Wire
Heloise
FOR RELEASE SATURDAY, JULY 5, 2008 Dear Heloise: A couple more thoughts on our pPets riding with usETS RIDING WITH USin vehicles. Even an enclosed sport utility vehicle or car can pose certain hazards that we might not think of. My golden retriever/Lab mix is a very well-behaved traveler, and I drive a small vehicle with limited options for securing her while on the road. Once, while driving on the freeway, she was trying to r...
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Sebelius kicks off talks of new education council
John Hanna Associated Press Writer TOPEKA (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius says the state needs to improve its coordination of education programs from preschool through graduate school. She also worries that the education system has gaps, where students fail or leave school and don’t live up to their full potential. She said the state needs to identify those gaps and address them. The governor raised those issues during the first meeting Thursda...
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SEK animal cruelty case dismissed
GIRARD (AP) — A court has dismissed charges against a southeast Kansas man accused of starving three bulldogs found in his freezer because the case didn’t go to trial quickly enough. Andrew Romanzi had been charged with four misdemeanor counts of cruelty. The Crawford County District Court dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the state can’t refile the charges. The charges were dismissed because the Crawford County prosecutor’s office f...
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Celebrities
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A rape charge against Rikki Rockett has been dropped after authorities determined that the Poison drummer was not in the state at the time of the alleged crime. Authorities say they are now looking for a man with a history of passing himself off as a rock musician to pick up women. Rockett was accused of raping a woman at a central Mississippi casino in September 2007 and arrested in March. The Neshoba County district...
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Oddities
Potato-laden runaway tractor rolls down hill and crushes car BERLIN (AP) — A farmer in Germany has learned a harsh lesson about the dangers of smoking. While he ducked into a convenience store to buy cigarettes, his parked tractor and its load of 25 tons of potatoes went rolling down a hill — and over a parked car. Police say the emergency brake came loose while the farmer was in the store, and the tractor and its two trailers barreled 30 yar...
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Oddities
Two-meter catfish chokes on soccer ball in German canal BERLIN (AP) — A massive catfish has apparently choked to death after trying to chow down a soccer ball in a Bavarian canal. German police say the unfortunate two-yard-long fish was found dead Monday, floating on the surface with a blue-and-white ball in its mouth. “He tried to eat the ball and it got stuck,” police spokesman Karl-Heinz Kuberlein said Tuesday. Did the Euro 2008 socc...
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Heloise
FOR RELEASE WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 2008 Dear Heloise: Your recipe for no-mix cherry pineapple nut cakeNO-MIX CHERRY PINEAPPLE NUT CAKEis known to me as “dump cake,” because you just dump the ingredients into the pan. It also can be made with other fruit combinations, like pineapple/ strawberry, pineapple/apple, pineapple/ blueberry, apple/cherry, etc. I serve it warm with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream. -- Faith, Baton Rouge, La. ...
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Celebrities
NEW YORK (AP) — Boy George’s plans for a North American tour have run into some bad karma. The Culture Club singer, whose given name is George O’Dowd, has canceled his summer plans after U.S. authorities denied him a visa to enter the country. O’Dowd, 47, had planned to officially kick off his 25-city tour in Aspen, Colo., on July 10, and was to throw in a free concert at the New York City Department of Sanitation’s Family Day in August. H...
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Ask Amy
Dear Amy: I am a 50-year-old woman and have been asked about my ethnicity all my life. I am not sure how to answer the question. I see that presidential candidate Barack Obama probably has had identity issues much the same as mine. My German mother fell in love with a Hispanic man, and I am the product of that union. My father didn’t stick around, and my mother fell in love with another man from a Pacific Island. She married him, and becaus...
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World Briefs
Pentagon announced charges in 2000 bombing of USS Cole, 2002 attack on French oil tanker WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Monday it is charging a Saudi Arabian with “organizing and directing” the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole — and will seek the death penalty. Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal adviser to the U.S. military tribunal system, said charges are being sworn against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, who has...
