National Weather Service Issues Heat Advisory for Monday
TOPEKA, Kan. (KPR) - The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory for much of Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska as heat index readings are expected to soar into the triple digits. Heat index readings will range from 100 to 110 degrees Monday and Tuesday. Hot temperatures and high humidity can cause heat exhaustion, heat cramps, and even heat stroke. People are cautioned to limit strenuous activities to early mornings or evenings.
Tips for Surviving the Heat:
- Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing. Try to limit strenuous activities to early morning or evening hours.
- Anyone working outside should take frequent rest breaks in the shade or in air conditioned buildings.
- Stay hydrated by drinking more water than you think you need.
REMINDER:
Do not leave young children or pets in unattended vehicles. Car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes. Every year in the U.S., small children and pets die because they were left behind inside over-heated vehicles.
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Experts Say Abortion Still a Hot-Button Issue at 2nd Anniversary of Dobbs Decision
UNDATED (KNS) – Two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, experts say abortion continues to be a deciding issue in Kansas politics. Kansas has emerged as a leading abortion access point since Roe fell. Over two-thirds of abortion patients at Kansas clinics travel from out-of-state. Don Haider-Markel is a political science professor at the University of Kansas. He says abortion issues could influence efforts this fall to break a Republican supermajority in the Kansas Legislature. “Democrats are really trying to break that supermajority. And it's entirely possible that they'll be able to peel off those couple of seats, precisely because abortion is so much on the minds of voters,” he said. Kansans turned out in large numbers in 2022 to reject a ballot measure that could’ve led to an abortion ban. Abortion remains tightly regulated in Kansas. Republicans have moved to further restrict it, with mixed success.
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KBI Investigates Shooting Near City Pool in Minneapolis
OTTAWA COUNTY, Kan. (KPR) - An investigation is underway into an officer-involved shooting over the weekend in north-central Kansas. The Kansas Highway Patrol, the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office, and local police were called to a city park in Minnepolis Saturday morning after getting a report of gunshots near the city pool. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation says 46-year-old Artemis Thor Peck ran out of his house, shooting toward law enforcement officers and a surveillance drone. Police returned fire and shot Peck. He was taken to a Salina hospital where he underwent surgery. Later, he was flown to a Wichita hospital for further surgery. He is expected to survive. (Read more from KCTV.)
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New Kansas Law Will Restrict Access to Adult Websites
TOPEKA, Kan. (KC Star) - A new Kansas law will take effect this week that will restrict access to online adult websites. The law is designed to verify the ages of each user who visits adult websites. The bill was passed in April and will go into effect at the end of this month. The Kansas City Star reports that the bill was allowed to become law without the governor's signature. Kansas joins more than a dozen other states which all require websites to verify the age of visitors.
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Report: Region's Students Show Significant Rate of Chronic Absences
UNDATED (KCUR) – Kansas and Missouri students are still recovering academically after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools. KCUR reports that a new survey says attendance plays a big role. The annual child wellness report KIDS COUNT found twenty-seven percent of students in Kansas and twenty percent of students in Missouri were chronically absent in the 2021-2022 school year. Adrienne Olejnik is vice president of Kansas Action for Children. She said that makes it hard for students to learn. “We start to see households become more financially insecure, or not being able to put food on the table for every meal, it's more likely that children will start to experience high levels of absenteeism,” she explained. Olejnik said that’s why her organization wants more support for families, like a state-level child-tax credit.
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Kaw Ceremony Marks Return of Sacred Rock to Tribal Land
UNDATED (KCUR) – Over the weekend, the Native American tribe that gave Kansas its name reclaimed an important part of heritage in the state. KCUR reports that when the US government forced the Kaw, or Kanza people, out of Kansas, one of the many things the left behind was a 28-ton red quartzite boulder that held sacred. The enormous rock was propped up in a park in Lawrence for almost a century. On Saturday, tribal vice chairman Jim Pepper Henry celebrated the stone’s new place, on tribal land, near Council Grove. "Today we welcome home our grandfather Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe to our Kaw Nation lands and the last reservation that we had in Kansas.," he said, as part of the dedication ceremony. Pepper Henry says he hopes the tribe’s 160-acre Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park helps reestablish the Kaw in their ancestral homeland.
