HOLTON, Kan. (AP) — A fourth person has died from injuries suffered in a Kansas crash that happened more than a year ago as they returned home from watching two family members play in a state football championship.
Popkess Mortuaries says Lee Fred Ukele, of Sabetha, died Wednesday at the University of Kansas Hospital. He was critically injured in a November 2017 crash that killed his wife, his 11-year-old daughter and his brother.
They were returning home from watching the Sabetha High School football team win the state championship when 49-year-old Maria Perez Marquez, of Omaha, Nebraska, crashed into their minivan while trying to pass another vehicle north of Holton. At the time, two of Lee Ukele’s sons played on the team.
Carmen and her daughter Marlee photo courtesy Popkess Mortuary
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Chevy Equinox driven by Perez-Marquez, was southbound on U. S. 75 just north of 318 Road near Holton.
Marquez attempted to pass another vehicle, swerved to the shoulder to avoid a collision and struck a northbound 2008 Chrysler Town and Country driven by Carmen K. Ukele, 42, Sabetha, head-on.
Marquez -photo Jackson Co.
Ukele and passengers in the Chevy Marlee G. Ukele, 11 and Stephen M. Ukele, 62, all of Sabetha, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Marquez is scheduled to be sentenced in June on three misdemeanor counts of vehicular homicide and one felony count of aggravated battery.
BEIJING (AP) — Deepening a trade battle and sending financial markets spinning, China announced Monday it was raising tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods in retaliation for the latest hike in U.S. tariffs on its exports.
The Finance Ministry said Monday the new penalty duties of 5% to 25% on hundreds of U.S. products including batteries, spinach and coffee will take effect June 1.
That followed Trump’s increase on Friday of duties on $200 billion of Chinese imports from 10% to 25% after charging that China had backtracked on commitments it made in earlier negotiations in a dispute over Beijing’s technology ambitions and perennial trade surplus.
Resuming his messages over Twitter early Monday, President Donald Trump warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that China “will be hurt very badly” if it doesn’t agree to a trade deal.
Trump tweeted China “had a great deal, almost completed, & you backed out!”
Trump insisted the tariffs the U.S. has placed on Chinese goods don’t hurt American consumers, saying there is “no reason for the U.S. Consumer to pay the Tariffs.”
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that U.S. consumers and businesses pay the tariffs. “Both sides will pay,” he told Fox News.
China had vowed “necessary countermeasures” on Friday against Trump’s escalation of the tariff conflict.
Frazzled by the uncertainty, shares sank Monday across the globe. Futures contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were down 2 percent before markets opened on Wall Street.
Beijing is running out of U.S. imports for penalties due to the lopsided trade balance between the world’s two largest economies. Regulators have targeted American companies in China by slowing down customs clearance for shipments and processing of business licenses.
The new tariffs are likely to hurt exporters on both sides, as well as European and Asian companies that trade between the United States and China or supply components and raw materials to their manufacturers.
The increases already in place have disrupted trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment and sent shockwaves through other Asian economies that supply Chinese factories.
Forecasters have warned that the U.S. tariff hikes could disrupt a Chinese recovery that had appeared to be gaining traction. Growth in the world’s second-largest economy held steady at 6.4% over a year earlier in January-March, supported by higher government spending and bank lending.
The tensions “raise fresh doubts about this recovery path,” Morgan Stanley economists Robin Xing, Jenny Zheng and Zhipeng Cai said in a report.
The latest U.S. charges could knock 0.5 percentage points off annual Chinese economic growth and that loss could widen to 1 percentage point if both sides extend penalties to all of each other’s exports, economists say. That would pull annual growth below 6%, raising the risk of politically dangerous job losses.
The latest talks ended with no word of progress on Friday. Chinese officials said they hoped that the U.S. side would meet them halfway, describing the standoff as just a “setback.”
Trump might meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during next month’s meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in Osaka, said Kudlow, his economic adviser.
Chinese officials have invited the top U.S. envoys – Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin -to Beijing, Kudlow said on Fox News. But he said there were no “definite plans.”
