14 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS IN BRIEF
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2003
STATE
Former Westar executives under fire in new tax audit
TOPEKA- An internal company audit has led some Shawnee County officials to conclude that Westar Energy Inc. owes the county $5.7 million in back taxes.The company disagrees.
The issue arose during Thursday's Shawnee County Commission meeting, when members noted that aircraft used by Westar executives had been exempt from property taxes since 1997, under a decision by the state Board of Tax Appeals.
In an audit released two weeks ago, investigators working for the company's board of directors concluded that former chief executive David Wittig and other executives used the aircraft repeatedly for personal business. It also suggested that flight logs had been falsified.
State law permits companies to receive an exemption on aircraft used for business purposes.
However, Jim Ludwig, Westar's vice president of public affairs, said the company did not own the planes — or benefit from the tax exemption.
Commissioners agreed to have their staff work toward recovering the $5.7 million. The county would make the claim for taxes with Westar, who could appeal to the Board of Tax Appeals.
Ludwig said the company no longer condoned personal use of the aircraft but added that the tax exemption was based on the leasing company's use of the aircraft, not Westar's.
Six-year highway debate ends with expansion of U.S.59
LAWRENCE — After six years of study and controversy, state and federal transportation officials have decided on a new route for U.S. 59 south of Lawrence.
Nearly all the houses and outbuildings east of the highway must be removed to make way for the highway. Those relocations are expected to begin this fall.
Secretary of Transportation Deb Miller said the expansion would make a dangerous highway considerably safer.
On Friday, transportation officials released the chosen alignment of the expansion of the two-lane highway to a four-lane freeway extending 18 miles south of Lawrence to Ottawa.
The project, which will move the highway about 300 feet to the east,will cost $214 million and force the removal of 36 homes.
The expansion will reduce the number of access points to the highway from 185 to 16.
Construction will begin in 2007.
New DUI laws beginning July 1 get tough on drunken drivers
ATCHISON — Kansans who drive drunk soon will feel the consequences of an Atchison couple's grief over their son's death.
Beginning July 1, a new law will give state judges the authority to order cars in drunken driving cases immobilized or impounded for up to a year, even for a first offense — and even if the driver doesn't own the car.
The law is the result of more than two years of work by Dennis and Linda Beaver of Atchison, who began campaigning for tougher laws after their 23-year-old son, Casey, died in a crash with a drunken driver.
In Missouri, a state law lets Springfield authorities seize and sell cars from people caught driving with licenses that were suspended or revoked for drunken driving. Since 1993, when the law took effect, it has raised about $60,000 for schools.
Under the new law, a driver seeking to recover a car after a yearlong stay in a Johnson County impound lot, for instance, could face a bill between $5,110 and $9,125, depending on which city seizes the vehicle. Lot owners can sell the cars to recover costs if owners do not pay the fee to get them released.
The National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances offers a model law that calls for one- or two-month immobilizations of vehicles when someone convicted of drunken driving drives with a suspended or revoked license.
NATION
Missouri couple charged after 4-year-old son shoots himself
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — An Independence couple has been charged with
endangering a child after their 4-year-old son shot himself in the neck, authorities said.
The boy, Jeremy Knowles Jr., was in critical condition and on a ventilator Monday. The shooting occurred about 12:45 p.m. Sunday in an Independence hotel room.
Jackson County prosecutors charged Jeremy Knowles Sr.,25, of Kansas City with endangering the welfare of a child. He was also charged with tampering with physical evidence for allegedly hiding the gun used in the shooting.
His wife, Mollie Knowles, 27, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child. They were being held Monday.
According to court records, the couple was sleeping when Mollie Knowles said she was awakened by a gun shot and saw her son lying on the floor with a handgun beside him. She woke up her husband, and he drove them to a hospital.
Jeremy Knowles Sr. dropped off his wife and son at the hospital and said he returned to the motel to care for their 6-year-old daughter.
Knowles told police he gave the gun to a neighbor because he was scared. Police found the gun in the trash can of another hotel room.
He told police he thought he had left the gun in his jacket pocket.
Hemophiliacs suing Bayer Corp. for selling tainted medicine
SAN FRANCISCO — Several hemophiliacs filed a lawsuit against Bayer Corp. and other companies, claiming they exposed patients to HIV and hepatitis C by selling medicine made with blood from sick, high-risk donors.
The lawsuit alleged the companies continued distributing the blood-clotting product in Asia and Latin America in 1984 and 1985, even after they stopped selling it
in the United States because of the known risk of HIV and hepatitis transmission.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court, seeks class-action status on behalf of thousands of foreign hemophiliacs who received the product, said attorney Robert Nelson.
The lawsuit was filed less than two weeks after an investigation by The New York Times accused the company of selling old stock of the medicine abroad, while marketing a newer, safer product in the United States.
Bayer, based in Germany, declined to comment Tuesday, saying it had not yet received the relevant documents. Bayer told the Times it sold the old medicine because some customers doubted the effectiveness of a new version of the product, and because some countries were slow to approve its sale.
While the company said it acted responsibly and in line with the best medical knowledge at the time, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate settled 15 years of U.S. lawsuits from people who took the drug, paying about $600 million,the newspaper said.
As of 1992, the contaminated blood products had infected at least 5,000 hemophiliacs in Europe with HIV. More than 2,000 had already developed AIDS and 1,250 had died from the disease, the lawsuit said.
In Latin America, at least 700 HIV cases are linked to use of contaminated blood products by hemophiliacs, the lawsuit said.
El Paso student questions freedom of speech on campus
DALLAS Time and again, Ruben Reyes asked the University of Texas at El Paso for permission to hold protests about environmental dangers,the administration and censorship. Reyes was turned down by officials who said the student union where the creative-writing student wanted to talk was not one of the two "free-speech zones" on the campus of 17,000 students.
Reyes responded by joining a growing number of students around the country who have taken university officials to court, complaining that free speech is being stifled by institutions that in many cases promote themselves as pillars of democracy.
Free-speech zones began appearing on campuses in the 1980s as a way to allow expression without interrupting learning. But in recent years, students and activists say that limiting speech to a few designated areas is unconstitutional because it effectively bans speech everywhere else.
"What they have done is turn the First
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