John Hanna, Associated Press
Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, February 2014.
TOPEKA (AP) A proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution cleared its first hurdle in the Legislature on Tuesday as abortion opponents moved quickly to try to get it on the ballot.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the measure on a voice vote, sending it to the full Senate for debate, possibly later this week. The proposed amendment would overturn a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state constitution.
A House committee could vote on its own version Thursday. It’s the second week of lawmakers’ annual 90-day session.
John Hanna, Associated Press
Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, February 2014.
TOPEKA (AP) Kansas legislators prepared Monday to open their annual session with new leaders in the Senate and new lawmakers in a quarter of the seats.
The afternoon House and Senate sessions were for swearing in members and ratifying Republican lawmakers’ selection of the House speaker and speaker pro tem and the Senate president and vice president. Because those positions are mentioned in the Kansas Constitution, the full chamber must vote on them, but by tradition, approval of the majority party’s choice is a formality.
The new Senate president and majority leader are Wichita-area Republicans Ty Masterson and Gene Suellentrop. The new minority leader is Lenexa Democrat Dinah Sykes.
Thomas S. Fritzel leaves the Frank Carlson Federal Courthouse in Topeka, Kan. on Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018.
After serving four months of his one-year sentence in a federal prison, Lawrence developer and four-time felon Thomas Fritzel has been transferred to a reentry program that is designed to help him transition back to the community upon his upcoming release.
Fritzel began serving his sentence at the minimum-security federal prison camp in Yankton, S.D., on Aug. 25, and the Bureau of Prisons database reflected that he had been moved to the Residential Reentry Management program in Kansas City, Kan., sometime in the past week. As part of such programs, the BOP contracts with residential reentry centers, also known halfway houses, to help inmates nearing release transition back to the community, according to the BOP website.
Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured on May 3, 2016.
Though the total number of COVID-19 cases among City of Lawrence employees since the beginning of the pandemic nearly doubled in the past month, the increase is not due to transmission of the virus in the workplace.
The city’s monthly update regarding cases indicates a cumulative 87 cases among full-time and part-time city staff since the pandemic began, including 10 active cases. There had been 47 cases total in the city’s December update, meaning 40 cases, or about 46% of all cases since the pandemic began, occurred in the past month. However, the increase is not due to spread among city workers, meaning there are no outbreaks associated with any city departments or buildings.
Staff Report
photo by: Orlin Wagner
Big Jay shows off his face mask during the Jayhawks football game against Oklahoma State on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020 at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
2020 will always be remembered as the year of the coronavirus pandemic, which, to date, has infected nearly 20 million Americans and killed more than 340,000, including more than 2,500 Kansans.
It will be the story of 2021 as well, and for many of us, the story of our lifetimes. The deadly virus not only relentlessly dominated headlines for 10 months of the year but also affected virtually every aspect of our community and the way we live our daily lives how we interact socially, how we work and attend school, how we entertain ourselves, how our local governments operate and how our businesses and the economy function.