BY DAVE SKRETTA KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Chiefs backup B.J. Thompson was taken to a hospital in stable condition Thursday after the defensive lineman experienced a cardiac event during a team meeting, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press. The person, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the event, said team trainers and medical staff were able to react quickly and treat Thompson until paramedics arrived. The Chiefs planned to wrap up their voluntary offseason workouts on Thursday, but a team spokesman said the practice…
Author: AP News
BY JOHN HANNA TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Kansas legislators have intensified efforts to woo the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs by offering to let the professional football franchise shape a plan for using state bonds to finance a new stadium in Kansas. Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson said in a statement Tuesday that the Legislature would consider the proposal during a special session set to convene June 18. They invited the Chiefs “to weigh in on” the plan in a letter May 23 to Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, with the leaders released Tuesday. Their…
BY MARGERY A. BECK (AP) The Kansas Supreme Court offered a mixed bag in a ruling Friday that combined several challenges to a 2021 election law, siding with state officials on one provision, reviving challenges to others and offering the possibility that at least one will be halted before this year’s general election. But it was the ballot signature verification measure’s majority opinion — which stated there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights — that drew fiery dissent from three of the court’s seven justices. The measure requires election officials to match the…
BY HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH AND THOMAS PEIPERT LOVELAND, Colo. (AP) — As he coats a mold of Jackie Robinson with wax, metalsmith Alex Haines reflected on the extra importance of a project that will soon give the city of Wichita, Kansas, a replacement bronze statue of the baseball icon after thieves brazenly destroyed the original. “Many sculptures come through here,” said Haines at the Art Castings studio in Loveland, Colorado, where the original statue was cast. “Some are a little bit more important than others. And this is definitely one of them.” It all started in January, when thieves cut the original…
BY KEN MILLER The bodies of two Kansas women who disappeared in Oklahoma were found in a buried freezer, according to recently unsealed court documents. The bodies of Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, both of Hugoton, Kansas, were found April 14 buried on land in rural Texas County rented by Tad Cullum, who is among five people charged with kidnapping and killing the two women, according to documents filed May 15. Also found on the land, which Cullum rented for cattle grazing, were articles of clothing, duct tape and a knife, each “with possible blood on them,” in addition to black tape,…
BY PETER SMITH AND HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker may have stirred controversy in some quarters for his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism on Saturday, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the May 11 commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. The fast-growing college is part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice — part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church. Butker’s 20-minute speech hit several cultural flashpoints. Butker, a conservative Catholic himself, dismissed Pride month as consisting of the “deadly…
By Heather Hollingsworth TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The lesson on diversity started slowly in a first-grade classroom in Topeka, where schools were at the center of the case that struck down segregated education. “I like broccoli. Do you like broccoli?” Marie Carter, a Black school library worker, asked broccoli-hating librarian Amy Gugelman, who is white. The students in the sunny, book-filled room were comparing what makes them the same and what makes them different. It’s part of their introduction to Brown v. Board of Education, a ruling commemorated at a national historic site in a former all-Black school just down the…
By Will Pry IOWA TRIBE OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA RESERVATION, Kansas (AP) — When one of the elders in the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska asked if he could keep bees on the reservation, Tim Rhodd’s answer was straightforward: “Absolutely.” Soon, the bees started buzzing in the alfalfa fields. Then they started pollinating. Then they all died. “Once we started looking into it, we found there was a chemical (class) called neonicotinoid that caused the death of these bees,” said Rhodd, the tribe’s chairperson. “That was the very, very first part of what I had seen that we were…
BY JOE REEDY Netflix and the NFL announced a three-year deal Wednesday to stream games on Christmas Day. The streaming giant will carry two games this year and at least one game in 2025 and ‘26. Defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City will face Pittsburgh in the first game, followed by Baltimore at Houston. The NFL has played a total of 30 games on Christmas Day since 1971, including three last year. It has stayed away from midweek games, though, until this year’s Christmas slate. Hans Schroeder, the executive vice president of NFL Media, said team owners meeting in March were…
BY DAVID A. LIEB Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a measure Wednesday that could have earmarked up to $5 million for gun-detection systems in schools while expressing concern that it could have benefitted only one particular company. Kelly’s line-item veto leaves in place $5 million for school safety grants but deletes specific wording that she said would have essentially converted the program “into a no-bid contract” by eliminating “nearly all potential competition.” The company that stood to benefit is ZeroEyes, a firm founded by military veterans after the fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. ZeroEyes uses surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence…