FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The police chief in the St. Louis suburb where an officer fatally shot an unarmed teenager says cyber-attacks on his city’s website won’t sway him into publicly releasing the officer’s name.
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said Wednesday that someone burrowed into the website and shut it down for much of Monday, two days after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
An anonymous global group of hackers had pledged to create mischief with Ferguson’s city computers if the name wasn’t released. But Jackson says the officer has received numerous death threats, and the chief worries that disclosing his name would endanger the officer.
Brown’s death has drawn protests, a night of looting in Ferguson, and calls for Jackson to release the officer’s name. The officer is on administrative leave.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — The man accused of kidnapping, raping and killing a 10-year-old Springfield girl is trying to distance himself from handwritten stories about child rape and sodomy allegedly found in his home.
Prosecutors are trying to match Craig Michael Wood’s handwriting to the writing on the child pornography stories.
Wood is accused of raping and killing fourth-grader Hailey Owens in February after forcing her into his pickup truck while she walked home. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The Springfield News-Leader reports Wood’s attorney, Patrick Berrigan, said in a court motion that a letter taken from Wood to tie him to the stories should be kept out of evidence because it was seized improperly. Berrigan also argues handwriting comparison science is not trustworthy.
JOPLIN (AP) – A man already in state prison for drug trafficking admitted to trying to claim disaster benefits after the 2011 Joplin tornado.
Federal prosecutors said 35-year-old Gary L. Mitchell Jr., pleaded guilty Monday to making false statements to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He admitted he claimed on a FEMA application for assistance that the tornado had destroyed his primary home. Mitchell owned the house but was renting it to someone else.
The Joplin Globe reported after his claim was denied, Mitchell offered his driver’s license and a past-due tax statement to prove he lived at the home. However, the license was issued after the tornado, and the tax statement was mailed to his actual address in Carl Junction.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican incumbent Pat Roberts and independent candidate Greg Orman are holding multiple events across Kansas as they run for U.S. Senate.
Roberts launched what he called a listening tour this week, promising to visit all 105 counties. He stopped Wednesday in south-central Kansas for a Wichita forum on small-business issues and town hall meetings in Derby and Andover.
Orman was on an 18-stop bus tour that took him Wednesday to Hays, Colby and Garden City.
Roberts is seeking his fourth, six-year term in the Senate. Orman is an Olathe businessman and the co-founder of a business capital and management services firm.
The Democratic nominee is Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor.
KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) — Residents of Kearney coninue cleaning up debris and damage after heavy rain caused flooding in the eastern Nebraska city.
The Kearney Hub reports at least 3.89 inches of rain fell Friday night and flooding streets and some buildings in Kearney.
This video shows the moment flood waters crashed through the cafeteria doors at Good Samaritan Hospital.
Buffalo County Emergency Manager Darrin Lewis says most of the rain fell in under an hour. That caused floor drains in many homes in eastern and central Kearney to back up.
Kari Bruffett, former director of the Division of Health Care Finance, now serves as secretary of the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services- photo KHI News
By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — A state official charged with overseeing Medicaid-funded services that help people with disabilities live in community-based settings rather than in nursing homes said Tuesday that coming changes in federal wage and hour rules are likely to increase costs, reduce access to care and give beneficiaries less say in deciding who will provide their care.
“We have great concerns about this,” said Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Secretary Kari Bruffett, testifying before a Statehouse meeting of the Robert G. Bethell Joint Committee on Home and Community Based Services and KanCare Oversight.
The changes, which were first announced by the U.S. Department of Labor in September 2013, are set to take effect the first of the year. They require states to pay attendant care workers overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week.
Bruffett said the changes are expected to have little effect on home health companies that already pay their employees an hourly wage and have long been subject to laws governing overtime.
But in Kansas, she said, most of the state’s Medicaid-funded in-home services are based on an assessment of each individual’s needs and a formula for calculating how much the state will pay to have those needs met.
