KANSAS CITY (AP) — An animal rescue has named a litter of puppies born during an outbreak of severe weather after Kansas City TV meteorologists.

Midwest Animal Resq of Raytown says the puppies were born May 24, when tornado warnings were issued. One day earlier, storms injured about two dozen people in Missouri’s capital city and killed three others elsewhere in the state.

The animal rescue said in a Facebook post that, “We figured they needed to be named after some of the folks who helped keep KC safe that night! Welcome to the world weather pups.”

One of the puppies is named for KMBC-TV chief meteorologist Bryan Busby, while the mother was named for the station’s meteorologist, Katie Horner. The other puppies were named for meteorologists at other TV stations.

O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A convicted pedophile who ran an international child pornography ring has been charged with the 1993 abduction, rape and killing of a 9-year-old Missouri girl, after previously undetected DNA found on her clothing implicated him in the crime, authorities announced Wednesday.

Earl Webster Cox, who has been in custody for years because the state deemed him a sexually dangerous person likely to re-offend if set free, is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and sodomy in the death of Angie Housman, St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar said at a news conference.

Angie disappeared after getting off her school bus on Nov. 18, 1993, less than a block from her home in St. Ann, a St. Louis suburb. Her body was found nine days later in the August A. Busch Wildlife area, which is about 20 miles west of St. Ann, in St. Charles County.

Investigators said she had been sexually assaulted, starved and handcuffed, and that she died just hours before she was found. Lohmar said her head was covered in duct tape except for her nose and that she had tried hard to free herself.

“She was dehydrated, she was malnourished and she was alive when she was left out in the woods to die,” Lohmar said, noting that investigators don’t know where she was kept while she was missing.

Angie’s mother, Diane Bone, died of cancer in 2016 at age 52. Her stepfather, Ron Bone, told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday, “I can’t say anything about being happy until he’s found guilty.”

The disappearance of Angie and a 10-year-old girl, Cassidy Senter, the following month caused a panic in the area. Hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officers searched for Angie before a deer hunter found her body. Cassidy, meanwhile, was later found dead in a St. Louis alley.

Investigators feared that a child serial killer was on the loose before determining that Cassidy’s killer was one of her neighbors, who was eliminated as a suspect in Angie’s death.

In late February, St. Charles County crime lab investigators caught a break: They found previously undetected DNA on a pair of Angie’s Barbie-themed underwear that was found at the crime scene that matched a DNA profile in a national crime database.

“They were looking for a needle in a haystack without a magnet and still found the needle,” Lohmar said.

Lohmar said investigators have spoken with Cox about the killing, but he declined to say if Cox acknowledged knowing anything about it. He also wouldn’t say if his office will pursue the death penalty, and that investigators “have reason to believe that Earl Cox was not the only suspect,” though he didn’t elaborate.

Cox, now 61, grew up in the St. Louis area. He was living in another suburb, Ferguson, when Angie was abducted, but he had relatives who lived near her school and not far from her home, Lohmar said.

Cox enlisted in the Air Force in 1975 but was dishonorably discharged in 1982 after being convicted in a court-martial for molesting four young girls for whom he babysat while stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. He was paroled in 1985 and returned to the St. Louis area, where he was questioned in at least two reported instances of child molestation in the four years before Angie’s killing.

He was arrested in October 1989 in Overland, which borders St. Ann, after he allegedly had inappropriate contact with two 7-year-old girls. Cox was not charged in that case, according to court records, but the arrest led authorities to revoke his parole for crimes in Germany and he was returned to federal custody from January to December 1992. He got out 11 months before Angie was killed.

At some point during the 1990s, Cox moved to Colorado. In January 2003, he set up a meeting with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl whom he had asked to become his sex slave. It turned out to be an undercover federal agent.

After Cox was arrested, police seized about 45,000 images of child pornography from his computer and discovered that he led an international online child pornography ring known as the “Shadowz Brotherhood.” The subsequent investigation led to the arrest of about 60 people in 11 countries.