(–Related–)
Illinois May Return Stolen Land to Prairie Band Potawatomi Indians
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - Illinois is poised to right a 175-year-old wrong by returning land in northern Illinois to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. The land was guaranteed to a Prairie Band Potawatomi chief in 1829. The U.S. stole Chief Shab-eh-nay's land while he was visiting relatives in 1848. Legislation is expected to be approved later this year that would transfer the land (Shabbona Area State Recreation Area) in DeKalb County west of Chicago to the Kansas-based Prairie Band Potawatomi. The proposed transfer of the park, which is 68 miles west of Chicago, won Senate approval in the final days of the spring legislative session. But a snag in the House prevented its passage. Proponents will seek endorsement of the meaure when the Legislature returns in November for its fall meeting. Under the legislation, the Potawatomi would control the state park and the state will provide maintenance. Nearby residents fear a casino or hotel will spoil their community. The tribe says it wants people to continue using the park as it is. No one disputes the land was stolen, illegally sold and that it still belongs to the Potawatomi. Yet, nothing has changed for years. Now... there's a chance it will. The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation is based in Mayetta, north of Topeka.
(-Additional Reporting-)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Some 175 years after the U.S. government stole land from the chief of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation while he was away visiting relatives, Illinois may soon return it to the tribe. Nothing ever changed the 1829 treaty that Chief Shab-eh-nay signed with the U.S. government to preserve for him a reservation in northern Illinois: not subsequent accords nor the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which forced all indigenous people to move west of the Mississippi. But around 1848, the U.S. sold the land to white settlers while Shab-eh-nay and other members of his tribe were visiting family in Kansas.
To right the wrong, Illinois would transfer a 1,500-acre state park west of Chicago, which was named after Shab-eh-nay, to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. The state would continue providing maintenance while the tribe says it wants to keep the park as it is. “The average citizen shouldn’t know that title has been transferred to the nation so they can still enjoy everything that’s going on within the park and take advantage of all of that area out there,” said Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation based in Mayetta, Kansas.
It's not entirely the same soil that the U.S. took from Chief Shab-eh-nay. The boundaries of his original 1,280-acre reservation now encompass hundreds of acres of privately owned land, a golf course and county forest preserve. The legislation awaiting Illinois House approval would transfer the Shabbona Lake State Recreation Area.
No one disputes Shab-eh-nay's reservation was illegally sold and still belongs to the Potawatomi. An exactingly researched July 2000 memo from the Interior Department found the claim valid and shot down rebuttals from Illinois officials at the time, positing, “It appears that Illinois officials are struggling with the concept of having an Indian reservation in the state.”
But nothing has changed a quarter-century later.
Democratic state Rep. Will Guzzardi, who sponsored the legislation to transfer the state park, said it is a significant concession on the part of the Potawatomi. With various private and public concerns now owning more than half of the original reservation land, reclaiming it for the Potawatomi would set up a serpentine legal wrangle. “Instead, the tribe has offered a compromise, which is to say, ‘We’ll take the entirety of the park and give up our claim to the private land and the county land and the rest of that land,’” Guzzardi said. “That’s a better deal for all parties involved.”
The proposed transfer of the park, which is 68 miles (109 kilometers) west of Chicago, won Senate approval in the final days of the spring legislative session. But a snag in the House prevented its passage. Proponents will seek endorsement of the meaure when the Legislature returns in November for its fall meeting.
The Second Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1829 guaranteed the original land to Chief Shab-eh-ney. The tribe signed 20 other treaties during the next 38 years, according to Rupnick. “Yet Congress still kept those two sections of land for Chief Shab-eh-nay and his descendants forever,” said Rupnick, a fourth great-grandson of Shab-eh-nay. “At any one of those times the Congress could have removed the status of that land. They never did.”
