WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – A federal lawsuit filed against Textron Aviation alleges that a drill bit left during repair of a single-engine Cessna aircraft is responsible for the 2015 crash in Arkansas that caused minor injuries to the pilot and destroyed the new aircraft.

The complaint filed by Mid-Continent Aircraft Corp. of Missouri and its insurer involves the purchase of a 2014 Cessna T206H Stationair TC aircraft for $712,290. During a test flight, a problem was found in a magneto, which fires the engine spark plugs. Cessna replaced it.

A month after Mid-Continent took possession of the aircraft, the plane lost power and crashed during takeoff from Piggott Municipal Airport in Arkansas.

The lawsuit alleges Textron refuses to pay for loss of the aircraft.

Textron did not immediately respond to message seeking comment.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A judge has granted a change of venue for a suspect in the slaying of a transgender teen whose eyes were gouged out and her body set on fire in southwest Missouri.

Court records show that the first-degree murder case against Andrew Vrba was transferred Monday to Greene County.

Vrba is charged with killing 17-year-old Ally Steinfeld in neighboring Dallas County. The case previously was moved to Crawford County.

Vrba had been missing for weeks when her burned remains were found in September 2017 in the town of Cabool, a rural area about 70 miles (115 kilometers) east of Springfield. Two others have been sentenced in the case, and a fourth person is awaiting trial.

Authorities say the crime wasn’t motivated by Steinfeld’s gender identity.

WASHINGTON  — The casket carrying the remains of George H.W. Bush is at the U.S. Capitol as the nation says its formal farewell to the 41st president.

Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer attended Monday’s ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Although it is a time of mourning for our nation, and a sad time for me personally, I am honored to be here at the viewing for my former boss and friend, @GeorgeHWBush #ksleg pic.twitter.com/2uc7oP4u5k

— Governor Jeff Colyer (@GovJeffColyer) December 3, 2018

Bush will lie in state in the Rotunda through Wednesday. He died Friday at his home in Houston. He was 94. An invitation-only funeral service is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral.

Kansas City (AP) – President Donald Trump is set to visit Kansas City for a conference on crime.

According to the White House, Trump will speak Friday at the 2018 Project Safe Neighborhoods National Conference in Kansas City.

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is among U.S. Department of Justice leaders slated to speak at the conference. The White House says the event is expected to draw hundreds of law enforcement officials, prosecutors and others focused on cutting back on crime.

The George W. Bush-era Project Safe Neighborhoods faded during former President Barack Obama’s administration. Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions revived it last year.

Through the initiative, federal prosecutors have worked with local law enforcement agencies to target offenders in cases involving guns, drugs and gangs.

This Trump’s eighth visit to Missouri since becoming president.

JOHNSON COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a report of road rage and need help to identify the driver of a vehicle.

Just after 10p.m. on November 23, victims reported traveling southbound on U.S. 69 approaching 103^rd when the road rage incident occurred. The driver of a white GMC Yukon Denali XL fired several shots at the victim’s vehicle.

The suspect vehicle displayed a 60 day license tag, a black luggage rack and had a black brush guard on the front.

Anyone with information is asked to call police.

By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will swear in its first two openly LGBT state lawmakers next month and the new Democratic governor promises to end a ban on discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity in state hiring and employment decisions once she takes office.

Yet other goals for LGBT-rights activists, such as expanding the state’s anti-discrimination law covering landlords and private employers, might not be much closer to fruition — despite a historic national wave of victories by LGBT candidates and Gov.-elect Laura Kelly’s promise to break with Republican predecessors on policy.

The GOP still has large majorities in the Legislature, and it will be a little more conservative after this year’s elections. While Kelly’s election likely prevents new laws that LGBT-rights advocates oppose, they probably will struggle to undo policies enacted in recent years when Republicans held the governor’s office.

“It’s not the governor who decides if we get hearings or if bills come out of committee,” said Tom Witt, the executive director of Equality Kansas, the state’s most influential LGBT-rights organization. “That’s going to make it a little more challenging.”

Kelly takes office in January, along with the state’s first LGBT lawmakers, Democratic state Reps. Susan Ruiz and Brandon Woodard. They were elected in Kansas City-area suburbs, which also elected Democrat Sharice Davids , an LGBT and Native American lawyer, to Congress.

Kelly has promised to issue an executive order — possibly on Jan. 14, her first day in office — to end anti-LGBT discrimination in state hiring and employment decisions.

“Gov.-elect Kelly wants to send a message to people across this state, and across the country, that Kansas is an open, welcoming place that does not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” spokeswoman Ashley All said.

But the partisan breakdown in the Legislature did not change, and among Republicans, conservatives gained at least half a dozen House seats at moderates’ expense and elected a new, more conservative majority leader Monday. In the Senate, a moderate senator resigned after being elected state insurance commissioner, and her replacement is all but certain to be more conservative.

“Kansas is still Kansas, and I think most Kansans understand the nature of the family,” said Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, a former state representative from Wichita.

Kansas voters added a ban on same-sex marriage to the state’s constitution in 2005, with 70 percent approval. It has not been enforced since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2015 legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

In 2007, then-Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a friend and political ally of Kelly, issued an executive order banning anti-LGBT discrimination in state employment. But conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback rescinded it in 2015, arguing that such a policy should be set by legislators — who clearly weren’t going to do it.

Brownback resigned in January to become U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. New GOP Gov. Jeff Colyer said his administration would not tolerate discrimination but did not reinstate the formal protections in Sebelius’ order.

