Local Primary Elections Underway Across Kansas
LAWRENCE, Kan. (LJW) — Local primary elections are underway across Kansas. The Lawrence Journal World reports that eight candidates are running for three seats on the Lawrence City Commission as the terms of three commissioners expire. And three candidates are running to fill a special, two-year term vacated by former school board member Andrew Nussbaum, who resigned several months into his term. The top six vote-winners in the Lawrence City Commission election and the top two vote-winners in the school board election will move on to the general election on November 7. In Shawnee County, WIBW TV reports that four candidates are on the ballot for Topeka’s district six seat. The top two from will advance to the general election in November. There are also six city council primary races in Johnson County, including races in Overland Park, Lenexa, Merriam, Prairie Village and Olathe. Polls are open until 7:00 pm.
==========
Teamsters: Trucking Giant Yellow Corporation Ceases Operations, Files for Bankruptcy
NEW YORK (AP) — Troubled trucking company Yellow Corp. is shutting down and filing for bankruptcy, the Teamsters said Monday. An official backruptcy filing is expected any day for Yellow, after years of financial struggles and growing debt. Its impending liquidation marks a significant shift for the U.S. transportation industry and shippers nationwide. The company's collapse arrives just three years after Yellow, formerly known as YRC Worldwide Inc., received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the federal government. But the company was in financial trouble long before that — with industry analysts pointing to poor management and strategic decisions dating back decades.
Yellow is one of the nation's largest less-than-truckload carriers. The closure of the 99-year-old Nashville, Tennessee-based company risks a loss of 30,000 jobs. Yellow shut down operations on Sunday, according to The Journal, following the layoffs of hundreds of nonunion employees on Friday. As of Tuesday morning, no bankruptcy filings from the company could be found on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website.
The company's collapse arrives just three years after Yellow, formerly known as YRC Worldwide Inc., received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the federal government. But the company was in financial trouble long before that — with industry analysts pointing to poor management and strategic decisions dating back decades.
Yellow has racked up hefty bills over the years. As of late March, Yellow had an outstanding debt of about $1.5 billion. Of that, $729.2 million was owed to the federal government.
(Additional reporting...)
Yellow Is Shutting Down and Headed for Bankruptcy
UNDATED (KPR / Various Media) — One of the nation’s largest and oldest trucking companies is filing for bankruptcy, and nearly 1,000 employees in the Kansas City area could be laid off as a result. The Wall Street Journal reports that Yellow Corporation ceased operations Sunday. The Teamsters Union, which represents 22,000 Yellow employees, announced they received legal notice confirming today that the company was ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy. The nearly 100-year-old company has nearly 30,000 employees worldwide. Until last year, Yellow was based in Overland Park and still maintains a large presence in the Kansas City area. According to the Kansas City Business Journal, as of last month, Yellow had nearly a thousand full-time employees in Kansas City.
(Earlier reporting...)
Yellow Trucking Corporation Headed for Bankruptcy
NEW YORK (AP/WSJ/KPR) — Trucking company Yellow Corporation has shut down operations and is headed for bankruptcy. That's according to the Teamsters Union and multiple media reports. After years of financial struggles, reports of Yellow preparing for bankruptcy emerged last week. The company, once based in Overland Park is now based in Nashville, Tennessee, but keeps a large presence in the Kansas City area, where about 1,000 jobs remain in limbo. The Wall Street Journal reports that Yellow shut down operations on Sunday, following the layoffs of hundreds of non-union employees on Friday. In an announcement early Monday, the Teamsters said that the union received legal notice confirming Yellow was ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy.
==========
Another Bank Fails, this Time in Southwest Kansas
ELKHART, Kan. (ABA Banking Journal) — Another bank has failed, this time in southwest Kansas. On Friday, state regulators closed Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart and named the FDIC as receiver. The FDIC entered into an agreement with Dream First Bank in Syracuse, Kansas, to assume the failed bank’s $130 million in deposits and to purchase all of the bank’s assets. As part of the purchase, the FDIC agreed with Dream First to share losses and potential recoveries on the loans purchased from the failed bank. The ABA Banking Journal reports that this is the fourth bank failure of 2023 and the first community bank to fail this year. The failure is expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $54.2 million.
==========
Hot, Extreme Weather Continues with Summer Only Half Over
UNDATED (AP/KPR) — At about its halfway point, the record-breaking hot summer of 2023 is both unprecedented and unsurprising, featuring killer heat, deadly floods and choking smoke from wildfires. Scientists have been talking about this for a long time. But many of them are particularly worried about warming seawater. And there appears to be no relief in sight. Forecasters predict a hotter than normal August and September. Scientists say the extreme weather is mostly caused by climate change with a bit of help from El Nino.
