JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Powdered alcohol would be regulated like other alcoholic beverages in Missouri under legislation passed by the state House.

House members voted 117-30 this past week to send the measure to the Senate. The bill would regulate a powder that can be added to water much like Kool-Aid to create an alcoholic drink.

Efforts to completely ban powdered alcohol have previously failed in the Legislature.

The measure also would allow workers ages 18 or older to unload alcohol from delivery trucks, as well as carry it to customers’ cars.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — University of Kansas fraternity leaders say they are developing plans to reduce hazing and dangerous drinking.

The new initiative comes about a month after a freeze on the fraternities’ social activities was enacted and then quickly revoked after fraternity leaders complained.

The new plan will require fraternities to reform recruitment and pledging processes at the 24 chapters. It will also require chapters to meet with university administrators yearly to review progress.

That action came after several houses were sanctioned this semester for hazing and drinking.

The new initiative also will require fraternities to revise programs for new members, undergo substance abuse education, ban hard liquor at houses and limit the number of guests at social events.

Information on how policies will be enforced wasn’t released.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – The family of a man whose body sat in a Kansas City International Airport parking lot for months is suing the company responsible for monitoring vehicles in the lot.

The Kansas City Star reports that Randy Potter’s widow and children sued SP+ Corp. and two of its employees Friday. The lawsuit accuses the Delaware-based company of causing the family “extreme trauma and emotional distress.”

Airport police found Potter’s body in September in a pickup truck, when someone called to report a bad smell. Potter’s parking pass was dated Jan. 17. Police said it appeared Potter committed suicide.

The lawsuit says the family provided SP+ employees a description of Potter’s truck and license plate about a week after he disappeared and were assured that if Potter’s truck were in the lot, it would soon be found.

SP+ attorney Jan Paul Miller said the company would be “vigorously defending the suit.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri has the highest rate of black homicide victims in the country, with neighboring Kansas coming in the top 10.

The Violence Policy Center released a study Wednesday that looked at 2015 data submitted by local law enforcement agencies nationwide to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The report said the homicide rate among African-Americans in Missouri was 46.24 per 100,000. Kansas comes in at ninth, with a rate of 25.02 per 100,000 African-Americans in 2015.

That year is the seventh time since 2005 that Missouri topped the rankings. It was the third time Kansas ranked in the top 10.

“I can’t figure why, I wish I could,” said Rosilyn Temple, who heads the local chapter of Mothers in Charge, a group working to draw attention to violent crime. Temple’s son was killed in 2011 in a still-unsolved crime.

“It’s virtually every day” she said. “It’s babies and women. And no one wants to say anything. Why are we allowing people to murder anybody? We don’t have to like each other, but we have to respect each other.”

The national black homicide rate in 2015 was 18.68 per 100,000. The rate for white homicide was 2.67.

Black residents represented 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2015, but they accounted for more than half of all homicide victims.

“The devastation homicide inflicts on black teens and adults is a national crisis, yet it is all too often ignored outside of affected communities,” the report stated.

The report cautioned that the results are only as reliable as the data submitted by law enforcement. The study also didn’t offer an explanation for differences among the states or races, but stressed the importance of focusing on gun violence prevention.

“For black victims of homicide, like all victims of homicide, guns — usually handguns — are far and away the number-one murder tool,” the report stated. “Successful efforts to reduce America’s black homicide toll, like America’s homicide toll as a whole, must put a focus on reducing access and exposure to firearms.”

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KANSAS CITY – A Romanian national has been charged in federal court related to a scheme to covertly steal and utilize illicitly obtained debit card data by placing skimming devices on ATMs inside QuikTrip stores in Olathe, Kan., and Riverside, Mo, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas City.

David Velcu, also known as Luca Antoni, 23, a citizen and national of Romania residing in Anaheim, Calif., was charged in a criminal complaint filed Thursday, April 19, 2018, in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo. Velcu remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing on April 24, 2018.

The federal criminal complaint alleges that Velcu, with the intent to defraud, possessed unauthorized access devices – approximately 78 re-encoded magnetic strip gift cards.

According to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, a manager at an Olathe QuikTrip store noticed on April 7, 2018, that a metal piece was not sitting evenly along the card slot of the ATM. He subsequently pushed the metal piece with a key and it popped out of the card slot. Upon doing so, he noticed that one side of the metal was a mag strip reader and a circuit board was glued to the reverse side of the metal. There was also a piece of molded plastic fascia with pinhole camera that was applied directly above the keyboard designed to capture Personal Identification Numbers (PIN’s) of unwitting victims. Footage from the store’s surveillance cameras captured two unidentified juveniles responsible for placing the skimming device earlier that day.

