting states upload their records and get lists of potential double-registered names in return — Caskey said Kansas had already been handling data storage without that state’s help. Now, he said, the Kansas office is confident it can handle the transmission safely, too.

Storing data for other states landed a Kansas state agency in trouble last year. Hackers accessed more than 5.5 million social security numbers stored by the Kansas Department of Commerce on behalf of 10 states.

In 2016, legislative auditors completed a three-year review of information technology security at 20 Kansas agencies that store sensitive information. They turned up significant weaknesses at most, including unpatched vulnerabilities that could open the door to hackers. The Secretary of State’s Office was not part of that audit.

Caskey said legislative auditors last reviewed his office’s IT security several years ago, and that they found no problems.

More recently, he said, the office hired an outside firm to review its cybersecurity. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also reviewing Kansas’ election systems for safety, including Crosscheck. That’s part of the office’s efforts to revamp security since the 2016 elections.

“So we’re doing everything that we know to do,” he said. Threats evolve over time, he said, but “I’m as confident as I can be today.”

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

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say two men have been charged with plotting on Facebook to kill one of the men’s grandparents.

The Columbia Missourian reports that 19-year-old Jared Bears, of Buckner, and 20-year-old Brian Kelley, of Columbia, are charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Kelley also is charged with three counts of second-degree domestic assault and two counts of armed criminal action.

No attorney is listed for Bears in online court records. Kelley’s attorney, Stephen Wyse, declined to comment, saying he is still gathering evidence.

The probable cause statement says Kelley threatened and choked his grandparents, then grabbing a board and metal pipe to swing at the victims. The statement says Kelley’s grandparents were able to subdue him using wasp spray and threat of a firearm.