A December 2017 report by the Missouri Department of Public Safety said 28 of Missouri’s 114 counties lacked the ability to identify the location of callers seeking 911 emergency help.

Sixteen Missouri counties had only basic 911 service, with call centers that lacked 911 answering equipment and were unable to identify a caller’s location or name. Those counties included: Bollinger, Carter, Cedar, Clark, Dent, Douglas, Hickory, Mercer, Oregon, Ozark, Ripley, St. Clair, Schuyler, Scotland, Shannon and Wayne.

An additional 11 counties had equipment capable of identifying the location and name of a caller on a landline phone but not of a caller on a wireless phone. Those counties included: Bates, Camden, Cape Girardeau, Linn, Howard, Maries, Mississippi, Montgomery, Perry, Pemiscot and Reynolds.

Holt County had equipment able to identify a wireless phone caller’s number, cell tower and sector but not the caller’s exact location.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two more Missouri House members are resigning shortly before their terms were scheduled to end.

Republican Reps. Kurt Bahr of St. Charles County and Rick Brattin of Cass County submitted their resignations effective at 11:59 p.m. Monday — the final minute of 2018.

Both are leaving the Legislature for jobs in local government. Bahr won election in November as the St. Charles County elections director. Brattin won election as the Cass County auditor.

Their state legislative terms had been scheduled to end Jan. 9, when the new legislative session begins.

Their early departures mean there are 15 vacancies in the 163-member House.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A judge ruled Monday that Kansas cannot stop telemedicine abortions, thwarting the latest attempt by state lawmakers to prevent doctors from providing pregnancy-ending pills to women they see by remote video conferences.

District Judge Franklin Theis ruled that a law barring telemedicine abortions and set to take effect in January has no legal force. During an earlier hearing, Theis derided the law as an “air ball” because of how lawmakers wrote it.

That law was challenged in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Trust Women Wichita, which operates a clinic that performs abortions and provides other health care services.

Theis also ruled that other, older parts of the state’s abortion laws that could ban telemedicine abortions are on hold indefinitely because of a separate lawsuit challenging them that’s still pending.

The Wichita clinic began offering telemedicine abortions in October because its doctors live outside Kansas and could be on site only two days a week. It also hopes to provide the pills to women in rural areas and have them confer by teleconference with doctors.

The center argues that banning telemedicine abortions violates the state constitution by placing an undue burden on women seeking abortions and singling out abortion for special treatment when state policies intend to encourage telemedicine. Kansas has no clinics that provide abortions outside Wichita and the Kansas City area.

“That procedure by telemedicine is going to be legal after midnight (Monday), and the clinic will continue to offer it,” said Bob Eye, one of the attorneys for Trust Women. “This is a good outcome.”

The anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, influential with the Republican-controlled Legislature, contends telemedicine abortions are dangerous. But a study of abortions in California, published in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ journal in 2015, said less than one-third of 1 percent of medication abortions resulted in major complications.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, called Theis’ ruling “infuriating.”

“This judge has a long history of taking laws designed by the Legislature to protect unborn babies and women and turning them into laws that instead protect the abortion industry,” Culp said.

Seventeen other states have telemedicine abortion bans, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a group that advocates for abortion rights.

The 2018 law represents the third time Kansas legislators passed a measure meant to outlaw telemedicine abortions.

In 2011, a ban was part of legislation imposing special regulations on abortion clinics that critics argued were meant to shut them down. Providers sued, and Theis blocked all of the regulations. The case is still pending.

Legislators passed another version of the telemedicine abortion ban in 2015, but Theis ruled Monday that it also is covered by his order blocking the 2011 clinic regulations. He called that 2011 injunction a “safe harbor” for the clinic.

The 2018 law says that in policies promoting telemedicine, “nothing” authorizes “any abortion procedure via telemedicine.” Theis concluded that it’s toothless because it does not give prosecutors a way to bring a criminal case over a violation. He said in his order Monday that it “has no anchor for operation” — essentially rendering the clinic’s lawsuit moot.

The Kansas health department has reported that in 2017, the latest data available, nearly 4,000 medication abortions were reported, or 58 percent of the state’s total, all in the first trimester. It’s not clear how many of them were telemedicine abortions.

While abortion opponents have a long list of legislative victories over the past decade, they’ve fared less well in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear an appeal of lower federal court orders barring Kansas from stripping Medicaid funds for non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood.

The state’s first-in-the-nation ban on a common second trimester procedure anti-abortion lawmakers called “dismemberment abortion” has been on hold since 2015. In that case, the Kansas Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the state constitution protects abortion rights independently of the federal constitution — so that state courts could chart their own, more liberal course.

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COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — While work by Missouri House lawmakers to investigate Eric Greitens officially came to an end Monday when the investigatory committee issued its final report, its leader said he’s still hopeful the former scandal-ridden governor will be held accountable for alleged campaign finance violations.

Republican Rep. Jay Barnes said in a statement that the committee he headed lost the authority to continue its investigation into numerous claims of personal and political misconduct levied against Greitens when the Republican resigned in the face of possible impeachment in June.

