AP Top Kansas News at 5:45 a.m. CDT
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Board approves plan for Kansas City, Kan., casino
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- A partnership hoping to build a Kansas City, Kan., casino cleared its biggest regulatory hurdle on Tuesday, despite the misgivings of the state board in charge of awarding the contract that the plan's first phase does not include building a hotel.
The Kansas Lottery Gaming Facility Review Board unanimously approved a $521 million project at Kansas Speedway, the Kansas City area's NASCAR track. International Speedway Corp., the track's parent, and Penn National Gaming Inc., of Wyomissing, Pa., are partners in the venture.
They hope to open the casino by early 2012 with 2,300 slot machines and about 90 tables for games such as poker and blackjack. The partners also expect the new gambling to generate $220 million in net revenues in 2013, though others' projections are more conservative.
The partners still face background checks by the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission, which will regulate the casino, and it has until early March to sign off. But state officials don't expect the checks to take that long because Penn is licensed in other states.
Penn and speedway officials are promising to start building a hotel at the track within two years of the casino's opening or pay financial penalties. Review board members had questioned the delay but ultimately concluded it was reasonable, given the sour economy.
"This is about as good as we're going to get under the circumstances," said review board Chairman Matt All, an attorney from Lawrence.
------ Families mourn slain Wichita couple
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- Prosecutors on Tuesday charged an 18-year-old suspect in the killing of a couple whose bodies were discovered at their Wichita home on Thanksgiving day.
A 17-year-old also arrested in the case is not expected to be charged until Wednesday at the earliest.
The bodies of Jessie Foust, 25, and 26-year-old Pharon Adrian Jackson had been lying in their house for hours when Jackson's sister discovered them after they failed to turn up for a holiday dinner. The couple's 4-year-old and 18-month-old sons were found unhurt and wandering around the house.
Prosecutors charged Samuel Holton of Mulvane with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated robbery on Tuesday.
Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said Jackson was believed to have known both suspects, and was involved with one of them in an earlier transaction involving a gun.
Police have confiscated more than one gun, although the two victims appear to have been shot with the same weapon, Stolz said. There was no sign of forced entry, but police found indications of a struggle inside the home.
------ Kansas shooting victims remembered in Missouri
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- After dropping out of college to marry the man who would later be charged with killing her, Karen Kahler had finally returned to school to finish her degree.
Daughter Emily, 18, was close to completing her first semester at pharmacy school and planned to graduate at the same time as Mom. Younger sister Lauren, 16, was a talented musician and honor roll student with a wide circle of friends at her Columbia high school.
Now, with husband and father James Kraig Kahler facing Kansas capital murder charges after a Thanksgiving weekend shooting, friends of the three women are grieving in the Missouri college town they called home for a little more than one year.
"She was an awesome woman," said Traci Wilson-Kleekamp, a friend who met the 44-year-old Texas transplant and personal trainer at a pre-dawn boot camp organized by Kahler. "She was the source of my inspiration ... I am simply devastated."
The family moved to Columbia in summer 2008 when Kraig Kahler was hired to run the city utilities department. Although municipal leaders revised their payroll rules to make him the city's highest paid employee, Kahler's personal life quickly unraveled, court records and interviews show.
In January, just weeks after a New Year's Eve incident back in Texas that Karen Kahler said left her with a head injury, cuts and a pulled hamstring, she filed for divorce after 23 years of marriage.
------ KCP&L seeks to add 300 megawatts of wind power
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Kansas City Power & Light is looking to quadruple the amount of electricity it generates through wind farms over the next two years.
The Kansas City-based utility on Tuesday issued a request for proposals from energy developers for a series of projects aimed at boosting wind energy by 300 megawatts by 2011.
KCP&L already owns and operates a 100.5-megawatt wind farm near Spearville, Kan.
One option for developers is to expand the Spearville facility by another 100.5 megawatts and sell the power to KCP&L by August 2010.
A second option includes providing an additional 100 megawatts of wind energy from somewhere other than Spearville by August and then adding another 200 megawatts by October 2011. KCP&L could either buy this power or own and operate the facility.
The company wants the proposals by January and would select an option to provide the initial 100 megawatts by the end of March, said KCP&L spokeswoman Katie McDonald.
------ Crocker: Change in Afghan strategy essential
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) -- The former U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Tuesday that even with 30,000 more U.S. troops heading to Afghanistan, a change in strategy is essential if the U.S. wants to succeed after eight years of war.
Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to spring of this year, said that it's not just a matter of how many more forces are sent to Afghanistan -- but how they are used. He also stressed that success in Afghanistan can't be expected to look like Iraq.
Crocker spoke with officers at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. hours before President Barack Obama was set to announce during an evening broadcast that he is dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, stepping up a risky war building. Obama also plans to assure the country that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011.
Crocker was the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq when a surge of forces were sent to tamp down rising sectarian violence -- something that couldn't have taken place or been successful had the Iraqis not gone through the painful sectarian strife that threatened the future of the nation, he said.
Likewise, Crocker said that sending more troops to Afghanistan also could not have come any sooner because the Taliban forces there were not as strong in recent years as they are now.
"It would have made no sense to surge against an adversary that hadn't taken to the field," Crocker told The Associated Press at the Kansas Army post after speaking to officers. "Timing is everything."