Ball Star

Royals fan races onto field and (momentarily) eludes capture with fancy footwork

Check out this video of a fan dashing onto the field at Kauffman Stadium during the Royals’ 5-4 loss to the Angels on Thursday night. He eludes a police officer with a slide across the pitcher’s mound and steals the rosin bag. He ran off, but eventually was caught.

Community Faces

Blue Star Awards Ceremony

Nominees for best in high school musical theater from schools around the area walked the red carpet Thursday evening at Starlight Theater. Taylor Louderman, Broadway actress who is scheduled to star in “Footloose” at Starlight in August, was guest award presenter.

Top photos and video

Editor's Picks

Front Page

Boy Scouts approve plan to accept openly gay boys

The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders — a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors. Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

Chiefs

Husain Abdullah, who gave up football to take Muslim pilgrimage, is back in NFL with the Chiefs

New Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah, a practicing Muslim, elected not to return to the Minnesota Vikings last season and instead took his wife, parents and two older brothers on a monthlong pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last October. “To get back out here and to have a second chance, not a lot of people get one,” Abdullah said. “So this is a blessing.”

The Kansas City Star Magazine

Bread-baking brings kneaded therapy

Baking bread is at once invigorating and soothing. You can take out aggression on dough, hurl it at the counter from a foot high and punch it with your fists if you want. You can’t hurt it. Or you can find a gentle reverie in the dough, squeeze its cool pillowy sides with your finger and rock the heels of your hands lazily back and forth in the center. The main thing is to find a rhythm and just keep going.

MOVIE REVIEW

‘Epic’ isn’t epic, but it is gorgeous | 3 stars

The action sequences are frequent and exceptional, from zooming aerial battles to comedic chases involving Bomba’s three-legged pet pug. It’s also one of the year’s most visually distinctive movies. All this is thrilling enough to divert viewers from the formulaic elements.

Editorial

A summer of reading for low-income children

Without books, low-income children get out of the habit of reading during the summer and struggle when school resumes. That’s why the effort this week to distribute 10,000 books to elementary children in Kansas City Public Schools is so critical.

Midwest Voices | Kelly Luck

FBI plan puts our privacy at risk

Technology is moving faster than before, and laws must move equally fast if they are to keep up with ever-changing reality. But this is not the way to do it. Leaving your emails, IMs, etc. deliberately available at all times for law enforcement (or others) is an overreaction, a move of desperation.

Entertainment

Rare Superman comic found in house insulation

It's considered the Holy Grail of comic books: Action Comics No. 1 from 1938, featuring the debut of Superman. And David Gonzales found one mixed in with old newspapers insulating a house he was renovating in a small town in Minnesota.

Front Page

Giving kids something to hold: Kansas girls’ blanket project wins national recognition

Sseven girls from Heartland Elementary School in the Blue Valley School District, now mostly middle-schoolers at Harmony or Aubry Bend, for a few years had been competing in an international problem-solving educational program, Odyssey of the Mind. This time around, however, they decided to take on a side challenge — Odyssey Angels — and create a real-world project to help people in their own community.