Cox was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Before he was scheduled for release in 2011, Cox was certified as a sexually dangerous person, which allowed authorities to keep him incarcerated even after he completed his sentence because he was considered likely to re-offend. He has unsuccessfully appealed the government’s decision to keep him incarcerated, arguing in part that his poor health makes it unlikely that he would re-offend.

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MANHATTAN — The suspect arrested in connection with the May 9 shots fired incident at the KSU Foundation building has been identified as Erin Trent Boykin, 23, of Junction City, according to the Riley County Police Department arrest report.

He is being held on a $50,000 bond on requested charges of attempted murder in the 1st degree; In the commission of a felony, criminal damage to property; without consent value < $1000, aggravated assault; use of a deadly weapon, criminal discharge of firearm; recklessly at occupied dwelling, according to the report.

Police determined that the individuals involved in the incident are not connected to the university.

The May 9 incident began on the east side of Manhattan off campus and continued to the parking lot north of the KSU Foundation Building, where shots were fired. There were no injuries.

MANHATTAN — The Kansas State University Police Department has arrested a suspect in connection with the May 9 shots fired incident at the KSU Foundation at Kimball and Denison avenues, according to a media release from K-State.

The suspect is currently detained at the Riley County Jail on charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, criminal damage to property and criminal discharge of a firearm. Additional charges may be pursued. This is an ongoing investigation and names will not be released at this time.

Police determined that the individuals involved in the incident are not connected to the university.

The May 9 incident began on the east side of Manhattan off campus and continued to the parking lot north of the KSU Foundation Building, where shots were fired. There were no injuries.

PHOENIX (AP) — The federal government has stopped paying for English-language courses and legal services at facilities that hold immigrant children around the country, imposing budget cuts it says are necessary at a time when record numbers of unaccompanied children are arriving at the border.

The Health and Human Services department notified shelters around the country last week that it was not going to reimburse them for teachers’ pay or other costs such as legal services or recreational equipment. The move appears to violate a legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that requires the government to provide education and recreational activities to immigrant children in its care.

But the agency says it doesn’t have the funding to provide those services as it deals with a soaring number of children coming to the U.S., largely from Central America.

It’s now up to the various nonprofit and private organizations run facilities for the children to cover the cost of teachers, supplies, legal services and even recreational activities and equipment — if they can, or choose to.

BCFS, a nonprofit provider in several Texas cities, said in a statement that it would continue providing services because not doing so would violate state licensing standards. It said it will use emergency funding from its parent organization.

“The health and well-being of those in our care are of the utmost importance and we hope there is a rapid resolution to this funding issue,” spokeswoman Evy Ramos said.

The government says it currently has 13,200 children in its care, and more are coming. The Border Patrol said Wednesday that 11,500 children crossed the border without a parent just last month. The kids are transferred to the care of Health and Human Services after the Border Patrol processes them. Health and Human Services contracts out their care and housing to nonprofits and private companies.

“As we have said, we have a humanitarian crisis at the border brought on by a broken immigration system that is putting tremendous strain (on the agency),” spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said. “Additional resources are urgently required to meet the humanitarian needs created by this influx – to both sustain critical child welfare and release operations and increase capacity.”

Health and Human Services is seeking nearly $3 million in emergency funding to cover more beds and provide basic care.

An official at one of the shelter providers said the government notified them on May 30 that they wouldn’t be reimbursing costs of providing education and other activities. The providers pay for things like teacher salary upfront and are then reimbursed by the government.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said his employer was scrambling to figure out how it would cover the cost of teachers. The provider hasn’t laid anyone off, but worries about children who desperately need to learn English and be intellectually stimulated.

Advocates are also worried about the ramifications of cutting recreational activities. Funding cuts may result in physical education coordinators from being let go and in a lack of adults who can supervise children playing outside.

“The kids are inside 23 hours, and the hour they spend outside is a real lifeline for them,” said J.J. Mulligan, an attorney at the Immigration Law Clinic at University of California, Davis, who has visited and spoken to many of the children at the facilities. “Most of them come from Latin American countries where soccer is king, so the ability to play with their friends really brings them joy in dark circumstances.”

