KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) The Kansas City Royals have signed right-hander Kyle Zimmer, their first-round choice out of San Francisco, to a contract that includes a $3 million signing bonus. The Royals announced the deal Thursday, less than three days after they made Zimmer the #5 overall pick in Major League Baseball’s first-year player draft. The early signing is a departure from previous years, when high draft picks often waited until just before an August deadline. The new collective bargaining agreement has moved up the deadline to July 13 and created a slotting system to help speed along negotiations. The…
Author: KMAN Staff
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Three federal judges have set new political boundaries for Kansas, making a change in congressional districts that many Republican legislators have opposed. The ruling also directly impacts Manhattan. The panel issued an order Thursday night in a federal lawsuit filed last month. The judges drew new boundaries for congressional, state House, state Senate and State Board of Education districts because the Republican-dominated Legislature failed to do so. A key change in the state’s congressional map will expand the 1st District of western and central Kansas so that it takes in Manhattan, home to Kansas State University. Many…
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Budget requests for fiscal year 2013 dominated the discussion at Thursday’s Riley County Commission meeting. Department heads from five county agencies were on hand to make their requests. Robbin Cole, director of Pawnee Mental Health Services, asked the commission for a 5 percent increase in funding. “It would be both a reasonable and generous increase for our organization for serving the citizens of Riley County,” Cole said. Pawnee has received $225,785 from the county in each of the past four years. The increase would bring the county’s overall appropriation to $237,075. Extension director Jennifer Wilson made requests on…
HAYS, Kan. (AP) A man accused of shooting a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper last year has pleaded no contest to reduced charges. The Hays Daily News reports Trooper Doug Schulte was in the Ellis County courtroom Wednesday as Ruben Herrera Escobedo entered the pleas to aggravated battery and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. He was initially charged with attempted premeditated first-degree murder. Schulte was wounded in January 2011 after stopping Escobedo on a traffic violation in Hays. Investigators said Escobedo got out of his pickup truck and shot the trooper in the chest with a .357-caliber revolver. The…
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) The self-proclaimed leader of a Kansas commune that lived off life insurance payouts of its dead members has been ordered to stand trial on a charge of premeditated first-degree murder. Sedgwick County District Judge Clark Owens entered the order Thursday at the end of a preliminary hearing for 52-year-old Daniel U. Perez. Perez is accused in the 2003 death of Patricia Hughes at a compound near Wichita. It was initially listed as accidental. Defense lawyers contended there was not enough evidence to put Perez on trial. Owens disagreed and scheduled a jury trial for July 30. Perez…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Although the state’s new budget restores $700,000 in funding for the arts, it will be at least a year before federal and regional matching funds will return to Kansas. Mary Kennedy, executive director of the Mid-America Arts Alliance, says Kansas won’t get any matching funds in fiscal 2013. She says the state also won’t get any federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts in the next fiscal year. She says it will take a year to go through the process needed to return the funds to the state. Gov. Sam Brownback last Friday signed the…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A Republican state senator is being questioned in a Kansas district attorney’s investigation into private meetings that lawmakers had with GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. Sen. Bob Marshall of Fort Scott was being questioned Thursday at Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor’s office at the county courthouse. Taylor, a Democrat, subpoenaed Marshall and six other Republican legislators. Taylor is investigating seven dinner meetings Brownback had in January with legislators at Cedar Crest, the governor’s official residence. The governor invited more than 90 of the legislature’s 165 members, grouping them by committee. Almost all were Republicans. Marshall’s interview with…
HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) Hutchinson’s first sculpture walk is starting to take shape. The first of six sculptures planned for the walk was installed Wednesday. The sculpture by Georgia artist Gregory Johnson is called “Rival Readers.” It’s a 300-pound bronze sculpture of a boy reading a book with a little girl looking over his shoulder. The Hutchinson News reports five more sculptures will be installed before the official launch of the sculpture walk on June 21. The sculptures will be on display for the next year. Visitors to the sculpture walk will vote for the “People’s Choice” award. The city will…