JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – Missouri’s eight Congress members hold a huge cash advantage over their challengers.

Heading into the final few weeks before the Aug. 5 primaries, incumbent Congress members were sitting on nearly $5 million in campaign cash. By contrast, their 38 challenges had less than $100,000 combined in their campaign accounts.

The challengers generally lack the name recognition of the incumbents.

Yet some of the challengers remain hopeful of success, citing the upset victory of Dave Brat over U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia’s Republican primary.

Missouri State University political science professor George Connor said a similar upset is highly unlikely in Missouri. He said Missouri’s incumbents are generally viewed as conservative or liberal and thus aren’t as susceptible to a challenge from the political right or left in primaries.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Lawrence police and state authorities are investigating the death of a woman whose body was found at a house.

Police say officers found the woman’s body at a home Saturday afternoon, but that the woman hasn’t been positively identified.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and Lawrence police are investigating the death, which police consider a homicide.

Police say no additional information would be released Sunday.

TIM TALLEY, Associated Press
BRADY McCOMBS, Associated Press

 

LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) — State health officials say although three rabid bats have been found this summer in a Kansas City suburb, the statewide number of rabies cases is down.

One person was bitten by one of the rabid bats found in Lee’s Summit since June 1 and has been treated for the bite.

The Kansas City Star reports (http://bit.ly/1khC1tQ) there have been 14 rabies cases reported in animals this year in Missouri. Seven were rabid bats and the others were infected skunks.

Officials also say the number of rabid cases this year is substantially lower than the 39 rabies cases reported for the same time last year. Missouri usually has about 50 rabid animals that are detected annually.

Kansas has had 26 cases of animal rabies reported this year.

 

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas State University is considering a $150 million research facility that would focus on food and complement the planned National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility adjacent to the university.

K-State President Kirk Schulz has requested $5 million in state funding for next year to begin planning the Food Systems Research and Education Facility.

The Lawrence Journal-World (http://bit.ly/1ocLEcE ) reports the proposal was discussed briefly Tuesday at a Kansas Board of Regents budget session. Schulz says the project might be years down the road, but he wants to get legislators and other state officials familiar with the request.

The 200,000-square-foot facility would focus on the food supply, including developing higher-yielding crops and more intensive cropping systems, along with improved processing and distribution.

KANSAS CITY(AP) – President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Kansas City, where he’s expected to speak about the economy.

The White House announced Saturday that President Obama will arrive in Kansas City on Tuesday evening and deliver remarks on the economy Wednesday morning at the Uptown Theater. The White House says in a release that the free event at the Uptown Theater is open to the public, but tickets are required.

The last time Obama visited the Kansas City area was in September, when he spoke at the Ford plant in Claycomo.

By Alex Smith, KUCR

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After announcing this season’s schedule of peanut allergy-friendly events, the Kansas City Royals saw several sell out, and the team soon added another to keep up with demand.

The announcement came after a campaign from some local fans, and it followed a growing trend of baseball teams working to be more accommodating to fans with allergies.

Despite what some call an allergy epidemic, the medical community is still trying to grasp why peanut allergies seem to be increasing among kids. Meanwhile, some fans scoff at the idea of separating the national pastime from its signature snack.
Ten-year-old Weston Miller, a fourth-grader who plays catcher for his Little League team in Knob Knoster, Mo., said baseball is his favorite sport. But attending Royals games – or any major sporting event – has been difficult for him and his parents, Janna and Eric Miller.

“I am allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, and that’s very severe, and I could die from that,” Weston said.

In early spring of this year, Janna Miller decided she wanted to take her son’s favorite sport beyond the Little League field.

She started a Facebook group, Kansas City Royals Fans for Peanut Free Baseball Games, to encourage the Royals to create allergy-friendly events. That meant setting aside a private seating area that would be free of peanuts and food containing them.

Miller said she’s still willing to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch.

“We’ll still sing the song, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be eating peanuts,” she said.

Grassroots movement

Miller’s local campaign is part of a national grassroots movement comprised mostly of parents like her and a blogger who identifies herself only as Jennifer B, a Boston mother whose son is allergic to peanuts.

On her website, www.peanutfreebaseball.com, Jennifer B dispenses information on food allergy-friendly sports events and rallies supporters to contact local teams.

When she started the peanut-free effort in 2008, few teams offered the events. She says a lot of teams she initially contacted were sympathetic but stopped short of making accommodations. All of them offered the same reason: liability.