Key to the proposal is a management agreement between the tribe and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Rupnick said the tribe needs the state's help to maintain the park.
Many residents who live next to the park oppose the plan, fearing construction of a casino or even a hotel would draw more tourists and lead to a larger, more congested community. “Myself and my family have put a lot of money and given up a lot to be where we are in a small community and enjoy the park the way that it is,” resident Becky Oest told a House committee in May, asking that the proposal be amended to prohibit construction that would “affect our community. It’s a small town. We don’t want it to grow bigger.”
Rupnick said a casino doesn't make sense because state-sanctioned gambling boats already dot the state. He did not rule out a hotel, noting the park draws 500,000 visitors a year and the closest lodging is in DeKalb, 18 miles (29 kilometers) northeast of Shabbona. The park has 150 campsites.
In 2006, the tribe purchased 128 acres in a corner of the original reservation and leases the land for farming. The U.S. government in April certified that as the first reservation in Illinois.
Guzzardi hopes the Potawatomi don't have to wait much longer to see that grow exponentially with the park transfer. “It keeps this beautiful public asset available to everyone,” Guzzardi said. “It resolves disputed title for landholders in the area and most importantly, it fixes a promise that we broke."
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Kansas and Missouri Home Buyers Face Steep Increases
UNDATED (KNS) - Home buyers across Kansas and Missouri face prices that have shot up in relation to their incomes over the past three decades. In 1990, a resident of Manhattan with a median income could buy the average house in that college town for less than 3 times their annual pay. Today they have to pay more than 5 times their annual pay. Harvard University findings reported by NPR show that housing prices relative to income also shot up in Kansas City, Columbia, Joplin and Wichita, though not as dramatically. Housing prices surged nationally during the pandemic. Higher prices are hitting Black and Hispanic home buyers especially hard.
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Kansas Turnpike Moving to Cashless Toll System Beginning July 1
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (KNS) – The Kansas Turnpike will soon be going cashless. Starting July 1, drivers on the highway from the Oklahoma border to Kansas City will no longer need to pull over to pay their toll. The Kansas News Service reports that the Kansas Turnpike Authority offers K-Tags, which are small stickers for vehicles that allow drivers to be charged automatically when they go through a cashless toll. Drivers without K-Tags will be identified by their license plate and will receive a bill in the mail. Rachel Bell of the Kansas Turnpike Authority says the new system is safer, and drivers who use cashless tolling in Texas and Colorado wanted it in Kansas too. “We do hear from customers who say 'when can we have a system like theirs, where everybody keeps moving?'”, she added. Bell says drivers can learn more about cashless tolling by visiting DriveKS.com. (Read more.)
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Panasonic Battery Factory Nearly Halfway to Completion
DE SOTO, Kan. (KCUR) – The $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto is almost halfway built. KCUR reports that the giant facility eventually will employ about 4,000 people. Allan Swan, president of Panasonic’s North American division, says the small city and surrounding areas should expect to see an increase in other jobs and spending. "There should be three additional jobs that go with one job, which is obviously potentially service industries as well was toolmakers, small engineering shops, et cetera," he added. The facility will begin production early in 2025.
The facility plans to have 500 employees starting by the end of the year. Kristen Walters, vice president of human resources, says the majority of the employees will be from Kansas, but won’t necessarily live in De Soto.
While the plant will begin operation early next year, it will take about two more years for it to be fully completed and staffed. When it’s completed, the De Soto factory will be the largest electric vehicle battery factory in the world.
