KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A citizen of Ukraine who lived in Chicago admitted that he transported thousands of cartons of cigarettes from northwest Missouri to Chicago to avoid paying excise taxes.

Federal prosecutors say 32-year-old Yevhen Sychikov pleaded guilty Thursday to interstate transportation of contraband cigarettes. Prosecutors say the scheme allowed Sychikov to avoid paying nearly $160,000 in excise taxes.

Missouri’s tax on cigarettes is 17 cents per pack. The Illinois state excise tax on cigarettes is $1.98 per pack. Cook County, Illinois charges another $3 a pack and the city of Chicago imposes an additional $1.18 per pack — making the total excise tax on cigarettes in Chicago $6.16 per pack.

Sychikov faces up to five years in federal prison without parole.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri has received $8.7 million from Volkswagen as part of a multibillion-dollar national settlement over the automaker’s emissions cheating scandal.

Attorney General Chris Koster’s office transferred the money to the state’s general revenue fund on Thursday.

The money comes after Gov. Jay Nixon so far this fiscal year cut about $174 million in funding for Missouri’s schools, roads and a variety of other programs. He says the cuts were needed to balance the budget.

A Nixon spokesman didn’t immediately respond to Associated Press requests for comment Thursday.

The $8.7 million is just part of Volkswagen’s planned payments to Missouri. Volkswagen also agreed to pay as much as $39 million for environmental air remediation programs in the state, as well as $40 million on a consumer vehicle buy-back or repair program.

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon’s own video store will no longer have the starring role on the company’s Fire TV streaming devices.

Software updates coming this year will give movies and TV shows from Netflix, HBO and other competitors equal prominence on the devices’ home screen. The approach is similar to one Apple took when it refreshed its Apple TV device last year.

Amazon’s Fire TV has offered solid performance at reasonable prices, but its home screen has been cluttered with Amazon products. That’s made it tough to find video from competing providers.

Now, competing services will be offered space on the home screen.

The development comes as leading video services make major investments in original shows, making it difficult for any single service to fulfill all of a viewer’s needs.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A woman has been arrested in the 26-year-old unsolved killing of another woman in Kansas City, Kansas.

Kansas City, Kansas, police said in a news release that the U.S. Marshals Service took the 48-year-old woman into custody Wednesday in Clay County, Missouri. She is being held on a $1 million bond in the killing of Sarah DeLeon. The body of the stabbed 19-year-old was found by railroad tracks in 1989.

Police investigators said in May that they believe there is a link between DeLeon’s killing, the unsolved 1994 slaying of Diana Marie Ault in Independence, Missouri, and an abduction in 1987. Investigators didn’t say then why they believe the cases are connected.

New DNA collection and testing technology prompted police to reopen the DeLeon case in July 2014.

DETROIT (AP) — Stopping to pick up a stray penny off the ground may not seem worth the effort, yet one bank is trying to change that mindset by placing 100 fake pennies across the country worth $1,000 apiece.

Ally Bank says it is hoping to encourage Americans to look for opportunities to save through its “Lucky Penny” promotion, which launched this week. The lucky pennies carry a copper color like real pennies, but feature the Detroit-based bank’s logo instead of Abraham Lincoln’s head. The flip side of the coin lists its value at 100,000 cents.

The pennies have been placed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Miami, Denver, Detroit, San Diego, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas.

The coins can be redeemed online until the end of the year.

ABILENE, Kan. (AP) — The Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office says investigators exhumed the remains of a person believed to be a possible victim of a serial killer.

Sheriff Gareth Hoffman said in a news release the remains were exhumed Wednesday from the Abilene Cemetery in Abilene.

Hoffman says the sheriff’s office was contacted last April by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation of a possible match between the remains found near Upland in 1974 and a person reported missing from Tulsa, Oklahoma, that year.

The Salina Journal reports a KBI investigation in 1974 identified a serial killer, Cecil Henry Floyd, as the suspect in the Dickinson County case.

Investigative reports indicate that Floyd admitted to killing 11 people — four in Florida, one in Kansas, one in Nebraska and five in Indiana.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is withdrawing a court brief that cites the slavery-era Dred Scott decision to support the state’s position that the Kansas Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion.

Schmidt said Wednesday in a statement that the filing submitted to the Kansas Supreme Court a day earlier does not accurately reflect the state’s position and should not have been made.

The state used the 1857 Dred Scott case to bolster its argument that the Declaration of Independence had no legally binding effect.

Schmidt says the reference was “obviously inappropriate,” and he ordered it withdrawn once he became aware of it.

In the infamous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a black person whose ancestors were sold as slaves could not be a U.S. citizen.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has revived a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Kansas law requiring prospective voters to prove they are U.S. citizens.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson on Wednesday gave Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach a pass for failing to file a timely response to the lawsuit. She set aside a court clerk’s default judgment issued last week against the state.

Robinson says the case is of constitutional significance and public interest, and that it deserves to be decided on the merits and not through procedural default.

The Kansas law requires people who register to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization certificate.

Kobach is facing four separate lawsuits challenging various aspects of that law.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Police say a man is in custody after he allegedly tried to choke a 4-month-old baby he didn’t know at a Kansas City-area Walmart.

Overland Park police say the man walked up to a woman who was in a checkout lane early Wednesday and began choking her baby. The woman screamed and the man stopped.

Police say people in the store helped the woman and held the man until officers arrived. The baby was not injured.

Investigators say the man possibly was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.