JUNCTION CITY- A Kansas woman was arrested on Interstate 70 just after 1 a.m. on Tuesday in Geary County.
The Geary County Sheriff’s Department reported that deputies stopped Cheryl Lynn Lund, Lawrence, on Interstate 70 about six miles east of Junction City on suspicion of being a pedestrian on the interstate.
Further investigation revealed Lund was westbound on the interstate at 11:50 p.m. when her Toyota Camry left the road, struck a KDOT sign, continued west into a ditch, and struck a concrete culvert. The accident caused the deployment of the air bags and major damage to the vehicle.
The Junction City Fire Department responded to the accident and evaluated Lund who declined treatment. No injuries were reported.
As a result of the investigation the Sheriff’s Department arrested Lund on suspicion of Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol, Driving While Suspended, Interference With Law Enforcement, Failure to Report an Accident, Improper Driving on the Roadway, and Refusal of Preliminary Breath Test.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has set a new hearing on the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
A court notice filed Tuesday shows the hearing on the ACLU’s request for an order forcing Kansas to allow gay marriages is set for 2:30 p.m. Friday before U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Kansas City, Kansas.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit for two lesbian couples denied marriage licenses in Douglas and Sedgwick counties after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals from five other states seeking to preserve bans on gay marriage.
The ACLU is seeking a temporary injunction that would bring Kansas into line with a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals precedent set in other cases.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri is preparing to execute a man who wasn’t able to appeal his conviction in federal court because his attorneys missed a filing deadline to do so.
Mark Christeson is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. CDT Wednesday for the killing of a woman and her two children in 1998.
Christeson had two appeals pending with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. One challenges the state’s planned use of a made-to-order execution drug produced by an unnamed compounding pharmacy. The other argues that Christeson deserves the chance to appeal his case in federal courts, which is the norm for inmates sentenced to death.
Christeson would be the ninth person executed by Missouri this year, which would equal the state record set in 1999.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Records from the Kansas attorney general’s office show taxpayers spent more than $34,000 in legal fees for the secretary of state’s failed effort to force Kansas Democrats to field a candidate for U.S. Senate.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach told The Wichita Eagle that’s not a lot of money, in litigation terms.
The state paid Wichita-based Hinkle Law Firm $34,627 to defend Kobach against a lawsuit brought by Democrat Chad Taylor, who withdrew from the Senate race.
The Kansas Supreme Court rejected Kobach’s argument that Taylor should remain on the ballot because he did not declare himself incapable of serving, if elected.
The state also retained Hinkle when it tried to intervene in a lawsuit to force the Democratic Party to name a replacement candidate, which also failed.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Seven school districts have asked the St. Louis County prosecutor to wait until classes aren’t in session to make any announcement about whether a grand jury decided charges were warranted in the Ferguson police shooting case.
Riverview Gardens School District Superintendent Scott Spurgeon last week sent Prosecutor Bob McCulloch a letter signed by six other superintendents asking that any announcement be made after 5 p.m. or on a weekend.
The grand jury is expected to decide by mid-November whether Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson should face charges in the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown. Brown’s death led to weeks of sometimes violent protests in and around Ferguson.
The letter suggests that any protests after the announcement could make it hard for students to get home.
NEW YORK (AP) — Lowe’s is testing whether robots can improve customer service in its stores.
The machines look like white columns with two large screens on either side of them. They have wheels that allow them move and are equipped with 3D cameras to scan and identify items.
Customers can research items they are looking for on the screens, and the robot can lead them to the aisle where an item is located.
The robots also have a database of the store’s inventory, so they can let customers know whether something is in stock.
The head of Lowes’ Innovation lab, Kyle Nel, says people can come in “with a random screw and say Mr. Robot, I need more of these,” and find it.
Lowe’s is testing four robots at its Orchard Supply Hardware store in San Jose, California.
Lowe’s has been working on infusing more technology into its customer service. It has also developed a “holoroom” that lets users see what different pieces of furniture look like in different rooms in a virtual-reality environment.
WEBB CITY, Mo. (AP) — Webb City officials plan to use a $3 million grant to buy land for a wetlands project designed to combat pollution runoff from former mines.
The southwest Missouri city recently received the grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The plan is to buy land along Center Creek to use as a 100-acre wetland. Another 1,200 acres would be used for wildlife habitat, walking trails and picnic areas.
The Joplin Globe reports Webb City leaders have been talking to federal and state regulators about ways to reduce heavy metal runoff from decades of lead and zinc mining.
Interim City Administrator Carl Francis says the wetlands would trap sediment, excess nutrients and pollutants that currently flow into Center Creek and then into Spring River.
LATHROP- Two Missouri women were injured in an accident just before 12-noon on Monday in Clinton County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Nissan Altima driven by Gregory N. Kemp, 43, Shawnee, KS., was northbound on U.S. 69 three miles east of Lathrop.
The vehicle failed to stop at a stop sign, traveled into the intersection and was hit by a 2005 Chevy Aveo driven by Elinka A. Carter, 60, Polo that was westbound on MO 116.