China’s state media has sought to reassure businesses and consumers that the ruling Communist Party has the resources and policy tools to respond to the dispute with Washington.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” said the party newspaper People’s Daily. “The U.S.-instigated trade war against China is just a hurdle in China’s development process. It is no big deal.”
Trump started raising tariffs last July over complaints China steals or pressures companies to hand over technology.
Washington wants Beijing to roll back government support for Chinese companies striving to become global leaders in robotics and other technology. The U.S. and other trading partners say such efforts violate Beijing’s free-trade commitments.
A stumbling block has been U.S. insistence on an enforcement mechanism with penalties to ensure Beijing carries out its commitments. Economists say Chinese leaders probably reject that as a violation of Chinese sovereignty.
The abruptness of Trump’s announcement on May 5, just days before the last round of talks, about raising tariffs to 25% made companies see doing business in China as more uncertain, said Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, an industry group.
No matter what Washington and Beijing decide, “there is an enormous risk in the background that tariffs could come back into play at any moment,” he said.
CLAY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect on charges in connection with an outstanding warrant.
On Sunday afternoon, a deputy stopped a car for a traffic violation and the driver ended up taking off. They surrendered after a short chase ending in mom’s driveway.
Deputies arrested the suspect and according to the Clay County Sheriff’s Department social media page, “Sorry Mom, #Mother’sDayFail
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Doris Day, the honey-voiced singer and actress whose film dramas, musicals and innocent sex comedies made her a top star in the 1950s and ’60s and among the most popular screen actresses in history, has died. She was 97.
Courtesy Doris Day Foundation
The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed Day died early Monday at her Carmel Valley, California, home. The foundation said she was surrounded by close friends.
“Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia, resulting in her death,” the foundation said in an emailed statement.
With her lilting contralto, wholesome blonde beauty and glowing smile, she was a top box office draw and recording artist known for such films as “Pillow Talk” and “That Touch of Mink” and for such songs as “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” from the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
But over time, she became more than a name above the title: Right down to her cheerful, alliterative stage name, she stood for a time of innocence and G-rated love, a parallel world to her contemporary Marilyn Monroe. The running joke, attributed to both Groucho Marx and actor-composer Oscar Levant, was that they had known Day “before she was a virgin.”
Day herself was no Doris Day, by choice and by hard luck.
In “Pillow Talk,” released in 1959 and her first of three films with Rock Hudson, she proudly caught up with what she called “the contemporary in me.” Her 1976 tell-all book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” chronicled her money troubles and three failed marriages, contrasting with the happy publicity of her Hollywood career.
“I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes, America’s Virgin, and all that, so I’m afraid it’s going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together,” she wrote.
She never won an Academy Award, but Day was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, as George W. Bush declared it “a good day for America when Doris Marianne von Kappelhoff of Evanston, Ohio decided to become an entertainer.”
In recent years, she spent much of her time advocating for animal rights. Although mostly retired from show business since the 1980s, she still had enough of a following that a 2011 collection of previously unreleased songs, “My Heart,” hit the top 10 in the United Kingdom. The same year, she received a lifetime achievement honor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Friends and supporters lobbied for years to get her an honorary Oscar.
Born to a music teacher and a housewife, she had dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12, she suffered a crippling accident: a car she was in was hit by a train and her leg was badly broken. Listening to the radio while recuperating, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, “trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.”
Day began singing in a Cincinnati radio station, then a local nightclub, then in New York. A bandleader changed her name to Day, after the song “Day after Day,” to fit it on a marquee.
A marriage at 17 to trombonist Al Jorden ended when, she said, he beat her when she was eight months pregnant. She gave birth to her son, Terry, in early 1942. Her second marriage also was short-lived. She returned to Les Brown’s band after the first marriage broke up.
Her Hollywood career began after she sang at a Hollywood party in 1947. After early stardom as a band singer and a stint at Warner Bros., Day won the best notices of her career with “Love Me or Leave Me,” the story of songstress Ruth Etting and her gangster husband-manager. She initially balked at it, but the 1955 film became a box-office and critical success.
