AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Four more states have joined a Texas-led coalition suing the Obama administration over executive action on immigration.

The addition of Arkansas, Michigan, North Dakota and Oklahoma brings to 24 the number of states fighting the order in a federal district court in Brownsville.

Announced last month, the president’s unilateral move is designed to spare millions of people living illegally in the United States from deportation. But the lawsuit accuses the White House of “trampling” the U.S. Constitution.

Outgoing Attorney General Greg Abbott says Texas is uniquely qualified to sue because its sprawling border with Mexico means it will be especially harmed.

Abbott, the governor-elect of Texas, added Wednesday that the presidential decree “circumvents the will of the American people.”

TOPEKA- Two Kansas drivers were injured in separate accidents on Wednesday morning in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported that just after 7:50 a.m., a 2000 Buick LeSabre driven by Veronica L. Morgan, 62, Burlingame, was on the ramp from northbound U. S. 75 to westbound Interstate 470.
The driver lost control and struck the guardrail.

At 8:20 a.m. a 2000 Chevy Colorado driven by Valerie L. Smith, 51, Rossville, was eastbound on U.S. 24 one mile west of Topeka. The driver lost control on the icy bridge, entered the south ditch and rolled.

Just before 9 a.m. a 1999 Chevy Blazer driven by Debra Fisher, 60, Topeka, was eastbound on U.S. 24 just east of Kansas 4. The driver lost control on an icy bridge and struck concrete wall.

Smith was transported to Stormont Vail. Morgan was transported to St. Francis Hospital. Smith and a passenger in the Blazer were possibly injured but not transported for treatment.

The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accidents.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Science City at Kansas City’s Union Station is rebounding from years of stagnant attendance, thanks to new exhibits and attractions and an increase in donations.

The latest good news came Wednesday, when two new exhibits costing more than $1 million and resulting from a high school science competition opened.

The Kansas City Star reports  more than half of Science City has been overhauled in recent years, sparked by more than $5 million in donations from the Burns & McDonnell Foundation and in-kind services from the company.

It appears to be paying off. Attendance at Science City increased 7 percent in 2013 and has grown by double digits this year. Revenues increased 17 percent in 2013 and Union Station CEO George Guastello says the science center is financially self-sustaining.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced in a media release Tuesday that two southern Missouri men were indicted by a federal grand jury today, in separate and unrelated cases, on charges involving the sexual exploitation of children.

USA v. Talbott

Jeremiah Shane Talbott, 37, of Oronogo, Mo., was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Springfield, Mo.

Today’s indictment alleges that Talbott used a cell phone to attempt to induce an individual whom he believed to be less than 18 years of age to engage in illicit sexual activity between June 26 and Aug. 26, 2014.

The indictment also contains a forfeiture allegation, which would require Talbott to forfeit to the government any property used to commit the alleged offense, including his cell phone.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ami Harshad Miller. It was investigated by the Southwest Missouri Cybercrime Task Force, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the FBI.

USA v. Penn

Edward Penn, 31, of Hartville, Mo., was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Springfield, Mo.

Today’s indictment alleges that Penn received and distributed child pornography over the Internet between Jan. 1, 2013, and Oct. 3, 2014.

The indictment also contains a forfeiture allegation, which would require Penn to forfeit to the government any property used to commit the alleged offense, including his cell phone.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney James J. Kelleher. It was investigated by the Southwest Missouri Cybercrime Task Force and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Dickinson cautioned that the charges contained in these indictments are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.

COLUMBIA (AP) – Some security personnel will be allowed to carry guns in Columbia schools if they meet certain requirements.

Superintendent Peter Stiepleman said Tuesday he wants schools security director John White and assistant security director Ken Gregory to carry guns by Jan. 15, after a procedure is prepared to react if one of them fires a gun. White and Gregory are usually the first on the scene at school incidents.

Four Columbia police officers who work in the schools already carry guns.

The policy requires the security director and assistant director to have police certification and experience. They also must take state and federal licenses and at least 24 hours of firearms training each year, as well as other training.

SPRINGFIELD (AP) – A Springfield man has been charged with murder in a fatal shooting from more than two years ago.

The Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s office on Tuesday charged 31-year-old Carlos Tureaud with second-degree murder. Authorities say he killed Marcus Wells during a party at a Springfield apartment complex in September 2012.

They say witnesses were reluctant to talk to police for years because they were afraid of Tureaud. A witness in April told police Tureaud was responsible and expressed guilt about not being truthful previously.

Tureaud is being held without bond. It wasn’t immediately clear if he has an attorney.

LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City-area prosecutors have charged a man who they say dragged a suicide victim’s corpse into a portable restroom and lit it on fire.

Twenty-four-year-old Sean Lloyd has been charged with abandonment of a corpse and knowingly burning an object. A Jackson County park ranger found 30-year-old Jackson Guzman’s body on Nov. 20 in the parking lot of the Frank White Jr. Softball Complex near Longview Lake in Lee’s Summit.

