JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri judge has rejected legal challenges to a pair of proposed constitutional amendments dealing with gun rights and transportation taxes.

In two similar rulings Tuesday, Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem dismissed the lawsuits against the measures as moot because less than six weeks remain before the Aug. 5 election.

His rulings are likely to be appealed.

One of the measures would ask voters to impose a three-quarters cent sales tax for transportation projects.

The other measure would enhance the right to keep and bear arms in the Missouri Constitution. It would declare the right to be “unalienable” and subject gun-control restrictions to a tougher legal standard.

2:35 p.m. UPDATE  MANHATTAN- One person was hospitalized after a truck hit a tractor just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday in Riley County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Ford E350 driven by Halston Puett, 20, Topeka, was westbound on Interstate 70 fifteen miles east of Manhattan.

For an unknown reason the truck left the roadway and struck a 2009 New Holland farm tractor that was mowing the grass on the north shoulder of the westbound Interstate.

Puett was transported to Mercy Regional Medical Center

The KHP reported the tractor driver Myron Sessions, 40, Alma, was possibly injured. It does not indicate he was transported for treatment.

The KHP reported Puett was properly restrained at the time of the accident.

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MANHATTAN-   EMS, Riley County Police, Manhattan Fire and the Kansas Highway Patrol are at Interstate 70 mile marker 317 in Riley County  where an  injury accident between a semi-truck and a mower has backed up traffic in the west bound lanes. East bound traffic is also slow in the area.

ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Trade Commission is alleging that T-Mobile USA, Inc., made “hundreds of millions” of dollars off its customers through bogus charges.

In a complaint filed Tuesday, the FTC says the mobile phone provider billed consumers for subscriptions to “premium” texts such as $10-per-month horoscopes that were never authorized by the account holder. The FTC alleges that T-Mobile collected as much as 40 percent of the charges, even after being made aware that the subscriptions were scams.

FTC Chair Edith Ramirez said in a statement that the agency’s goal is to ensure T-Mobile repays its customers. She said there were, quote, “clear warning signs the charges it was imposing were fraudulent.”

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — Excessive alcohol use accounts for almost one in 10 deaths among working-age adults in the United States, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, released late last week, found that from 2006 to 2010 excessive use of alcohol killed nearly 88,000 Americans each year. In 2001, the last time CDC researchers reviewed the data, alcohol was blamed for almost 75,800 deaths.

Almost 70 percent of the deaths in 2006-2010 involved people ages 20 to 64; 5 percent were younger. The remainder were 65 or older.

Binge drinking – five or more drinks in a two-hour span for men; four or more drinks for women – accounted for more than half of these deaths.

The five states with the highest percentages of working-age deaths were New Mexico (16.4 percent), Alaska (15.9 percent), Colorado (14.2 percent), Wisconsin (13.4 percent) and Arizona (13.4 percent).

“Excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death that kills many Americans in the prime of their lives,” Ursula E. Bauer, director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a prepared statement that accompanied release of the study. “We need to redouble our efforts to implement scientifically proven public health approaches to reduce this tragic loss of life and the huge economic costs that result.”

According to the study, roughly 5,450 working-age Kansans died in each of the five years. Of these deaths, 9.5 percent (almost 520 people) were due to excessive alcohol use, resulting in either chronic conditions – liver disease, primarily – or “acute causes” such as car crashes, drownings, suicides, falls and homicides.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s latest vital statistics report shows that 163 Kansans died of chronic liver disease and cirrhosis in 2012.

Dulcinea Rakestraw, vice president of treatment service at Preferred Family Healthcare, Wichita, and chair of the Kansas Association of Addiction Professionals, said she wasn’t surprised by the CDC’s findings.

Alcohol abuse, she said, has been the top reason for admission to rehabilitation programs for “a long time, and in 20-to-64 age group, a lot of the people we see are working.”

One of the “strange” things about alcohol abuse, Rakestraw said, is that some people are able to “compartmentalize it” in ways that allow them to hold jobs and have families.

