JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – A Missouri Senate committee is preparing to consider the final sticking points to conclude its work on the state’s operating budget.

Issues up for discussion Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee include basic aid for public schools and an expansion of a college scholarship for top Missouri students. The panel could also look at funding for a state takeover of an old hospital site in Jefferson City and a new maintenance shed for the Highway Patrol to replace a building destroyed by a fire.

The committee’s plan would advance to the full Senate for consideration. The House passed its budget proposal earlier this year. Lawmakers have until May 9 to pass their roughly $26 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Efforts to spare the life of a condemned Missouri man hinge on an argument that has so far held little sway over the courts.

William Rousan is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for killing a southeast Missouri couple on their remote farm 21 years ago. Rousan’s attorneys are seeking clemency from Gov. Jay Nixon and have filed federal appeals, both citing concerns that the execution drug obtained from a compounding pharmacy could cause the inmate to suffer before dying.

Several states, including Missouri, now use compounded drugs from unnamed pharmacies. Courts have so far allowed executions to move forward, though some dissenting judges have questioned the practice.

Rousan would be the sixth man executed in Missouri in the past six months.

LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — After the 9/11 attacks, many Americans joined the military and headed to Afghanistan and Iraq. But as the wars wind down and Pentagon budgets shrink, thousands of young officers are being told they have to leave.

Captains are nervously waiting, their fates resting in the hands of evaluation boards that may quickly read through service records before making decisions that could end careers.

During the peak war years, the Army grew to about 570,000, including thousands of newly minted officers. The service must shrink to 490,000 by October 2015, and then to 450,000 two years later. While a lot of the reductions can come from voluntary retirements and decreased enlistments, commanders will have to force as many as 3,000 officers to leave by a year from this fall.

BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Raising money for charity has become a lucrative line of work.

A new study of 280 nonprofits released Monday by the Washington-based Chronicle of Philanthropy shows nearly 30 top fundraisers have been earning more than $500,000, and at least two surpassed the $1 million mark. The data is from 2011, the most recent year available.

The increased pay for fundraisers came as nonprofits were seeking to replace money that was lost or declined during the recession. It raises questions for some about how much donated money is going to support a charity’s mission.

The study looked at nonprofits that raised more than $35 million each. It found fundraisers at top hospitals and colleges were earning more than fundraisers in the arts, environmental and other nonprofits.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – A Kansas City man who spent several years as a fugitive has admitted stealing nearly $39,000 during a 2007 bank holdup.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says 40-year-old Marlon Jaye Larry pleaded guilty Monday to armed bank robbery and using a firearm in a violent crime.

Larry admitted entering a Bank of America branch on Kansas City’s State Line Road the morning of June 27, 2007, and threatening employees at gunpoint. Tellers filled a trash bag with nearly $39,000 in cash before Larry drove off in an employee’s car.

A search of a female acquaintance’s home the same day turned up a handgun and trash bag containing more than $28,000. Larry was charged in 2008 but remained a fugitive until his arrest in Pennsylvania in March 2013.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Republican state senator wants to know the opinion of Missouri’s top law enforcement official on legislation that seeks to nullify some federal gun laws.

Sen. Will Kraus, of Lee’s Summit, sent a letter to Attorney General Chris Koster’s office on Monday asking him to weigh in on the bill’s constitutionality. The measure would declare “null and void” past, present and future laws deemed to be infringements on gun rights.

Both the House and Senate have passed the separate versions of the measure this year. Kraus voted in favor of the Senate bill.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – A 27-year-old Missouri man accused of shooting at several vehicles along busy Kansas City highways and wounding three drivers will be appointed a public defender after telling a judge he can’t afford to pay for an attorney.

KCTV-TV reports Mohammed Whitaker of Grandview appeared in Jackson County court Monday with his hands shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. He is being held on $1 million bond on 18 felony counts stemming from highway shootings that started in early March.

Police say they had Whitaker under surveillance for about a week before arresting him Thursday night in Grandview, only a few miles from an area where many of the shootings occurred.

His preliminary hearing on the charges is scheduled for May 1.

MARIONVILLE, Mo. (AP) — Officials in the southwest Missouri community of Marionville were expected to discuss anti-Semitic statements made by the city’s mayor in support of a white supremacist accused of killing three people at Jewish community sites in Kansas.

The Springfield News-Leader reports Mayor Dan Clevenger’s support of 73-year-old Frazier Glenn Cross resulted in the resignation of Alderwoman Jessica Wilson and City Attorney Paul Link. The city’s Board of Aldermen was planning to discuss a resolution about his statements Monday night.

Cross is accused of fatally shooting 69-year-old William Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Underwood, on April 13 in Overland Park, Kan., and 53-year-old Terri LaManno at a nearby Jewish retirement complex.

Clevenger told the News-Leader last week he believes Jews have played a role in hurting the American economy.

NEW YORK (AP) — Elizabeth Spencer, a revered Southern author still active in her 90s, has won a $30,000 short story prize.

The 92-year-old Spencer has won the Rea Award for lifetime achievement in short fiction, the Dungannon Foundation announced Monday. Previous recipients include John Updike, Alice Munro and Spencer’s longtime friend, Eudora Welty.

A native of Mississippi who now lives in North Carolina, Spencer has published nine novels and eight story collections. Her latest book of stories, “Starting Over,” came out earlier this year. She is best known for the novella “Light In the Piazza,” which has been adapted into a feature film and Broadway show.

The Dungannon Foundation is a nonprofit established in 1986 by the award’s founder, Michael Rea, to administer the prize.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Appeals that seek to spare the life of a Missouri man facing execution this week focus on concerns about the lethal injection drug.

William Rousan is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. He was sentenced to death for killing 62-year-old Grace Lewis in 1993. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing her 67-year-old husband.

The killings were part of a plot by Rousan, his son and his brother, to steal cattle from the Lewis farm near Bonne Terre.

Rousan’s son, Brent, was 16 at the time of the killings. He is serving life without parole. Rousan’s brother, Robert, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served seven years in prison.

An appeal in federal court questions Missouri’s secretive process of purchasing execution drugs from an unnamed compounding pharmacy.