Latest news with #Lauria
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Yahoo
Quapaw Nation holds walk to honor missing Indigenous women
QUAPAW, Ok. — Keeping the memories of lost loved ones alive is the focus of an event in northeast Oklahoma. The Quapaw Nation hosted a Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Support Walk this morning at its Route 66 Roadside Park in Quapaw. Today's guest speaker, Lorene Bible, the mother of Lauria, who, along with Ashley Freeman were kidnapped, raped and murdered just over 25-years ago. Their bodies have never been found. This event came a day after what is the 'National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. We asked Lorene Bible about the news yesterday of Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt officially signing Lauria and Ashley's law, which, in part, would add accessory to murder in the first or second degree to the list of crimes that would require an offender to serve 85-percent of their prison sentence before being eligible for consideration for parole. 'This is our way of letting out their spirits we believe their spirits are out somewhere. We're all connected. Through here. He's seen to it that we're connected this way. So, we know, and we don't forget. We never forget and we never give up,' said Minnie Hawk, Quapaw Nation Tribal Elder. 'If someone has information, don't take it for granted that law enforcement that's currently working on cases has all the answers. So, if you know something or you hear something, it may be new information. Come forward. It may be something that one thing that could crack the case open and solve, solve the case,' said Charles Addington, Quapaw Nation Dept. of Public Safety Exec. Director. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KSNF/KODE |
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Law on stiffer penalties for accessory to murder heads to governor's desk
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Oklahoma Senators voted Wednesday to send Lauria and Ashley's Law to the governor's desk. House Bill 1001 was authored by Rep. Steve Bashore (R-Miami) and passed through the House easily in March. It would require anyone convicted of accessory to murder to serve at least 85% of their sentence before they are considered for parole. The law was named after Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman. The two teenage girls were kidnapped and murdered in Welch in 1999. Their bodies were never found. 'Lauria and Ashley Law' adds harsher penalty for 'accessory' to murder Lorene Bible, Lauria's mother, was at the Capitol on Wednesday. She has been working with lawmakers on the legislation for three years. 'It's what we've been striving for all along,' said Lorene. Lisa Bible Brodrick is Lorene's niece and has been an advocate for the family. 'We didn't really get the victory that we'd hoped for in the girls' case, but it does feel like a small victory for families in the future,' said Bible Brodrick. 'That's a really great feeling.' Ronnie Busick was convicted of 'accessory' in the case of the missing girls. He was there the night they went missing and spent only three years in prison. He was released for good behavior.'It was an insult to the girls. It was an insult to the community. It was an insult to the parents,' said Sen. Micheal Bergstrom (R-Adair). Bergstrom shared his personal attachment to the piece of legislation before the vote on the Senate floor.'Lauria Bible was my student,' said Bergstrom. 'I had her in my class as an English teacher. She was a wonderful kid who laughed and had a great deal of joy.' The law might not be able to help in Bible and Freeman's case, but it will make a difference, in their honor, for years to come.'We're still fighting on their behalf so it doesn't happen to somebody else,' said Lorene. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Hold the fries. Forgo the soda. R.I. kids' menus could get a tad healthier under proposed bill.
