Wire
Black Friday shoppers out in force, but cautious
Anne D’Innocenzio AP Retail Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers, who had snapped their wallets shut since September, turned out in force Friday to grab deals on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, but it was clear worries about the economy tempered buying. Preliminary reports from several major retailers including Macy’s and Toys “R” Us said that crowds were at least as large as last year’s, but many shoppers sounded notes of ca...
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Poor economy takes toll on sales
WICHITA (AP) — Pharmaceutical rep Alisha Ontiberos works in her office, the front seat of her van parked near a Wichita medical facility. In early June, she learned in a conference call that she was losing her job as a pharmaceuticals sales representative. That put the Wichitan among thousands of sales reps who’ve been laid off this year. This month, GlaxoSmithKline said it was cutting its U.S. sales force by 1,000. Novartis announced a c...
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World Briefs
Obama promotes fiscal restraint as counterpoint to spending plans WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama wants to project fiscal restraint even as his economic team assembles a massive recovery package that could cost several hundred billion dollars. A day after introducing the captains of his economic team and promoting a giant jobs plan, Obama on Tuesday was to lay out his budget belt-tightening vision. The dual images — big spender...
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Deer endanger KC area park
SHAWNEE (AP) — The deer population is so dense in one suburban Kansas City park that it could pose a threat to other wildlife, the ecosystem and the health of people who visit the park. Shawnee Mission Park spans about 1,280 acres and is part of two suburbs in Johnson County, the state’s most populous county. Wildlife officials say that is possibly the highest deer density in the country. Lloyd Fox is big-game program coordinator for the K...
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Oddities
Man’s idea to break ATM less than smashing LEAVENWORTH (AP) — Police in Leavenworth, Kan., say a thief who tried to bust an ATM open like a giant piggy bank is lucky to be in one piece himself. They say the 49-year-old pried an ATM loose from a credit union early Sunday by using a stolen skid loader. Then, in a bid to break open the 3,000-pound cash machine, the man used the skid loader to drop it down a 50-foot wooded embankment. Police ...
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Screenwriter to begin filming Kansas movie
‘Love letter’ to state will film around Lindsborg SALINA (AP) — After four years of waiting, a Lawrence-based screenwriter is about to bring his love to life. Next week, crews will begin filming J.T. O’Neal’s “Au Pair, Kansas” at locations around Lindsborg in central Kansas. O’Neal calls the film his “love letter” and knew that if he sold it to Hollywood that the film never would have been shot in Kansas. “And this is about Kansas. This ...
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Celebrities
NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce says her parents prepared her for the hard work of marriage. In an interview in the latest issue of Giant, the 27-year-old singer talks about getting hitched to Jay-Z. She says she doesn’t have a fantasy view of marriage. That’s because she’s seen her parents, Matthew and Tina Knowles, struggle but stick through it. Says Beyonce: “My parents are tighter now than ever, but they’ve been through it all. There were time...
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Home sales slide 8 percent in Midwest in October
Alan Zibel AP Real Estate Writer Existing home sales in the Midwest fell 9 percent in October compared with a year ago as consumers got increasingly nervous about the sinking economy and deteriorating fortunes of Detroit’s automakers, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. The median sale price in the region slid 6.7 percent to $149,400. Nationally, by comparison, home sales fell less than 1 percent, without adjusting for seas...
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Bush pardons 14 individuals as end of presidency nears
Sitting president has given out less than half as many as Reagan, Clinton Deb Riechmann Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — President George W. Bush has granted pardons to 14 individuals and commuted the prison sentences of two others convicted of misdeeds ranging from drug offenses to tax evasion, from wildlife violations to bank embezzlement, The Associated Press learned Monday. The new round of White House pardons are Bush’s fir...
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Kansas discusses closing two El Dorado prisons
DOC seeks to eliminate $18M over next two fiscal years EL DORADO (AP) — Impending budget cuts have prompted the Kansas Department of Corrections to consider closing two minimum-security prisons in El Dorado, although no final decision has been made. “Every aspect of our operation is under review for potential reductions or eliminations in funding” because of state revenue shortfalls, department spokesman Bill Miskell said Friday. The...
