SPRINGFIELD (AP) – A southwest Missouri woman has been sentenced to seven years in prison for leaving the scene of an accident after she fatally hit a bicyclist while fleeing from her boyfriend.

The Springfield News-Leader reports 32-year-old Shannon Smith of Buffalo received the punishment in the November 2013 death of 23-year-old Zachary Gibson. She pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in March.

Authorities say Smith was being chased through Springfield by her boyfriend when she killed Gibson near the Missouri State University campus. Smith tells police she was speeding to get away from 24-year-old Blake Basten. She says Basten had a gun and she was hoping police would stop her.

Basten was also sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in October.

TOPEKA- Two Kansas men were killed in an accident just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1993 Chevy pickup driven by Steven G. Galarneau, 62, Scranton, was westbound on NW 62nd Road at U.S. 75 four miles north of Topeka.

The driver failed to yield at the stop sign and struck a 2011 Ford F350 driven by Leon J. Weber, 56, Yates Center, that was travelling northbound on U.S.75

Galarneau and a passenger David N. Hilleland, 64, Topeka, were pronounced dead at the scene and transported to First Call.

Weber and a passenger in the Ford were not injured.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

TOKYO (AP) — Only small fries with that? McDonald’s in Japan has begun limiting the serving size of fries as stocks of spuds run short due to labor disruptions on the U.S. West Coast.

McDonald’s began rationing its fries Wednesday morning. It said prolonged labor negotiations with port workers on the West Coast had made it difficult to meet demand despite an emergency airlift of 1,000 tons of spuds and another extra shipment by sea.

Japanese consume more than 300,000 tons of french fries a year, mostly at fast-food restaurants, and largely made from imports of frozen, processed potatoes. Domestic production has been declining for years, while imports have risen.

McDonald’s has 3,100 outlets in Japan. It also cut prices for set meals to compensate for including only small fries.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Health care plans would have to cover eating disorder treatments under proposed Missouri legislation.
State Sen. David Pearce of Warrensburg recently filed a bill requiring coverage for diagnosis and medically necessary treatment of the disorders. Coverage would include specialist services recommended by a patient’s treatment team.
Under the measure the Department of Insurance would be required to make an annual report to lawmakers regarding those insured and treated for eating disorders.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill that keeps the government operating over the next nine months.

The legislation was a bipartisan compromise that angered liberals and conservatives alike but avoided a government shutdown and put off partisan clashes over immigration to next year.

Ensuring a debate over immigration, though, the legislation only finances the Homeland Security Department until Feb. 27.

The bill was one of the last acts of Congress under the current Republican House and Democratic-controlled Senate. In January, the new Congress will return with Republicans in charge of both chambers.

The spending bill retains cuts negotiated in previous budget battles and rolls back some banking regulations. But it retains spending for Obama’s health care law and pays for the administration’s fight against Ebola.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Federal funds will provide $30 million for Alzheimer’s disease research at Washington University in St. Louis over the next five years.

The university announced Tuesday that the National Institutes on Aging and the National Institutes of Health have renewed grants that provide the funding.

The research includes an effort to identify biological changes or biomarkers that can detect the disease and track its progression. The goal is to start Alzheimer’s treatments years before patients develop memory loss and dementia.

Researchers hope to determine if sleep disruption accelerates development of symptoms and help predict when dementia begins. They are also looking at whether genetic variations can reduce the rate at which Alzheimer’s symptoms progress, and if those variations explain why some people with Alzheimer’s avoid memory loss and other cognitive problems.

MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, has detected spikes of methane in the planet’s atmosphere. That suggests something is producing or venting the scientifically tantalizing gas, but no one knows what.

Most of Earth’s atmospheric methane comes from animal and plant life, and the environment itself. So the Martian methane raises the question of past or present microbial life. Or the gas elevations could come from geological sources, comet impacts or something else entirely.

The latest study, released Tuesday by the journal Science, indicates there’s less than half the expected amount of methane in the atmosphere around Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater. But over a full Martian year, the rover measured fairly frequent occurrences of elevated methane levels — tenfold increases.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Christopher Webster led the international study.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest point in more than six years.
The state Department of Economic Development released data Tuesday showing the seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped from 5.9 percent in October to 5.6 percent in November.

That puts the unemployment rate at its lowest rate since May 2008.
Seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment grew by 4,500 jobs in November, bringing the number of new jobs for the year at more than 42,000.