==========
Critics Attack Evergy's Plan to Raise Electric Rates
TOPEKA, Kan. (KNS) — Critics of Evergy’s plan to hike electricity rates in Kansas warn that higher prices would put the health of elderly people in danger. Evergy says its first increase to base rates in five years is less than the inflation over that time. But Wichita Democratic Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau urged the electricity company to look for ways to help retirees. She says people with fixed incomes can struggle to pay for cooling their homes. Monthly bills would jump about $14 for the average household in the company’s central Kansas region. Average monthly bills would increase about $3.50 for households in and near the Kansas City metro.
Retirees on fixed incomes are upset at Evergy’s proposal to hike rates. At a public hearing, Topeka resident Ella Dawson criticized the company for seeking to increase its annual revenue by more than $200 million. “So what kind of life are you setting for us senior citizens – who have given their whole entire life to the work environment? And we can’t afford to be stockholders. If we could, I would get into it. Buy me some of that stock and get that cash," she said.
Evergy paid out half a billion dollars in dividends last year. The company says its proposal will, in part, help it recover spending on power grid improvements.
==========
Winter Wheat Harvest Finished in Kansas; One of the Smallest Crops in Decades
UNDATED (Brownfield Ag News) — The winter wheat harvest in Kansas has finally wrapped up. The USDA says the vast majority of the crop is now in, about a month behind schedule. When the final figures are released, it's expected to be one of the smallest wheat crops in decades. Meanwhile, according to Brownfield Ag News, the Kansas corn crop is rated 50% good-to-excellent. Soybeans are rated 49% good-to-excellent.
(-Related-)
Kansas Farmers Didn’t Harvest Much Wheat This Season and It Continues to Rain
UNDATED (Brownfield Ag News) — A western Kansas farmer says drought destroyed his entire winter wheat crop and now, it won’t stop raining. Jim Sipes told Brownfield Ag News that the recent moisture was too little too late. “We’ve gone from having the driest three-year period of my lifetime to now having 20 inches of rain since May," he said. But, Sipes says, the rain has his "corn and sorghum crops in good shape, despite extreme weed pressure.”
==========
KBI Investigates Fatal Shooting of Ottawa Man
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) — One man is dead following a fatal shooting in Franklin County. WIBW TV reports that deputies responded to a 911 call about a shooting Friday night (in the 1800 block of John Brown Rd.) in Princeton. Upon arrival, deputies discovered a man suffering from a gunshot wound. He died at the scene. Authorities later identified the victim as 42-year-old Nathan Boggs, of Ottawa. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Ottawa Police Department and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation are all investigating.
==========
Man Arrested in Georgia for Deadly Hit and Run in Western Kansas
DOUGLAS COUNTY, GA. (KSNT) — A man was arrested in Douglas County, Georgia, for leaving the scene of an accident in Kansas that resulted in the death of a 57-year-old man and his 81-year-old father. KSNT reports that 26-year-old Paulo Ivan Garcia was arrested in connection to a case that originally happened in October 2019 in Grant County, Kansas. Garcia was identified as the driver of a semi-truck that failed to yield the right of way to the father-son duo. Garcia then stole a pickup truck from a witness and fled the scene. According to the U.S. Marshals Office, the pickup truck was later found abandoned. Garcia was also wanted for a federal supervised release violation from Wichita.
==========
Kansas Regulators Go After Landfill Beset by Complaints of Fires, Stench
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (Kansas Reflector) — Kansas regulators have instructed a Leavenworth County landfill to stop accepting waste until further notice. The Kansas Reflector reports that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has issued a "cease and desist" letter to the landfill’s operator, Shawn Britz, outlining a series of problems. The landfill is already under scrutiny because of fires and environmental violations and now, state health officials want to shut it down. The letter says the facility, owned by Flat Land Excavating, poses a threat to public health.
The order comes after a fire and a series of violations by the landfill inspired outrage among some neighbors of the landfill in Easton, a small town west of Leavenworth. They said the smell from the landfill was “unbelievable” and complained repeatedly to the state that the facility was forming a massive waste heap before inspectors finally visited the site.
==========
A Community College in KC Teaches Students How to Grow Marijuana
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KC Star) — A community college in Kansas City is teaching students how to grow marijuana. The Kansas City Star reports that Metropolitan Community College has launched three new online classes to help jump-start careers in Missouri’s burgeoning marijuana industry.