Velcu entered the store later on the same date, the affidavit says. He wore a jacket exactly like one of the two unidentified suspects, and proceeded directly to the ATM, which had signage indicating that it was “Out-of-Service.” After staring at the ATM for an unusual amount of time, the affidavit says, Velcu purchased some food items and left the store in a sliver Audi A6 with California license plates. Surveillance video captured the same vehicle in a nearby parking lot where the two juvenile suspects had been seen earlier that morning.

Investigators used the license plates on the Audi A6 to identify the vehicle’s owner, Velcu (using the alias of Luca Antoni). Investigators determined the vehicle had recently had an oil change in Independence, Mo., and an employee of the business identified Velcu from a photo obtained from the QuikTrip surveillance camera. An Olathe, Kan., police detective then drove to several motels in the area on the hunch that perhaps he might be able to locate the suspect vehicle in a motel parking lot. The detective found Velcu’s vehicle in the parking lot of American Inn in Independence.

According to the affidavit, the motel manager told investigators that a large group of Romanians had checked into the motel on April 8, 2018, and that the group had three vehicles.

On April 9, 2018, an ATM skimmer device configuration was discovered at a QuikTrip in Riverside, Mo.

On April 10, 2018, Velcu, one of the juvenile suspects from the Olathe QuikTrip surveillance video, and an unidentified woman (with an infant) walked out of the hotel and left in Velcu’s vehicle. Officers stopped the vehicle. Velcu initially presented a counterfeit Italian driver’s license, but officers later located his Romanian ID card. The woman told officers that she is Velcu’s wife, and the unidentified juvenile suspect (who had a Romanian ID card) is her brother; she and her brother entered the United States illegally via the Mexican border over a year ago.

Officers searched the vehicle and found three re-encoded mag strip cards with stickers on the front depicting 4-digit codes, three tubes of Super Glue, and two small crowbars. Upon deploying a card reader to ascertain the track 2 data on the mag strips, investigators ascertained that each one of them contained a different 16-digit account number than the 16-digit number embossed on the cards.
One of the other vehicles that arrived with the group of Romanians, bearing a temporary Texas tag, pulled in the motel’s parking lot soon afterward. The driver of the vehicle initially presented a counterfeit Italian driver’s license but officers later located a genuine Republic of Ireland passport with a photo that matches the driver. Officers searched the vehicle and found re-encoded gift cards with 4-digit stickers applied, surface skimmers, circuit boards, gray and silver paint for fascia plates, memory cards, lithium battery packs, super glue and cutting tools.

Officers searched Velcu’s motel room and found 78 re-encoded gift cards, memory chips/cards, circuit boards, super glue, plastic fascia plates, lithium battery packs, cutting tools, cables, and three laptop computers. In this case, 16-digit account numbers were put onto plastic magnetic strip gift cards in order to fraudulently apply credits derived from various bank Visa debit card checking accounts. In addition, each of the plastic magnetic strip cards had a circular sticker applied to the front suggesting the corresponding PIN affiliated with the 16-digit re-encoded account number on the magnetic stip. Both elements are necessary in order to steal cash from ATMs.

The charge contained in this complaint is simply an accusation, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charge must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.

By Brian Grimmett

For about 10 years Laura Krier has lived in Concordia, Kansas, a small town that she’s seen get only smaller.

Without some kind of economic development, she fears things it will only get worse.

“I just want to see it grow,” said Krier, a real estate agent and part-time basketball coach. “I want my kids to want to come back home.”

That’s why, when a deal to build a Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Tonganoxie, Kansas, collapsed, she fully supported her city’s efforts to lure them to Concordia.

Kreir grew up in Holcomb, Kansas, where her single mother worked for a Tyson beef processing plant. She says she fully understands both the good and the bad that large animal processing production brings, but that for her mother and family, the job was, well, a job.

“She knew she had job security,” she said. “She had good income. If she needed to take time off she had days where she could take time off and paid as well.”

Many parts of rural Kansas would love to land a big company like Tyson, fully aware that it would bring foul smells and pose a potential threat to the local water supply. Even though the jobs are hard labor with modest pay, the wages would be better than what comes with the dwindling work available now. Enough, at least, to help save towns struggling to keep people.

Larger and more prosperous suburban areas, however, have already chased Tyson away. They’d rather see growth in the tech or aerospace manufacturing industries. Companies offering lower salaries aren’t as enticing when you can commute to a job that pays $60,000 a year. It’s an economic development luxury that many smaller communities don’t have.

