SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A political consultant pleaded guilty to conspiring with a former Arkansas lawmaker and Springfield, Missouri, charity executives to spend nearly $1 million on illegal political activity.
Sixty-two-year-old Donald Andrew Jones, of Willingboro, New Jersey, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy. Jones’ firm, D.A. Jones and Associates, is a consulting company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Prosecutors say Preferred Family Healthcare, a Springfield-based nonprofit, paid Jones about $973,000 for illegal lobbying and political activity.
Five unnamed co-conspirators who worked for Preferred Family – including a former Arkansas state lawmaker – have not been charged.
Court documents say that to hide Jones’ activities, the conspirators described his services as “consulting” or “training,” when he was actually lobbying lawmakers to support projects for the charity. They also made personal contributions to elected officials that were reimbursed by the charity.
ST. LOUIS (AP) – A longtime Missouri death row inmate whose conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of two sisters was overturned has pleaded guilty to murdering them and been re-sentenced to life behind bars.
Reginald Clemons, who spent 22 years on death row, pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of second-degree murder and other crimes. His plea agreement calls for him to serve five consecutive life sentences.
The Missouri Supreme Court in 2015 dismissed Clemons’ conviction after finding that prosecutors suppressed evidence that police had beaten a confession out of him.
Clemons was among four men convicted in the deaths of 20-year-old Julie Kerry and her 19-year-old sister, Robin. Authorities say the sisters were raped and shoved off the old Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A Missouri man has pleaded guilty to firing at officers and other vehicles during an Interstate 70 police chase.
The U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release that 27-year-old Russell Deane Moore Jr. of Fulton admitted Monday to three criminal violations. The chase started in April 2016 when a stolen Jeep was spotted at a Columbia truck stop.
The release says Moore shot at law enforcement and at tractor-trailers in an effort to cause a serious accident that would stop the pursuit. The chase ended when the Jeep ran out of gas in Calloway County.
One tractor-trailer driver found a bullet lodged behind the driver’s seat. Another rig’s driver found a hole in his tractor’s grill.
Prosecutors also filed charges against the woman who was driving the Jeep.
Gov. Sam Brownback signed a welfare reform measure in 2015 that included lower lifetime limits on cash assistance for low-income Kansans. Since 2011 the state has reduced the lifetime limit for people in TANF. FILE PHOTO / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
A University of Kansas study supports the suspicions of lawmakers and advocates who believe there’s a link between additional restrictions on welfare benefits and an increase in foster care cases.
The researchers say their initial findings show that while Kansas was reducing the amount of time families could receive cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and increasing the requirements they needed to meet for that assistance, the number of child abuse and neglect cases went up. Abuse and neglect are the leading reasons why Kansas kids enter foster care.
“It’s remarkable. There is a mirror image,” said Donna Ginther, a KU economist and one of the study researchers. “As the Kansas TANF caseloads drop, the number of reports of abuse and neglect go up. And you see a similar relationship for foster care placements.”
The number of Kansas families receiving TANF has dropped from 14,321 in 2011 to 4,563 in March 2017.
Since Gov. Sam Brownback took office in 2011, lifetime limits for TANF recipients have been reduced three times:
While TANF caseloads decreased, the KU researchers noted a jump in the number of TANF applications that were denied beginning in 2011.
Gina Meier-Hummel, newly appointed secretary of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, addressed the study when its impending release came up during a child welfare task force meeting earlier this week. She said the agency’s numbers don’t signal a relationship between the more restrictive welfare policies and the increase in foster care cases.
“We’re going to continue to have conversations about the policies and make sure we’ve got everything right,” she said. “We obviously think we have the policy right, but we’ll continue to look at that.”
Sandra Kimmons, DCF director of economic and employment services, said the agency’s records from 2010 to 2016 indicate a steady percentage of families who left TANF and saw their kids enter foster care in the next 12 months.
Michelle Johnson-Motoyama, a professor of social welfare at KU and another of the study’s researchers, said the KU research differed from the data DCF cites. KU looked at the relationship between states that implemented stricter sanctions and the number of child abuse and foster care cases more broadly to understand the effect of TANF changes in Kansas, while DCF directly tracked the Kansas families who left TANF to see if they entered foster care.
For Rep. Linda Gallagher, a Lenexa Republican and a member of the child welfare task force, the preliminary results from KU offer evidence that she can take back to the Legislature as it considers improvements to a struggling foster care system. She said she intends to bring the KU researchers to testify before the task force and hopes to use the study’s findings to begin reversing some of the HOPE Act 2.0 provisions.
“I didn’t vote for the HOPE Act in the first place, so I welcome anything we can do to roll back aspects of it,” Gallagher said.
However, even with more moderates elected to the Legislature since HOPE 2.0 was approved in 2016, Gallagher said it will likely be an incremental process. She’d like to start by reducing the work requirements for women after they give birth, but ultimately hopes to see a lifting of the two-year lifetime limit.
“We’re going to have to be strategic in going for change that is achievable,” she said.
Tragic train crash scene-photo courtesy Washington State Dpt of Transportation Traffic Cameras
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — The Latest on an Amtrak train derailment in Washington state (all times local):
Authorities say multiple people were killed when an Amtrak passenger train derailed onto Interstate 5 south of Seattle.
Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer says none of the fatalities were motorists who were in cars and trucks when the train came off the tracks on to I-5.
He says emergency responders are working to get survivors out and to area hospitals.
Authorities say the train derailed before 8 a.m. Monday, but no specifics were immediately available.
