THOMPSON, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say a woman has died in a house fire in central Missouri.

The Little Dixie Fire Protection District responded around 2:30 a.m. Saturday to a fire that was burning inside the garage of a ranch-style home in Audrain County. Firefighters found 64-year-old Paula Sites in front of a vehicle on the floor of the garage.

The fire appeared to originate from a wood pellet stove found in the central part of house, but an exact cause couldn’t be determined due to the extent of the damage. The house was a total loss.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have rescued a doe that was found trapped in a storm drain in suburban Kansas City.

Police in Olathe said in a Facebook post that someone stumbled across the animal Saturday while walking a dog. The post described the doe as “very agitated and in distress.” The department estimated that it had been in the hole for about a week.

A video shows an animal control officer reaching a long pole with a loop on the end into the open manhole and pulling out the doe. After emerging, the doe bounds into a wooded area. The officer then told the county that the manhole needs fixing.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri could save up to $1 billion a year within the next four years if it overhauls the state’s Medicaid health insurance program, according to a study from a consulting team.

A draft of the report obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch does not recommend tightening eligibility rules for Medicaid. State lawmakers are separately considering a plan to require healthy Medicaid recipients to work.

 

“Without significant changes, Medicaid spending may comprise 26 percent to 30 percent of state general revenues by 2023. To bring growth of Medicaid spending in line with the level of economic growth of the state while preserving access for participants and avoid reducing eligibility or coverage, significant savings would be necessary,” according to the report.

The study began last year after former Gov. Eric Greitens pushed to find ways to control Medicaid’s escalating costs. The consultants were paid $2.7 million.

Gov. Mike Parson said Monday the state owes it to citizens to maximize the use of tax dollars spent on Medicaid.

“Ensuring that each and every Missourian has access to the quality health care they deserve is crucial to improving Missouri’s workforce and infrastructure,” Parson said.

The study found Missouri spent nearly $10 billion on Medicaid in 2018, funded with 53 percent in federal funds and 21 percent in state general revenues, with the balance paid by taxes on hospitals and other funds.

The health care industry and advocates who are concerned the state will cut off services to vulnerable residents are likely to object to some of the recommendations.

For example, the study said the state could save up to $270 million if it adjusted a decades-old system of reimbursing nursing homes for care. The consultants also say the state could save money by improving health care offerings in rural areas, where recipients may go to hospitals for basic services instead of lower cost clinics and doctor’s offices. And, as noted by the report, Missouri paid $186 million last year to reimburse care by out-of-state patients.

The study comes as Missouri’s Medicaid rolls are already dropping faster than in other states. Parson has introduced a budget calling for $50 million less in health care funding because of a drop of more than 71,000 enrollees over the past year. His administration attributed the decrease to an improving economy.

The effort to reduce Medicaid costs will be led by former House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Poplar Bluff Republican who became the state’s Medicaid director last year .

“We must now begin the hard work of planning and implementing a transformation of Missouri’s Medicaid program,” Richardson said. “While the report identifies a range of options for the state to consider, the path forward will ultimately be determined by what is best for Missouri.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional negotiators reached agreement to prevent a government shutdown and finance construction of new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, overcoming a late-stage hang-up over immigration enforcement issues that had threatened to scuttle the talks.

Republicans were desperate to avoid another bruising shutdown. They tentatively agreed Monday night to far less money for President Donald Trump’s border wall than the White House’s $5.7 billion wish list, settling for a figure of nearly $1.4 billion, according to congressional aides. The funding measure is through the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The agreement means 55 miles of new fencing — constructed through existing designs such as metal slats instead of a concrete wall — but far less than the 215 miles the White House demanded in December. The fencing would be built in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

“With the government being shut down, the specter of another shutdown this close, what brought us back together I thought tonight was we didn’t want that to happen” again, said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Details won’t be officially released until Tuesday, but the pact came in time to alleviate any threat of a second partial government shutdown this weekend. Aides revealed the details under condition of anonymity because the agreement is tentative.

“Our staffs are just working out the details,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

The pact also includes increases for new technologies such as advanced screening at border entry points, humanitarian aid sought by Democrats, and additional customs officers.

