MANHATTAN- The Riley County Police Department on Friday located and arrested missing inmate Jason Lamar Leonard. He was arrested for a probation violation and was given a $50,000 bond.
LEONARD, JASON LAMAR Approx Picture Date 2008-10-01 – Photo courtesy KBI
Leonard, 38, of Manhattan, had been under investigation by the Riley County Police Department since July 26, 2014, when he failed to return after his work shift while on work release from the Riley County Jail.
Leonard was originally serving time in the Riley County Jail for a probation violation stemming from a felony burglary and misdemeanor theft case.
LaShana McGee, of Piper, Kan., stands in the shallow end of the pool at he Providence YMCA/Ball Family Center in Kansas City, Kan., with her 9-year-old daughter, KayLynn, who takes swimming lessons at the facility.-Photo by Mike Sherry
By Mike Sherry
KHI News Service
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — LaShana McGee marvels at the exploits of her 4-year-old daughter at their neighborhood pool in Piper, Kan.“She goes straight to the deep end. It’s crazy,” McGee said. “I don’t know why she does that, but she does. She just jumps right in, and she will swim her way back to the stairs where you get in.”
Having grown up in an African American household in the urban core of Kansas City, Mo., McGee made sure her two girls started swimming lessons early so they didn’t grow up like their mom – with such a fear of the water that she needs the reassurance of her 9-year-old to brave the water slide at Oceans of Fun.
McGee’s mother couldn’t swim, so she didn’t make it a priority for her kids.
But a recent national analysis of a dozen years’ worth of death statistics illustrates the perils that such an indifference to the water poses.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released in the spring by Dr. Julie Gilchrist, found that African Americans under the age of 30 are far more likely to drown in swimming pools than people of other races and ethnicities in the same age range.
A spate of deaths earlier this summer reminded Kansas Citians just how dangerous the water can be, but Gilchrist said pool statistics are especially telling when it comes to racial disparities.
“Swimming pools take a lot of the other variables away,” she said. “There aren’t currents, there aren’t underwater obstacles, you know where the sides are, you know where the bottom is. So theoretically, with just basic swim skills, it should be very difficult to drown in a swimming pool.”
Water-safety advocates say true aquatic proficiency extends to knowing lifesaving techniques. And, of course, knowing how to swim confers exercise benefits.
Drowning data
According to the CDC:
• Nearly 4,000 people die from drowning each year in the United States.
• Nearly 80 percent of the people who die from drowning are male.
• Drowning is one of the top three causes of unintentional death for people under the age of 30.
• Among 11- and 12-year-olds, blacks drowned in pools at 10 times the rate of whites between 1999 and 2010.
On a more local level, according to medical authorities, about two dozen people drowned in Kansas City, Mo., between 2008 and 2013. Wyandotte County logged nearly 30 drowning deaths going back nearly 15 years.
While Wyandotte County has not had a drowning this year, Jackson County had three in the span of eight days in June. All three were males under the age of 19, including a 7-year-old biracial boy who died in an apartment complex swimming pool. The other deaths occurred in a park pond and a lake.
Minorities accounted for a majority of the drowning deaths in each jurisdiction, but they did not mirror the national data. Gilchrist said that’s not surprising, given that national trends would not be reflected in a sample that includes little more than 50 cases.
It’s not clear what role, if any, socioeconomic status plays in the national drowning statistics. Gilchrist could not say whether the disparity in drowning between blacks and whites persists across income brackets.
African Americans tend to predominate among the urban poor. According to the latest census figures, from 2012, the percentage of blacks living below the poverty level was more than double that of whites (28 percent vs. 13 percent).
But in trying to explain the disparity, Gilchrist and others say financial barriers are likely to blame for poor swimming proficiency. The problem is exacerbated by the dearth of municipal pools and by households struggling to cobble together jobs and so lacking the time to learn.
That rings true for McGee, the mother from Piper, who grew up at 63rd Street and Walrond Avenue.
Some kids in her neighborhood played in fountains, she says, but her mother did not think that was safe. The Swope Park pool was within walking distance, “but I think finances kept us from going because it wasn’t free – you had to pay – and so, I didn’t really care” about swimming.
KCK experience
In Kansas City, Kan., Mayor Mark Holland said urban youths in his community suffer from a lack of access to aquatic facilities. The city has one public pool, and Holland said it’s little more than a cement pond in the Quindaro neighborhood.
“One pool for 155,000 people,” Holland said. “I mean, that’s crazy.”
Urban communities often struggle with the costs of operating and maintaining a public pool, he said.
Holland is hoping to address the imbalance through his plan for a “healthy campus” near downtown that would include a community center with an Olympic-size pool.
His initial vision was to provide a setting for swim meets hosted by the Kansas City, Kan., school district. Holland credits school Superintendent Cynthia Lane with expanding that idea and working the pool into the physical education curriculum for second- and third-grade students.
“It makes a lot more sense to broaden the vision to teach every child how to swim,” he said.
He added that you’re not likely to have much of a high school swim team if a lot of your students can’t swim.