Medicaid beneficiaries then are given the choice of letting a home health agency provide the needed services or making those decisions for themselves.
Typically, a home health agency won’t agree to provide the services if the agreed-upon rate doesn’t cover its overtime costs. But there’s nothing to stop an individual from hiring a caregiver – an adult son or daughter, for example – who’s willing to provide the care for what the state is willing to pay.
Bruffett said KDADS is now being told that after Jan. 1, so-called self-directed caregivers will have to be paid minimum wage as well as overtime.
If the agreed-upon rate falls short of the required wages, she said, the state will have to cut services or pay more for them.
The rule change likely will double the cost of providing thousands of beneficiaries with sleep cycle support services, she said. That refers to the practice of paying someone to be present while a beneficiary sleeps so they’re available when the person in their care needs help toileting, taking medication, being repositioned to prevent bedsores or getting out of bed in the morning.
Currently, the state pays about $35 for six to eight hours of sleep cycle support. After the minimum-wage requirement takes effect, it’s likely to cost roughly $60 per person per night.
Bruffett warned that without sleep cycle support, thousands of vulnerable Kansas – frail elders and people with disabilities, primarily – likely would need to move to a nursing home setting.
“Those would not be good choices,” she said.
Bruffett said KDADS has not yet calculated how much it expects the change to cost the state. Instead, she said, the department is planning to “push back pretty hard,” noting that she recently wrote a letter to U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez, asking him to exempt Kansas’ self-directed programs or delay implementation of the new rule.
“I’m not here to cause alarm,” she said, “but we do want people to know that changes are going to be made. And we’d like them to join us in pushing back. We’d like for there to be some kind of Kansas-specific exemption.”
Bruffett said she was aware that Perez has denied similar requests from other states.
The committee did not hear from anyone representing the U.S. Department of Labor.
Mike Oxford, executive director at the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and a longtime advocate for the disabled, said implementing the rule change will be costly and disruptive.
“What’s really sad is that this is going to hijack a lot of other issues that we have going on, like restoring cuts in services and addressing waiting list for services,” he said. “And now, we’re looking at having to spend all this money on overtime, which, when it’s all said and done, is going to lead to fewer services.”
Oxford encouraged Medicaid beneficiaries to contact their legislators about the changes.
GOODLAND, Kan. (AP) — A Missouri woman whose sister died in a western Kansas county jail has pleaded guilty to a felony drug count.
Joy Biggs, of Kansas City, pleaded Tuesday to not having a tax stamp on less than an ounce of marijuana found in the women’s vehicle when a trooper stopped them near Goodland. Six other charges were dropped.
The Salina Journal reports Biggs is expected to be placed on probation when she is sentenced in October.
Biggs’ sister, Brenda Sewell, died in the Sherman County jail in January, three days after the women were arrested.
Biggs alleged jail guards refused to help her sister as she became ill.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation declined to investigate Sewell’s death after an autopsy found she died of natural causes.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) released the following statement today regarding the recent tragedy in Ferguson, Mo.:
“I join all Missourians in remembering the family of Michael Brown and the Ferguson community as they grieve the tragic loss of this young man. His recent high school graduation should have been a beginning of better things.
“Everyone deserves a transparent understanding of what happened here. I am fully supportive of County Executive Charlie Dooley and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar calling for DOJ and the FBI to take a careful, open review of the events that led to this tragedy for everyone involved.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says the clock is ticking for hundreds of thousands of people who have unresolved issues affecting their coverage under the new health law.
Officials said Tuesday that letters are going out to about 310,000 people whose citizenship and information documentation doesn’t match what the government has on file.
These consumers will need to upload their documentation to HealthCare.gov by Sept. 5, or mail it in.
Otherwise their coverage will end Sept. 30.
Of the 8 million people who signed up for private coverage through President Barack Obama’s law, more than 2 million at one point had discrepancies of some sort that affected their eligibility.
That number has been greatly reduced — but the remaining cases are proving difficult to clear up.
