TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Some educators in the Topeka school district have had illegal access to data that identifies students from low-income families, which is legally protected as confidential, according to a newspaper report.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reported this week that principals and other educators were able to see the data through the district’s student information platform called PowerSchool. The data is used to determine which students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
Although Superintendent Julie Ford assured the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday that the problem had been fixed, the Capital-Journal reports that was not the case, after a person who is not legally allowed to review the data provided samples to the newspaper.
On Wednesday, the district shut down a data-exporting function in PowerSchool that was allowing the leak.
PETE YOST, Associated Press
MARCY GORDON, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has announced a $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America over its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis.
The deal announced Thursday calls for the bank, the second-largest in the U.S., to pay a $5 billion cash penalty and provide billions of dollars of relief to struggling homeowners. Bank of America says its cash payouts will total $9.65 billion.
The settlement is by far the largest deal the Justice Department has reached with a bank over the 2008 mortgage meltdown. In the last year, JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to a $13 billion settlement while Citigroup reached a separate $7 billion deal.
MARYVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A Nebraska man is charged in Missouri after a police chase that wound through parts of three states before ending in northwest Missouri.
Nodaway County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice on Tuesday charged 37-year-old Neal Alan Ulfers, of Lincoln, Nebraska, with tampering and resisting arrest, both felonies.
Ulfers was arrested Monday after the chase ended in Maryville. He is accused of stealing a pickup truck from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and eluding officers in southwest Iowa before entering northwest Missouri. Investigators say the chase reached speeds up to 80 mph, and Ulfers sometimes drove the wrong direction on highways, two-lane blacktops and gravel roads.
The Maryville Daily Forum reports Ulfers was finally forced off the road by a state trooper.
Online court records do not list an attorney for Ulfers.
INDEPENDENCE (AP) – Independence police are looking for a man who shot an employee while robbing an insurance office.
Police spokesman Tom Gentry says the shooting occurred Wednesday afternoon at the Dingeldein Insurance Group building.
He says the man brandished a gun and demanded money. The female employee was shot after she didn’t comply with the demand.
The Independence Examiner reports the woman was taken to a hospital but her injuries were not life-threatening.
Police said the suspect is a black male in his 40s or 50s, about 6 feet tall, with a speech impediment. He wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, khaki pants and a dark blue shirt with the word “ALLERGEN” on the front.
CENTERTOWN (AP) – The state fire marshal is helping an investigation into a house fire that killed a mid-Missouri man.
Cole County fire authorities say 40-year-old Steven Mims died in the fire Wednesday in Centertown.
The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports the home was a total loss. Sheriff Chief Deputy Capt. John Wheeler says the extent of the damage makes it more difficult to determine the fire’s cause.
Wheeler says the blaze is not considered suspicious.
ST. JOSEPH (AP) – A company that handles animal medicines plans to open a massive new warehouse and packaging plant in St. Joseph next week.
Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. will open its $28.7 million plant next Wednesday. It’s about the size of four football fields, and eventually will have 150 employees.
The Kansas City Star reports Boehringer will package, handle and distribute animal vaccines and medicines for shipment to more than 50 countries. The products are used to prevent and treat disease in the swine, cattle, equine and pet markets.
Boehringer, with U.S. headquarters in St. Joseph, said the plant could be expanded by about 100,000 square feet for manufacturing. The company also has operations in Ames, Fort Dodge and Sioux Center, Iowa. It is a division of a Germany-based company.
There was little violence after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer. Peace prevailed when four other unarmed black males were killed by police in recent months, from New York to Los Angeles.
Then Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri. And waves of riots have convulsed the city.
Why Ferguson? Observers cite a convergence of factors.
Brown’s killing happened in broad daylight, and the body lay in the street for hours. Police responded aggressively to protests. And some say people were simply fed up with the toll of killing after killing of unarmed black males.
Kevin Powell, president of an advocacy group, is heading to Ferguson as a peace activist. He says one reason for the riots is that it appeared that local authorities didn’t care about the community.
E-cigarette retailer Aaron Todd says “vaping” helped him quit smoking–Photo by Alex Smith
By Alex Smith, KCUR
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Carlo Cavallaro pours a brown liquid into a device that looks a little like a Star Trek phaser. When it hits battery-heated coils, the liquid sizzles and turns into vapor. He takes a big draw and exhales a sugary-smelling cloud.
Cavallaro makes his own custom nicotine-infused e-cigarette juice.
“This one that I have here is a fudge brownie,” he said.
E-cigarettes have only been around the United States for about seven years, and during that time they have been left largely unregulated by the federal government and most state governments, including Missouri.
The independent e-cigarette makers, as well as enthusiasts like Cavallaro, have reveled in the freedom to experiment with devices and flavors, making the vaping industry pretty much whatever they want it to be. So it might seem surprising that e-cigarette advocacy groups have been pushing for one regulation.
“We want to make sure that minors don’t get these products in their hands,” said A.J. Moll of the Bistate Regional Advocates for Vaping Education, or BRAVE, which works in Missouri and Illinois.
With support from e-cigarette companies and retailers, Missouri lawmakers overwhelming passed a bill last session that would have banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. Moll was irate when Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed it in July.
