KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City have been working on plans to integrate a proposed Downtown Campus for the Arts into the community.
The school says that second-, third- and fourth-year students in the university’s Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design program have focused their studio work for the semester on the campus. Students have worked side by side with local and national firms on the project.
Some of the students focused on a hypothetical mixed-use retail and residential development. It would include a musical instrument and accessory store for future students of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, a café/coffee bar and five student apartments.
The public will have a chance to view the students’ work at a series of presentations this month.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed long-sought legislation to renew a government program that’s credited with reviving the market for insurance against terrorist attacks after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the measure passed Wednesday may face a bleak future in the Senate because of opposition to an unrelated item involving a rewrite of a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial services regulations.
The terrorism risk insurance program was originally enacted in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks led the private market for terrorism insurance to collapse. It provides a government backstop in the event of catastrophic losses.
The legislation is important to economic sectors such as construction, real estate, hospitality and major sports leagues, which fear crippling insurance costs if the program expires.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Where did the Earth get its water?
It’s a mystery that got murkier today as some astronomers essentially ruled out one of the chief suspects: comets.
Over the past few months, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe closely examined the type of comet that some scientists believed could have brought water to our planet 4 billion years ago. It found water, but the wrong kind. It contains more of a hydrogen isotope than water on Earth does.
The author of a study in the journal Science says it could be that asteroids brought water to Earth. But others disagree.
Many scientists have long believed that Earth had water when it first formed, but that it boiled off, so that the water on the planet now had to have come from an outside source.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Aside from increased demand for corn to make food sweeteners and a boost in soybean exports, few adjustments are found in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest crop update.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not change in Wednesday’s report the number of corn acres planted this year, as some analysts expect it may.
The agency will likely wait until January to make adjustments, because there is still corn in some Michigan and Wisconsin fields.
Currently, the number of acres reported in federal program applications exceeds USDA estimates by about 5 million acres, a larger discrepancy than usual.
Farmers in 22 states including Iowa and Nebraska expect record corn yields this year as part of the anticipated record 14.41 billion-bushel crop. Soybean farmers expect a record 3.96 billion bushel harvest.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Mexican man accused in a bizarre identity theft scheme would likely still be able to circumvent tough new Kansas voting laws because he had the proper documents.
Eighty-one year-old Ramon Perez-Rivera entered a not guilty plea Wednesday in Wichita after being charged in a 33-count indictment. Federal prosecutors say he took another man’s identity to get food stamps and Medicaid, obtain a U.S. passport and driver’s license, and register to vote.
While Perez-Rivera did not have to prove his citizenship to vote because he registered in 1999, he still would have likely fooled the state even under the strict requirements now in place because he would have had the needed paperwork.
Election officials say he remains eligible to vote pending a conviction.
As of Wednesday, more than 25,000 voter registrations in Kansas were suspended because they had not provided the necessary paperwork.
———–
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Tough election laws that have kept 25,248 Kansas residents from voting would not have affected a Mexican man accused in a federal indictment of lying about his citizenship status when registering to vote.
Eighty-one year-old Ramon Perez-Rivera makes a court appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Wichita on charges accusing him of assuming a false identity to obtain food stamps and Medicaid, register to vote and obtain a U.S. passport and driver’s license, among other charges.
Perez-Rivera did not have to prove his citizenship since he was grandfathered in because he registered in 1999 to vote. But even if had he registered under the state’s new strict documentation requirements he still would have had the needed paperwork.
Election officials say he remains eligible to vote pending a conviction.
ST. LOUIS (AP) – A University of Missouri campus near the site of the fatal Ferguson police shooting has announced a hiring freeze for faculty and staff in response to what administrators call an unexpected enrollment drop by students worried about their safety.
The University of Missouri-St. Louis announced the move Wednesday in a campus-wide email from Chancellor Tom George. He cited a $2 million budget shortfall created by “widespread anxiety about the region in general and North (St. Louis) County in particular.”
School spokesman Bob Samples says the campus expects to enroll 600 fewer students in the upcoming spring semester compared to spring 2014.
He attributed the drop to a combination of returning students declining to again register for classes and admitted students not actually enrolling for the first time.
The Department of Transportation said Wednesday that 80 percent of domestic flights arrived on-time in October, down from 81.1 percent in September and 84.1 percent in October of last year.
Industry trade group Airlines for America says many of the delays were due to a fire that reduced operations at an air traffic control center in Chicago for 12 days in late September and early October.
Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Delta had the best ratings, while regional carrier Envoy Air had the worst.
About 1.1 percent of October flights were canceled. That was better than September but worse than the previous October.
KANSAS CITY- One person was injured in a 3-vehicle accident just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday in Wyandotte County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Chevy Tahoe driven by Michael K. McCrave, 53, Lenexa, spun out of control on the icy bridge and struck outside barrier wall.
A 1997 Ford Taurus driven by Ronald Mondaine, 47, Kansas City, MO., struck the Tahoe while it was spinning out of control.
A 2007 Kenworth semi driven by Jody Dillon, 30, Blue Springs, MO., got side swiped during the earlier collision.
A passenger in the Taurus Jackson, Angela Jackson, 42, Kansas City, was transported to St. Luke’s.