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Heloise
Dear Heloise: I read the column about the reader who lives in a hilly, wooded area and the dilemma of an ambulance finding a house in that kind of area. We, too, live in a remote, wooded area, on a lake. After having a heart episode our first year out here, it dawned on us that if it had not been daylight, we would have had the same problem, because there are no streetlights of any sort out here, and it is hard to read the numbers on the m...
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Celebrities
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Oprah Winfrey wants a court to dismiss or order arbitration in a defamation lawsuit filed by the ex-headmistress of her girls school in South Africa. Nomvuyo Mzamane sued over remarks the media mogul made following sex-abuse complaints at the $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, near Johannesburg. A dorm matron who worked under Mzamane was charged with abusing six students last year. According to the ...
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World Briefly
Government unveils plan to rescue Citigroup, including taking $20 billion stake in the firm WASHINGTON (AP) — Rushing to rescue Citigroup, the government agreed to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in possible losses at the stricken bank and to plow a fresh $20 billion into the company. Regulators hope the dramatic action will bolster badly shaken confidence in the once-mighty banking giant as well as the nation’s financial system,...
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Obama gets a lauded economic thinker with Lawrence Summers
Glen Johnson Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) — As Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers was famous for wolfing down a bag of Cheetos and polishing them off with a can of Diet Coke. The tip-off was the patina of orange dust on his suit. Outward appearances can be deceiving when it comes to Summers, a lauded economist who became president of Harvard University, only to resign after some faculty members accused him of harboring sexist thought...
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Oddities
NC carjacking suspect clubbed with frozen turkey RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Stopped. Cold turkey. North Carolina authorities say a shopper clubbed an alleged carjacker with a frozen turkey as he tried to steal a woman’s car in a grocery store parking lot Sunday. Police say 30-year-old Fred Louis Ervin of Raleigh stole money from a gas station before running across the street to a Harris Teeter store in a town just south of Raleigh. Garner polic...
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Ask Amy
Dear Amy: My husband was in a work-related accident, resulting in severe brain damage. The doctors say he will never be the same. Before the accident, my children talked to us about everything; we were a very close family. My two children and I have had a very difficult time dealing with this tragedy. My youngest child is 7, and he has been doing a good job in communicating his problems with me. He has had a difficult time, but I believe he...
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‘Mind spa’: This is your brain on exercise
Rasha Madkour Associated Press Writer SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — Seniors in this retirement hotspot diligently packed the local Y, sweating to keep their bodies in shape. But after their workout, several couldn’t remember where they put their car keys. Watching this scenario unfold, neurotherapist George Rozelle thought: Wouldn’t it be great to have a health club where people could keep their brains fit? And so it was born: the Neurobics Club....
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Kansas universities Army ROTC numbers up
TOPEKA (AP) — While many new students are donning Kansas college colors this fall, more are also wearing green. Officials at the University of Kansas and at Kansas State report an increase of at least 20 percent in the number of Army ROTC cadets on campus this semester. Nationally, there are 30,721 Army ROTC cadets. Enrollment at Kansas State’s Manhattan campus, which is within 30 minutes of Fort Riley and the 1st Infantry Division, is 155 th...
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Topekans reflect on 20th anniversary of tornado
TOPEKA (AP) — A strange feel was in the air that Tuesday morning 20 years ago, a heaviness and mugginess not typical of mid-November. It felt like tornado weather. But that couldn’t be. Tornadoes only hit Kansas in the spring and early summer, not the fall. As Topekans found out in the early afternoon of Nov. 15, 1988, tornadoes can strike anytime, anyplace and in any month whether warning sirens sound or not. About 2 p.m. that day, an F...
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Charges dismissed in football bar fight
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Allen Beckett said he was just enjoying a beer at his favorite Oklahoma City bar in June 2007 when a young man wearing a University of Texas T-shirt strolled in. Beckett, a 54-year-old federal auditor and church deacon, said he good-naturedly ribbed the man, saying the Longhorn emblem on his shirt was upside down. What ensued a short time later was a bar fight that left the Texas fan nearly castrated with an injury to ...
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