TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts is launching what he calls a statewide listening tour next week with events in three northeast Kansas communities.

The Republican senator’s office says the first town hall meeting will take place Monday morning at Elizabeth’s restaurant in Atchison. He also plans town halls at community centers in Troy and Hiawatha in the afternoon.

Roberts has said he plans to have meetings in each of the state’s 105 counties.

Roberts is seeking his fourth, six-year term in the Senate in the November general election.

His Democratic opponent is Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor, and Olathe businessman Greg Orman is running as an independent candidate. Wichita manufacturing plant inspector Randall Batson will be on the ballot as a Libertarian candidate.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today released the following statement after the National Guard announced a decision to curtail its spending on sports-related marketing and recruitment with organizations such as NASCAR and IndyCar:

“I’m a NASCAR fan, and I love the National Guard—but spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a recruitment program that signed up zero recruits, and that has been abandoned by other service branches as ineffective, just makes no sense.”

In May, McCaskill led a hearing on reports of waste and abuse in spending on sports-related marketing and sponsorships with organizations such as NASCAR and IndyCar.

Each year the National Guard spends more than $56 million on sports marketing with NASCAR and IndyCar, which amounts to 37 percent of its marketing and advertising budget. However in 2012, not a single National Guard soldier was recruited from the NASCAR sponsorship program. In 2013, the program generated fewer than 8,000 leads—far from the roughly 1,000,000 leads the National Guard needs to meet its annual recruiting goal of 50,000 soldiers.

The target demographic for the National Guard is primarily young adults between the ages of 18 and 24. However only 10 percent of NASCAR viewers are between 18 and 24. The average age of an IndyCar fan is between 35 and 54 years old.

The Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, all of which used to sponsor NASCAR, have all decided to end these programs. The Regular Army ended its sponsorship with NASCAR in 2012 after concluding that the program had the highest cost per lead in the Army’s portfolio of sponsorships. The Marine Corps made the same decision in 2006, when it determined that the cost per impression of sponsoring a NASCAR team was almost impossible to measure. The Navy ended its own sponsorship of NASCAR in 2008 because the program was too expensive compared to the marketing benefit it received. And the Coast Guard ended its relationship with NASCAR in 2006 due to the cost of the sponsorship and only generating 350 leads for their $9.6 million investment.

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is issuing five more recalls totaling 310,000 vehicles as the company cleans up past safety issues.

The recalls in North America pushed GM’s total for the year to 66, covering just over 29 million cars and trucks. That beats the company’s old full-year record and has pushed this total number for the industry this year to more than 40 million, also an annual record.

The largest of Friday’s recalls covers just over 215,000 Saturn Vue SUVs from the 2002 through 2004 model years. GM says keys can be removed when ignitions are not in the “off” position. The problem is linked to two crashes and one injury.

GM is conducting a companywide safety review following a bungled recall of 2.6 million small cars with faulty ignition switches.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — New budget projections from the Kansas Legislature’s nonpartisan research staff show a state budget shortfall developing by July 2016.

The projections released Friday by the Legislative Research Department also show a lower figure for the state’s cash reserves on June 30 than Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration reported last month.

The department provided the figures to The Associated Press exclusively after releasing them to legislators.

The projections show the state would face a $262 million shortfall by July 2016. Kansas aggressively cut personal income taxes at Brownback’s urging, and revenues fell short of expectations earlier this year.

The department also said the state’s cash reserves on June 30 were $380 million, not the nearly $435 million Brownback’s administration reported. The department factored in bills that were still pending on June 30.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Police in Lawrence want to hear from anyone who may have given a ride to a suspect in a July homicide.

Thirty-eight-year-old Angelica Marie Kulp is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Christine Kaplan. The 56-year-old victim was found July 26 in her Lawrence home, where Kulp may have stayed.

Kulp remains in the Shawnee County Jail in Topeka on unrelated theft charges. Authorities say she’ll be returned to Lawrence when the other case is resolved.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports Kulp did not have a vehicle and often asked for rides. Police have now released photographs of a car whose driver is thought to have taken Kulp to a supermarket on July 22.

Authorities say the driver is not considered a suspect but may have helpful information.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Overland Park police say one pedestrian was killed and another was seriously injured when they were hit by a car.

Police say in a news release that 52-year-old Kevin Patrick Moroney of Overland Park and Maureen Hogg, of Kansas City, Missouri, were standing next to a car on an Overland Park street Thursday when a car driven by a 17-year-old male hit them and the car.

Moroney died at the scene and Hogg was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.

The driver of the car was not injured.

An investigation is continuing.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri will receive$693,000 part of a $35 million settlement with a Pfizer Inc. subsidiary over the marketing of an organ-transplant drug.

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia reached the deal with the drug maker over charges that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals trained its sales representatives to encourage doctors to prescribe Rapamune for uses other than preventing rejection of transplanted kidneys.

New York-based Pfizer said in a statement the alleged activity occurred before it acquired Wyeth. Pfizer didn’t admit wrongdoing or liability as part of the settlement.

DAVID PITT, Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The nation’s corn and soybean farmers are on track to produce record crops this year as a mild summer has provided optimum growing conditions.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt says he will appeal recent state Supreme Court decisions overturning the death sentences of three men convicted of capital murder.

Schmidt announced Friday that he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the sentences for Sidney Gleason and brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr.

The Kansas court overturned the Carr brothers’ sentences July 25, concluding that they should have had separate sentencing hearings.

The Carrs were sentenced to die for the fatal shootings of three men and a woman in a snow-covered soccer field in Wichita in December 2000.

The Kansas court overturned Gleason’s death sentence on July 18, saying the judge’s instructions to jurors were flawed. He was convicted for the murders of a Great Bend couple in February 2004.