A photo illustration of a Happy Meal at McDonald's in San Francisco, California. In 2010, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to pass a law to control giving away free toys with unhealthy meals for children. (Photo by David) Kids' menus may serve up smaller portions, but smaller doesn't always mean healthier. A piece of legislation recently heard in both chambers of the Rhode Island General Assembly would set nutritional standards for restaurants that serve kids' meals by capping calories, sodium, added sugars, and fats. The default drink included with a children's meal would be water, milk or a milk substitute. Sen. Pam Lauria, the bill's sponsor and a Barrington Democrat, told her colleagues at an April 10 hearing of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services that the Healthy Kids Act isn't meant to limit what businesses can do, but instead aims to improve families' access to more nutritious meals for their kids. 'Parents are very busy,' Lauria said. 'There are sports, there are activities, and frequently they need to feed their children on the fly, and they will frequent a restaurant to help them to do that.' The bill would give parents more 'healthy options,' Lauria said, by specifying each restaurant with a kids' menu serve at least two qualifying meals. A healthy kid's meal per the bill's definition has no more than 550 calories, 700 milligrams of sodium, and 15 grams of added sugars. A maximum 10% of calories would come from saturated fat, and no trans fats would be allowed. Portions would need to include at least two of five food groups, with one of them being a fruit or non-fried vegetable. The remaining kids' meals would not need to follow these standards, and the default beverage choices could also be swapped out at the customer's request. 'What this bill does not do is stop restaurants from serving anything else that they want for children,' Lauria said to the Senate committee. 'Kids can still have a hot dog if it's on the menu, kids can still have chicken nuggets if they're on the menu. Kids can still have a soda if they prefer, if their parents allow. This [bill] just says that we have to acknowledge that we need healthy options available, and that the healthy options should probably be default, particularly when it comes to sugary drinks.' On the House side, the Healthy Kids Act is sponsored by Rep. Susan Donovan, a Bristol Democrat, and has not yet been scheduled for a committee hearing. Lauria said that the bill was spurred by the 'heartbreaking' prevalence of obesity among Rhode Island kids. According to the 2024 Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook, Rhode Island ranks last place in New England for the number of children ages 10 to 17 that are overweight or obese, accounting for 35% of that demographic. Rhode Island ranks 39th on this same metric nationally, according to the factbook. There are also racial disparities in these numbers, the factbook noted: In 2022, 17% of Hispanic children ages 2 to 17 were overweight and 32% were obese, and 16% of non-Hispanic Black children were overweight and 28% were obese. Doctors showed up to support the bill last week in the Senate, including Dr. Amy Nunn, CEO of the Rhode Island Public Health Institute and a professor at Brown University. The proposal is 'just a common sense bill that promotes healthy opportunities for kids,' Nunn said. 'Our obesity rates are nearly on par with states in the Deep South…Our children, our Hispanic children in Rhode Island, fare 49th in terms of lifetime health and education achievements. Those statistics are breathtaking.' Nunn said the bill was about making accessible the kinds of meals 'you would want to put in front of your children. Nobody wants their kids to be eating supersized food.' Dr. Philip Chan, also of the Public Health Institute and a primary care physician with Brown University Health, framed the bill as a preemptive measure to reduce chronic disease rates and health problems seen in Rhode Island's adult population. 'These behaviors start in childhood, right? So we have to start there in terms of addressing them,' Chan told senators. 'You can have the chicken nuggets, you can have the lemonade or soda every once in a while, but have a vegetable, have a fruit. This is the thing that we try to teach our children. A lot of times you can't find veggies or fruit on the menu. You have to order it specially made.' The push to legislate healthier kids' menus is not new. An April 2024 roundup by the Center for Science in the Public Interest found over 30 jurisdictions have laws governing children's meals. The majority of these laws regulate the default beverage to push kids away from soda or other sugary drinks. Nutrition-based laws — ones closer to Rhode Island's current proposal — are largely found in county-level governments, many of them in Maryland. Statewide initiatives in California, Hawaii, Delaware and Illinois have focused on beverages. Before the Senate committee, Nunn referenced these efforts, saying, 'The data and studies around these bills show that they have had demonstrable impacts on improving healthy eating behaviors among kids and among people of color. So the science around all of this is really sound, and it really hasn't had a huge detrimental impact on restaurants.' You can have the chicken nuggets, you can have the lemonade or soda every once in a while, but have a vegetable, have a fruit. – Dr. Philip Chan, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Brown University Industry giants like McDonald's have had enough time to change and accommodate the trend. The fast food juggernaut at first took a subversive approach to regulations, like