“It’s why we have such a hard time treating multiple DUI offenders,” she said. “Their alcohol abuse doesn’t seem to get into the other parts of their lives, so they don’t see themselves having a problem with alcohol because they still have their job and they still have their family. The problem, they say, is with their driving.”

The percentage of alcohol-caused deaths in Kansas was the 22nd highest in the nation. New Jersey’s was the lowest, at 7.8 percent.

“It really doesn’t matter where we rank in comparison to other states because every community in Kansas should want the lowest rank possible,” said Shana Burgess, manager of prevention services at the Johnson County Mental Health Center. “These are preventable deaths.”

Nationally, the study found that excessive alcohol use killed males (71 percent) more often than females (29 percent).

In Kansas, most of the state’s alcohol-abuse prevention efforts are housed in 10 regional centers.

“The main focus of our work is centered on community coalitions and engaging different sectors in the community so that kids all hear the same message from their parents, from the schools, from the faith community and from local businesses,” said Burgess, who runs the regional prevention center in Johnson County.

Earlier surveys of Kansas children, she said, have found that one in every four Kansas 12th-graders report having participated in binge drinking in the last two weeks.

The surveys, Burgess said, also found that in Kansas the average age for first use of alcohol is 13.

“The most important message I took away from this report is that all alcohol-related deaths are preventable,” Burgess said.

JOAN LOWY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog says the federal effort to provide drones regular access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and won’t meet a September 2015 deadline set by Congress.

A report by the Transportation Department’s inspector general says the Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t figured out what kind of technology unmanned aircraft should use to avoid crashing into other planes.

The FAA also hasn’t set standards for certifying the safety of drone designs and manufacture like those that exist for manned aircraft. Nor has the agency developed procedures for air traffic controllers to guide drones or criteria for training “pilots” who remotely control drones from the ground.

The report says that until the FAA resolves these problems and others, the effort to integrate drones into the national airspace will move slowly.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Commerce Secretary Pat George says the state has no plans to follow Missouri’s offer of a truce over the fierce competition for businesses in the Kansas City area.

But he says he’s willing to talk.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed a bill Tuesday that would prohibit Missouri from offering incentives to businesses that relocate from one of four Kansas counties to any of four Missouri counties in the Kansas City area.

Kansas needs to take similar steps for Missouri’s bill to take effect, and that was far from certain Tuesday.

George says Kansas has offered to work with Missouri to curtail the movement of businesses across state lines.

But he says Kansas doesn’t want to interfere with border communities that have their own economic development priorities.

TONGANOXIE- Two people were injured in an accident just 8 a.m. on Tuesday in Leavenworth County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Ford passenger car driven by Joanna B. Frevele, 26, Tonganoxie was northbound on 246th Street three miles west of Tonganoxie.

The car left the roadway to the east and struck a fence.

Frevele and a 6-year old passenger were transported to KU Medical Center.

The KHP reported both were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s health care fraud watchdog says the Obama administration has been struggling to clear up data discrepancies that could potentially jeopardize coverage for millions under the health overhaul.

In a report Tuesday, the inspector general of the Health and Human Services department says the administration was unable to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems from October through December, 2013.

The report says that most of the problems dealt with citizenship and income information supplied by consumers that conflicted with what the federal government had on record.

It’s the first independent look at a festering behind-the-scenes issue that could turn into another health law headache for the White House.

The report said the government’s eligibility system was not fully functional.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has offered a truce to Kansas in the states’ ongoing battle to lure businesses across the state line with lucrative tax breaks.

Nixon signed legislation Tuesday in Kansas City that would prohibit Missouri from offering incentives to businesses that relocate from one of four Kansas counties to any of four Missouri counties in the Kansas City area.

But Nixon said the law can only work if Kansas takes similar steps.

The two states have combined to approve hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks in recent years for businesses to locate in the Kansas City area. Sometimes, those businesses have moved only a few miles across the state line without much of a net gain in the workforce.