“He could’ve ensured the safety of Missouri’s children by simply signing what we feel is a common sense bill,” he said.
To regulate or not to regulate
But Nixon said the issue wasn’t quite that simple. In a letter to the Missouri secretary of state, the governor said he would support a straight ban for minors but could not accept parts of the bill that would have prevented e-cigarettes from being regulated like tobacco products.
Nixon explained that the products contain nicotine, which is addictive and dangerous, particularly for adolescents and pregnant woman. And some studies have shown e-cigarette vapor contains carcinogens and heavy metal particles. In a nutshell, there are still lots of questions about the safety of e-cigarettes.
“There’s certainly not an extensive array of evidence related to e-cigarettes as there is with traditional cigarettes,” said Dr. Brian King, a senior scientific advisor with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
King notes that e-cigarettes have been sold in the United States only since 2007 and studied only since 2010. Decades of research have shown that traditional tobacco cigarettes contain thousands of chemicals and as many as 70 carcinogens, but he said there just aren’t enough studies to prove the dangers, if any, of e-cigarettes. Complicating the picture, King said, is the fact that e-liquids and devices are made in different ways by lots of different producers.
King thinks the many unanswered questions about e-cigarettes should make the public cautious. Moll, on the other hand, believes those unknowns are precisely why health agencies should not jump into tobacco-style regulation.
“They just don’t know enough about e-cigarettes, so I don’t know how they can form regulations,” Moll said.
Kansas lawmakers passed a bill in 2012 banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. Unlike the Missouri legislation, the Kansas bill didn’t include a prohibition on regulating the devices as tobacco products.
A less harmful alternative?
“I quit in May two years ago, and I haven’t had a cigarette since. All my family and friends I’ve gotten off cigarettes, and it was with the help of electronic cigarettes,” said Aaron Todd, owner of Vapur, an e-cigarette chain in the Kansas City area.
Todd and many e-cigarette users see the devices and juices as a healthier alternative to tobacco and a good way to quit tobacco smoking. In fact, modern e-cigarettes were invented in China in the early 2000s as a smoking cessation device.
King, however, is skeptical.
“The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data,’” he said. “So although some people are saying they are using them to quit, the data we have currently does not show that these products are effective for long-term cessation.”
In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that e-cigarettes were no help to quitting for people in the study group.
Dr. Robert Moser, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, isn’t convinced that e-cigarettes improve smokers’ chances of quitting. And he worries that normalizing their use could lead young people to take up the habit and form addictions to nicotine that then make it more likely they will start smoking.
“We know how addictive nicotine can be,” Moser said. “So, once we have our youth taking up this habit, will they become addicted not just to e-cigarettes but do what a lot of our adult chronic smokers are doing, which is use both electronic cigarettes and tobacco products?”
While most e-cigarettes have been produced by small, independent companies, their sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion this year, and that growth has attracted the attention of some big-time players. In the last two years, major tobacco companies such as Reynolds American Inc., Altria Group Inc., British American Tobacco and Lorillard Inc. have bought or introduced their own e-cigarette brands under names like Vuse, MarkTen, Green Smoke and Blu.
While Nixon vetoed the Missouri bill, many other states have passed similar legislation banning sales to minors but preventing e-cigarettes from being regulated like tobacco.
To Tracey Kennedy of Tobacco Free Missouri, that seems very similar to the tobacco industry’s strategy of voluntarily adopting “anti-youth access” programs to avoid further regulation. Kennedy is one of many observers who suspect big tobacco companies are pushing for the new state laws. Her group has closely monitored the legislation.
“We were able to highlight some comparisons to other states that had very similar language that could be directly related back to the tobacco industry,” she said.
FDA rule
Recently, the debate at the state level has been overshadowed by federal action. In April, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a rule barring e-cigarette sales to minors, requiring health warnings and disclosure of ingredients and banning free samples, among other things. If the rule is adopted, it could conflict with the anti-regulation-friendly state laws.
Kennedy, for one, doesn’t think the FDA rule goes far enough.
“What’s really a key thing that’s missing,” she said, “is there’s no marketing restrictions on e-cigarettes, so things like celebrity endorsements and television ads and things that really appeal to youth aren’t a part of this rule.”
By contrast, Moll sees the FDA rule as potentially ruining a growing independent industry built on a safer alternative to tobacco.
“What they’re really going to do is close all these businesses down, and you’re not going to be able to get product, and there’s going to be a huge black market,” he said.
As e-cigarette proponents anxiously await the FDA’s decision, many like Moll also will be pushing Missouri legislators to override the governor’s veto of the state bill at the veto session in September.
Amid all the debate and clamor, at least one thing is clear: The 21st century answer to cigarettes is unquestionably gaining in popularity. And with that popularity, increased scrutiny from politicians and health advocates — scrutiny that could radically change the industry — is all but inevitable.
How that plays out remains shrouded in smoke.
– Jim McLean of KHI News Service contributed to this story.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Some educators in the Topeka school district have had illegal access to data that identifies students from low-income families, which is legally protected as confidential, according to a newspaper report.