She followed with another impressive film, Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” starring her and James Stewart as an innocent couple ensnared in an international assassination plot. She sings “Que Sera, Sera” just as the story reaches its climax and viewers are beside themselves with suspense. The 1958 comedy “Teacher’s Pet” paired her with an aging Clark Gable as an idealistic college journalism teacher and her student, an old-school newspaper editor.
But she found her greatest success in slick, stylish sex comedies, beginning with her Oscar-nominated role in “Pillow Talk.” She and Hudson were two New Yorkers who shared a telephone party line and initially hated each other.
She followed with “The Thrill of It All,” playing a housewife who gains fame as a TV pitchwoman to the chagrin of obstetrician husband James Garner. The nation’s theater owners voted her the top moneymaking star in 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964.
Her first musical hit was the 1945 smash, “Sentimental Journey,” when she was barely in her 20s. Among the other songs she made famous were “Everybody Loves a Lover,” ”Secret Love,” and “It’s Magic,” a song from “Romance on the High Seas,” her first film.
Critic Gary Giddins called her “the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow-ballads in movie history.”
“Romance on the High Seas” had been designed for Judy Garland, then Betty Hutton. Both bowed out, and Day, recommended by songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, won the role. Warner Bros. cashed in on its new star with a series of musicals, including “My Dream Is Yours,” ”Tea for Two” and “Lullaby of Broadway.” Her dramas included “Young Man with a Horn,” with Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall, and “Storm Warning,” with Ronald Reagan and Ginger Rogers.
Her last film was “With Six You Get Eggroll,” a 1968 comedy about a widow and a widower and the problems they have when blending their families.
With movies trending for more explicit sex, she turned to television to recoup her finances. “The Doris Day Show” was a moderate success in its 1966-1973 run on CBS.
Disillusionment grew in the 1960s when she discovered that failed investments by her third husband, Martin Melcher, left her deeply in debt. She eventually won a multimillion-dollar judgment against their lawyer.
She had married Melcher, who worked in her agent’s office, in 1951. He became her manager, and her son took his name. In most of the films following “Pillow Talk,” Melcher was listed as co-producer. Melcher died in 1969.
In her autobiography, Day recalled her son, Terry Melcher, telling her the $20 million she had earned had vanished and she owed around $450,000, mostly for taxes.
In 1974, Day won a $22.8 million judgment against Jerome B. Rosenthal, her lawyer and business manager, for mishandling of her and Melcher’s assets.
Terry Melcher, who died in 2004, became a songwriter and record producer, working with such stars as the Beach Boys. But he was also famous for an aspiring musician he turned down, Charles Manson. When Manson and his followers embarked on their murderous rampage in 1969, they headed for the house once owned by Melcher and instead came upon actress Sharon Tate and some visitors, all of whom were killed.
Day married a fourth time at age 52, to businessman Barry Comden in 1976. She lived in Monterey, California, devoting much of her time to the Doris Day Animal Foundation.
Washington, DC—The names of 371 U.S. law enforcement officers including four from Kansas and four from Missouri who have died in the line of duty will be formally dedicated on the walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial during the 31st Annual Candlelight Vigil held on the National Mall in Washington, DC, at 8:00 pm on Monday, according to a media release from the National Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial
U.S. Attorney General William Barr will deliver special remarks and lead in reading the names of the fallen officers.
The names of Clinton, Missouri Police officer Christopher Ryan Morton, Greene County Deputy Aaron Paul Roberts, Miller County Deputy Casey Shoemate, and Missouri Department of Liquor Control officer Thomas Jefferson Greer, Sedgwick County Deputy Robert Kunze, Wyandotte County Deputies Patrick Rhorer and Theresa King and Jefferson County Undersheriff George Burnau and 363 other officers added to the Memorial this year include 158 who made the ultimate sacrifice in 2018, in addition to 213 officers who died earlier in history but whose sacrifice had not been previously documented.
With these additions, there are 21,910 officers’ names engraved on the Memorial, representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, federal law enforcement, and military police agencies.
Clinton Police Officer Christopher Ryan Morton.
Officer Christopher Morton was shot and killed when he and two other officers responded to an unknown situation as the result of a 911 call.