Lloyd contacted deputies after the discovery and said that the Shawnee, Kansas, man shot himself in the head after they had been drinking. Lloyd says he was scared to call deputies because he was on probation, so he looked up what to do on the Internet.

Online jail records didn’t indicate an attorney for Lloyd.

By Jim McLean
KHI News Service

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A multimillion-dollar plan to transform this city’s downtown into a national model is one step closer to reality.

The Unified Government Board of Commissioners last week unanimously approved a new master development plan designed to help improve the health of Kansas City and other Wyandotte County residents by providing a state-of-the-art community center, more green space in which to exercise and access to healthy foods at a 30,000- to 35,000-square-foot urban grocery store.

The 8-0 vote to approve the Downtown Central Parkway Plan and its signature “healthy campus” occurred only six months after a public forum where city and county residents were openly skeptical that UG officials could move the ambitious plan from concept to reality.

“Trust was a big concern,” said Gordon Criswell, assistant county administrator. At the time of the May forum, he summarized the sentiment expressed as: “We have been let down time and time again, and so … don’t set us up to fail again.”

After the forum, Mayor Mark Holland said, “There’s no shortcut to trust.”
Building trust

Last week, Holland said he viewed the commission’s pro-forma vote to move the project forward as an indication of more trust.
“We’ve had six months of public process, the commissioners have all been engaged in that, and the public has been engaged,” Holland said. “We’ve reached out to every neighborhood group, every stakeholder.”

Still, Holland said, finalizing the plan is one thing; making the vision real with bricks and mortar is another.

“Our challenge now is to go raise the money,” he said.

But even there, much progress already has been made. Revenue generated by the Hollywood Casino at Village West and a $1 million grant from the Wyandotte Health Foundation will provide approximately half of the $12 million to $14 million needed to build the community center, which will be owned by the city/county but managed by the YMCA.
Cathy Harding, CEO of the Wyandotte Health Foundation, said she’s excited to be a partner in the project.

“When the mayor of a large metropolitan area — like Wyandotte County is — says that his top priorities are public works, public safety and public health, with health being one of the three priorities, that is really amazing,” Harding said. “It just says a lot about the leadership there.”

Asked during a recent appearance on KCUR’s “Up to Date” how confident he was that the city/county could raise the additional funds needed from foundations, Holland said: “I’m very confident that we’re going to be able to get this done. And we’re going to get it done because it has to get done.”

Holland said the goal is to have the “funding nailed down” by late spring or early summer of next year.

From Last to…

The plan to revitalize downtown Kansas City, Kan., in ways that helps residents improve their health is rooted in a 2009 report that ranked Wyandotte County as the least healthy county in Kansas. The report was a wake-up call for then-Mayor Joe Reardon and other UG officials.

A couple of years later, the Reardon-led effort to improve Wyandotte County’s health ranking attracted national attention from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

If anything, Holland has intensified the health improvement effort since winning election in April 2013 after Reardon’s retirement from politics. He believes the campus at the heart of the downtown redevelopment project can serve as a model for other cities struggling to reverse generations of poverty and physical neglect.

“The vision we have for the healthy campus downtown is nothing short of a national model for healthy living in an urban area,” Holland said on “Up to Date.” “We’re going into the hardest-hit area and we’re going to move the needle. We’re going to change the environment. We’re going to tear down crummy buildings. We’re going to build new. We’re going to build first-class.”

Access to healthy food

After four years, negotiations to acquire land across the street from the proposed community center and convince the Charles Ball Sunfresh Market to build a $15 million to $18 million grocery store in what Holland calls the downtown “food desert” have reached a critical stage.
“We have a financial gap that we haven’t resolved,” Holland said. “But I’m confident we will resolve that.”

The store will be a partnership between the UG and the company, Holland said, meaning that tax-increment financing will generate some of the funds.

“We’re certainly willing to partner … because the tax that we receive from that store is far less important than the stabilization of the neighborhood around it,” he said.

The project, Holland said, will elevate property values downtown, provide jobs and give people living in or near downtown access to a full-service grocery store for the first time in decades. A study was done to ensure that a downtown location was financially viable, Holland said.

“Remarkably, as it turns out, people in Kansas City, Kansas, buy groceries; they’re just not buying them in Kansas City, Kansas,” he said. “They’re finding a ride or driving to Missouri or Johnson County or somewhere else where there is a nice grocery store. People don’t want to buy groceries in a place that’s run-down.”

Jim McLean is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

JIM SALTER, Associated Press

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri inmate has been executed for beating a 63-year-old woman to death with a hammer in 1998.

Paul Goodwin was put to death early Wednesday, the 10th man executed in Missouri in 2014. That breaks the state’s previous high of nine executions in 1999 and matches Texas for the most in the U.S. this year.

Goodwin sexually assaulted Joan Crotts in St. Louis County, pushed her down a flight of stairs and beat her in the head with a hammer. Goodwin was a former neighbor who felt Crotts played a role in getting him kicked out of a boarding house.

Efforts to spare Goodwin’s life centered on his low IQ and claims that executing him would violate a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the death penalty for the mentally disabled.