Carter was transported to North Kansas City Hospital.
A passenger in the Chevy Marie L. Justofin, 85, Polo, was transported to Liberty Hospital.
The MSHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
WASHINGTON (AP) —For Americans wondering why President Barack Obama hasn’t forced all states to follow a single, national rule for isolating potential Ebola patients, the White House has a quick retort: Talk to the Founding Fathers.
A hodgepodge of state policies, some of which directly contradict Obama’s recommendations, has sowed confusion about what’s really needed to stop Ebola from spreading in the United States. While public health advocates denounce state quarantines as draconian and scientifically baseless, anxious citizens in non-quarantine states are asking whether they’re at greater risk because their governors and the president have adopted a lesser level of caution.
If public health departments across the country aren’t singing the same tune, that may be by design.
Although the Constitution empowers the federal government to isolate sick people entering the U.S. or traveling between states, it’s the states themselves that have the bulk of the authority to regulate public health in America — including the decision to enforce quarantines within their borders.
“I guess you can take that up with James Madison,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, referring to the fourth president and key drafter of the Constitution, when asked why there was no binding federal policy. That’s ironic, perhaps, coming from an administration Republicans are constantly accusing of exceeding its legal authority on everything from immigration and health care to foreign policy.
With states and localities having broad authority to impose quarantines themselves, Earnest said the federal government’s role was to “marshal scientific evidence” for best practices to stop Ebola’s spread. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did just that.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease at the National Institutes of Health, defended the Washington policy Tuesday, but said that states have a right “to go the extra mile” if they wish.
In an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Fauci declined to criticize the more stringent quarantine policies implemented in New York and New Jersey by Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. “I don’t want to use the word mistake,” he said. “They’re doing it in good faith.”
Christie said Tuesday he feels the CDC’s latest guidance is “incredibly confusing.”
“The CDC is behind on this,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show. “Governors ultimately have responsibility to protect the public health of people within their borders.”
Fauci, appearing on CNN, said the CDC guidelines are “based on the science, on what we know and how it’s transmitted. It’s a good matching, based on science, of the level of risk with the kind of monitoring the kind of restrictions. Based on scientific evidence as well as experience.”
“When you start getting the viral load that is enough to be able to be transmitted,” he said, “you’re feeling very, very poorly.”
For the first time, the CDC recommended 21 days of isolation and travel restrictions for people at highest risk for Ebola — a nurse stuck by a needle while treating an Ebola patient in Guinea, for example — even if they have no symptoms.
But the recommendations are just that: recommendations.
States are still free to go above and beyond the CDC guidelines. And if states were to opt to be more lenient, there’s next to nothing Obama could do to force their hand.
Case in point: An order issued Friday by New Jersey, like one in New York, requires three-week quarantines for anyone who treated Ebola patients in West Africa — not just those deemed high-risk because of a needle-stick or failure to use proper protective gear. But under the new federal guidelines, those lower-risk workers merely must have their temperatures monitored twice a day.
Legal experts say New York and New Jersey could be on shaky legal ground. To justify infringing on an individual’s civil liberties, like freedom of movement, states face a high bar to prove their orders are based on science and epidemiology. Courts also like to see that states are acting as narrowly as possible rather than in broad strokes, such as lumping together everyone who treated Ebola patients even if they’re healthy.
“We have not seen for decades and decades the state or federal government say a whole category is going to be subjected to quarantines,” said David Fidler, who teaches international and public health law at Indiana University.
In fact, such broad quarantines are almost unheard of in U.S. history. Almost always, they have been limited to diseases that are airborne and easy to catch. Public health experts say Ebola is neither.
When an influenza pandemic dubbed the “Spanish Flu” infected millions in 1918, major U.S. cities closed schools and imposed strict quarantines. New York considered quarantining tuberculosis patients in the 1990s, and isolated some who wouldn’t comply with treatment.
But as any school nurse can tell you, TB and the flu can be passed from person to person by sneezing or coughing, while Ebola requires direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.
Obama and top federal officials have echoed aid groups like Doctors Without Borders in warning that mandatory quarantines will dissuade doctors and nurses from volunteering to fight Ebola in West Africa, therefore making it harder to stop the disease at its source.
But others warn of another risk to public confidence here at home: If Obama insists people without Ebola symptoms aren’t contagious while states are quarantining those same people, whom should people believe?
“What several of these governors are doing is giving very confusing and mixed messages to the public,” said Lawrence Gostin, who heads the national and global health law program at Georgetown University. “It’s an inherent problem in our federalist system. We are designed as 51-plus governments. They can speak with different voices.”
KANSAS CITY- A Missouri man was injured in an accident just after 8:30 p.m. on Monday in Wyandotte County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Ford F350 driven by Kenneth Dean Johnson, 66, Blue Springs, MO., was northbound on Interstate 635 at mile marker 8 in the right lane. For an unknown reason the truck left the roadway, went down an embankment and struck a KDOT fence.
Johnson was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital. The KHP reported he was properly restrained at the time of the accident.