Greene County sheriff’s deputy Aaron Robers drowned in September 2018 when his patrol car was washed off the roadway by rushing water during a storm.
In April of 2018, Miller County Deputy Casey Shoemate died in a crash responding to a 911 call. Missouri Liquor Control agent Thomas Jefferson Greer died from a heart attack while assisting a Missouri State Highway Patrol officer responding to a call in 1971.
A convicted felon on a crime spree shot and killed Deputy Kunze in September 2018. Deputy Sheriff Theresa King and Deputy Sheriff Patrick Rohrer were shot and killed as they transported a prisoner to court in Wyandotte in June of 2018. In March of 2019, Undersheriff George Burnau suffered a fatal heart attack while involved in a foot pursuit of a mental subject
Each May 13, an estimated 30,000 people assemble for the Candlelight Vigil, a signature event of National Police Week. For the 11th year, the ceremony will be streamed live over the Internet so that everyone can witness this annual tribute to America’s law enforcement officers. Individuals interested in the free webcast can register online at www.nleomf.org/vigil.
“The annual Candlelight Vigil allows us to honor the officers who sacrificed their lives for the protection of ours,” said Lori Sharpe Day, Interim Chief Executive Officer of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. “By attending the ceremony in person or by viewing it online, we are able to show support for the families of these brave men and women who serve.”
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — A man who became lost on an Alaska mountain trail has been safely located by searchers.
26-year-old Logan Holmer of Missouri was among four hikers on Far Mountain Trail Thursday who were reported overdue.
Searchers located Holmer in good condition on a ridge around 4 p.m. Saturday.
Alaska State Troopers, Alaska Wildlife Troopers, Wilderness Search and Rescue, Civil Air Patrol, Alaska State Park Rangers and PAWS search dog teams began searching for Holmer after he was reported missing.
Police say the other three hikers in his party returned to the Chena Hot Springs Resort near Fairbanks, but Holmer remained missing until Saturday.
Authorities did not provide details of when the three hikers returned or how they were separated from Holmer.
KANSAS CITY – A Kansas City man was convicted by a federal trial jury Friday for his role in a three-months-long conspiracy that included at least 27 armed robberies, culminating in the armed robbery of a Walgreens in Blue Springs, Mo., in which a suspect was fatally shot by law enforcement officers.
Police on the scene of the pharmacy robbery in 2016 photo courtesy KMBC
According to the United State’s Attorney, Shannon R. Thomas, 28, was found guilty of participating in the conspiracy as well as participating in ten armed robberies. He was also found guilty of ten counts of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Thomas faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 70 years in federal prison without parole.
Evidence introduced during the trial indicated that Thomas and co-conspirators robbed 27 businesses in Blue Springs, Independence, North Kansas City, Raytown, Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., at gunpoint from Jan. 2 to March 24, 2016. In addition to the armed robberies charged in the indictment, evidence was introduced during the trial of other, uncharged robberies that were committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. Victim businesses included convenience stores, pharmacies, and other businesses.
The robberies followed a similar pattern: Two or three conspirators entered the business armed with handguns, wearing gloves, hoodies, and/or masks. The hoodies were drawn tightly over their faces to obscure their features. The employees were forced at gunpoint to hand over money from the cash register and the safe. The thieves wore the same hoodies in nearly all the robberies; Thomas wore a blue Kansas City Royals hoodie for the majority of the robberies he committed.
The spree of robberies culminated on March 24, 2016. Thomas, along with co-defendant Deonte J. Collins-Abbott, 24, of Grandview, Mo., and Jermon Seals of Shawnee, Kan., robbed the Walgreens at 7 Highway and Duncan in Blue Springs. Thomas placed a Springfield Armory .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol to the back of an employee’s head and took money from the front register. Collins-Abbott and Seals went over the pharmacy counter and took prescription grade cough syrup at gunpoint from the pharmacist. They left the business but were confronted by law enforcement officers as they were walking back to the vehicle. They failed to comply with the officers’ commands; Seals turned towards the officers, pointing a gun in their direction. Officers returned fire and Seals was fatally struck in the exchange. Thomas and Collins-Abbott were apprehended by officers after a short foot chase.