The KHP reported Mondaine was not wearing a seat belt.
TOPEKA — A former physician now in the Kansas Legislature says she will promote a bill expanding background checks for gun sales because she believes gunshot wounds are a public health issue.
Rep. Barbara Bollier, a moderate Republican from Mission Hills, this week attended the first conference of a newly formed group of state lawmakers committed to curbing gun violence. Bollier joined almost 200 representatives from both parties and all 50 states at the Washington, D.C., meeting of American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention, calling it “a tremendous opportunity for the people’s voice to be heard throughout the country.”
“This upcoming session I will support state legislation for background checks,” Bollier said in a statement distributed during the conference. “It is imperative that this public health issue be addressed in Kansas.”
Bollier was a practicing anesthesiologist in the Kansas City area for more than a decade, but said via phone that she first recognized the public health implications of gunshot wounds during her residency at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston.
She said Ben Taub had one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country at that time and treatment of gunshot wounds was “routine.”
Rep. Ken Corbet, a conservative Republican from Topeka who is one of the House’s most vocal supporters of firearm rights, said he did not see the connection to public health.
“I don’t believe it’s a public health issue,” Corbet said. “I think if the Founding Fathers wanted that to be a public health issue, it would have said that in the Second Amendment. They did not bring that up.”
A study published in 1997 found that the cost of medical expenses, public services and work-loss hours due to gunshot wounds was about $40 billion annually in the United States, or about $154,000 per gunshot survivor.
Federal law currently requires background checks for people purchasing from licensed gun dealers to determine whether buyers have a felony conviction that could disqualify them from gun ownership. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has conducted more than 100 million such checks in the last decade, resulting in more than 700,000 denials.
Sales at gun shows and private person-to-person sales are exempt from that federal requirement.
According to Governing magazine, 14 states require background checks at gun shows for at least some firearm purchases. Four of those states only require checks for handgun purchases. Five of the 14 states have provisions for universal background checks that apply to almost all gun sales, including person-to-person sales and online sales.
Kansas has no background check requirement beyond what is required by federal law.
Bollier said Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, is working on draft language of background checks legislation for the upcoming session in Kansas. The extent of the bill has yet to be determined.
“From my perspective, I would like to see universal (background checks),” Bollier said. “But we may have to start with gun shows.”
Polls have shown about 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks, but gun lobbying groups including the NRA strenuously oppose them and have helped squelch any federal action on them.
Corbet said the measure faces an even tougher road in the Kansas Legislature, where the trend in recent years has been a wide-ranging expansion of gun ownership and carrying rights, including a bill stating that the federal government has no jurisdiction to regulate guns made and sold strictly within Kansas.
“The last couple of gun bills, they passed overwhelmingly, for pro-gun rights,” he said. “But she (Bollier) apparently has some constituents that feel that’s an issue and that’s her job to bring that forward.”
Corbet, who owns a hunting lodge in southern Shawnee County, said his constituents feel differently about background checks.
“I know that most of the people in my district, the 54th District, including myself, would probably be opposed to that,” he said.
Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today said the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had work to do to address regulatory overreach and will need to do more in the future to recognize the concerns of all market participants including farmers and ranchers.
At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Roberts, a senior member and the former ranking member of the Committee, thanked CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad on his willingness to correct the mistakes of the previous Commission, especially on issues Roberts had concerns with including residual interest rules and proposals for reporting requirements.
Senator Roberts and Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) introduced legislation, S. 2601, to enhance customer protections for farmers and ranchers by preventing regulations from the CFTC from being overly laborious and making it significantly more difficult for farmers and ranchers to make economical trades on commodities.
“The Commission’s actions over the last several months have demonstrated that the previous commission and Chairman often took Dodd-Frank regulations much further than required by the law…and wouldn’t stop to listen to feedback from stakeholders including market participants and Congress,” Roberts said.
“While I value the work you have undertaken to correct several regulatory missteps and over-reaches, several of the tweaks the commission has proposed, but not yet finalized, were simply low hanging fruit that many of us around this table have raised for years,” Roberts said. “I know that most of us are anxious to see the easiest fixes put into place, particularly for agriculture and end users, including the proposals for reporting requirements and residual interest.”
Roberts also noted that the CFTC is set to receive nearly 50 percent more in funds since 2010, including the “cromnibus” proposed by the House. Roberts said that despite the challenges facing the agency, its spending should not be allowed to continue to grow unchecked.
Roberts remains concerned with the following CFTC regulatory issues:
market participation: small and medium sized Future Commission Merchants (FCM’s) are closing and consolidating;
time and resources on the further study of the collection of residual interest despite the Commission’s decision to end the automatic pre-funding of margins given the unpopular and unrealistic rule’s high cost to farmers for little to no benefit;
the use of staff no-action letters and regulatory guidance instead of following federal rulemaking procedures including a cost benefit analysis;
cross-border issues from lack of regulatory equivalence from the European Union including the definition of “U.S. person”;
and foreign businesses are choosing to relocate their business and capital away from the U.S. markets.
Senator Roberts is a senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City have been working on plans to integrate a proposed Downtown Campus for the Arts into the community.
