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Only half of America's smallest businesses now offer health coverage to their workers because many say steady cost hikes have made it too expensive to afford a benefit that nearly all large employers still provide. The Kaiser Family Foundation said Tuesday that 50 percent of companies with three to 49 employees offered coverage this year. That's down from 59 percent in 2012 and 66 percent more than a decade ago. "There's just not as much money around for compensation, including benefits," said Gary Claxton, a Kaiser vice president and lead...
Attorneys general from most states are broadening their investigation into the opioid industry as a nationwide overdose crisis continues to claim thousands of lives. They announced Tuesday that they had served subpoenas requesting information from five companies that make powerful prescription painkillers and demanded information from three distributors. Forty-one attorneys general are involved in various parts of the civil investigation. The probe into marketing and sales practices seeks to find out whether the industry's own actions worsened...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Employing an array of giant telescopes positioned in the New Mexico desert, astronomers have started a massive surveying project aimed at producing the most detailed view ever made of such a large portion of space using radio waves emitted from throughout the Milky Way and beyond. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the project this week, saying the Very Large Array will make three scans of the sky that's visible from the scrubland of the San Augustin Plains. It is one of the best spots on the planet t...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An environmental science teacher at Broken Arrow Public Schools has been named Oklahoma's Teacher of the Year for 2018. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister said Tuesday that Donna Gradel (GRAW-dul) was named Oklahoma Teacher of the Year after extensive interviews with 12 finalists by a 20-member panel of judges. A 29-year veteran educator, Gradel began her teaching career after receiving one of the first women's basketball scholarships to West Virginia University. A teacher in Broken Arrow for 21 y...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cleanups at some U.S. hazardous waste sites have stopped or slowed down because the Environmental Protection Agency does not manage its Superfund staff effectively to match its workload, an internal government watchdog said Tuesday. Such work is at a standstill or moving slowly on at least four Superfund sites where "human exposure is not under control," according to a report from the EPA's inspector general. That means contamination at the sites is unsafe for humans and there is a reasonable expectation that people may be e...
DENVER (AP) — The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has finished excavating the Thornton triceratops. The Denver Post reports (http://dpo.st/2fhDKmP ) that excavation of the pre-historic creature finished on Monday, and with about 80 percent of the skull and 15 percent of the skeleton being recovered, the triceratops is the most complete Cretaceous-period fossil to be discovered in Colorado. Museum dinosaur curator Joe Sertich says the fossils will help his team understand what the Thornton area was like 66 million years ago. The triceratops w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Arctic sea ice this summer dropped to its eighth lowest level on record, new federal data show. That's far below average, but considerably above the record low set five years ago. The National Snow and Ice Data Center said Tuesday that on Sept. 13 sea ice in Arctic shrank to its smallest area of the season: 1.79 million square miles (4.64 million square kilometers). Data center scientist Ted Scambos said the Arctic sea ice set a record for the smallest winter amount earlier this year and was close to 2012's record low l...
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Amazon has rejected the 21-foot (6.4-meter) Saguaro cactus that southern Arizona economic leaders planned to send as a gift to CEO Jeff Bezos, in a bid to attract the company's second headquarters. "Unfortunately we can't accept gifts (even really cool ones)," an Amazon tweet read. Amazon says it is instead donating the cactus to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. Sun Corridor Inc., an economic development group, said it was sending cactus last week, saying it symbolizes that Tucson has the room to grow with the on...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Nearly 100 foster children in Kansas have stayed overnight in the offices of contractors who administer the state's foster care system because no foster homes are available, state contractors told a meeting of the state's Child Welfare Task Force on Tuesday. Representatives of KVC Kansas and Saint Francis Community Services said since the beginning of the year, 98 children had to spend a night in their offices after they were removed from their families but a foster care home couldn't be found immediately. Phyllis G...
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Police say a man under investigation by the Kansas Department of Revenue is suspected in a shooting that critically injured an employee at the agency's Wichita office. Wichita Police spokesman Charley Davidson told reporters that a 35-year-old employee was shot multiple times Tuesday before the gunman fled the scene. The suspect was arrested about a half hour later and is in custody. Davidson says there was a Revenue Department investigation involving the suspect earlier in the day, but he did not have details of its n...