Collins-Abbott pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison without parole. Collins-Abbott admitted that he committed eight armed robberies between Feb. 3, 2016, and March 24, 2016.
Co-defendants Kevin T. Thompson-Randell, 23, and Demetrius Nelson, 26, both of Kansas City, Mo.; and Parrise K. Black, also known as “Kilo,” 26, and Frank A. Garner, Jr., 25, both of Grandview, have also pleaded guilty and await sentencing.
Following the presentation of evidence, the jury in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., deliberated for approximately three hours before returning the guilty verdict to U.S. District Judge Greg Kays, ending a trial that began Monday, May 6, 2019.
Under federal statutes, Thomas is subject to a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison without parole for participating in the conspiracy, and up to 20 years in federal prison without parole for each of the ten armed robberies. Thomas is also subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in federal prison without parole for each of the ten counts of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, which must be served consecutively. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is taking on the tech industry, including apps and tools aimed at children.
Hawley last week introduced legislation that would ban “pay-to-win” apps like Candy Crush that he said are targeted at children. The Kansas City Star reports the games are often free, but users can buy upgrades and bonus features.
“When a game is designed for kids, game developers shouldn’t be allowed to monetize addiction,” Hawley said in a statement announcing the bill. “And when kids play games designed for adults, they should be walled off from compulsive microtransactions. Game developers who knowingly exploit children should face legal consequences.”
The bill is one in a series of moves the freshman Republican has made against the tech industry. In a recent speech to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution he questioned the value of social media and slammed the industry for profiting off the addiction of its users. And in other action last week, Hawley and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission calling on the agency to conclude its investigation into Facebook’s alleged violation of a 2011 consent agreement by improperly sharing data of 80 million users and to impose deterrent penalties.
Hawley had previously introduced a bill to restrict internet companies from collecting data from users under the age of 13.
Josh Golin, the executive director of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, applauded Hawley.
“It is beyond unfair for developers to rig their games to manipulate children into making purchases themselves or nagging their parents to do so. Games that require additional payments to advance take advantage of children’s natural inclination to master new skills and compete,” Golin said in a statement.
Candy Crush, a popular puzzle game that Hawley’s office said has “a Candy Land style cartoon aesthetic,” is a key target of the bill. The app enables users to pay $149.99 for 24 hours of unlimited lives and other bonus features.
Activision, which distributes Candy Crush, declined to comment and deferred questions to the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry trade group.
Stanley Pierre-Louis, acting president and CEO of the association, said in an email that apps already come with features meant to prevent kids from making purchases without parental consent.
Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, a group which represents the tech industry, called Hawley’s bill well-intentioned but overly broad. He said most of the games like Candy Crush are aimed at adults, and parents should be the ones to choose what games are appropriate for their children.
If a new Mississippi law survives a court challenge, it will be nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there.
Or, potentially, in neighboring Louisiana. Or Alabama. Or Georgia.
The Louisiana legislature is halfway toward passing a law — like the ones enacted in Mississippiand Georgia— that will ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant. Alabamais on the cusp of approving an even more restrictive bill.
State governments are on a course to virtually eliminate abortion access in large chunks of the Deep South and Midwest. Ohio and Kentucky also have passed heartbeat laws; Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature is considering one.
Their hope is that a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court will approve, spelling the end of the constitutional right to abortion.
“For pro-life folks, these are huge victories,” said Sue Liebel, state director for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. “And I think they’re indicative of the momentum and excitement and the hope that’s happening with changes in the Supreme Court and having such a pro-life president.”
For abortion rights supporters, meanwhile, the trend is ominous. Said Diane Derzis, owner of Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization: “I think it’s certainly more dire than it ever has been. They smell blood and that’s why they’re doing this.”
Already, Mississippi mandates a 24-hour wait between an in-person consultation. That means women must make at least two trips to her clinic, often traveling long distances.
Other states have passed similar, incremental laws restricting abortion in recent years, and aside from Mississippi, five states have just one clinic — Kentucky, Missouri, North and South Dakota, and West Virginia. But the latest efforts to bar the procedure represent the largest assault on abortion rights in decades.