in 2011 when McDonald's locations in San Francisco started selling Happy Meal toys for 10 cents to get around a municipal law banning toys' inclusion with unhealthy meals. But by 2014, McDonald's had started to retool its menu, and in 2018 announced all of its kids' meals would max out at 600-calories by 2022. Today, a hamburger Happy Meal would satisfy the requirements of Rhode Island's Healthy Kids Act. The cheeseburger Happy Meal, however, would not, as it exceeds pretty much every threshold specified in the bill (as well as McDonald's previously stated goal, as it has 690 calories). As for the enforceability of the proposed law, the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) would be charged with ensuring compliance. The bill text prescribes the health department to issue relevant rules and regulations, supply multilingual signage and outreach materials for restaurants, and check that restaurants are training staff properly and maintaining documentation about their meals' compliance. But Dr. Jerome 'Jerry' Larkin, the health department's director, wrote in a testimony that those duties are easier said than done. The department 'applauds the intent of the proposed legislation, which is to establish and enforce environmental food changes to address rising childhood obesity and associated chronic disease emergence in Rhode Island,' Larkin wrote. 'However, RIDOH would not be able to implement the provisions outlined in the bill without adequate resources.' The department would need another full-time position to enforce the bill, Larkin wrote — specifically, a 'grade 27' full-time, nutritionist position that would cost $116,544 a year, with that salary expected to increase in future years. Rolling out content like signage, plus tracking and analyzing compliance, would cost about $1,850 in the first year, Larkin wrote. The proposed cost for an extra nutritionist comes at a time when the department is still reconciling the recent loss of $31 million in federal grant money, as well as the potential loss of dozens of existing full-time staff. The Senate committee voted to hold Lauria's bill for further study, the typical procedure for a bill at its first hearing. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Biggest threats with windy, wintry mess of a storm
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The FOX4 Weather team has been hammering home all the that's set to move through the Kansas City area Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. A for many counties beginning at 9 p.m. Tuesday and ends at various times on Wednesday morning. View the latest Weather Alerts in the Kansas City region on FOX4 spent time on discussing the biggest issues you need to be prepared as the storm blows through the area. 'The winds are the guarantee. We're going to pick up 50, 60 mile per hour wind gusts, and that's all going to happen after 8 or 9 o'clock or so,' Lauria told FOX4's Loren Halifax. 'After 10 o'clock, the 60 to eventually 70 mile per hour winds are on the table.' Fierce winds will usher in a significant drop in temperatures where we're also see a transition from rain over to snow late on Tuesday night. Lauria breaks down all the weather factors in the video at the top of the page. FOX4 will have continuous coverage of the weather and its impacts during newscasts, , our new streaming TV app for Roku, Fire TV and Apple TV devices. In addition to live streaming our newscasts on WDAF+, you can also watch two new weekday shows: Morning Brunch after FOX4 Morning News, and Afternoon Drive before FOX4 News at 4. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
How can you have a blizzard with little-to-no snow?
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City metro isn't done with winter just yet. The National Weather Service has issued a High Wind Warning that will be in effect from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 6 p.m. Wednesday. Northwest winds 30 to 40 mph with gusts up to 70 mph is expected for portions of east central and northeast Kansas and northwest and west central Missouri. North of the metro, a Blizzard Warning will be in effect from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 3 a.m. Wednesday. View the latest Weather Alerts in the Kansas City region on FOX4 said this storm is actually stronger than the blizzard Kansas City experienced back in January. 'Thankfully, we're just going to get the backside of the storm in terms of snow production but from a wind standpoint, this storm is going to be a doozy for this part of the country,' he said. There are big concerns about power outages, wind damage, tree limbs coming down, trees potentially coming down as well. Something similar to the windstorm back in December of 2021. A dusting to 2 inches of snow is possible for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning for the Kansas City area with 2 to 4 inches of snow possible up north where the Blizzard Warning will be in effect. 'For the first time in my 30-plus years here in Kansas City, we may have a blizzard for parts of the area with under 3 inches of snow. There's no requirement for significant, real heavy snow like the January blizzard,' Lauria said. For the weather to be considered a blizzard, there must be large amounts of snow or blowing snow with winds exceeding 35 miles per hour and visibilities of less than a quarter mile for at least three hours, according to the National Weather Service. Joe's Blog: Massive(!) spring/winter storm to hit region (MON-3/3) 'That's possible, especially north and northwest of Kansas City, where the heavier snow totals will be,' Lauria said. . Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