MCC is partnering with a California-based company to offer three certificate programs that focus on different aspects of the pot industry: cannabis cultivation specialist, cannabis retail specialist and cannabis extraction & product development specialist. The program covers topics like the relationship between the cannabis plant and human biology, how different products are made, proper dosing and customer service.
==========
Cops Fired for Misconduct Still Allowed to Work in Kansas Prisons
TOPEKA, Kan. (KNS) — Kansas police officers who lose their law enforcement license for misconduct can still work in the state’s prisons or jails. Some groups want to change that. One former Lawrence Police Officer was charged with a crime after becoming violent with his wife. He lost his job with the police department but got a job working at the Shawnee County Jail. That’s because police officers have a more stringent hiring process - one that requires them to have an active police license. Jails and prisons have fewer requirements. Lauren Bonds is the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project. She says corrections and police officers should be held to the same standard. “Certification of correction officers in jails and prisons makes as much sense as it does for certification of police officers who are working out in the community," she said. State lawmakers have not shown much interest in boosting requirements for corrections officers. The state doesn’t track what jobs former police officers take, so it isn’t clear how many go on to work as corrections officers.
==========
Missouri Governor Rejects Mercy Plea from Man Set to be Executed for Killing 6-Year-Old Girl
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Governor Mike Parson has denied a clemency request from a man scheduled to be executed for the 2002 death of a 6-year-old girl in St. Louis County. Johnny Johnson is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Tuesday for the murder of Casey Williamson. Johnson's attorneys had asked for mercy while asserting that Johnson is mentally incompetent to understand the reason why he is being put to death. Parson said Johnson's crime was "horrific" and that he had received numerous letters seeking justice for Casey. Johnson would be the fourth person executed this year in Missouri, and the 16th nationally. Requests to halt Tuesday evening's planned execution still are pending with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Casey's mother had been best friends in childhood with Johnson's older sister and had even helped babysit him. After Johnson attended a barbecue the night before the killing, Casey's family let him sleep on a couch in the home where they also were sleeping. In the morning, Johnson lured the girl to the abandoned factory, even carrying her on his shoulders on the walk to the dilapidated site. When he tried to sexually assault her, Casey screamed and tried to break free. According to court documents, he killed her with a brick and a large rock, then washed off in the nearby Meramec River. Johnson confessed that same day to the crimes, according to authorities. After a search involving first responders and volunteers, Casey's body was found in a pit less than a mile from her home, buried beneath rocks and debris.
At Johnson's trial, defense lawyers presented testimony showing that their client — an ex-convict who had been released from a state psychiatric facility six months earlier — had stopped taking his schizophrenia medication and was acting strangely in the days before the slaying. In recent appeals, Johnson's attorneys have said he has delusions about the devil using his death to bring about the end of the world. They also noted he had been placed on suicide watch in prison a couple years ago after claiming to be a vampire.
In June, the Missouri Supreme Court denied an appeal seeking to block the execution on arguments that Johnson's schizophrenia prevented him from understanding the link between his crime and the punishment. The Missouri Attorney General's Office successfully challenged the credibility of the psychiatric evaluation and said medical records indicate that Johnson is able to manage his mental illness through medication. A three-judge federal appeals court panel last week temporary halted the planned execution, but the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it. Johnson's attorneys then filed multiple appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court centered around his competency to be executed.
==========
Transgender Former Student Sues Missouri School over Use of Bathrooms
PLATTE COUNTY, Mo. (AP/KPR) — A transgender former student sued a Missouri school district on Monday for forcing her to use the boys' bathrooms or the high school's only single-stall bathroom. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued Platte County R-3 School District on behalf of the transgender former student, who identifies as femail. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff is identified only as R.F. The former student received detention twice for using the girls' restroom, according to the lawsuit. She said a male classmate harassed her and threatened her with rape when she used the boys' bathroom. The lawsuit argues the school violated her rights by requiring her to use the bathroom that aligned with her sex assigned at birth (which was male) or the school's single-stall gender-neutral bathroom.
"Forcing transgender students to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their sex designated at birth is not only discrimination but dangerous and causes serious harm to Missouri's youth," said Gillian Wilcox, deputy director of litigation at the ACLU of Missouri, in a statement.
Superintendent Jay Harris said in a statement that the district is "in the early stages of evaluating the legal claims" but plans to provide more information soon. "The District's focus is, and has always been, providing a safe and caring environment for all students," Harris said.