To the rescue
Nonprofit organizations in the metropolitan area also are working to improve swimming skills among African Americans and other urban youth.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City last month hosted a four-day water safety program for 5- to 9-year-olds. The club offered the program in partnership with The ZAC Foundation, a Connecticut-based organization started in 2008 by a couple that lost their 6-year-old son when his arm became stuck in a pool drain.
And the YMCA of Greater Kansas City recently wrapped up its second year of providing water-safety instruction to kids participating in a summer camp put on by City Union Mission in Kansas City, which operates a homeless shelter and other programs.
One of the swimmers at last week’s session in Platte City was 7-year-old Brea Powell.
While doing the front paddle, she said, she realized the importance of learning how to save someone in trouble “because you don’t want other people to drown and be in heaven by themselves.”
With basic steps, such as wearing a life jacket and ensuring adult supervision, drowning is 100 percent preventable, said Amanda Mitchell, senior aquatics director for the Kansas City YMCA.
The YMCA provides scholarships to ensure that money is not a barrier for families that want to provide swimming lessons to their kids.
Swimming, Mitchell said, is a life skill that also provides an “avenue of constant health.”
Gilchrist, the CDC researcher, agreed.
She said it’s understandable that African American parents, unable to swim themselves, would stay away from the water to protect their kids. But the data illustrate the danger of doing that as those kids grow up and find themselves near a pool.
“So that fear and avoidance is not protective as the children age,” Gilchrist said. “At some point, everyone is going to encounter water.”
Old emotions about Iraq are resurfacing across America. People are conflicted about President Barack Obama’s decision to bomb Islamic militants there.
Many support the airstrikes, but do so for contrasting reasons. People who oppose the bombing say the U.S. never should have invaded in the first place. But they struggle with defining America’s responsibility to a nation it upended in a long and costly war.
In interviews, no one sees a concrete solution to Iraq’s problems.
Neil McCanon, who supports the decision to bomb the militants, says he’s torn about how much force should be used. As a U.S. Army veteran who fought there, he doesn’t want Iraq to fall into chaos.
Almost 4,500 American troops were killed in Iraq from the 2003 invasion to Obama’s withdrawal in 2011.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is opening a two-week summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard just as the U.S. is engaged in airstrikes against Islamic militant targets in Iraq.
Obama is due to arrive on the Massachusetts island Saturday afternoon. He’s breaking up his vacation with a two-day return to Washington midway through the trip.
The president typically keeps a low-profile on his annual summer vacations. But he will headline a Democratic fundraiser on the island Monday night.
The president and his family are staying in a rented vacation house in the town of Chilmark.
People outside of agriculture routinely try to define the family farm. These same folks have a tendency to question corporate farming, whether family owned or not.
John Schlageck writes for the Kansas Farm Bureau.
Let’s take a look at the family farm. In Kansas, farm and ranch families grow up with the feel of the prairie earth beneath their feet, the wide-open sky overhead and the rhythm of the seasons in their blood.
Throughout their lifetime, these farmers and ranchers love, care for and respect the land entrusted to them. Ag producers adhere to an ethic that enlarges the boundaries of our community to include soils, waters, plants and animals – collectively – the land.
This entity known as the family farm is based on owner operation. The rights and responsibilities of ownership are vested in an entrepreneur who works the farm for a living.
Another key ingredient of the family farm system is independence.Independence means financing from within its own resources using family labor, management and intellect to build equity and cash flow that will retire the mortgage, preferably in the lifetime of the owner.
Economic dispersion is another integral part of the family farm. Economic dispersion includes large numbers of efficient-sized farms operating with equal access to competitive markets worldwide.
No family farm would be complete without the family core. All family members share responsibilities and the children learn the vocation of their parents.
At an early age, young men and women learn to work with their dads and moms on the family farm. Here, they develop self-reliance and initiative. They often rise with the sun and finish work when it sets. Yet, they rarely take this place called home for granted.
The ideal family farm is commercially diversified. Diversified commodities help reduce price risks and maximize the use of farm resources to produce crops and livestock that in turn provide greater self-sufficiency.
One final attribute necessary in defining today’s family farm is the use of innovative technology. It not only enhances farm labor but also helps boost production.
Family farming carries with it a commitment to specific, independent values. These values become part of the community and include conservation, frugality, responsibility, honesty, dignity in work, neighborliness, self-reliance and concern and care for future generations.
While it’s rare indeed that one particular family farm may possess all of these attributes, together they have created a system of agriculture that has been a part of our rural culture since this nation’s beginning.
Today, detractors of this profession are making it increasingly difficult for this vital industry to progress and prosper. Maybe they should learn more about the ag industry, visit a farm or connect with a farmer or rancher. That way farmers and ranchers can continue doing what they do best – responsibly producing the healthiest, safest food in the world.
John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.
A tick bite might make you a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off red meat.
Doctors across the nation are seeing a surge of sudden meat allergies in people bitten by Lone Star ticks, which are found in the Southwest and eastern half of the U.S.
