Living Wage Alliance plans Labor Day event

The Kaw Valley Living Wage Alliance will gather Monday in South Park to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Lawrence’s living wage ordinance.

The celebration will be from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the gazebo.

The event also will be used to kick off a new educational campaign to address affordable housing, health care and jobs.

Ice cream and other snacks will be served. There will be music, clowns, balloons, speakers and educational tables.

KU presents 18th Kemper award of year

A professor of occupational therapy at the Kansas University Medical Center is the latest faculty member awarded a Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.

Winifred Dunn, who teaches in the School of Allied Health, received a $5,000 prize.

She is the 18th professor to win the award this year. Two more Kemper awards will be given Sept. 22 and 28.

Movie screening prompts FOX protest

About three dozen protesters gathered Thursday night in downtown Lawrence to rail against FOX News.

The protest came an hour after 150 people attended a screening of “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” a documentary critical of the TV media machine.

The Kansas Union screening was followed by a panel discussion that ultimately led to an impromptu march to the corner of Seventh and New Hampshire streets, where protesters blasted “Faux News” as “the media wing of the Republican party.”

“We feel that FOX News is neither fair nor balanced, and they should just admit it,” said Kevin McKenzie, a Kansas University junior who helped organize the event as a member of Delta Force, a KU student activist organization.

Road conditions posted online, at KDOT hot line

Residents planning to travel during the Labor Day weekend or to future college football games now can check Kansas highway conditions online or by calling a special telephone number.

Travelers can receive road conditions, construction detours and weather information on state highways and the Kansas Turnpike. Information is updated every 15 minutes. Similar information is provided for Nebraska.

Telephone users in Kansas can call 511; phones from anywhere in the United States can call (866) 511-KDOT. The calls are free from a landline phone. For cell phone users, the call most likely will count against a caller’s minutes.

Travelers also can go online at www.kanroad.org to get highway conditions.

Slain Fort Riley soldier’s mother livid with Army

The Army has decided to drop charges against a Fort Riley soldier whose alleged horseplay caused an explosion that killed a fellow soldier in Iraq.

“I am furious with that. How dare they? How dare they?” Ester Macklin said of the decision by Fort Riley brass to halt prosecution of Spc. Benjamin Hathaway, who served with her son in the 924th Military Police Battalion.

Military officials told Macklin in March that horseplay had killed her 18-year-old son, Pvt. David Evans. Hathaway, they said, had lit some fuse bundles at the cajoling of another soldier, sparking a series of blasts that sent the three soldiers diving for cover as they guarded a munitions dump in Ad Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad.

Col. Robert Teetsel said he recommended that Fort Riley’s commanding general dismiss the charges after concluding a conviction was unlikely.

Teetsel said Thursday that Hathaway had denied responsibility, both during a preliminary hearing and a military-administered polygraph test, which he passed. On top of that, the Fort Riley official said, the only other living witness said he couldn’t remember the incident after being seriously wounded.

“This is not over,” vowed Macklin, who has asked Fort Riley officials to reconsider.