==========
Kansas Population Predicted to Grow but Slowly
WICHITA, Kan. (KNS) — The population of Kansas is forecast to grow more slowly in the next 50 years than previously predicted, according to a new report. A Wichita State economic research center predicted the population of Kansas will grow on average about 0.3% annually in the next 50 years. Previous predictions estimated 0.4%. Several factors are slowing growth, including more competition for labor, the departure of retirees from Kansas and a changing fertility rate. Jeremy Hill, an economist at Wichita State University, says the area has had an outmigration of working age females. Meanwhile, the 65-and-up age group is expected to have the highest growth rate in Kansas. Minority populations are also expected to grow much more quickly than the white population.
==========
Shawnee County Deploying Goats to Manage Invasive Weeds in Parks
TOPEKA (KSNT) — Shawnee County Parks and Recreation is trying a new approach in the battle against invasive plants. KSNT reports that the city has imported 77 goats from Longton, west of Independence in southeast Kansas . The animals will be put to work eliminating weeds, bamboo and other invasive plants in the Lindbloom Park south of Lake Shawnee. The park features steep slopes that are difficult to manage with typical maintenance equipment. The department says the goats eat as much as 5% of their body weight in foliage every day while their feet aerate the soil, and their droppings are full of nutrients. The so-called “Warrior Goats” will be at work in Lindbloom Park through Thursday.
==========
Program Makes Internet Access More Affordable for Residents of Kansas and Missouri
LAWRENCE, Kan. (KPR) — The cost of broadband internet service can be a barrier for low-income families. But there is a federal program that can lower the cost by $30 a month. The Affordable Connectivity Program was passed by Congress last year to provide low-income households with a monthly credit to help offset the cost of high speed internet service. Aaron Deacon, Managing Director of the group KC Digital Drive, says not enough people are taking advantage of the program. “We have a lot of good providers and a lot of good network capacity and a lot of people don’t know that you can get this support to make that monthly broadband bill more affordable.” The program is available to low-income residents of Kansas and Missouri, including those who receive SNAP benefits, Pell grants or who qualify for the WIC program. More information at the FCC’s website at FCC.gov.
==========
GOP Presidential Candidate and Florida Governor Coming to KC
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KMBC) — Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is coming to Kansas City for a fundraiser next month. The event will be held Tuesday, August 8 at noon. KMBC TV reports the luncheon fundraiser will be pricey. The VIP reception is $6,600 per person. The cost of the lunch itself is $3,300 per person.
==========
Mega Millions Jackpot Soars to More Than $1 Billion
LAWRENCE, Kan. (KPR) — Tuesday night's Mega Millions lottery jackpot has climbed to more than $1 billion. There have been no jackpot winners since April, pushing the grand prize up to an estimated $1.05 billion, which is tied for the fourth-largest prize in the lottery's history. The next jackpot drawing takes place Tuesday night. Odds of winning are extremely low, at about 1 in 303 million.
The winning numbers from the most recent drawing on Friday, July 28 were: 5, 10, 28, 52 and 63. The Mega Ball was 18 and the Megaplier was 5X.
==========
Brain Fog and Other Long COVID Symptoms Become Focus of New Small Treatment Studies
WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Institutes of Health is starting some studies to test possible treatments for long COVID. Millions of people re estimated to have the mysterious condition. The studies are small but each will tackle multiple possible therapies for things like brain fog, sleep disturbances and the theory that lingering virus may be at least partly to blame. The studies are part of the RECOVER project, which had to unravel what the most common and burdensome symptoms of long COVID are before doing studies.
==========
Remains of WWII Veteran Finally Laid to Rest in Kansas
PLAINS, Kan. (KAKE) — The remains of a Kansas WWII veteran killed in World War II will be laid to rest today (TUE), 80 years after he was killed in action. U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sgt. Robert C. Elliott, of Plains, Kansas, died during a bombing mission in Romania. He was killed August 1, 1943 when his plane was hit by enemy fire. Elliot was just 24-years-old. His remains could not be identified at the time. KAKE TV reports that Elliot's remains were finally identified in February. Sgt. Robert Elliott will be interred at Plains Cemetery today (TUE), exactly 80 years to the day after he was killed.
==========
This summary of area news is curated by KPR news staffers, including J. Schafer, Laura Lorson, Tom Parkinson and Kaye McIntyre. Our headlines are generally posted by 10 amweekdays and updated throughout the day. These ad-free headlines are made possible by KPR members. Become one today. You can also follow KPR News on Twitter.