This weekend, Shelby pulled the plug on the talks over Democratic demands to limit immigrant detentions by federal authorities, frustrating some of his fellow negotiators, but Democrats yielded ground on that issue in a fresh round of talks on Monday.

Asked if Trump would back the deal, Shelby said: “We believe from our dealings with them and the latitude they’ve given us, they will support it. We certainly hope so.”

Trump traveled to El Paso, Texas, for a campaign-style rally Monday night focused on immigration and border issues. He has been adamant that Congress approve money for a wall along the Mexican border, though he no longer repeats his 2016 mantra that Mexico will pay for it, and he took to the stage as lawmakers back in Washington were announcing their breakthrough.

“They said that progress is being made with this committee,” Trump told his audience, referring to the congressional bargainers. “Just so you know, we’re building the wall anyway.”

Democrats carried more leverage into the talks after besting Trump on the 35-day shutdown but showed flexibility in hopes on winning Trump’s signature. After yielding on border barriers, Democrats focused on reducing funding for detention beds to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The agreement yielded curbed funding, overall, for ICE detention beds, which Democrats promised would mean the agency would hold fewer detainees than the roughly 49,000 detainees held on Feb. 10, the most recent date for which figures were available. Democrats claimed the number of beds would be ratcheted down to 40,520.

But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border — a limit Democrats say was aimed at preventing overreach by the agency — ran into its own Republican wall.

Democrats dropped the demand in the Monday round of talks, and the mood in the Capitol improved markedly.

Trump met Monday afternoon with top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the negotiations. He softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue.

“We can call it anything. We’ll call it barriers, we’ll call it whatever they want,” Trump said. “But now it turns out not only don’t they want to give us money for a wall, they don’t want to give us the space to detain murderers, criminals, drug dealers, human smugglers.”

The recent shutdown left more than 800,000 government workers without paychecks, forced postponement of the State of the Union address and sent Trump’s poll numbers tumbling. As support in his own party began to splinter, Trump surrendered after the shutdown hit 35 days, agreeing to the current temporary reopening without getting money for the wall.

The president’s supporters have suggested that Trump could use executive powers to divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, though he could face challenges in Congress or the courts.

The negotiations hit a rough patch Sunday amid a dispute over curbing ICE, the federal agency that Republicans see as an emblem of tough immigration policies and Democrats accuse of often going too far.

According to ICE figures, 66 percent of the nearly 159,000 immigrants it reported detaining last year were previously convicted of crimes. Reflecting the two administration’s differing priorities, in 2016 under President Barack Obama, around 110,000 immigrants were detained and 86 percent had criminal records.

Few convictions that immigrants detained last year had on their records were for violent crimes. The most common were for driving while intoxicated, drugs, previous immigration convictions and traffic offenses.

The border debate got most of the attention, but it’s just part of a major spending measure to fund a bevy of Cabinet departments. A collapse of the negotiations would have imperiled another upcoming round of budget talks that are required to prevent steep spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Honeywell Aerospace is expected to close its Wichita facility and move its jobs to Olathe by the end of the year.

Honeywell spokesman Scott Sayres confirmed Friday that the company will move jobs from Wichita and Renton, Washington to Olathe. He says the company’s plant in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe is centrally located and has the capacity to handle more work. The jobs will move from Wichita by the end of the year and from Washington in the next 1.5 years.

The Wichita Eagle report s Sayres wouldn’t say how many jobs are involved, but Olathe Chamber of Commerce CEO Tim McKee said he understood it would be hundreds of jobs.

Sayres said some Wichita workers will have the potential to relocate to Olathe.

TOPEKA —Legislation requested Monday by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt would prevent state judges from lowering prison sentences for adult sex offenders because a child victim was an “aggressor” who contributed to the crime.

According to a media release from the Attorney General, current law allows judges to reduce the length of prison sentences – or “depart” downward from statutory sentence guidelines — by finding that the victim of certain crimes contributed to the criminal conduct by being an “aggressor.” The proposed bill would make that reason for downward departure unavailable in sex crimes when the victim is younger than 14 years and the offender is an adult. It also would make departure unavailable when human trafficking victims are involved regardless of their age.