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USDA funds repairs to Greensburg’s courthouse
TOPEKA (AP) — Funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will help Greensburg repair its county courthouse and build new homes. The USDA announced Monday that Kiowa County had received more than $2.2 million in aid to help repair the courthouse. Greensburg is the county seat. More than 90 percent of the town was destroyed by a tornado on May 4, 2007. The courthouse remained standing but was heavily damaged. The USDA also announced that...
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California firefighters battle wildfires
Scott Lindlaw Associated Press Writer SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two of Northern California’s more than 1,400 wildfires choked parts of the Sierra Nevada foothills, darkening parts of a 100-mile stretch between Sacramento and Reno with clouds of black smoke. The fires in the Tahoe National Forest blanketed portions of the Interstate 80 corridor linking the two cities and the foothill communities in between where tens of thousands of people live...
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Oddities
Mich. woman gets back ring she lost in lake in ’54 LUDINGTON, Mich. (AP) — A woman who lost her class ring in Lake Michigan in 1954 has it back, thanks to a metal-detector hobbyist. Robert Savage told the Ludington Daily News for a story Saturday that he found the ring about 12 years ago but only recently began looking for its owner. He did a bit of detective work by looking at the initials and the year on the ring. He found a Ludington H...
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Smog could boost Wichita gas prices
WICHITA (AP) — Environmental officials say fuel prices in south-central Kansas could rise even faster than they already are in coming years if air quality doesn’t improve. The region, which has struggled with meeting federal air-quality standards, is in danger of joining the Kansas City metropolitan area in mandatory smog-reduction practices, including the use of low-emission gasoline blends. Those types of blends add about 2 cents per gallon...
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Judge faces allegations of sexual harrassment
TOPEKA (AP) — A state commission has set the stage for a public hearing into allegations of sexual harassment by a district judge. An attorney for Judge Frederick Stewart says the allegations are false. In a notice filed with the commission, an examiner says the alleged conduct occurred between 1999 and 2007 against an administrative assistant. The notice says Stewart has 20 days to respond. A hearing date will be set after that. The 14-...
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Kansas farmers plant more corn, soybeans, sorghum this year
Roxana Hegeman AP Farm Writer WICHITA (AP) — Kansas farmers planted a record number of soybean acres this spring, while also putting more fields into corn and sorghum than a year ago, the National Agricultural Statistics Service said Monday. Kansas growers planted 4.1 million acres into corn, up from 3.9 million a year ago. The bigger corn acreage comes at a time when flooding in the Midwest has inundated some of the nation’s major corn-g...
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Celebrities
NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn’t Teri Hatcher who made a big impression on schoolchildren in Nairobi, Kenya. It was her 10-year-old daughter, Emerson Rose. Hatcher and Emerson visited a boarding school where the students hit it off with the California tween. “They loved my daughter,” Hatcher, one of the stars of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Tanzania. The 43-year-old actress recalled a moment w...
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Students research Wichita Indian village
Artifacts will be housed at OU’s Sam Noble Museum after lab work ARKANSAS CITY (AP) — Student archaeologists working to find artifacts of a 18th century Indian village in northern Oklahoma are digging through muddy conditions to uncover the area’s history. They bagged flint rock tools this week while researching three circular fortification ditches, which might have been used as protection against enemies and bad weather as the site was ...
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Celebrities
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paris Hilton is making good on her promise to become a better person. The 27-year-old socialite made an “extremely generous” donation toward the construction of a medical building at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, hospital officials said Thursday, although they did not specify the amount. “The children I have met through my involvement with Childrens Hospital have truly touched my heart,” Hilton said in a statement. “I ...
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With talk of pregnant teens, talk to your kids
With a lot of attention on teen pregnancy these days, parents can use the news to talk about sex and pregnancy with their children: Here are some tips from experts. — Have age-appropriate discussions about sex. Answer their questions openly and honestly. — Talk about teen pregnancy. Ask your kids what they thinks about “Juno” and Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy, says Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplan...
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