“However, the Missouri Ethics Commission has the power to investigate and act,” Barnes said. “I remain hopeful the commission will take appropriate action to enforce Missouri’s campaign finance laws against Eric Greitens and those with whom he conspired to evade reporting requirements and voter-enacted campaign finance limits.”

Barnes in July filed an ethics complaint against Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign and a nonprofit that promoted his agenda.

Among the allegations, the complaint said several of Greitens’ campaign staff members established the nonprofit called A New Missouri specifically to skirt new donation limits while essentially functioning as an unofficial arm of Greitens’ operation.

The nonprofit has faced criticism because it’s able to accept unlimited campaign donations without disclosing its donors.

Catherine Hanaway, an attorney for the campaign and nonprofit, on Monday said she’s “not surprised” that Barnes still wants the complaint to be heard months after he filed it.

“We don’t believe that his allegations about violations of campaign finance law are accurate,” Hanaway said. “Greitens for Missouri and A New Missouri complied with all Missouri campaign finance laws.”

The Missouri Ethics Commission can levy fines and, in certain cases, refer cases to prosecutors.

The final House committee report details months of work by lawmakers to investigate mounting claims against Greitens, including allegations that he slapped and shoved a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair and that he took a donor list without permission from a nonprofit he founded and used it for political fundraising. Greitens has repeatedly denied allegations of criminal misconduct.

A special prosecutor ultimately decided against taking up a felony invasion of privacy charge against Greitens related to claims that he allegedly took a photo of the woman he had an affair with while she was partially nude, then threatened to release it if she exposed their relationship. In exchange for his resignation, St. Louis prosecutors also dropped a felony charge of tampering with computer data that was related to the donor list.

Still pending are a lawsuit alleging Greitens’ office violated the Sunshine Law by using a message-deleting app called Confide and an appeal of a dismissed lawsuit claiming A New Missouri should have to turn over its financial records.

BROWNVILLE, Neb. (AP) — Utility crews extinguished a fire at a nuclear power plant in southeast Nebraska over the weekend.

The Nebraska Public Power District says the fire was discovered in the basement of the facility around 9 a.m. Saturday while crews were investigating a hazardous gas. It was extinguished before 10 a.m.

The utility says the fire never threatened public safety. NPPD and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will investigate what started the fire and evaluate the utility’s response.

The Cooper nuclear plant continued operating throughout the incident on Saturday.

Cooper sits along the Missouri River in southeast Nebraska near Brownville about 80 miles south of Omaha and across the river from Iowa.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a woman was killed and four others were hurt when a fleeing driver smashed a stolen car into two other vehicles in Kansas City, Kansas.

Police say officers began pursuing the stolen Audi A4 Saturday night but ended the pursuit shortly before the driver ran a red light and crashed into the two vehicles. Two or three suspects in the stolen vehicle ran from the scene before police arrived. Police searched known gang houses Sunday, but the deadly crash suspects remain at large.

The Kansas Highway Patrol identified the woman who was killed as 47-year-old Octavia Barker, of Kansas City, Kansas. The crash also left two passengers in her car and two people in a third car hospitalized with serious injuries.

SHAWNEE COUNTY— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect for alleged kidnapping and a long list of additional charges.

Just after 11p.m Sunday, police responded to the Traveler’s Inn, 3846 SW Topeka Boulevard in Topeka on the report of a kidnapping, according to Lt. John Trimble. They were able to make contact with a witness to the incident who led them to the victim. He told police had he been approached by 36-year-old Joshua William Banfield, Sr. who brandished a handgun and ordered the victim into a truck. Banfield then drove the victim throughout the city and repeatedly struck him in the face with the handgun before bringing him back to the motel.

Officers were able to locate Banfield at the motel where he was taken into custody without incident. The investigation showed the truck that Banfield used was a stolen vehicle. The handgun used in this incident was also recovered. Banfield was also found to be a convicted felon which prohibits him from possessing a firearm.

He also had a felony Shawnee County Warrant for a Probation violation with the initial charge being possession of stolen property.

He was taken to the Shawnee County Department of Corrections and booked in on requested charges of  Aggravated Battery,  Aggravated Assault, Kidnapping, Felon in Possession of a Firearm,  FelonyPossession of Stolen Property X2 and the Felony Warrant, according to Trimble.  Banfield has previous convictions for theft and drugs, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.

ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — Prosecutors say a Missouri man charged with fatally shooting his girlfriend, her two young children and her mother could face the death penalty once the investigation is complete.

Authorities are still investigating what led to the shooting late Friday. Richard Darren Emery of St. Charles, Missouri, is facing 15 charges, including first-degree murder.

Emery, who often goes by his middle name Darren, exchanged gunfire with officers as he fled. He was captured several hours later — wounded and covered in blood.

St. Charles is a city of about 70,000 residents on the Missouri River northwest of St. Louis.

A candlelight vigil was planned Sunday evening to honor the victims: 61-year-old Jane Moeckel, 39-year-old Kate Kasten, 8-year-old Zoe Kasten and 10-year-old Jonathan Kasten.