This bizarre problem was only discovered a few years ago but is growing as the ticks spread to more areas. Eating a burger or steak landed some people in the hospital.
The bugs harbor a type of sugar humans don’t have but that is found in red meat. The tick bite conveys the sugar to the bloodstream, and the immune system can go overboard reacting to the foreign substance.
Doctors say the allergy is one more reason to avoid ticks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A major new poll finds that President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas.
States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the number of uninsured residents, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.
States whose leaders still object to so-called “Obamacare” are seeing much less change.
The survey, released Tuesday, found an overall drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states accepting the law’s core provisions.
The drop was much smaller — 2.2 percentage points— in states that held back politically. Uninsured residents of those states still had access to a new federal insurance market.
Two southern states where the law found support led the nation in coverage gains. They were Arkansas and Kentucky.
LOS ANGELES (AP)–Smokey Bear is turning 70 today, but don’t bring any candles to the party, please.
As the friendly, huggable bear with the brimmed hat and shovel enters his golden years, he’s burning up Twitter. But his message of fire prevention through personal responsibility hasn’t changed that much.
Smokey was created in 1944, when TV was in its infancy.
Now, he has more than 300,000 friends on Facebook and 24,000 Twitter followers.
Smokey’s classic slogan â “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” changed to “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires” in 2001.
That’s because wildfires in urban areas were becoming a bigger threat than remote forest fires.
Smokey celebrated on Friday with a party at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
KU News Service LAWRENCE– How light interacts with matter is one of the grand challenges of atomic, molecular and optical research. A Kansas and Nebraska consortium led by university researchers has received a three-year, $6 million award to understand ultrafast molecular processes on the order of a millionth of a billionth second, or one femtosecond. The award is divided equally between the two states.
The project, Imaging and Controlling Ultrafast Dynamics of Atoms, Molecules, and Nanostructures, is part of the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR).
Kristin Bowman-James, project director of Kansas NSF EPSCoR and a university distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, and her counterpart at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UN-L), Fred Choobineh, professor of industrial and management systems engineering, are the lead principal investigators responsible for project oversight. Research activities in the two states involve 30 people and are led by Anthony Starace, professor of physics at UN-L, and Itzik Ben-Itzhak, university distinguished professor of physics at Kansas State University.
“We’re extremely excited about the project,” Bowman-James said. ”This is a tremendous opportunity to build on EPSCoR-funded linkages between KU and Kansas State by partnering with researchers in Nebraska. NSF support for multidisciplinary, multi-institutional projects such as this is absolutely crucial for understanding highly complex scientific processes, and we are very grateful for their commitment.” During the project, physicists, chemists and electrical engineers will develop scientific, technological, experimental and theoretical tools to both understand these very fast processes and, even more challenging, to control them. These tools can ultimately be applied to laser technology, solar energy capture, nanotechnology and even optogenetics (studying light sensitive neurons in the nervous system).
Education, outreach and workforce development activities will involve partnerships with small colleges in Nebraska, summer workshops for high school physics teachers and a host of programs for students.
The Kansas-Nebraska consortium is one of three funded this summer by NSF. The others are Louisiana-Mississippi and Arkansas-Missouri. Collectively, these three awards involve researchers from about 20 universities in the six states and will result in science and engineering research, education and outreach to accelerate progress on nationally important scientific challenges. Photo: Diocles Extreme Light Laboratory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Image courtesy of the Communications Department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
TOPEKA — State welfare officials announced Friday that they will resume foster placements with TFI Family Services.
The Kansas Department for Children and Families suspended foster placements with Topeka-based TFI after the July 24 death of a 10-month-old left in a hot car in Wichita. TFI sponsored the home where the child died.
DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore said all TFI-sponsored homes were inspected before the decision to resume foster placements.
“Our investigation into the death is ongoing, but placements are once again permitted,” Gilmore said. “While we know this affected our valued foster families, it was never intended to be an insult to foster parents who have opened their homes to care for children in need. It was simply a safety precaution.”
TFI formerly contracted with DCF to provide foster services, but its contract was not renewed in July 2013. It continues to have foster homes as a subcontractor to the state’s current lead foster care contractors, KVC Behavioral Healthcare of Olathe and St. Francis Community Services of Salina.
On July 25, officials directed KVC and St. Francis to assess the safety of all children in TFI-sponsored homes. In homes where children were under 7, the homes were to be inspected within 72 hours. In homes where the children were older than 7, the inspections were to occur within the week.
“During the inspections, St. Francis and KVC social workers addressed with the foster parents any safety concerns and reiterated the importance of removing children from vehicles and refraining from being impaired while serving as a foster parent,” Gilmore said. “We were pleased to learn that no major issues were discovered. It appears the recent tragedy is a rare exception to an otherwise strong record of foster care child safety in Kansas.”
As part of the investigation into the death, DCF and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment have formed a workgroup to assess foster care licensing, placement and inspection policies.
The number of children in foster care in Kansas recently hit a record high.