“No matter the child’s behavior, child victims are not responsible for the criminal conduct of adults who commit sex crimes against them,” Schmidt said. “In my view, the law should reflect that simple principle.”

Schmidt said the legislation was motivated by a recent decision by a Leavenworth County judge, who reduced the sentence imposed on 67-year-old Raymond Soden who was convicted of committing a sex crime against a 13-year-old girl. The reduction was based on the judge’s finding that the child victim was an “aggressor” in the crime.

Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson said he disagreed with the reduced sentence but did not appeal the decision because he concluded the judge had acted within the discretion allowed by current law. Thompson said he supports the proposed new legislation.

“We are grateful to Attorney General Schmidt in recognizing this flaw in the law and working with us to immediately take action to fix it,” Thompson said. “When appealing a case we must remove the emotional component and focus solely on the legal argument. In this case we do not have the legal argument.”

The legislation was requested Monday in the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri House has passed a bill to create a monitoring program to track prescriptions for opioids.

House members voted 103-53 Monday in favor of the bill . It now heads to the Senate, where past efforts have met pushback.

The legislation would allow doctors and pharmacists to see which prescriptions patients are receiving. The goal is to identify patients who are receiving multiple prescriptions for painkillers and address potential opioid misuse.

Missouri is the only state without a statewide prescription drug monitoring program.

Critics in the House raised concerns that personal health information in a government database could be hacked and questioned its effectiveness in fighting the opioid epidemic.

A panel of senators last week failed to pass a similar proposal out of committee.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas attorney eying a possible run for U.S. Senate has been arrested for driving with a suspended license.

Democrat James Thompson was arrested on Jan. 27 in Greenwood County.

The Wichita attorney has run twice for the south-central Kansas congressional seat once held by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Thompson is weighing a 2020 campaign to replace retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts.

Thompson says his license was suspended in January because of a speeding ticket he failed to pay in Sedgwick County. He said he didn’t realize it had been suspended when he went on a hunting trip.

He was pulled over for speeding and arrested for driving while suspended.

Thompson says his license was reinstated after he paid the Sedgwick County fine.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — A Missouri jail nurse who allegedly wanted to marry a man convicted of killing a lottery winner has been charged with poisoning her husband and setting their home on fire, according to court records.

Amy Murray, 40, is facing charges including first-degree murder and arson in the Dec. 11 death of her husband, Joshua Murray. Investigators said he was found dead in the master bedroom of the couple’s burned-out home in Iberia, and that his wife later told the prison inmate in a recorded phone call that they could get married because her husband was “out of the picture.”

An autopsy determined her husband was poisoned by a chemical in antifreeze and likely died before the blaze started.

Amy Murray remained jailed Monday on a $750,000 bond. Her attorney didn’t immediately return a phone message Monday seeking comment from The Associated Press.

Murray reported finding the home ablaze when she returned from taking the couple’s 11-year-old son and two dogs to a McDonald’s, a Miller County sheriff’s detective wrote in a probable cause statement released last week. She told investigators she couldn’t get inside the home because the house was filled with smoke.

But investigators said they found a McDonald’s sandwich on the kitchen counter at the house in Iberia, which is about 140 miles southeast of Kansas City.

Murray worked part-time as a nurse at the Jefferson City Correctional Facility, where she had a “romantic relationship” with inmate Eugene Claypool that had been ongoing “for some time,” according to authorities and charging documents. Claypool, who isn’t charged in the case, was sentenced to life in prison for fatally stabbing an elderly man in 2000.

In recorded phone calls at the facility, Murray told Claypool she wanted to divorce her husband. Following the fire, she allegedly told Claypool they could get married because her husband was dead and “out of the picture,” according to court documents. She and Claypool also discussed getting an attorney so Claypool could be released from prison early.

Claypool and another man pleaded guilty to killing 72-year-old Donald Hardwick, who was attacked in his home on Christmas Day in 2000. Hardwick, who couldn’t walk without using a walker, won a $1.7 million Missouri Lottery jackpot in 1998. Investigators said Claypool and his co-defendant targeted Hardwick believing he had $10,000 stashed in his Springfield home.

Investigators said Claypool repeatedly stabbed Hardwick, whose wife later found him dead with a Bible on his chest.