WICHITA- Seven south central Kansas residents were indicted in separate cases on federal charges of fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom.

The indictments allege each of the defendants submitted false information to the Kansas Department of Labor in order to receive unemployment benefits to which they were not entitled.

Each of the defendants was charged with one count of wire fraud. The defendants include:

John C. Hutchinson, 36, Wichita, who worked for The Specialists Group, LLC and Home Depot USA Inc., and is alleged to have fraudulently received $25,888 in benefits.

Ricky J. Henderson, 32, Wichita, Kan., who worked for CNH America, LLC, and is alleged to have fraudulently received $12,405 in benefits.

Edward L. Schwartz, 46, Colwich, Kan., who worked for CNH America, LLC, and Angela D. Schwartz, 41, Colwich, Kan. They are alleged to have fraudulently received $10,320 in benefits.

Terrance Turner, 32, Wichita, Kan., who worked for CNH America, LLC, and is alleged to have fraudulently received $10,879 in benefits.

David J. Smith, 34, Wichita, Kan., who worked for CNH America, LLC, and is alleged to have fraudulently received $9,582 in benefits.

Ignacio Calderon, 49, Wichita, Kan, who worked for CNH America, LLC, and is alleged to have fraudulently received $15,401 in benefits.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000. The Kansas Department of Labor investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Metzger and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Treaster are prosecuting.

By JIM MCLEAN

Both Kansas and Missouri are underperforming when it comes to reducing the number of uninsured within their borders.

From 2013 to 2014, all 50 states recorded statistically significant reductions in their uninsured rates, mostly because of the implementation of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But most states saw bigger reductions than those posted in Kansas and Missouri.

The drop in Missouri’s rate, from 13 percent to 11.7 percent, represents an overall reduction of only 10 percent. That was better than only Alaska’s 7 percent reduction.

Kansas performed better, dropping its rate from 12.3 percent to 10.2 percent, an overall reduction of 17 percent. But it also lagged far behind the best performing states.

Kentucky led the nation, dropping its uninsured rate a whopping 41 percent, followed by West Virginia, 39 percent, and Rhode Island, 36 percent. Oregon and Washington rounded out the top five with reductions of 34 percent each.

All of the top five performing states expanded their Medicaid programs to cover non-disabled adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level —$16,105 annually for an individual and $32,913 for a family of four. In addition, three of the five — Kentucky, Oregon and Washington — established their own online health insurance marketplaces.

“A review of the uninsured rates across all 50 states shows that those states that opted to expand Medicaid and/or ran their own marketplace (or worked with the federal government on marketplace planning) saw the greatest decreases in the uninsured,” according to an analysis done by the National Academy for State Health Policy.

Neither Kansas nor Missouri expanded Medicaid or established its own marketplaces.

Still, the drop in Kansas’ rate meant that at least 57,000 fewer Kansans under age 65 were uninsured in 2014 compared with 2013, according to an analysis done by the Kansas Health Institute.

Nationally, the number of uninsured Americans dropped by approximately 8.8 million.

“There has been a lot of speculation about the success of the ACA,” said Robert St. Peter, M.D., KHI’s president and CEO. “The fact that the uninsured rate decreased significantly in every state in the country during the first full year of implementation suggests that it has been successful in at least one respect: It has reduced the number of uninsured Americans. However, now that more people are covered with insurance, it will be important to see how well that insurance protects them from financial hardship and helps them get the medical care they need.”

Editor’s note: KHI News Service, a partner in Heartland Health Monitor, is affiliated with but editorially independent of the Kansas Health Institute.

Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s flu-shot season, and health officials expect to be able to avoid a repeat of last winter’s misery, when the vaccine wasn’t a good match for a nasty surprise strain.

There are no guarantees, but this year’s vaccine has been updated to protect against that bug and other strains that specialists predict will spread.

The government said Thursday everybody starting at 6 months of age should get vaccinated. More than 170 million doses are expected. Options range from traditional shots to nasal spray to a needle-free injection.

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls vaccination “the single most important step people can take to protect themselves from influenza.” Frieden says this year’s vaccine appears to be a good match.

COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Harvard University is starting to ask its students which gender pronouns they want to be referred by.

The registration form includes typical options like “he” and “she” but also gender-neutral options like “ze.” It gives new options to transgender students, and those who don’t identify as male or female. In the past, forms required them to choose between “male” and “female.”

Other schools that recently embraced those pronouns include American University and Ohio University.

Experts say colleges are changing as they recognize the growing population of transgender students. Many have also created campus housing geared toward transgender students.

But changes have sparked backlash at some schools. The University of Tennessee posted a guide to gender-neutral pronouns on its website, but removed the post after it drew outrage from state senators.

Here’s a table of some common — and uncommon — alternatives to “he” and “she.”