In a memo to staff obtained by The Associated Press, Southwest Key interim CEO Joella Brooks said she was working with the government to figure out why the funding had ended and how it can continue to offer the services. Southwest Key is a nonprofit and the largest provider of shelters for immigrant children.

“In the meantime, remember the service, encouragement and compassion you provide to these youth every day matters a great deal. Please continue to stay focused on taking good care of them,” Brooks wrote to her staff.

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, was critical of the cuts.

“By eliminating English classes and legal aid that are critical to ensuring children successfully navigate the asylum process, the Trump Administration is essentially condemning children to prison and throwing away the key until their imminent deportation,” Grijalva, who represents a district on the border, said in a statement.

NORTH KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City police say two people are in custody after a chase that included a bound person falling out of the vehicle and police using tear gas to get the suspects out of the vehicle.

Police said in a news release the pursuit began when officers spotted people wanted for several property and assault cases in Clay County.

At one point, a passenger with hands tied opened a rear door and fell out of the vehicle. That person told officers a potential kidnapping was occurring.

The vehicle stopped and started several times, requiring officers to break the windows with beanbags. When the car still wouldn’t stop, armored tactical vehicles surrounded it. The two suspects, a man and a woman, left the vehicle when tear gas was deployed.

Further information was not immediately available.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republican legislators on Wednesday blocked nearly $10 million that Kansas corrections officials argue they need to deal with prison overcrowding and said lawmakers might reject Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s choice to be the prison system’s next leader.

The actions by Republican legislative leaders decrease the number of male inmates that the Department of Corrections can transfer for now to private prisons out of state and halt the agency’s plans to move female inmates into empty space at a juvenile detention center in Topeka.

Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature did agree to release about $18 million, including money for pay raises for corrections officers. They said they’re still addressing the troubled prison system’s most pressing problems, with future discussions of the other spending still possible.

GOP leaders said they have reservations about the department’s plans to house 600 inmates outside Kansas and worry about conditions in private prisons generally. They questioned whether the juvenile correction project was legal and complained repeatedly that Kelly’s administration waited until late April to fully outline its plans.

But recently retired Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz said, “I think it’s going to make things more dangerous.”

Legislators provided nearly $36 million in additional funds for prisons in the next state budget. However, Republicans worried enough about how it might be spent to require Kelly to convene a meeting of eight top legislative leaders, six of them Republicans, and have them sign off on releasing the bulk of it.

Their meeting Wednesday came with Republican leaders and Kelly increasingly at odds, following her vetoes of two GOP tax relief plans and top Senate Republicans thwarting Medicaid expansion.

It also came less than two weeks after Kelly announced her appointment of Jefferey Zmuda, the deputy director of Idaho’s prisons system, as the next Kansas corrections secretary. He plans to take over in July.

But Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, told Kelly publicly Wednesday that she is not sure Zmuda can win Senate confirmation. A state-court-judge in Idaho criticized Zmuda in a March ruling, saying he had given “disingenuous” testimony in a lawsuit over access to that state’s execution records.

Wagle said she is concerned about transparency issues with Zmuda planning to take over the Department of Corrections. Lawmakers are out of session until January, but Zmuda would be forced to step down if the Senate won’t confirm his appointment.

“He would not be confirmed if we voted today,” Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, told reporters.

Kelly firmly stood by Zmuda’s appointment. The governor said she and her staff knew about the Idaho judge’s comments and discussed them with Zmuda, and he acknowledged that issues related to the lawsuit were not handled as well as they could have been. She said once lawmakers meet him they will see that he is “eminently qualified.”

“He knows what the problems are here in the state of Kansas and he is up for the challenge,” Kelly told reporters.

The Kansas prison system has been plagued with staffing shortages even as its inmate population has continued to grow. The prison system had multiple riots in 2017 and 2018. Extra funding released by legislative leaders Wednesday will 15.9% pay raises for uniformed corrections officers across the prison system.

Werholtz told legislative leaders Wednesday that since an emergency was declared in February at the state’s maximum-security prison outside El Dorado, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Wichita, employees there have worked more than 2,000 16-hour shifts.

