EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Latest on Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s visit to the Southwest border (all times local):

6:50 p.m.

Top defense officials have toured sections of the U.S.-Mexico border to see how the military could reinforce efforts to block drug smuggling and other illegal activity. The Pentagon is weighing the diversion of billions of dollars for President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, accompanied by the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford, was visiting a border site near El Paso, Texas Saturday, called Monument Site 3 where a stretch of 18-foot border wall stands atop a huge landfill.

Today, Gen. Dunford & I engaged with @CBP officials along our southern border to see firsthand the ongoing activities in support of @DHSgov pic.twitter.com/cLoFErssMr

— Acting SecDef Pat Shanahan (@DepSecDef) February 23, 2019

Shanahan and Dunford got an up-close look at U.S. Border Patrol vehicles used for surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security has requested Pentagon help in operating about 150 of the vehicle-mounted surveillance cameras, which can see as far as eight miles away.

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11:16 a.m.

The Pentagon’s acting chief is visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas as he considers how to use emergency powers invoked by President Donald Trump to help build a border wall.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan arrived Saturday in El Paso with Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Shanahan plans to get a firsthand view of areas along the border, west of El Paso, where military troops are assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection with barrier replacement work. The sites are along known drug smuggling corridors.

It’s Shanahan’s first visit to the border since taking over at the Pentagon on Jan. 1 after Jim Mattis resigned as defense secretary in protest of Trump’s policies.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to life in prison in the stabbing death of a Missouri woman who forced her daughter to use a wheelchair and undergo unnecessary medical tests so she could collect gifts and charitable donations.

29-year-old Nicholas Godejohn, of Big Bend, Wisconsin, won’t be eligible for parole under the sentence ordered Friday. The sentence was the only one possible after he was convicted in November of first-degree murder in the June 2015 death of 48-year-old Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard at her home near Springfield.

Defense attorneys argued for a lesser charging, saying that Blanchard’s daughter, Gypsy Blanchard, manipulated Godejohn into killing her mother in order to escape from an abusive home life. She already is serving a 10-year prison sentence.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas House committee has narrowly voted to keep the state’s death penalty law in place.

The Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee voted 7-6 on Friday to reject a bill to repeal the state’s 1994 capital punishment law. A bipartisan group of 33 lawmakers sponsored the measure.

The bill would have made life in prison with no chance for parole the possible punishment for murders that now qualify for lethal injection.

Kansas has 10 men on its death row but has not executed anyone under the 1994 law. The state’s last legal executions were by hanging in 1965.

Critics contend the death penalty is immoral and costly.

But committee Chairman Russ Jennings said his constituents support capital punishment. The Lakin Republican broke a 6-6 vote to sink the bill.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Zoo officials say an adult male giraffe died after suffering a spinal cord injury in a zoo barn.

The zoo says that on Wednesday the 9-year-old male, named Hamisi, caught his head in an area of the barn that allows keepers to reach the animals. The officials believe Hamisi panicked and damaged his spine.

Hamisi sired two giraffes last year. He came to Kansas City from Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 2016.

Sean Putney, senior director of zoo operations, says the barn was built in 1995. He said no animal had been previously injured in the barn.

The zoo’s remaining giraffes are housed in a separate area of the giraffe barn that does not have the same configuration as Hamisi’s area.

By STEPHAN BISAHA

A bill in the Kansas Legislature would let students escape bullying by transferring to a new school, either public or private.

But critics say the bill is little more than an attempt to send state dollars meant for public schools to private alternatives.

The Kansas Hope Scholarship Act, sponsored by two Republican representatives from Wichita, would require schools to inform parents and students about transferring after a case of bullying has been reported. That would occur regardless of whether an investigation by the school found any evidence of bullying.

A student could transfer to either a public or private school. If a student chooses a private school, most of the state aid that goes to the public school for that student would go into an account run by the Kansas treasurer.

Those funds can then be used by the student to pay for tuition and supplies, such as books. Extra funding is also provided for transportation to the new school.

“This serves notice that this is a serious problem,” said Chuck Weber, director of the Kansas Catholic Conference and a former state legislator. “We want to give them options to get out of that bullying situation.”

Opponents call this a voucher program, meant to take public school funding and deliver it to private schools. They say that would damage the finances of public schools and make those tax dollars less accountable because they would be in private hands.

