From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 12, 1914:

• “A well delivered blow at the High Cost of Living may be expected from the direction of the chemical laboratories of the University of Kansas, according to a recent discovery by Prof. L. E. Sayre, Dean of the School of Pharmacy. Dean Sayre declares that, from experiments already made, oil made from Kansas corn can be substituted for expensive olive oil and cotton seed oil. ‘The cheapness of corn oil suggests the possibility of wise economy in substituting it in place of the more expensive oils wherever this can be done without injury to the product in which it may be employed,’ said Dean Sayre today. ‘Our experiments thus far show the value of this substitution in medicinal preparations. We are continuing our work to determine its importance in cooking, and to prove that corn oil may be used interchangeably in culinary operations with cotton seed and olive oils.'”
• “The Supreme Court of Kansas Saturday reversed the decision of the District Court and the Probate Court of Douglas county when it gave little Beulah Helen Pinney over to the custody of her father, Perry E. Pinney of Omaha, Nebraska. In rendering this decision the court took the child away from her uncle, Theo. Sulzen, of Lecompton, who has had the child in his care since the death of her mother in 1911. This decree probably marks the end of a struggle over the little girl that was carried through the courts of Douglas county last summer and which attracted unusual attention…. Last summer the father came to Lawrence from his home in Omaha, Nebraska. He appeared before the Probate Court of Douglas County and petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in an effort to take the child away from her uncle at Lecompton. The court denied the writ. Then the father appealed his case to the District Court where the writ was again denied. The next step was to take the case to the supreme court of the state. And the decision of the state marks the success of the father…. The story of the struggle for the little girl runs through the divorce courts of Iowa and South Dakota, and then into the civil courts of Kansas and finally to the Supreme Court of the state. Back of it is the expressed fear on the part of the father, a Protestant, that his daughter would be brought up a Catholic by the girl’s uncle, Theodore Sulzen of Lecompton, a Catholic. ‘I would rather she were dead,’ Perry Pinney declared in referring to this possibility…. Perry Pinney married Cora Pinney in Omaha in 1900. They had two children, Harvey and Helen. Then came domestic difficulties. Both filed petitions for divorce in the district court of Pottawatomie county, Iowa, in 1908. Mrs. Pinney was given the decree and the custody of little Helen. The father was given charge of the boy. Mrs. Pinney moved to Kansas and was married to Fred Moore. In 1911 she died. Mr. Moore placed the girl in the care of Mrs. Sulzen of Lecompton, Mrs. Pinney’s sister. Last February, Mrs. Sulzen died, leaving the girl with her husband, Theodore Sulzen. Then the fight for the possession of the child was begun…. Sulzen’s side of the case, as represented in his brief filed with the supreme court, is that Pinney is a man without a home, unmarried, owns no property except a heavily incumbered claim in the Dakotas, upon which he does not live. That he is not a fit guardian for the girl; that he deserted the girl and mother immediately following the birth of Helen, and left them to shift for themselves, are further affirmed by Sulzen…. In his brief Pinney represented that he would place both children with a respectable family in Omaha, where he could see them every day, and where they would be given the best schooling possible.”
• “Central Europe is experiencing the most severe winter in a generation. Blizzards of a fortnight ago, after abating somewhat, have returned. In eastern Russia 150 deaths from cold are reported and stories of peasants devoured by wolves are numerous.”