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.
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.
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.
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
Wes Jackson will step down from his leadership position at the Land Institute near Salina in June.
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.
TOPEKA–Entrepreneurs understand the importance of making the right connections to start and grow a successful venture. Kansas community leaders also know that in order to keep their local economies strong, helping their own entrepreneurs and small business owners make those connections is vital.
“The resource day is an opportunity to showcase what’s available to entrepreneurs and business owners,” Steve Radley, president and CEO of NetWork Kansas, said in a news release. “Community leaders will learn what education, expertise, and economic resources are currently available to support their local startups and existing businesses. The goal of this day is to increase the connectivity between resources and entrepreneurs across the state.”
When: Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Marriott Hotel, 9100 Corporate Hills Drive, Wichita
Registration is required, but there is no cost to attend.
Penny Lewandowski
Penny Lewandowski of the National Center of Economic Gardening and the Edward Lowe Foundation will be the keynote speaker. She is a nationally recognized champion of building strong entrepreneurial cultures and providing high-end technical assistance to 2nd stage growth businesses.
The conference will provide in-depth presentations on:
· Entrepreneurship Communities and the NetWork Kansas Referral Center
· NetWork Kansas matching loan programs including Startup Kansas, the Kansas Capital Multiplier and Capital Multiplier Venture Fund and the Minority and Women Business Capital Multiplier Loan Fund
· Kansas Economic Gardening Network
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.
Tornado damage in Miami County KS. This hay bale was blown into the house photo National Weather Service
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.
Tornado damage at Hillsdale Lake in northern Miami County- photo National Weather Service
Miami County Undersheriff Wayne Minckley says there were some minor injuries in his county, but nothing life-threatening.
HUTCHINSON- Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old suburban Dallas student who became a sensation on social media Wednesday after word spread about his clock, mistaken for a bomb, may be coming to Kansas.
The Kansas Cosmosphere on Friday invited Ahmed to attend their space camp in Hutchinson.
Ahmed was pulled from class Monday after he showed the clock to a teacher. Authorities are not seeking criminal charges against him. News of his arrest sparked an outpouring of support including from President Barack Obama.
HUTCHINSON -A Kansas man arrested for allegedly robbing LoanMax Title Loans in Hutchinson in May was bound over for trial on Thursday.
Jerry Allen Anderson Jr., 29, Hutchinson, is charged with aggravated robbery after he allegedly walked into the business and demanded money at gunpoint.
He got away with about $1,400 and left in a black four-door automobile.
The victim testified Thursday morning about the suspect coming into the business then coming through a door that leads behind the counter.
That is when she says she saw the gun and she said that the suspect spoke in a soft voice, “this is how we’re going to do this.”
She testified the suspect told her to put her hands up and stated he wanted the cash.
She opened the drawer and placed the money on the counter. He grabbed it and ran out. She was able to identify Anderson as the one who robbed her because of photos provided by police.
Police Sgt. Detective Tyson Myers testified about a search of a home where Anderson was living and found items consistent with what he was wearing the day of the robbery including a black Atlanta Braves baseball cap and a black dew rag.
The gun is believed to have been a BB-gun that looks like a real gun.
Anderson will be arraigned on October 5, in front of Judge Trish Rose.
Anderson was paroled in January for another conviction of aggravated robbery from 2007 in Leavenworth County.
The secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says the agency is moving to fill several leadership positions vacated in recent weeks. KDHE’s Division of Public Health is losing the directors of three of its eight bureaus and two supervisors who led sections directly under the bureau heads. Combined, the five had more than 80 years of experience.
Photo by KHI News Service Susan Mosier, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, says the agency is moving to fill several leadership positions vacated in recent weeks.
All of them worked with local health officials. KDHE Secretary Susan Mosier, responding Wednesday to concerns some of those local officials expressed about the sudden loss of institutional knowledge, said the agency is working to quickly fill the void.
“We’ve got great people coming up,” she said. Mosier said Jennifer VandeVelde, the chief of the agency’s sexually transmitted illnesses section, is set to replace Brenda Walker, who is retiring as director of the state’s Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention.