“We strongly oppose any voucher-type bill,” said Devin Patrick Wilson, the legislative chair of the Kansas State PTA. “That removes transparency and accountability.”

Dealing with bullying by having victims leave their school has also been criticized.

Wichita Public Schools board member Ben Blankley wrote an email to state lawmakers opposing the bill. Blankley said that as a student at a public middle school in Iowa, he dealt with severe bullying. He thinks that encouraging bullied students to transfer will only empower bullies.

“That was the very first thing that the bullies wanted is us gone,” Blankley said. “They wanted us out of the environment, and this would encourage that kind of behavior.”

National advocates for bullying victims said transferring out of school to escape bullying can be a legitimate solution. Distance from a bully can provide needed relief for students afraid to attend a school.

But they say that should be a last resort. Advocates are concerned that bringing up the transfer option during the first reported incident could lead parents to transfer their child before families have gone through other steps, such as working with the school to solve the problem.

“The first option would send the bully a message that he or she is a hero,” said Rolss Ellis, founder of Stomp Out Bullying. “I would try and work it out in every possible way before I sent my kids to another school.”

Defenders of the bill say having an exit option is necessary. Adding private schools also gives students a wider selection of schools for finding one they feel safe in.

And while proponents say it wasn’t their original intention, letting public schools know that they’re at risk of losing some state funding if bullying isn’t dealt with could get those schools to better address the issue.

There aren’t any estimates for how many students would take the transfer option. Gov. Laura Kelly’s budget office said it would take at least 1,200 students for the program to fund itself because some of the transferred state aid would cover administrative costs.

Rep. Susan Humphries of Wichita, one of the bill’s sponsors, has heard concerns that the bill uproots victims while ignoring the bullies. She said Kansas has enacted other anti-bullying legislation that focuses on bullies, but there needs to be legislation that provides relief for victims.

“In no way is the bully in control here,” Humphries said. “It’s the parent and the person being bullied. They’re the ones that chose to either stay or they may go if that’s what they want to do.”

Stephan Bisaha is an education reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @SteveBisaha.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City man who is charged with first-degree murder told investigators that he didn’t seek medical care for his ailing mother before she died weighing just 58 pounds and suffering from open bed sores, according to court records.

Raymond McManness, 51, of Olathe, Kansas, also faced a charge of mistreatment of a dependent adult in the death of 75-year-old Sharon McManness. He was jailed on $1 million bond. Zach Thomas, an attorney for McManness, declined to comment Thursday.

His mother, who had dementia, was pronounced dead in January in her Olathe home after McManness called police to report that she wasn’t breathing. Police described her as “very emaciated” and said one of her bedsores was “open to the bone,” according to the charging documents released Wednesday.

McManness told police that he was his mother’s primary caregiver and that she refused to be treated by doctors. He said he had been living with her but moved out about six months before she died because she kept him awake at night. He told police he checked on her before and after work, bringing her food as she became bedridden and forcefully opening her mouth in an attempt to get her to eat on the day before she died, the documents say.

Weeks earlier, McManness went to the Kansas Department of Aging and was told he needed to take his mother to a doctor, the records said. But he told police he didn’t take her “because he was busy due to the holiday season, and he was scared because he had not been taking adequate care of her,” according to the records.

Police who searched her home found no medications, no clean clothing, no working telephone and minimal food. They found dog feces and urine throughout the house. Court records say soiled clothes that appeared to be cut off the victim were found in a trash can in the driveway.

Preliminary findings from the medical examiner’s office said the woman likely died from an infection caused by bed sores. She also was malnourished and dehydrated, and the examination showed she had bruising on her jaw area, wrists and the upper part of her head.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A 68-year-old Missouri woman has pleaded guilty to receiving disability payments intended for her mother, who died nearly 50 years ago.

Federal prosecutors say Marsha Gail Coy, of St. Peters, received more than $230,000 in the scheme. She pleaded guilty Thursday to bank fraud.

Coy’s mother worked for the Kirkwood school district until she retired in 1968. Although she died in 1969, the district’s retirement plan continued to make disability benefit payments into her bank accounts. The Public School Retirement Systems made the payments until learning in May 2018 that the woman had died. Coy’s father lived in a long-term care facility from 1996 until he died in 1999.