CHETOPA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have arrested a Kansas man who is suspected of growing marijuana in a park in a small town in the southeast corner of the state. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation says in a news release that the 54-year-old man was arrested Monday after attempting to flee from law enforcement in a boat. He is accused of cultivating the marijuana on an island in Elmore Park in the Labette County town of Chetopa. He also is accused of criminal possession of a firearm because he had a past felony conviction. Sheriff's deputies, C...
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Authorities are investigating the death of a Manhattan man as involuntary manslaughter. The Manhattan Mercury reports that police responded to a call late Saturday and found 60-year-old Randy Abarr unconscious. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died early Sunday. Police haven't made any arrests or named any possible suspects. Riley County Police Department public information officer Hali Rowland says she doesn't expect that police will release any additional information pending an autopsy report. ___ Information f...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Topeka man faces a sentence of up to 20.5 years in prison after he was found guilty in the stabbing death of another man. A Shawnee County jury on Monday convicted Caleb John Kanatzar of voluntary manslaughter in the death of 24-year-old Terrin Holloway. Holloway's body was found in December 2015 in a car stopped in the middle of a street in Topeka. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Kanatzar testified last week that he stabbed Holloway in self-defense because he thought Holloway had a gun. Kanatzar said before the s...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The body of a man who police believed killed himself sat in his pickup truck in a Kansas City International Airport parking lot for eight months before being discovered and his family wants to know why it wasn't noticed sooner. The body of 53-year-old Randy Potter was found last week after someone reported a bad smell coming from the truck, The Kansas City Star reports. Police said the man from suburban Lenexa, Kansas, appeared to have died by suicide, but provided no details. His parking pass is dated Jan. 17, the d...
STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) — James Washington came into the season as the standout receiver for No. 6 Oklahoma State. Now he has a lot of company among the Cowboys' talented group of wide receivers. Four OSU wideouts, including Washington, recorded at least 100 yards receiving in Oklahoma State's 59-21 victory over Pittsburgh, as Heisman Trophy candidate Mason Rudolph threw for 497 yards and five touchdowns, all in the first half. That was the first time in school history more than two receivers reached 100 yards in the same game and the first t...
CHICKASHA, Okla. (AP) — Police say seven officers were injured during a weekend shootout in central Oklahoma, including one who remains hospitalized. Police initially said two officers were wounded Sunday as they tried to serve a search warrant following a kidnapping attempt in Chickasha, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City. Chickasha Police Chief Goebel Music said Tuesday that seven officers were injured after the suspect allegedly opened fire from a home. Music says two officers were taken to a hospital. One was t...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An audit has found that test results were repeatedly altered for an adult basic education program at Oklahoma City Community College. The audit conducted by Oklahoma City accounting firm Crawford & Associates found six of the students who were selected for review had alterations on their scan sheets, including erased and replaced names. The audit also said 17 other student records had "conflicting data entry errors" and that "student files were not being consistently maintained." An investigation was launched in 2016 a...
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) — The secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is in Oklahoma to meet with members of the Pawnee and Cherokee nations. Secretary Tom Price began a three-day visit to Oklahoma Tuesday as part of the federal agency's integral relationship with tribal governments. Price plans to meet with tribal leaders and tour health facilities and human service sites that offer programs tailored to the needs of tribal nations and people. Price will also host a meeting of the Secretary's Tribal Advisory Committee — the...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A Democratic schoolteacher who defeated a Republican businessman in a special election for a state House seat in a traditionally GOP district is getting sworn into office. Jacob Rosecrants will take the oath of office Wednesday morning in the House chamber at the Oklahoma Capitol. Rosecrants won 60 percent of the vote last week over Republican Darin Chambers for the House District 46 seat in west Norman, despite a nearly 3,000-voter registration advantage for the GOP there. With his win, Republicans now hold a 72-28 edge i...
OKMULGEE, Okla. (AP) — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says the Okmulgee County sheriff has asked the agency to investigate a shooting by a deputy that wounded two men at the end of police pursuit in eastern Oklahoma. The OSBI says the deputy on Saturday was pursuing a car carrying two people when the driver turned around and drove toward the officer. The officer then fired several times, striking 34-year-old driver Chris Culberson of Duncan and his passenger, whose name wasn't immediately released. Culberson is hospitalized in u...