The state has about 10,000 inmates in its custody and the official capacity of its prisons is about 9,900 — after boosting the capacity figures in 2017 by declaring that inmates could be housed two-to-a-cell in much of the system, despite some officials’ past misgivings.

The next state budget included $16.4 million to allow the department to house up to 600 male inmates in county jails or out-of-state prisons. The department is pursuing a contract with a private prison in Arizona that its officials declined to name Wednesday.

But top Republicans on Wednesday blocked $6.6 million of the funds as some of them said they dislike using private prisons. Kelly said it’s not ideal but, “I just don’t think we have much of a choice.”

The department also wanted to move 120 inmates from the state’s prison for women in Topeka to the juvenile corrections center there. Lawmakers set aside $3 million.

The budget says the money was for “renovations.” Department officials said the need for renovations at the juvenile center is minimal and wanted instead to spend the funds on staff and programs. GOP legislative leaders concluded that the budget law wouldn’t allow it and blocked the funds, stopping the project altogether.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri utility regulators have approved the acquisition of a large wind energy project by a Chicago firm.

The decision Wednesday by the state Public Service Commission was a necessary step for Invenergy to buy the rights to construct the proposed Grain Belt Express power line.

The project initiated by Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners would carry Kansas wind energy on a 780-mile path across Missouri and Illinois before hooking into an electric grid in Indiana that serves eastern states.

Missouri regulators earlier this year reversed their previous denials and gave the green light to the project. Missouri legislators then tried but failed to prohibit eminent domain for the project.

But the project still needs regulatory approval in Illinois, where an appeals court last year overturned the state’s previous approval.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Montana man dubbed the AK-47 bandit and accused of holding up banks in several states over a five-year period has been sentenced in a Nebraska federal court to 35 years in prison.

Richard Gathercole, of Roundup, Montana, received the maximum sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in March to bank robbery. The 41-year-old Gathercole admitted during that plea hearing to using an AK-47 while robbing a Nebraska City bank in 2014. Gathercole also pleaded guilty to the 2017 carjacking of a farmer in Kansas that led to his arrest in Lexington, Nebraska.

As part of his plea deal, Gathercole won’t be prosecuted by other jurisdictions for other violent crimes, including shooting at a Kansas state trooper in 2017 and bank robberies in California, Idaho, Iowa and Washington state from 2012 to 2017.

Some of the crimes had passed the five-year federal statute of limitations.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri revenues continue to exceed expectations for the year.

State Budget Director Dan Haug on Wednesday announced fiscal year-to-date revenues increased by 2.1% as of May. That’s compared to the same time frame last year.

Gov. Mike Parson and lawmakers were banking on a 1.7% increase compared to last fiscal year.

The state’s fiscal year runs from July to June.

Revenues were down considerably earlier this year.

Budget and revenue officials cited changes to withholding tables that meant employers withheld less from workers’ paychecks for income taxes. That meant employees had to pay a bigger chunk of their taxes in April, instead of in smaller payments throughout the year.

Missouri lawmakers raised concerns that taxpayers wouldn’t make up the difference in time. But revenues appear to have bounced back.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Nine nursing homes in Kansas and 14 in Missouri are among nearly 400 nationwide with a “persistent record of poor care” whose names had been withheld from the public, according to a U.S. Senate report released Monday.

The facilities are not included on a shorter list of homes that get increased federal scrutiny because of health, safety or sanitary problems.

The nearly 400 homes qualify for the federal Special Focus Facility (SFF) program but aren’t selected to participate because of limited resources at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to the Senate report.

“Despite being indistinguishable from participants in terms of their qualifications for enhanced oversight, candidates are not publicly disclosed,” the report states. “As a result, individuals and families making decisions about nursing home care for themselves or for a loved one are unlikely to be aware of these candidates.”

Here are the Kansas and Missouri homes that are candidates for the SFF program, according to the Senate report, along with the number of their certified beds. (The bed numbers come from Nursing Home Compare, an online reference maintained by CMS that rates nursing homes based on health inspection reports, quality of care measures and overall staffing.)

