WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas judge has decided that the son of a deceased Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent can publish his father’s files from the 1959 murders that inspired the book “In Cold Blood.”

Shawnee County District Court Judge Larry Hendricks said in a ruling made public Monday that he made an error when he initially blocked publication of the criminal investigation files in 2012. His decision comes in a lawsuit by the Kansas attorney general’s office against Ronald Nye of Oklahoma City.

The judge ruled Nye’s First Amendment rights to publish his father’s files outweigh government’s interest in maintaining the confidentiality of its investigative records.

Nye’s father investigated the Clutter family murders in Holcomb and kept records at home. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were executed for the killings in 1965.

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced the remains of servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been accounted for and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

They include Army Air Forces 1st Lts. William Bernier of Augusta, MT; Bryant Poulsen of Salt Lake City, UT and Herbert Young Jr. of Clarkdale, AZ. Also identified were Tech Sgts. Charles Johnston of Pittsburgh, PN and Hugh F. Moore of Elkton, MD; Staff Sgts. John E. Copeland of Dearing, KS and Charles J. Jones of Athens, GA and Sgt. Charles A. Gardner of San Francisco, CA.

All will be buried with full military honors. Gardner will be buried Dec. 4 in Arlington National Cemetery.

On April 10, 1944, Gardner, along with 11 other B-24D Liberator crew members took off from Texter Strip, Nazdab Air Field, New Guinea, on a mission to attack an anti-aircraft site at Hansa Bay. The aircraft was shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire over the Madang Province, New Guinea. Four of the crewmen were able to parachute from the aircraft, but were reported to have died in captivity.

Following World War II, the Army Graves Registration Service (AGRS) conducted investigations and recovered the remains of three of the missing airmen. In May 1949, AGRS concluded the remaining nine crew members were unrecoverable.

In 2001, a U.S.-led team located wreckage of a B-24D that bore the tail number of this aircraft. After several surveys, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) teams excavated the site and recovered human remains and non-biological material evidence.

NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Spurred by the Ferguson, Missouri shooting, President Barack Obama is calling for $75 million in federal spending to get 50,000 more police to wear body cameras that record their interactions with civilians.

However, Obama is not seeking to pull back federal programs that provide military-style equipment to local law enforcement.

The president was making the announcements Monday from the White House during a series of meetings with his Cabinet, civil rights leaders, law enforcement officials and others.

At least for now, Obama is staying away from Ferguson in the wake of a racially charged uproar over a grand jury’s decision last week not to charge the police offer who fatally shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

By BRENT FRAZEE

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Hunters have found that what’s good for Fort Riley is good for them.

The thick brush, rugged terrain and overgrown fields used to train soldiers also provide outstanding wildlife habitat for quail, pheasants, deer, turkeys and even elk.

The 101,000-acre Army base is located in northeast Kansas. The Kansas City Star reports that hunting is permitted on large chunks of acreage on the base where training is not taking place.

John Hill is president of the Jayhawk Chapter of the Quail and Upland Wildlife Federation, a conservation group dedicated to promoting upland game-bird hunting and habitat improvement for the birds. The Kansas quail population has dropped sharply over the years. But Hill says he knows he can still return to Fort Riley and stand a chance of flushing quail.

MANHATTAN — Two Kansas State University faculty members have been named 2014 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, the world’s largest scientific society.

The following Kansas State University faculty members were selected as fellows:

• C. Michael Smith, professor of entomology, for distinguished contributions to entomological sciences, particularly in the fields of plant-insect interactions and plant resistance to insects.

• Christopher Sorensen, Cortelyou-Rust university distinguished professor of physics and university distinguished teaching scholar, for pioneering contributions in soft matter physics, disperse particulate systems and light scattering; teaching curriculum development and outreach; and service to the scientific community.

Smith and Sorensen are among 401 fellows chosen this year. Their selection follows a vote by their peers in the association, who looked at potential fellow’s distinguished efforts to advance science.

The professors will be recognized at a certificate and pinning ceremony at the association’s annual meeting Feb. 14, 2015, in San Jose, California.

“We’re proud of our newest fellows in the AAAS and congratulate them on this well-deserved recognition,” said Kirk Schulz, university president. “Dr. Smith and Dr. Sorensen have repeatedly demonstrated their dedication to the advancement of science, research and education. Our distinguished researchers and their recognitions will help Kansas State University become a Top 50 public research university by 2025.”

The 2014 fellows will be announced in the AAAS News and Notes section of the journal Science on Nov. 28.

Smith has spent more than 30 years conducting research on plant resistance to arthropods. Before joining Kansas State University, he studied the allelochemical basis of resistance in soybean and rice as well as cereal gene expression in response to aphids and mites. He has helped characterize a gene cluster in wheat responsible for creating resistance to the Russian wheat aphid as well as identified factors affecting the expression of R genes in this cluster.

As a 2002 Fulbright scholar, he collaborated with European and African scientists to identify the first Russian wheat aphid biotypes in North Africa and South America. He is currently developing biotype-sensitive molecular markers. Additionally, collaborations with entomology, plant pathology and agronomy researchers have identified wheat genotypes with multiple resistances to wheat curl mite and several viruses transmitted by the mite.

Smith’s research has been supported by more than $4.7 million in funding, and he has published three books, 17 book chapters and more than 103 refereed journal articles. He has mentored 20 graduate-level students. He also was named a fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 2006.

Sorensen devotes his time to both teaching and research. His research interests are diverse. He performs experimental and theoretical studies of light scattering by particles of arbitrary shape, which is related to how aerosol particles affect global warming. He uses chemical methods to synthesize nanoparticles and then studies their solution and self-assembly behavior. He has developed a novel method for the large-scale production of graphene, and he studies gelation and aggregation kinetics in aerosols and colloids. His service to science includes a term as president of the American Association for Aerosol Research. Sorensen has authored more than 280 technical publications and holds six patents, with three more pending.

