President Barack Obama says the U.S. is investigating whether chemical weapons have been deployed in Syria, but he’s “deeply skeptical” of claims by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime that rebel forces were behind such an attack.
Author: KMAN Staff
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says unemployment will remain high into 2015, suggesting the Fed will keep short-term interest rates near record lows at least until then.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) The Kansas House has given first-round approval to bill cutting sales and income taxes after rejecting a diversion of highway funds to stabilize the budget. The bill advanced Wednesday on an 82-37 vote, suggesting it has enough support to pass on final action expected Thursday. The legislation follows up on personal income tax cuts enacted last year by promising income tax rate reductions each year that overall state revenues grow more than 2 percent. Also, the bill allows the state sales tax to decline as scheduled in July. Originally, the bill would have diverted $382 million over…
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) A bizarre crash in Wichita involving a pair of empty school buses has left one man dead and two others under arrest. KAKE-TV reports the accident happened early Wednesday on the Kansas Turnpike. The Highway Patrol says one school bus was towing another southbound when the towed bus broke loose. Troopers say the driver of the first bus turned around in the southbound lanes and drove back to the other one. Other motorists tried to avoid the buses, setting off a chain-reaction crash that killed a driver identified as Donald Putnam, 60, of Wichita. Investigators believe the…
WAKEENEY, Kan. (AP) Voters in a northwest Kansas county have approved a 1 percent sales tax to help their local hospital meet expenses. The Hays Daily News reports voters in Trego County returned nearly 1,400 of the 2,100 ballots mailed out. A count Tuesday showed the tax to benefit Trego County-Lemke Memorial Hospital in WaKeeney approved with roughly 68 percent of the vote. CEO Harold Courtois says he’s pleased that residents recognized the needs of the rural hospital. He said he favored a sales tax over an increase in property taxes to raise the necessary funds. Trego County-Lemke Memorial Hospital…
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) A student at the University of Kansas has filed a lawsuit accusing a fraternity of allowing underage drinking, which he claims led to his severe head injury. The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Andrew Charles Johnson, 20, of Salina filed the lawsuit in Douglas County court against the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Johnson claims he and other other underage fraternity members were provided unlimited access to alcohol and encouraged to drink during a 2011 party. According to Johnson, later that night another student rammed his head into a concrete wall, causing a “massive closed head injury.” The lawsuit…
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) A 39-year-old resident of Mexico who was living in Kansas has been sentenced to about five years in prison after pleading guilty to possessing weapons illegally. The Wichita Eagle reports that Guadalupe Burciaga-Alcantar, who is from Ojinaga, Mexico, was arrested in October after a traffic stop in Sedgwick County. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Kansas says deputies found two loaded handguns in the pickup Burciaga was driving. He pleaded guilty in December to the charge of an illegal alien in possession of a firearm. Federal law prohibits people unlawfully in the U.S. from possessing firearms. He was…
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) Olathe officials have approved an agreement that paves the way for Google’s super-fast Internet service to be installed in the southern Johnson County community. The Kansas City Star reports the Olathe City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the Google Fiber agreement. The Olathe deal is similar to other deals in the Kansas City area, where Google has been slowly connecting several neighborhoods with its high-speed service. The deal gives Olathe 5 percent of gross receipts generated by Google selling the service in the Johnson County suburb. The agreement also promises free 1-gigabit-per-second connections to up to…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A former employee of a northeast Kansas credit union has been sentenced in federal court to two years of probation for embezzling $85,000 from the company. The U.S. Attorney’s office says Deborah Bomia, of Enterprise, must also pay $85,000 in restitution to Enterprise Credit Union under the sentence she received Tuesday. Bomia pleaded guilty last July to the crime, which occurred between April 2005 and August 2011. She admitted kiting checks between accounts in her name at the credit union to create fictitious balances. Prosecutors said Bomia would record a large deposit in the credit union’s general…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) The Kansas House and Senate are set to act on their respective versions of a $14 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The House planned a final vote on its budget bill Wednesday after debating it for more than four hours Tuesday. The measure would spend about $6 billion in general state revenue in the fiscal year that starts July 1. Senators are scheduled later Wednesday to debate their version of the budget, spending roughly the same amounts as the House on public schools, social services and public safety. A final version of the budget will…