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9:16 a.m.
Authorities say several vehicles on Interstate 5 were struck by the falling train cars when an Amtrak train derailed south of Seattle, and “multiple motorists” were injured on the roadway.
No fatalities of motorists were reported.
All southbound lanes of I-5 were closed south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and motorists were being warned to avoid the area.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s office says “injuries and casualties” were reported when the train derailed before 8 a.m. Monday, but no specifics were immediately available.
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9:01 a.m.
Chris Karnes was on the train Amtrak train that derailed south of Seattle, three or four cars back from the front.
Karnes told The Associated Press in a brief phone interview Monday morning that he was “not sure what got hit.”
He was unhurt and is now near the medical tents set up in a median area between north- and sound-bound Interstate 5, just south of DuPont, Washington.
Karnes said: “there are several cars that are hanging over the overpass,” Karnes.
The train derailed before 8 a.m. Monday. Authorities reported “injuries and casualties” but did not immediately have more information.
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8:37 a.m.
An Amtrak train derailed south of Seattle, and authorities say “injuries and casualties” were reported.
The train derailed about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Seattle before 8 a.m. Monday, spilling at least one train car on to busy Interstate 5.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s office says in a tweet that the train was heading south bound and that there were “injuries and casualties,” but no numbers were immediately available.
All southbound lanes of Interstate 5 were closed south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and motorists were being warned to avoid the area.
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8:29 a.m.
An Amtrak train has derailed roughly 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Seattle, spilling cars onto a busy interstate.
The train derailed just before 8 a.m.
No other information was immediately available.
The train derailed just south of Tacoma, Washington.
Maryville, Mo. – Northwest Missouri State University students recently won second place in a national scholarship competition aimed at building the next generation of agriculture advocates.
According to a news release, students in Northwest’s agriculture advocacy class, under the instruction of Rod Barr, director of the School of Agricultural Sciences, earned the $1,000 prize in the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s national College Aggies Online (CAO) scholarship competition.
Since CAO launched in 2009, nearly 6,000 students have participated. This year’s program kicked off in early September with 30 student organizations competing in the club division as well as students competing in an individual division. The participants represented 43 states and 89 universities.
“Every year we applaud the students for being the most engaged and enthusiastic group to compete, but it seems each group outdoes the last,” Kay Johnson Smith, the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s president and chief executive officer, said. “We are thrilled to see so many individuals passionate about agriculture.”
The nine-week program is filled with assignments for individuals such as blog posts, infographics and photo contests while club members received challenges ranging from hosting farm tours and school visits to guest speakers and food drives. Assignments and challenges are geared toward helping students boost their confidence when communicating with peers about agriculture issues.
Competitors shared more than 3,000 posts about agriculture on Instagram and Twitter, earning more than 4.4 million impressions, and nearly 400 posts were shared on Facebook. More than 16,000 students and faculty members attended farm tours, guest speaker presentations, booths and other events on college campuses.
Clubs and individuals who successfully finished the program also earned the CAO Completion Emblem, which demonstrates their commitment to advocating for agriculture.
Investigators on the scene of Sunday’s fatal plane crash -photo courtesy KY3 TV
BRANSON WEST, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say two people from Kansas have died in a small plane crash in southwest Missouri.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said in an email that the single-engine Piper Cherokee went down Sunday night in a pasture about one mile northwest of the Branson West Municipal Airport in Missouri.
Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader says the two people aboard the plane were killed. The man and woman were from Gardner, Kansas. Rader says they were meeting family in the Branson area. Their names weren’t immediately released.
Cory described the circumstances of the crash as “unknown.” She says the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.
Patchy fog this morning will give way to increasing temperatures through Thursday. Much colder temperatures will arrive by the late week and continue through Christmas. Here’s the 7-day forecast from the National Weather Service:
Today: Sunny, with a high near 56. Southwest wind 6 to 11 mph.
Tonight: Clear, with a low around 36. Southwest wind 6 to 9 mph.
Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 57. West southwest wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable.
Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 32. Northeast wind around 6 mph.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 51. South southeast wind 6 to 8 mph.
Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 42.
Thursday: Partly sunny, with a high near 59.
Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 30.
Friday: Partly sunny, with a high near 36.
Friday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 20.
Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 33.
Saturday Night: A chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 17. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
Sunday: A chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 27. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
First responders at the scene of the fatal accident-photo courtesy Natalie Davis KCTV
KANSAS CITY (AP) – Authorities say one person has been killed and two others seriously injured in a head-on crash with a church van in Kansas City.
Police say the wreck happened Sunday morning when the driver of a Kia crossed into oncoming traffic and struck the van. The Kansas City Star reports that the Kia’s driver was pronounced dead at the scene, but the person’s name wasn’t immediately released.
Police say the driver of the van and one passenger suffered serious injuries. Two other van passengers were treated for minor injuries.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the Kia veered into the opposite lane.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas legislative committee is planning to consider the potential problems caused by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars to public schools from other parts of the budget.
The special joint committee is scheduled to meet Monday and Tuesday to continue gathering information. Lawmakers have started work on a response to a Kansas Supreme Court order in October to boost spending on public schools.
Legislators aren’t so much interested in slashing spending in other parts of the budget to provide more money for schools as spelling out the potential harm. Many also don’t want to increase taxes next year.
Lawmakers earlier this year phased in a $293 million increase education funding over two years to make it $4.3 billion annually. The court said that still wasn’t constitutionally adequate.