Kansas

• Enterprise Estates Nursing Center, Enterprise, 41 beds
• Great Bend Health & Rehab Center, Great Bend, 65 beds
• Woodlawn Care and Rehab, DBA Orchard G, Wichita, 93 beds
• Indian Creek Healthcare Center, Overland Park, 120 beds
• Fort Scott Manor, Fort Scott, 45 beds (This facility closed last year.)
• Pinnacle Ridge Nursing & Rehab Center, Olathe, 94 beds
• Westy Community Care Home, Westmoreland, 43 beds
• Via Christi Village Pittsburg Inc., Pittsburg, 96 beds
• Mount Hope Nursing Center, Mount Hope, 45 beds

Missouri

• Kansas City Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, Kansas City, 180 beds
• Crestview Home, Bethany, 92 beds
• Normandy Nursing Center, St. Louis, 116 beds
• Garden Valley Healthcare Center, Kansas City, 156 beds
• Life Care Center of Bridgeton, Bridgeton, 91 beds
• Hillside Manor Healthcare and Rehab Center, St. Louis, 208 beds
• Parklane Care and Rehabilitation Center, Wentzville, 240 beds
• Crystal Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center, Florissant, 158 beds
• Maple Wood Healthcare Center, Kansas City, 150 beds
• Edgewood Manor Center for Rehab and Healthcare, Raytown, 66 beds
• Christian Care Home, Ferguson, 150 beds (This facility is no longer participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.)
• Lewis & Clark Gardens, St. Charles, 142 beds
• Redwood of Raymore, Raymore, 142 beds
• Rancho Manor Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, Florissant, 120 beds

Two Kansas nursing homes and three Missouri nursing homes are in the SFF program:

Kansas

• Serenity Care and Rehab, Overland Park, 145 beds
• Garden Valley Retirement Village, Garden City, 78 beds

Missouri

• Hidden Lake Care Center, Raytown, 112 beds
• St Johns Place, St. Louis, 94 beds
• Green Park Senior Living Community, St Louis, 188 beds

As the Senate report notes, the SFF program “targets those facilities that ‘substantially fail’ to meet the required care standards and resident protections afforded by the Medicare and Medicaid programs.” The program aims to stimulate improvements in their quality of care.

Linda MowBray, vice president of the Kansas Health Care Association, a trade association representing 260-plus Kansas nursing homes, said that SFF program participants are chosen from the poorest performing facilities in the bottom 20% of state inspection surveys.

“The state survey agency identifies two to three facilities from the lowest 20% that have demonstrated a special need for more oversight due to history of deficiencies, staffing levels and/or quality outcomes,” she said.

“They may very well need to be a special focus home,” MowBray said. “But it may be that they are in that bottom quintile because of one particular incident, not necessarily a longstanding history that’s care-related. But some facilities do have a record of having more widespread problems.”

She added: “It’s public information and people need to know it, but I really believe that in Kansas we’re getting our act back together.”

Only 88 nursing homes out of more than 15,700 nationwide are currently participating in the SFF program, according to the Senate report

The program dates to 1987, when Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act requiring nursing homes to maintain “the highest possible mental and physical functional status of residents.” The act also established oversight procedures, including regular surveys and inspections.

Unlike SFF participants, which are required to notify the public of their participation in the program, SFF candidates are not. Adding further confusion to the picture, 27% of the SFF candidate facilities had two stars out of a maximum of five on Nursing Home Compare.

In Kansas, some of the ratings may be dated. The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), the agency that conducts nursing home surveys, had fallen behind the federal schedule that calls for nursing homes to be inspected at least once a year.

“It’s taken KDADS quite some time to get caught back up with surveys,” MowBray said. “So we’ve had facilities that have gone as long as 24 months between surveys, and we don’t like that, the homes don’t like that.

“Some of the rankings have been hanging around their neck for a long time and they’ve made quite a few improvements since that bad point. But that bad survey’s still hanging out there.”

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.