(AP) — Drury University is eliminating 35 jobs as enrollment dips at the private Springfield school.

Fewer than 10 employees will be laid off. The rest of the jobs will be eliminated through retirements, consolidations and leaving vacancies unfilled.

Drury reached a record enrollment of 5,625 students in 2010. Since then, Drury has experienced an average annual decline in enrollment of 6 percent per year.

President David Manuel said in a news release that the improving economy is leading fewer people to seek graduate degrees and continuing education. The trend is a national one. Manuel also noted that Missouri has seen a 6 percent decline in high school graduates since 2010.

(AP) — UPS will be hiring 55,000 U.S. seasonal workers to help with an increase in volume over the holiday season.

The world’s biggest package delivery company said Friday that it foresees peak season daily volume rising 8 percent this year.

Its peak day for holiday pickups will be Dec. 16, with anticipated pick-ups of more than 34 million packages around the world that day. A day later will be the peak delivery day, at more than 29 million packages.

United Parcel Service Inc. expects that Cyber Monday on Dec. 2 will see a 10 percent increase in pickup volume, surpassing 32 million packages.

The company said that there are 26 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, six fewer than last year and the most compressed holiday shopping season since 2002.

The long anticipated Helzberg Penguin Plaza opens today at the Kansas City Zoo.

Penguins started arriving last month and are excited to meet the community. Helzberg Penguin Plaza will be home to around a dozen Humboldt penguins and nearly 40 cold water penguins.

Construction on the Plaza started over a year ago. 
It features a 100,000 gallon cool pool for cold water penguins laced with snow, and a 25,000 gallon warm wet area laced with sand for warm water penguins.

Each exhibit provides magnificent views showcasing these extraordinary black and white birds in a recreated Southern Oceans environment.The zoo is open 9:30 to 4 weekdays and 9:30-5 on weekends.

(AP) The Kansas City school board wants to keep its superintendent around for another five years.

The board decided Thursday to sign Superintendent Steve Green to a new contract paying him $250,000 a year after the district showed improvements. The contract would retain Green through June 2018.

 The coming years promise to be fraught with challenges. Because the district is unaccredited, it soon could be forced to begin paying to allow its students to transfer to accredited school systems. A legal challenge has been holding up the transfers.

The 59-year-old Green already has worked in the district two years. If he sticks around for all seven years, that would make him an exception. Green is Kansas City’s 20th superintendent in the last 31 years.

Missouri Farm Bureau president Blake Hurst issued the following statement on the passage of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act. “We are  pleased

the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) by a vote of 417 to 3. For farmers in Missouri and other states across the country, cost-effective transportation from farm to market is extremely important to American agriculture’s overall competitiveness in the global marketplace. Our infrastructure is aging and investments are needed to ensure we have a reliable system of inland waterways and ports for 21st century commerce.

We thank Missouri’s U.S. representatives for their strong support of the WRRDA and appreciate their ongoing efforts, led by Congressman Luetkemeyer, to press for common-sense reforms in the Missouri River mitigation/habitat restoration strategies pursued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies.

We encourage congressional leaders to move quickly in appointing members to a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate-passed bills. We remain hopeful the WRRDA and a new five-year farm bill will be enacted before the end of the year.

A Thursday night crash in Lenexa sent one man to the hospital.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol Forty-four year old Jack Wesley Sanford of Kansas City was driving a Chevy Astro Van north bound on 135 in Lenexa behind a Semi-truck driven by Ronnie W. Richards age 56 of Calhoun, Kentucky in the #2 lane of I35 at milepost 224.

For an unknown reason the van struck the truck from behind. Both were traveling at highway speed upon impact.

Sanford was transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center. He was not wearing a seat belt. Richards was not injured.

(AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is recommending new restrictions on prescription medicines containing hydrocodone, the highly addictive painkiller that has grown into the most widely prescribed drug in the U.S.

In a major policy shift, the agency said in an online statement that hydrocodone-containing drugs should be subject to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine.

The move comes more than a decade after the Drug Enforcement Agency first asked the FDA to reclassify hydrocodone so that it would be subject to the same restrictions as other opioids drugs.

Hydrocodone has long been easier to prescribe, in part, because it is sold in combination pills and formulas with non-addictive ingredients like aspirin.

In 2011, U.S. doctors wrote more than 131 million prescriptions for hydrocodone.

(AP) — Federal environmental regulators plan to hold a listening session in northeast Kansas next month on President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency says the Nov. 4 session is among 11 being held nationwide. The goal is to solicit ideas from the public about the best approaches under the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants.

The four-hour Kansas meeting will be held at the EPA’s regional office Lenexa and starts at 4 p.m.

Comments can also be sent to carbonpollutioninput@epa.gov until Nov. 8.