By Morgan Chilson TOPEKA — Kansas communities exploring data center development must put policies in place to protect residents, the environment and long-term economic growth before building begins, national experts say. Mike Turner, a Loudoun County, Virginia, county official, learned about holding data centers accountable through “painful lessons.” Loudoun County is often called “data center alley,” with 70% of the world’s internet traffic going through 253 data centers located there. Turner wrote a white paper about what government entities should consider before approving a data center. “The 15 best practices are based on six factors that you have to address…
Author: Kansas Reflector
By Anna Kaminski TOPEKA — The parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram agreed to one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in American history, paying $17.1 billion to most U.S. states and territories and promising to implement sweeping safety features to protect kids. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said Wednesday the state’s $134 million portion of the settlement with Meta “marks a down payment on an industry-wide transformation that will finally prioritize our children’s well-being over corporate profits.” “For too long, Meta deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook with addictive features that preyed on kids’ developing brains, exposed them…
By Morgan Chilson TOPEKA — A west-central Kansas school superintendent faces 10 charges including misuse of public funds, contributing to child misconduct by encouraging commission of a felony, and witness intimidation. Jeff Michael Jones, of Ransom, was arrested at 1 p.m. Friday and released just before 7 p.m., according to a booking sheet from Ness County Sheriff Brandon Mitchell. Jones has been superintendent for Western Plains Unified School District 106 since July 2015, according to his LinkedIn page. In a statement Friday, Ness County Attorney Jacob Gayer identified the person arrested at Western Plains High School only as an adult…
By Morgan Chilson The $1.25 billion biocontainment facility in Manhattan developed for cutting-edge research on the most dangerous animal diseases is not fully operational three years after its ribbon-cutting, a federal report determined. The Office of Inspector General published a July report stating the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility isn’t able to perform the high-level animal disease science it was designed for. The facility wasn’t appropriately configured by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the report said. DHS transferred the facility to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February 2024, which accepted it without a complete commissioning report, a move that ultimately…
By Amanda Watford When young children and teenagers get into trouble, the question often comes quickly: Where were their parents? That question is again shaping public policy in communities across the country, as state and local lawmakers and prosecutors increasingly look for ways to respond to concerns about youth crime and public disorder. Some proposals would strengthen enforcement of existing laws that allow parents to be fined or otherwise held responsible for their children’s conduct. Others would impose youth curfews or establish new requirements for parents to perform community service or pay fines — measures considered in places such as…
By Amanda Watford Flock Safety is tightening privacy and oversight controls for its nationwide network of automated license plate readers as more communities pull back from the technology and lawmakers across the political spectrum push for new restrictions. The company announced Thursday that it will recommend that police agencies retain license plate reader data for seven days, down from 30, while adding tools to restrict data sharing between agencies and detect potentially abusive searches. Flock also plans to require law enforcement users to associate searches with case codes and automatically suspend users whose activity is flagged as abnormal. The changes come amid…
By Sherman Smith TOPEKA — Phyllis Zorn, the reporter whose acts of journalism served as an excuse for the August 2023 police raid of the Marion County Record, will get $850,000 from the city of Marion to settle her federal lawsuit over the raid. Attorneys for Zorn and the city filed a motion Tuesday, exactly three years after the raid, to dismiss the case. Kansas Reflector reviewed a copy of the settlement agreement, which has not been entered into the court record. Zorn said her long national nightmare is over. “I’ve always been a fairly private person,” Zorn said. “It’s…
Beatty: Trump’s endorsement pivotal to Masterson’s primary victory By Tim Carpenter TOPEKA — Roger Marshall and Adam Hamilton will test in November the legacy of nearly a century of partisan dominance by Republicans over Democrats in U.S. Senate elections in Kansas. Marshall, the Republican seeking reelection as a loyalist of President Donald Trump, easily brushed aside his August primary opponent. He faces a serious general election challenge from Hamilton, who founded the largest United Methodist church in the United States, proved to be a prolific political fundraiser and won the 11-candidate Democratic primary. Slotting Hamilton against Marshall on the November…
By Morgan Chilson TOPEKA — Kansas is on course for its smallest winter wheat harvest since the 1950s, with a July report showing the state’s farmers are expected to produce almost half the number of bushels they did at the same time last year, an expert said. A July 10 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected 196 million bushels for the Kansas winter wheat harvest, down from nearly 347 million last year, said Dan O’Brien, agricultural economist and Kansas State University professor. Nationally, winter wheat production is expected to be 471 million bushels, O’Brien said, compared with last…
By Anna Kaminiski TOPEKA — Where traditional polling has been quiet, online prediction markets ahead of Kansas’ primary election show who is favored to win key races, offering a glimpse into voter behavior hours before polls close. Polymarket and Kalshi — the two largest platforms where bettors can weigh the likelihood of candidates’ success — show people have wagered almost $800,000 on Kansas primary races. Across both platforms, people thought Ty Masterson would be the Republican gubernatorial primary winner, Cindy Holscher the Democratic gubernatorial winner, and Adam Hamilton the Democratic winner in the U.S. Senate primary. Across just those three…