She says team after team expressed concern about the possibility of accidental allergic reactions leading to lawsuits.

“They say, ‘We can’t assure them that there’s not going to be some stray peanut shell that’s going to come near them,” Jennifer B said.

Since starting her work, however, many major league teams – including the Yankees, Mets and White Sox – and minor league teams have made allergy accommodations, getting around the liability issue by requiring a waiver.

Jennifer B’s home team – the Red Sox – has offered allergy-friendly events for several years, but she admits she hasn’t actually been to one.

“To be honest with you, my son has turned out not to be that big a baseball fan as the rest of the family,” Jennifer B said.

The million-dollar question

A lot of her work involves answering questions from both parents and baseball teams about severe peanut allergies. And there are plenty of them, including the big one: Why are increasing numbers of people allergic to peanuts?

“Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question,” said Dr. Chitra Dinakar, a pediatric allergist at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

No one knows for sure what causes peanut allergies, but one theory points to the age that children are exposed to peanuts and another theory points to exposure to soy products.

One of the most popular theories is the hygiene hypothesis.

“When the environment is too clean, as in Western countries, then the immune system starts barking at shadows and considers things that are not scary to be scary,” Dinakar says.

Supporters of this theory point to the Amish, who raise their children among hay, dirt and animals. They also drink raw milk and have some of the lowest rates of allergies in the Western world.

Dinakar explains that the immune systems of allergic people react to peanuts as something harmful. When exposed to them, their bodies flood with histamine.

“It makes you itch and sneeze and throw up,” Dinakar said. “You sometimes have diarrhea, but it can go on to more severe reactions like wheezing, bronchial constriction. You can’t breathe. You start coughing, and then your blood pressure drops and you pass out and, God forbid, it can result in death.”

Even among allergists, estimates of the number of children affected range widely. Some say as many as one in 12 children are allergic to peanuts, with 40 percent of those allergies being severe.

Skepticism persists

Allergists agree that the prevalence of peanut allergies is increasing, but it still afflicts a small percentage of the population. Jennifer B says she’s heard from many in the peanut gallery who wonder why baseball teams should make special accommodations for such a small group.

A 2012 commentary by Fraser Steitel on a Fox News talk show with Shepard Smith was one notable example. He called the introduction of allergy-friendly events “heretical.”

Dinakar said she has seen many patients and parents overreact to an allergy diagnosis, and she understands the skepticism many harbor about peanut allergies.

But she thinks making accommodations, especially for children, is important to help ease the paralyzing fear that often accompanies peanut allergies.

“You’re supposed to be able to eat food, right?” Dinakar said. “To think that a normal food that everybody else eats and enjoys is a threat to your life, I think that’s the part that is sort of a quagmire.”

Not long after Janna Miller launched her campaign, the Royals announced they would offer allergy-friendly events this season.

Anthony Mozzicato, the Royals’ director of guest experience, said the team had previously offered allergy-friendly events but discontinued them due to lack of interest.

This season is different. The team has been inundated with requests for the events.

“We want to be able to help those individuals, whether it’s a child or an adult, have an opportunity to watch baseball games,” Mozzicato said.

According to Jennifer B, all but eight major league teams – the Angels, Astros, Athletics, Cubs, Dodgers, Marlins, Rangers and Rays – now offer allergy-friendly events.

At the first allergy-friendly Royals event of the season, five families turned out to watch the home team play the Astros from inside a sanitized and air-conditioned suite.

A registered nurse from the University of Kansas Hospital stood by with Benadryl and EpiPens, which are used to counteract severe reactions.

Many of the younger fans’ attention faded after a few innings, but that wasn’t the case for 15-year-old Antonio Franco, who was awed. It was his first time at a baseball stadium.

“I just never really expected anything like this,” he said. “I just never though that a club or team would do this, which I found really nice.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A U.S. senator from Rhode Island is calling on government to clarify rules about bringing musical instruments on to commercial flights as carry-on luggage.

Sen. Jack Reed fired off a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx after the Providence Journal reported that members of the band Deer Tick were delayed on a flight from Nashville, Tennessee, to Rhode Island after being barred from carrying their guitars on to the plane.

Reed said a 2012 law meant to allow musical instruments as carry-on items as long as they can be safely stowed in the aircraft cabin has yet to be implemented.

He said musicians who come to Rhode Island for renowned music events, such as this weekend’s Newport Folk Festival, shouldn’t have to deal with “arbitrary and conflicting” airline policies.