Colyer signed a measure in May providing legal protections to adoption agencies that cite faith-based reasons for refusing to place children in homes that violate their religious beliefs. The legislative debate centered on agencies that won’t place children in LGBT homes. Supporters saw it as religious liberties measure, but Kelly has called it an “adoption discrimination law.”

Reflecting social conservatives’ influence, the Kansas Republican Party’s election platform, adopted in June, called for an amendment to the U.S constitution barring same-sex marriage, drafted so “judges and legislatures cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it.”

“The benefits and privileges of marriage exist only between one man and one woman,” the platform said.

Kansas has been a reliably red state in presidential elections for the past 50 years and until Kelly’s and David’s victories this year, the GOP had won every statewide and congressional race starting in 2010.

Yet GOP conservatives and moderates have feuded enough over the decades to give Democrats opportunities, and Kelly’s victory continued a half-century tradition of alternating control of the governor’s office. Groups such as the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas are preparing for political battles over what they view as attempts to limit religious liberties of social conservatives.

Eric Teetsel, the alliance’s president and a Brownback son-in-law, said Kansas politics “is complicated, and it’s local.”

“This idea that American society or Kansas is just this awfully bigoted, anti-gay culture is belied by what we see around us,” he said. “You can be elected to public office in Kansas as a member of the LGBT community and no one bats an eye at it.”

Ruiz and Woodard ran on platforms that included support for LGBT rights but emphasized issues such as voting rights, education funding, expanding the state’s Medicaid health coverage to more families and lowering the state’s sales tax on groceries.

Ruiz said when she campaigned door-to-door, her sexual orientation “never came up” and voters did not appear to care. She said she doubts that attitude would have been as widespread a decade ago.

Woodard won in a district that had been held by conservative Republicans who’d backed religious objections measures, like the adoption law, and Equality Kansas described his GOP predecessors as strongly anti-LGBT.

But with the state as a whole, he said, “We don’t know how much it has shifted.”

Ruiz and Woodard also expect that it will be harder for colleagues to pass anti-LGBT measures.

“They will see our faces,” Ruiz said. “They will hear us speak.”

Annise Parker, a former Houston mayor, now president and CEO of the Victory Fund, which helps elect LGBT candidates, said this year’s election represented a milestone in Kansas, “but it doesn’t mean sweeping changes.”

“Putting openly LGBT legislators in place changes the debate, changes the dialogue. It actually makes for a healthier dialogue,” Parker said. “But it doesn’t change things overnight.”

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A 26-year-old Missouri woman accused of driving her car into the Kansas River has pleaded not guilty in her daughter’s drowning.

Scharron Dingledine, of Columbia, Missouri, pleaded not guilty Monday to first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Dingledine is accused of driving into the river near downtown Lawrence on Aug. 3 in an effort to kill her children and herself.

Rescuers pulled Dingledine and her 1-year-old son, Elijah Lake, from the water soon but were not able to save her 5-year-old daughter, Amiyah Bradley. The child’s body was recovered from the river the next day.

Dingledine was found competent in August to stand trial.

She remains in custody on $1 million bond.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans in the Kansas House elected a new, more conservative majority leader Monday and Democrats dumped their firebrand leader in the chamber in favor of lower-key veteran with a reputation for being able to work with the GOP.

The selection of conservative Rep. Dan Hawkins of Wichita as majority leader for the next two years is likely to complicate Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly’s efforts to pass her legislative agenda, particularly a plan to expand the state’s Medicaid health coverage for the needy. Defeated Majority Leader Don Hineman, a moderate Dighton Republican, has supported expanding Medicaid, while Hawkins strongly opposes it as chairman of the House health committee for the past four years.

Republicans maintained their 85-40 majority in the House in this year’s elections, but conservatives picked up at least six seats at the expense of GOP moderates. Hawkins prevailed over Hineman, 48-35, with one lawmaker absent and another not voting.

House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., a conservative Olathe Republican, won a second, two-year term as the chamber’s top leader, besting a challenge from conservative Rep.-elect Owen Donohoe, of Shawnee, on an 80-4 vote.

But the result in the majority leader’s race suggested that Democrats still have opportunities to form coalitions with GOP moderates to pass legislation sought by Kelly.

To help shepherd Kelly’s agenda through the Legislature, they turned to veteran Rep. Tom Sawyer over Rep. Jim Ward, who’d held the job for the past two years with conservative Republicans Sam Brownback and Jeff Colyer as governor. Both Sawyer and Ward are veteran lawmakers from Wichita, but Ward is far more likely to deliver fiery speeches during debates and has a reputation for being more confrontational.

The vote among Democrats was 24-16 in Sawyer’s favor.

Sawyer was first elected to the House in 1986 and served as majority leader in 1992, when Democrats last controlled the chamber. He was minority leader from 1993 through 1998, stepping down for an unsuccessful run for governor against then-popular GOP incumbent Bill Graves. He returned to the House in 2003 and left in 2009 for a seat on the state parole board. When his term in that job was set to expire, he won back his House seat again in 2012.

___

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker will be the Missouri Democratic Party’s next leader.

Democrats elected Baker Saturday. She will replace Stephen Webber as state party chairman.

Baker is taking the reins of following major Democratic losses. Republican Josh Hawley unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in November, which will give the state two Republican U.S. senators.

Auditor Nicole Galloway soon will be the only statewide Democratic officeholder. Republicans hold supermajorities in the state House and Senate.

Baker told the newspaper that it’s an opportunity for Democrats to self-assess. She says both progressives and conservatives are welcome in Democrats’ “great big tent.”

Baker was appointed county prosecutor in 2011 and elected in 2012. She says she plans to run for re-election.