Traditional (gender-binary) pronouns

sheherhers

hehimhis

Gender-neutral pronounsPronunciation

they(asterisk)them(asterisk)theirs(asterisk)

zehir hirszhee, heer, heerz

zezirzirszhee, zheer, zheerz

xexemxyrzhee, zhem, zheer

eemeirsee, em, airs

perperpers

huhumhuswho, whom, whose

(asterisk)used as a singular pronoun

Source: Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, the University of Tennessee

By BRYAN THOMPSON

Wes Jackson sees agriculture as a problem. That’s because it requires plowing, which leads to soil erosion. It also plants large tracts of land with a single species of crop, using large-scale application of pesticides and fertilizer.

Jackson views native prairie as the model for a more sustainable kind of agriculture, and in 1976 he co-founded The Land Institute, near Salina, to find a less destructive way to feed the world.

Since then, Jackson has been the institute’s only president. But the visionary botanist, geneticist and author has announced plans to step down from his leadership position next summer.

“I’m going to be 80 years old next June, and the next day The Land Institute will be 40 years old, and so I thought that’s sort of an auspicious set of math,” he said.

“You know, this is the time before senility gets full bore. There are realities associated with 80. I feel fine, but I think it ought to be someone that is younger, and knows more — more up to speed on the more recent stuff in genetics and ecology, and so on.” The Land Institute’s focus is on developing perennial crops that don’t require plowing and planting every year.

They could be planted in combinations, or polycultures, so they’d be less vulnerable to pests and weeds. Jackson understands that revolutionizing a 10,000-year-old activity like agriculture doesn’t happen in a single lifetime.

“It just takes time. That’s the important thing,” he said. “We’ve got to get it through the mind of homo sapiens that there’s no quick fix to the major problems.”

When he first published his thoughts on what is now known as natural systems agriculture, Jackson predicted the conversion to perennial-based grains could take 50 to 100 years. He now thinks that work is ahead of schedule. And Jackson is confident that the research he launched is well-established to continue once he steps aside. “

We have a good staff, and we’ve been fortunate with fundraising the past year or so, and we’re in good shape,” said Jackson. The Land Institute employs 29 year-round workers and additional seasonal employees.

That includes seven scientists, who are breeding perennial wheat, sorghum and oilseed crops and working with nitrogen-fixing legumes to provide fertilization for the mixed-crop fields. The organization has an annual budget of $5.3 million, most of which is raised from a national constituency of individual donors and supporters. Assets — which include 691 acres of Kansas land, research labs, breeding nurseries and a greenhouse — total $17 million.

The nonprofit organization’s board of directors has 16 members from 11 states. They’ve launched a national search to find Jackson’s replacement. While Jackson won’t be the Land Institute’s president after June, he plans to continue working with the institute and promoting environmental issues. One thing Jackson is especially excited about is a three-year, $500,000 partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden and St. Louis University.

Jackson said they have computers linked to all the major herbarian and botanical gardens of the world. Their goal is to create an inventory of every species of perennial plant worldwide that might lend itself to becoming a food crop. “That’s big,” he said, “because that means that ecology and evolutionary biology can come off the shelf.

All that knowledge that’s been gathered for 150 years can come off the shelf, and inform a research agenda with the perennials, which it couldn’t do with the annuals. “If you’re tearing the ground up every year, you don’t get give the soil part of the ecosystem a chance to ‘do its stuff,’ because you’re disrupting it with either a chemical or with a plow or a hoe.”

Bryan Thompson is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

GALENA, Kan. (AP) — A special prosecutor has asked a judge to throw out felony charges against seven elected officials in southeast Kansas accusing them of misusing public funds.

The Joplin Globe ) reports prosecutor Jennifer Brunetti filed a two-page motion in Cherokee County District Court this week saying the alleged conduct of the defendants doesn’t qualify as misuse of public funds.

Galena Mayor Dale Oglesby and six current or former city council members were accused of misusing funds in June 2013 by purchasing property for the city to settle a private-party lawsuit against companies owned by a business partner of the mayor.

Brunetti said in a motion filed Wednesday that the charge of misusing public funds doesn’t include actions such as the Galena City Council’s vote to settle the lawsuit.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — One person is under arrest and a second is being sought in connection with the shooting death of a Wichita woman in her home.

Jacob Daniel Strouse, a 21-year-old man was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on Friday morning in connection with the death of 66-year-old Jacquelyn Harvey.

He is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, theft, criminal possession of a firearm and aggravated kidnapping. He is being held on a $250,000 bond.

Harvey’s son found her dead in her home on Wednesday morning when he was dropping off his son so she could take him to school. Her purse and Jeep Grand Cherokee were stolen.

Authorities are looking for Brittany R. McDay, a 22-year-old woman as a second suspect in the death.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Several homes were damaged but nobody was killed as a tornado carved its way across eastern Kansas and into Missouri.

The Kansas City Star  reports the twister touched down around 6:30 p.m. Friday in Miami County, Kansas, wiping out a few homes in the sparsely populared area west of Hillsdale Lake.

The National Weather Service says the tornado touched down again about half an hour later near the Cass County, Missouri, town of Freeman, about 40 miles south of Kansas City. Cass County Sheriff’s Lt. Kevin Tieman says the storm broke windows and damaged bleachers and the press box around the football field at Cass Midway High School northwest of Freeman.

Miami County Undersheriff Wayne Minckley says there were some minor injuries in his county, but nothing life-threatening.