Lawmakers sponsoring the bans have made it clear their goal is to spark court challenges in hopes of ultimately overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
Those challenges have begun. Derzis’ attorneys are scheduled to go before a judge on May 21, seeking to prevent Mississippi’s heartbeat law from taking effect July 1.
A judge in Kentucky blocked enforcement of that state’s heartbeat ban after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of the clinic in Louisville.
Similar legal action is expected before bans can take effect in Ohio and Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the latest heartbeat bill into law Tuesday. Kemp said he welcomed the fight, vowing: “We will not back down.”
Georgia’s ban doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1. But the impact was immediate.
An abortion clinic operated by The Women’s Centers in Atlanta began receiving anxious calls from patients soon after Kemp signed the law. Many callers had plans to travel from outside the state for abortions. Georgia’s heartbeat ban would have a wider impact because the state has 17 abortion clinics — more than the combined total in the other four Southern states that have passed or are considering bans.
“On a typical day we will see people from North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina — all over the region,” said Dr. Lisa Haddad, the Atlanta clinic’s medical director. “And my thought is we’re not going to see those people coming here because they assume it’s already illegal in Georgia.”
Dr. Ernest Marshall, co-founder of Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic in Louisville, said in an email that banning abortions before most women know they’re pregnant would “have a disproportionate impact on poor women and communities of color throughout the South.”
Advocates for abortion rights expect judges to halt enforcement of any new bans while lawsuits work their way through the courts. That could take years.
“These laws are blatantly unconstitutional,” said Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which also has filed suit over Mississippi’s ban. “But if they were allowed to go into force, they would have devastating consequences for the residents of all of these states.”
If heartbeat bans are upheld, many women who are poor and have limited means to travel would have few options other than to try to terminate their own pregnancies, Haddad said, possibly using abortion drugs purchased online.
Others would have to drive or fly across multiple states, said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
“People would go to Florida, people would continue to go to Memphis,” Nash said. “How many states do you have to cross before you can access abortion services? It exacerbates all the issues we’ve already seen around taking time off from work and having the money to travel.”
Proposed heartbeat bans failed to pass this year in several Republican-led states, including Texas. There, GOP lawmakers lost ground to Democrats in the 2018 elections, and some abortion foes were wary after courts struck down prior abortion restrictions in the state. Such efforts also fell short in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Alabama lawmakers postponed until next week a vote on a proposal that would make performing nearly all abortions a felony. The measure has passed the state House, and the Senate suspended debate Thursday amid a heated dispute over whether exemptions for rape and incest should be stripped from the bill.
“You can’t put a price on unborn life,” Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, said Wednesday, as a legislative committee heard testimony on the state’s proposed ban. “What you have to do is protect the people that live in this state and that includes unborn children.”
But Jenna King-Shepherd told Alabama lawmakers she believed the abortion she had at age 17 allowed her to finish college. She said her father, a part-time Baptist preacher furious about her pregnancy, drove her to the abortion clinic because he trusted her to make the right choice.
“I’m not asking you to support access to abortion,” King-Shepherd said. “I’m only asking you to let women, their families, their physicians and their God make this decision on how they want to start their families in private and trust them to do that.”
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A fifth farmer has pleaded guilty to his role in an organic grain fraud scheme that involved at least $140 million in sales of grain.
John Burton, of Clarksdale, Missouri, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
Burton, 52, admitted that grain grown on his non-organic fields was marketed and sold as organic and that unapproved substances were used on fields certified as organic. Federal prosecutors are seeking to require that he forfeit $2.2 million that was traced to the scheme.
Burton’s plea comes months after one of his associates, 61-year-old Randy Constant of Chillicothe, Missouri, pleaded guilty to charges alleging he masterminded the scheme.
Constant made many of the fraudulent sales through an Iowa grain brokerage that he owned. Three other Nebraska farmers have also pleaded guilty in the case.
On Sunday afternoon, a deputy stopped a car for a traffic violation and the driver ended up taking off. They surrendered after a short chase ending in mom’s driveway.
