Jury convicts man of stealing cattle

A jury has returned a guilty verdict for Wesley Hale, a 61-year-old Douglas County man accused of stealing a neighbor’s cattle.

Hale was convicted of a lesser charge of theft of lost or mislaid property, a misdemeanor. He was originally charged with felony theft of three 7-month-old steers.

Sentencing will be July 8.

Jurors in District Court Judge Michael Malone’s courtroom began deliberating Wednesday morning and returned their verdict Thursday morning.

Hale was charged with stealing cattle from neighbor Gary Blodgett in April 2004 west of Lawrence near the intersection of County Road 1029 and North 1700 Road.

The crime carries maximum jail time of one year.

Crime

No verdict reached in brothers’ drug trial

Jurors did not reach a verdict Thursday after a full day of deliberations in the drug-dealing trial of a former Lawrence High School basketball player and his brother.

Deliberations are expected to resume this morning in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

Former LHS standout Maurice “Mo” Trotter and his brother, Mardell, are charged with a combined 12 counts, including conspiring to distribute crack cocaine, powder cocaine and marijuana within 1,000 feet of Kennedy School, New York School and Central Junior High School.

Lecture series

Salman Rushdie to speak at KU

Author Salman Rushdie, whose criticism of fundamentalist Islam earned him a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, will headline the 2005-06 Humanities Lecture Series at Kansas University.

Rushdie will speak at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6 at the Lied Center. His lecture will discuss contemporary literature, politics, culture and philosophy. His most recent book is “Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002.”

Other speakers scheduled for the lecture series are:

¢ Deborah Lipstadt, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 14 in Woodruff Auditorium of the Kansas Union. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University who will discuss her experience in being unsuccessfully sued for libel by a Holocaust denier.

¢ Samantha Power, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner and founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, will speak on human rights and genocide.

¢ Scott Turow, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16 in Woodruff Auditorium. Turow, an attorney and author of “Presumed Innocent,” will speak on “Confessions of a Death Penalty Agnostic.”

The lectures are sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities. Student Union Activities is a co-sponsor for the Rushdie lecture.

Law school honors Brownback, Murguia

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback and Janet Murguia, a former Kansas University official who now leads the National Council of La Raza, were among the recipients of the KU Law Society Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award last weekend.

Other recipients were Gary Waldron, an attorney in Newport Beach, Calif., and Douglas Wheat, co-founder and president of Haas Wheat and Partners in Dallas.

The award is given annually to KU School of Law graduates who have distinguished themselves in service to the legal profession, their community, the university and the state or country. It is the school’s highest alumni honor.

Free State graduate named memorial scholar

Lawrence Free State High graduate Christopher Trepinski has won the third annual Lisa Ramos Bland Memorial Scholarship.

The $500 award is renewable for three additional years. Trepinski will attend Kansas University beginning next fall.

Bland, who lived in Lawrence, was killed in an automobile accident, Sept. 16, 2000. She was a 17-year employee of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA), based in Lawrence.

The Lisa Ramos Bland Scholarship Program recognizes students who have given their time and talent to improve the lives of Douglas County residents. The scholarship is intended to assist these students with the cost of education beyond high school.

Lawrence resident wins writing awards

Lawrence resident Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg recently was named artist-in-residence at Rocky Mountain National Park for this summer and was awarded the Morris Morrison Education Award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy.

During the artist-in-residence program, she will spend two weeks in the William Allen White Cabin writing and present weekly workshops on writing from nature at the Moraine Park Museum. Mirriam-Goldberg also will donate one of her poems, to be written while at the park, to the museum for its permanent collection.

The education award honors Mirriam-Goldberg for founding and coordinating the Transformative Language Arts program at Goddard College. The Transformative Language Arts program educates people to use writing, drama, storytelling and other forms of the language arts for community building, growth and development.

KU grad named chief of staff at Energy Dept.

A Kansas University graduate has been named chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Eric Burgeson, who received his bachelor’s degree in political science in 1998, most recently served as special assistant to the president and associate director for presidential personnel at the White House.

Before his White House stint, Burgeson served as deputy chief of staff, White House liaison at the Department of Energy and senior policy adviser to former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Burgeson is a native of Hillsdale, Ill.

Moore to hold online Social Security forum

Third District Congressman Dennis Moore will answer questions about Social Security reform in an online town hall meeting June 7.

Moore, a Kansas Democrat, has offered Social Security seminars in each county in his district in recent months. He said he hoped that younger workers in particular would take part in the online forum.

The forum will be from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. To participate, log onto http://demcaucus.townhall.house.gov.

People unable to participate in the forum may submit a question before the discussion. A full transcript of the discussion will be available after June 7.

KPR wins AP awards

Kansas Public Radio was honored last month with five awards from the Associated Press Broadcaster awards.

Peter Hancock, KPR Statehouse bureau chief, swept the “spot news” category, winning first place for a story on vice presidential candidate John Edwards’ campaign stop in Lawrence and second for a story on the debate over gay marriage in Kansas.

Health reporter Bryan Thompson won second place in the “enterprise” category for his report “Arts and Alzheimer’s Disease.” Laura Lorson, news producer, took second place in the “best newscast” category, and J. Schafer, news director, earned honorable mention in that category.

The awards were announced April 23 during a banquet in Kansas City, Mo. KPR, the National Public Radio affiliated based at Kansas University, can be heard at 91.5-FM.

Spill disrupts traffic at busy intersection

A large container of oil that fell off a trailer Thursday morning spilled on Clinton Parkway near Iowa Street, causing a mess and disrupting traffic at one of the city’s busiest intersections.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical were called to the scene, but a private contractor would probably be brought in to finish the job, Lawrence Police Capt. David Cobb said shortly after the accident.

The spill happened about 10:30 a.m., when a 500-gallon oil container slid out a trailer door as the vehicle pulling it made a right turn from Iowa Street, going west onto Clinton Parkway, Cobb said.

Cobb said the driver apparently forgot to shut the door on the lowboy trailer. When he made the right turn, the container rolled out the door and spilled, Cobb said.

Cobb estimated about 250 gallons of oil ended up on the roadway.