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Under New Rule, Railroads Must Provide Details of Hazardous Cargo Immediately After Derailment
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A new federal rule aims to ensure first responders can find out what hazardous chemicals are on a train after a derailment, so they can respond appropriately. The rule was finalized Monday. Firefighters responding to last year’s fiery Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, risked their lives trying to extinguish a blaze without knowing the right way to respond. The local East Palestine fire chief said it took 45 minutes for him to learn exactly what was on that train. A federal official says those running towards a fire need to know the unique risks they face, so they can have the right gear and evacuate everyone in danger.
Too often in past disasters like last year's fiery Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, firefighters risked their lives trying to extinguish a blaze without knowing the right way to respond. The local fire chief in charge of the response said it took him 45 minutes to learn exactly what was in the 11 burning tank cars on the train, but some firefighters from neighboring departments that came to help said they didn't know what they were dealing with until two hours after the February 3, 2023, crash.
First responders need to know exactly which hazardous materials are on a train so they can look it up in the government's official guidebook and make sure they have the right protective gear and firefighting tools, said Tristan Brown, deputy administrator of the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration agency that proposed the rule.
Knowing what chemical is involved and how much of it is aboard also affects how big of an evacuation zone might be required to protect the public. “There are so many different types of hazardous materials being transported across the country on any given day — one in 10 goods that move across the United States — and each one, poses unique risks and hazards, certainly to the folks who are running towards a fire,” Brown said. “But certainly as well for anybody who may be living or working in that vicinity.”
The rule was published just one day ahead of the National Transportation Safety Board's final hearing on the East Palestine derailment, where they will discuss exactly what caused that crash and recommend steps to prevent similar disasters.
Train crews have long carried lists of their cargo in the cabs of their locomotives, but in the middle of the chaos after a derailment those engineers and conductors, who might have moved their locomotives miles down the track, can't always be found right away.
That's part of why the largest freight railroads developed an app called AskRail roughly a decade ago that enables firefighters to quickly look up the details of what each train carries. But not every firefighter had the app, and cell phones don't always have a signal strong enough to work in a disaster.
Regulators want the railroads to continue expanding access to that app, including to 911 centers, so information reaches first responders sooner. The railroads have been expanding access over the past year. The Association of American Railroads trade group estimates some 2.3 million first responders now have access to that information as a result of the effort to expand into dispatch centers.
The six biggest railroads also make train cargo information immediately available through the chemical industry's hazardous materials hotlines in the U.S. and Canada known as the CHEMTREC and CANUTEC, emergency call centers.
But the new federal rule also applies to the hundreds of smaller railroads that aren't involved in AskRail. Even railroads that only have one or two employees now must have a plan to get the crucial details of their cargo to the local fire department quickly, even if its as simple as having the fire chief's cell phone number at the ready. Railroads also must test their plan at least once a year. “In a hazmat incident, firefighters and first responders arriving on scene need to know what kind of hazardous materials are present so they can protect themselves and their communities,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
It's not clear how this rule might have changed the outcome in East Palestine, but more information could have helped responding firefighters. The derailment prompted a nationwide reckoning over railroad safety and prompted Congress to propose changes and regulators like Buttigieg to urge railroads to do more to prevent derailments.
The Federal Railroad Administration has issued various advisories about different aspects of railroad operations, but the reforms in Congress have stalled because Republicans wanted to wait for the final NTSB report and regulators have had only limited success making changes.
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Kansas City Chiefs Release Defensive Lineman Isaiah Buggs After 2 Recent Arrests in Alabama
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs released defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs on Monday after two recent arrests in Alabama. The 27-year-old Buggs, who signed a $1,292,500 contract with Kansas City for the upcoming season, turned himself in May 30 after he was charged with two misdemeanor counts of second-degree animal cruelty. Two dogs that were under Buggs’s care were allegedly found neglected and malnourished, and one of the dogs had to be euthanized. On June 16, Buggs was arrested on a charge of domestic violence/burglary and released on a $5,000 bond, according to records from the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. The run-stuffing tackle out of Alabama played three seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers before spending the past two with the Detroit Lions. He has started 23 games and appeared in 56 in his career, with 89 tackles and two sacks.
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