His teaching interests are equally diverse as he has taught at all levels. He conceived and developed hands-on studio instruction in physics, applying it broadly. He has won multiple teaching awards, including being named the 2007 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year.

He has given more than 100 invited lectures in the U.S. and abroad, including five lectures on a Scientific American Bright Horizons cruise around Cape Horn.

Kansas State University currently has 20 faculty members who are AAAS fellows.

Written by Greg Tammen ON ksu.edu.

Kansas Farm Bureau

A new coalition is fighting to defend the rural way of life and economic prosperity in five states.

The coalition, comprised of the Kansas Farm Bureau, Kansas Corn Growers Association, Texas Farm Bureau, The American Farm Bureau Federation, New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau and Colorado Farm Bureau, opposes The Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and WildEarth Guardians’ request that the lesser prairie chicken (LPC) be listed as an “endangered” species. The bird is currently listed as “threatened.” The LPC range is roughly 20 million acres, affecting 85 counties in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

“We are already seeing impacts from the ‘threatened’ listing,” said Jim Sipes, who farms near the primary habitat area. “We have seen wind generator projects leave the area. We have seen oil and gas companies pull out of the region. We have seen seismograph crews stopping seismograph work, and we are seeing effects on farms and ranches through the amount of grazing we are able to do.”

The threat from an “endangered” designation reaches far beyond the farm gate to rural Main Street and local government.

“In our small communities, businesses on Main Street depend on farmers and ranchers,” said Marieta Hauser, an economic development administrator and rural Chamber of Commerce official. “If we don’t stop excessive regulations on farmers and ranchers, more and more often what you are going to see on Main Street in rural America is a ‘Going Out of Business’ sign. If farmers and ranchers don’t have money to spend, our main street businesses will not be able to survive. It’s that important.”

County commissioner Mick MacNair, who lives in the habitat area, is concerned that with a more restrictive designation of the LPC comes lower property values. With less oil, gas, and renewable energy development, the tax base reduction would be disastrous.

“How we are going to fund our county roads and keep them maintained? How are we going to fund our local police departments? How are we going to fund our EMS and fire departments?” MacNair asks. “These are essential government entities. With the loss of revenue this will cost us, we have some very grave concerns.”

The coalition has created a website to provide detailed information on the issue and the progress of a lawsuit opposing the listing. Users are also urged to donate to the legal fund to defer the cost of litigation. The site is www.stopfowlplay.com. You can also follow the coalition activity on Twitter and Facebook at @StopFowlPlay and Facebook.com/StopFowlPlay. Look for the hashtag #StopFowlPlay.

Members of electric co-ops have flooded the Environmental Protection Agency with comments on EPA’s proposed new regulations of coal-fired power plants.

In a news release, the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives said there were more than 1.1 million comments from co-op members, including more than 300,000 sent from Missouri. The association says if they were printed and stacked, the pile would be over 400 feet high, and would tower over the Statue of Liberty.

“Those comments all had one thing in common,” says Barry Hart, CEO of the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives. “They told EPA in no uncertain terms that they can’t afford the rate increases those regulations would cause.”

The issue involves new regulations proposed by the EPA that would reduce the options for generating affordable electricity by reducing the use of coal for energy production. That is of particular concern to utilities in Missouri, since 80 percent of the electricity comes from coal generation.

Hart noted that when electric rates increase – and the EPA acknowledges they will under their plan – the burden disproportionally falls on rural America and electric cooperative members. That’s because electric cooperatives serve 93 percent of the counties where poverty is persistent. Rural communities in general have been slower to recover from the economic recession.

“Put simply, electric co-op members can’t afford to pay more for electricity,” Hart says. The comments came from people of all walks of life, including farmers, small business owners and senior citizens on fixed incomes.

These comments are typical of the many sent to the EPA from Missourians:
“Most of Missouri’s electricity comes from coal and being a widow living on Social Security, I cannot afford higher rates for my power bill,” a member of White River Valley Electric wrote.

“Your agency is overreaching, doing real harm to average Americans for the sake of your own environmental ideals,” wrote a member from Laclede Electric Cooperative. “I support common sense conservation, and have myself participated in activities to clean up my local natural environment. But the course you are taking will hurt folks who cannot afford the cost you wish to impose on them.”

“As you drive up the cost of electricity via more regulation you drive jobs overseas. Eventually, if we lose our economic might, someone else will decide what is good for us and I don’t think we will like it,” added a Cuivre River Electric member.

“As senior citizens we are on a fixed income and we need reliable electric power for our well being. The proposed regulations, which will have a disastrous impact on power plants using coal, negatively threaten us both financially and health wise. We ask that the EPA, which is at least theoretically supposed to be working for us, reconsider these proposals, which will diminish our quality of life,” said a Callaway Electric member.

A Black River Electric member had this to say: “Hello, I am concerned that you at the EPA have no idea what it takes to make ends meet at home or in business. I run my own company, and I find that I cannot afford to heat or cool my work site or my home as cost effectively as in the past. I have installed all the energy-saving items I can, but every month I have to make tough choices on my energy use. I used to have 4 employees, now I have one, myself. Please stop playing with my future and any chance I have to put something back for savings and retirement.”

Hart thanked the many Missourians who sent comments to the EPA. He said the sheer magnitude of the comments can’t help but make a difference on this issue.

He also pledged to keep fighting for members at the end of the line who rely on affordable and reliable electricity at their homes and businesses. “Those 1.1 million comments from across the country underscore the demand for common sense from the EPA,” Hart says. “But will the EPA listen? American families and businesses continue to struggle and the proposed EPA regulations will only add to their burden.”