TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Topeka man whose first conviction was overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court has been found guilty again in a death after a barroom fight.

A Shawnee County District Court jury on Monday convicted 29-year-old James Arthur Qualls III of premeditated first-degree murder in the July 2008 death of Joseph Beier. Qualls will be sentenced July 23.

Beier was shot 12 times in a confrontation at the Whiplash Bar. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Qualls testified that he shot Beier in self-defense.

Qualls was first convicted in 2010 and sentenced to life in prison with a mandatory minimum term of 25 years. But the Kansas Supreme Court ordered a new trial after finding that the judge in the first trial gave improper jury instructions.

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man is in custody after a shooting at a gas station and a four-hour standoff at a house in central Topeka.

Police say 51-year-old Daniel Lynn Cregut was booked into jail Monday night on several charges, including four counts of attempted murder.

Officers went to a gas station after a woman called to say she was being chased by a man with a gun.

Police say that man fired into the store and a bystander, 35-year-old Bryon Snyder, was shot. He is in critical but stable condition at a Topeka hospital.

Lt. John Sturgeon says after the shooting, police tracked Cregut to the home. The standoff ended when Cregut came out of the house without incident.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Monday, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) learned that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Inspector General (IG) will release the findings of two reports Tuesday July 1, 2014, on Obamacare verification systems. The first report reviews the effectiveness of the procedures and safeguards for preventing fraudulent or inaccurate information by applicants enrolling in health plans through the Obamacare insurance Exchanges. This report finds that the Obamacare system lacks internal controls to verify information provided by individuals enrolling through Obamacare. The second report details the inconsistencies that arose as part of the haphazard enrollment process. The IG finds that most exchanges were unable to resolve the majority of inconsistencies, most often relating to income and citizenship. In particular, the federal exchange was unable to resolve 2.6 million out of 2.9 million inconsistencies as of February 2014.

“The Administration has unilaterally changed Obamacare to bend every rule it can – delayed regulations, changed the enrollment period, and given select individual and employer exemptions – to try and make the law work,” Sen. Moran said. “Once again, we are provided further evidence that Obamacare is not working. In fact, the Administration is relying on nothing more than the honor system to run a billion dollar program. Without adequate safeguards or the ability to reconcile inconsistencies in income and citizenship, the Administration is wasting millions in American taxpayers’ dollars to provide subsidies to individuals who do not actually qualify.”

Without a process in place to verify an enrollee’s income or citizenship, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency responsible for implementing Obamacare, will continue to process applications based on nothing more than the honor system. As a result, the Administration will hand out inaccurate subsidies while relying on an unproven, incomplete back-end system to recoup incorrect subsidies during the tax filing process. This disorganization will result in massive uncertainty with the Administration having to dedicate more taxpayer dollars to reclaim the incorrect subsidies from enrollees who may not have the money to pay them back. In addition, many Americans who based their insurance choice off inaccurate subsidy information may now see their premiums increase as their subsidy is reduced by the Administration.

In May, Senator Moran demanded a response from the Department of Health and Human Services about a press report stating the federal government may be paying incorrect Obamacare subsidies to more than 1 million individuals. The Department has yet to respond to the Senator’s letter.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A monthly economic index for nine Midwestern and Plains states has inched up again, suggesting more economic growth over the next three to six months.

A report issued Tuesday says the overall Mid-America Business Conditions Index rose to 60.6 in June from 60.5 in May, hitting another three-year high.

Looking six months ahead, the business confidence portion of the overall index rose to 63.6 from 62.5 in May.

The survey results from supply managers are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth, while a score below that suggests decline.

The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Nine international teachers will be in Kansas classrooms this fall to give students exposure to other cultures and languages.

The state Department of Education began the Visiting International Teacher program in 2001.

The program allows certified teachers from Spain and China to spend up to three years teaching in Kansas public schools. They typically provide instruction in Spanish and Chinese, and in English to students who are learning it as a second language.

They are also permitted to teach art, math and science in elementary grades.

All teachers are screened and sponsored by the state Education Department. The agency provides assistance to the visiting educators and to the school districts where they will teach, including any cultural adjustments to the U.S.

 

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — Excessive alcohol use accounts for almost one in 10 deaths among working-age adults in the United States, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, released late last week, found that from 2006 to 2010 excessive use of alcohol killed nearly 88,000 Americans each year. In 2001, the last time CDC researchers reviewed the data, alcohol was blamed for almost 75,800 deaths.

Almost 70 percent of the deaths in 2006-2010 involved people ages 20 to 64; 5 percent were younger. The remainder were 65 or older.

Binge drinking – five or more drinks in a two-hour span for men; four or more drinks for women – accounted for more than half of these deaths.

The five states with the highest percentages of working-age deaths were New Mexico (16.4 percent), Alaska (15.9 percent), Colorado (14.2 percent), Wisconsin (13.4 percent) and Arizona (13.4 percent).

“Excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death that kills many Americans in the prime of their lives,” Ursula E. Bauer, director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a prepared statement that accompanied release of the study. “We need to redouble our efforts to implement scientifically proven public health approaches to reduce this tragic loss of life and the huge economic costs that result.”

According to the study, roughly 5,450 working-age Kansans died in each of the five years. Of these deaths, 9.5 percent (almost 520 people) were due to excessive alcohol use, resulting in either chronic conditions – liver disease, primarily – or “acute causes” such as car crashes, drownings, suicides, falls and homicides.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s latest vital statistics report shows that 163 Kansans died of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis in 2012.

Dulcinea Rakestraw, vice president of treatment service at Preferred Family Healthcare, Wichita, and chair of the Kansas Association of Addiction Professionals, said she wasn’t surprised by the CDC’s findings.

Alcohol abuse, she said, has been the top reason for admission to rehabilitation programs for “a long time, and in 20-to-64 age group, a lot of the people we see are working.”

One of the “strange” things about alcohol abuse, Rakestraw said, is that some people are able to “compartmentalize it” in ways that allow them to hold jobs and have families.

“It’s why we have such a hard time treating multiple DUI offenders,” she said. “Their alcohol abuse doesn’t seem to get into the other parts of their lives, so they don’t see themselves having a problem with alcohol because they still have their job and they still have their family. The problem, they say, is with their driving.”

The percentage of alcohol-caused deaths in Kansas was the 22nd highest in the nation. New Jersey’s was the lowest, at 7.8 percent.

“It really doesn’t matter where we rank in comparison to other states because every community in Kansas should want the lowest rank possible,” said Shana Burgess, manager of prevention services at the Johnson County Mental Health Center. “These are preventable deaths.”

Nationally, the study found that excessive alcohol use killed males (71 percent) more often than females (29 percent).

In Kansas, most of the state’s alcohol-abuse prevention efforts are housed in 10 regional centers.

“The main focus of our work is centered on community coalitions and engaging different sectors in the community so that kids all hear the same message from their parents, from the schools, from the faith community and from local businesses,” said Burgess, who runs the regional prevention center in Johnson County.

Earlier surveys of Kansas children, she said, have found that one in every four Kansas 12th-graders report having participated in binge drinking in the last two weeks.

The surveys, Burgess said, also found that in Kansas the average age for first use of alcohol is 13.

“The most important message I took away from this report is that all alcohol-related deaths are preventable,” Burgess said.