In September, Tyson announced plans for a $320 million poultry complex on the outskirts of Tonganoxie that would employ about 1,600 people. Then-Gov. Sam Brownback applauded the plan as a boon for the Kansas economy. But local residents weren’t as excited. They were upset that the project was announced before receiving any input on how the plant would change their lives.

Protests followed by a group called Citizens Against Project Sunset, the code name city and state officials used to discuss the project. The group worried about what the plant, and the chicken farms that would come with it, would bring — water pollution, bad odors, and decreased property values.

Those opponents also said that Tonganoxie didn’t need those jobs. The average Tyson wage of $13 to $15 an hour, they said, was far worse than the average salary of most of the people already living in the area.

With so much backlash, it took less than a month before city officials voted to pull their support for the project.

Sedgwick County officials faced similar backlash when they began showing interest as a potential replacement destination for Tyson. And just like in Tonganoxie, county officials quickly turned their attention elsewhere.

By early December the commission had issued a statement that they would not offer Tyson any tax incentives. Instead, it entered into a partnership with Spirit Aerosystems to give $7 million to help expand the company’s production line.

“We just evaluated, ‘Where should our resources go?’,’’ Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said. “And Spirit is where this commission went.”

But state officials remain confident. They still see poultry as an industry where Kansas could really grow.

The Kansas Legislature has also entered the debate. This year, it passed a bill that increases how many chickens can be housed inside of barns within a mile of other inhabited buildings. The bill is essentially an invite to the poultry industry.

“I’m confident that there are communities across our state that are interested and willing to see this as an economic development opportunity for their region,” Kerry Wefald, director of marketing, of the Kansas Department of Agriculture said.

The department received more than 40 letters of interest from Kansas communities in the state after Tyson backed off of the Tonganoxie plant.

Cloud County’s proposal, where Concordia is located, was among a few that stood out.

It has many of the things a company would look for — infrastructure and potential employees.

U.S. 81 runs right through the middle of Concordia and Cloud County. It eventually connects into Interstate 70 at Salina.

The county produces truckloads of grain, handy feed for chickens.

Ashley Hutchinson, the head of Cloud County’s economic development organization, said they also have people who would be excited to work there. The median salary in Cloud County is $11.86 an hour. That’s less than the average hourly wage Tyson says it would pay at a new facility.

“For us, these are incredible jobs,” she said. “They’re jobs that put food on people’s tables.”

None of that might matter.

Tyson said it is in no active discussions with any community in Kansas to build a new processing plant, the company said in an email. It’s focused on building a facility in Humboldt, Tennessee. It may still consider building additional plants in the future if there is enough demand, the email said.

The good news for Kansans wanting to draw in the poultry industry is that economists expect the demand for all types of meat to continue to grow.

Glynn Tonsor, professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, said that’s because nationally and internationally more people are eating meat. As income increases in countries like India and China, the ability to have more protein in the diet also increases. Low grain prices have also contributed to increased production.

But even if demand remained flat, Tonsor said, Kansas could still be a potential site of future growth. As older processing facilities elsewhere age, companies could shift production to Kansas. Companies don’t want to reinvest and put new buildings in a location if the advantages aren’t the same as when it was first constructed.

“The industry puts the building where they are the best fit for today,” Tonsor said.

Meanwhile, communities interested in the industry are waiting.

Hutchison said Cloud County is going to continue to be proactive in their efforts to lure someone to the area, whether that’s Tyson, or one of other producers such as Costco, Smart Chicken, or Perdue.

She just hopes that what happened in Tonganoxie, hasn’t already ruined their chances.

“We are a state that feeds the nation and feeds the world,” she said. “If you don’t particularly want that opportunity on your doorstep in a metro area, that doesn’t mean we don’t.”

Brian Grimmett reports on the environment and energy for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @briangrimmett.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Fellow Democrats are calling for a Missouri lawmaker to resign after they say he repeatedly called into a St. Louis-area radio program in which the host is known for making racist and other offensive remarks.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that 69-year-old Rep. Bob Burns, who represents Affton in eastern Missouri, called into KQQZ-AM Radio to Bob Romanik’s show. Romanik is known for using racial, homophobic and sexist slurs. Burns is alleged to have told Romanik, “You’re saying the right things.”

Missouri Democratic leaders, including U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, on Saturday issued public statements calling for Burns to resign.

Marc Powers, a spokesman for Missouri House Democrats, says leaders learned of the recordings on Wednesday and investigated Thursday. Powers says House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty asked Burns to resign Friday, but he declined.

Burns did not return phone and email messages left Saturday by The Associated Press seeking comment.