Coy must forfeit $231,148, which is the amount of disability benefits paid by PSRS after April 1, 1996.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A conservative Kansas legislator has apologized and said he has asked that he be removed as a sponsor of a bill calling same-sex marriages a “parody” after his LGBTQ daughter posted a letter to him on Facebook that ended with, “Shame on you.”

Republican state Rep. Ron Highland of Wamego said in a letter Thursday to his hometown newspaper that he should not have signed on to the bill because it contained “hateful language” that he does not condone, The Manhattan Mercury reports . The bill seeks to prevent the state from endorsing any policy in line with what it calls the “LGBT secular humanist religion.”

Highland’s letter came hours after the Facebook post from his daughter, Christel Highland , a Kansas City-area artist, mother and “partner to the love of my life.” In her letter, she told her father that, “It is time for you to change.”

“I love you, I always will, in spite of your flaws,” she wrote. “I cannot, however, condone your cruel actions. Shame on you.”

She said in the post that her father had not responded to an email she sent him on the subject. Her post was first reported by The Topeka Capital-Journal .

Highland is a retired veterinarian who was first elected to the House in 2012, and he serves as chairman of its Agriculture Committee. He previously has served as Education Committee chairman.

The proposed “Marriage and Constitution Restoration Act” has drawn the strong condemnation of LGBTQ-rights advocates and lawmakers and most of its nine pages are a polemic against same-sex marriage. It was introduced after Kansas elected its first two openly LGBT lawmakers to the House last year.

Christel Highland did not immediately respond to a Facebook message seeking comment Friday, and her father declined to comment when approached by a reporter at the Statehouse.

But in his statement, Ron Highland said he trusted the bill’s primary sponsor before seeing the text but that it “goes against our Lord’s command to love our neighbors.”

“I must admit it was a mistake, and apologize,” he said.

Christel Highland responded with a Facebook post Friday morning: “Now I have to write another letter,” followed with a heart emoji.

The anti-LGBTQ marriage bill was part of a package of six measures introduced by conservative Republicans. None of them are expected to get even a committee hearing.

They include bills that would impose a $3-per-entry tax on admissions to sexually oriented businesses, require anti-pornography filters on all devices sold in Kansas that provide internet access and to give social media users a right to suein Kansas courts if their political posts on social media are deleted or censored.

The bills have been promoted in various state legislatures by activist Chris Sevier , who once made news for trying to marry his laptop as a way to publicize his opposition to same-sex marriage. Rep. Randy Garber, a Sabetha Republican, agreed to sponsor the package of bills in Kansas.

Sevier has pushed the bills this year in Missouri, where some lawmakers have complained that the meetings with him were uncomfortable. The Kansas City Star reported that Missouri Senate Administrator Patrick Baker sent an email Thursday to the entire Senate and staff with the subject line “security concern” and a picture of Sevier.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A judge has dismissed criminal charges against a Kansas water park owner and the designer of a 17-story slide on which a 10-year-old boy was decapitated in 2016.

Wyandotte County Judge Robert Burns found Friday that state prosecutors showed grand jurors inadmissible evidence in dismissing second-degree murder charges against Schlitterbahn owner Jeff Henry and designer John Schooley. The judge also dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against operations manager Tyler Miles.

State prosecutors didn’t immediately return phone and email messages.

They alleged that shoddy planning and maintenance led to Caleb Schwab’s death on a special day for elected officials. Caleb’s father is Scott Schwab, a state lawmaker who’s now Kansas secretary of state.

A Schlitterbahn spokeswoman says the company welcomes the decision.

WICHITA, KAN. – Already sentenced to prison for his role as the alleged ringleader in a bomb plot, Patrick Stein, 50, of Wright, Kan., pleaded guilty Friday and was sentenced to an additional 44 months in federal prison for possession of child pornography, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

Stein pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography. In his plea, he admitted investigators found up to 149 images of children engaged in sexual activities on his laptop computer and USB drives.

Investigators found the child pornography after obtaining a warrant to search Stein’s computer for evidence of his part in a plot to detonate multiple bombs at an apartment complex in Garden City where Somali refugees were living.

In January, Stein was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for his role in the bomb plot. He will serve the sentence for the child pornography conviction consecutively with the sentence in the bomb case.