“She’s awesome,” Mosier said of VandeVelde. “She’s been involved in the agency for many years now and really knows the agency well.”
She said the agency is interviewing candidates to replace Paula Clayton, who is retiring as director of the Bureau of Health Promotion, and Mindee Reece, who was fired as director of the Bureau of Community Health Systems. Both positions should be filled within a month, Mosier said. “The outlook looks good,” she added.
Mosier said Clayton may continue to do some work for the agency on a contract basis. She did not touch on the departures of Jane Shirley, who worked directly under Reece as director of Local Public Health, or Tim Budge, who worked under Walker as section chief of immunizations.
Budge was terminated and has been replaced on an interim basis by Phil Griffin, the head of the agency’s tuberculosis control program. Shirley retired, then took a job with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas. An agency spokeswoman has said KDHE will not comment on the reasons for the personnel changes.
Conference kicks off
Mosier was in Manhattan on Wednesday to kick off the 2015 Kansas Public Health Association conference.
Her 10-minute presentation to a Hilton Garden Inn ballroom full of state and local health officials focused on progress KDHE has made this year toward encouraging healthy living, including:
Doubling the number of physicians participating in a “medical homes” program intended to better coordinate patient care.
Increasing the number of day care centers enrolled in a healthy eating program.
Increasing referrals to the state’s tobacco “quit line.”
Increasing participation in workplace initiatives that stress healthy eating and exercise.
Mosier also touted the state’s KanCare program, which placed almost all Kansas Medicaid beneficiaries under the administration of three private insurance companies known as managed care organizations.
“While we have been able to improve health, we also have been able to bend the cost curve down over time,” Mosier said.
A healthy legacy?
Keynote speaker Paul Kuehnert told attendees that this year’s conference theme of “Promoting Health for All Kansans” means bucking a “pattern of stark disparities in our country” when it comes to health outcomes.
Kuehnert, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Bridging Health and Health Care Portfolio, said the disparities go well beyond access to health insurance and acute medical care. “The vast majority of health is actually determined by other things, like what goes on in our social, economic or behavioral spheres,” he said.
The health effects of socioeconomic disparities are on display in places like Washington, D.C., he said, where a child born today in the wealthy suburbs of Maryland has a life expectancy seven years greater than a child born downtown.
But the disparities are also close to home for Kansans, Kuehnert said. He displayed a map that showed much better health outcomes in Johnson County than in neighboring Wyandotte County
In part because of those disparities, Kuehnert said he and his public health peers may be the first in American history to serve a generation of children who live “shorter, sicker lives” than their parents.
“What is going to be our legacy?” he asked rhetorically. Kuehnert said there’s still an opportunity to turn those life expectancy numbers around by establishing a “culture of health” that integrates social services with medical treatment.
But he acknowledged that a culture change would be difficult, given that 51,000 local public health jobs were cut nationwide during the recession.
“There’s no data to suggest those jobs are being replaced,” Kuehnert said. “At least not in significant numbers.”
During the question-and-answer session that followed his presentation, Kuehnert was asked how public health advocates should make their case to policymakers who question the government’s role in public health. Kuehnert said that does create a “difficult set of circumstances” politically, but said he worked productively with policymakers who preferred limited government in his previous job in Kane County, Ill.
One of the keys is to form public-private partnerships, he said, and then ask the private sector partners to tout public health goals to lawmakers. But he stressed that public health officials shouldn’t shy from the discussion.
“We in public health have to engage in that conversation … but not in an adversarial way,” Kuehnert said.
Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.S. government has announced it will begin using the term “sexual rights” in discussions of human rights and global development.
The statement at a U.N. meeting comes after years of lobbying from rights groups. They argued that the U.S. should show global leadership on the rights of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations.
The statement, posted on a State Department website, says sexual rights include people’s “right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.”
The Washington-based Center for Health and Gender Equity pointed out the statement Thursday and said it was delighted.
The change comes days before world leaders launch an ambitious set of development goals.
