State officials will pay five-point-seven-million dollars to the federal government, money allegedly misspent in connection with a program that was supposed to create a high-tech military research laboratory in central Iowa. Guard spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Greg Hapgood says it was a partnership with a private contractor called International Simulation Training System. He says the plan was to use the simulators to create “virtual training” for soldiers in the Iowa National Guard. Hapgood says it was expected to give a big boost to readiness and soldiers wouldn’t have to leave their homes and families for long periods of time to go through training. At some point in the project, Hapgood says there were warning flags raised about the money being spent.He says more investigation was done through the U.S. Property and Fiscal Office, which controls money coming into the guard, determined there were indeed “some issues regarding funding.” Flash forward two and a half years, he suggests, and the now-completed investigation confirms some funds, though not exactly “mal-appropriated,” were paid by federal funds that will be have to be reimbursed by the state. The bottom line — the state and federal government have agreed Iowa owes the feds five-point-7-million dollars. Paying back the money will present a special challenge — Hapgood says the Iowa National Guard gets a very small share of its budget from the state. He says the guard’s 300-million dollars a year in funding only contains two or 3-percent a year from the state. Since that’s such a small share, money will come out of the general fund and be paid back over four fiscal years, with the first payment due this June and the last one to be made in fiscal year 2008. The probe also concluded that two top officials bore responsibility for the an office in Arizona, holiday parties, payments for individual retirement accounts and other questionable expenses. The director of the Iowa Technology Center was Brigadier General Joe Lucas who retired from the National Guard several months ago, before the release of any of these findings. Program manager for CIVIC, the Consolidated Interactive Virtual Information System, program was Colonel David Ray, who left the program and retired before the investigation began. The U.S. Attorney has decided not to file any criminal charges. The final report will be forwarded to the secretaries of the Army and Air Force, and they will have the final decision on whether any charges will be filed.
U-S Treasurer urges direct deposit for Social Security
One-quarter of the Americans who get Social Security benefits still go to their mailbox to get a check. U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral was in Des Moines this week and urged the credit union executives she addressed to encourage their clients to use direct deposit for their Social Security benefits. Cabral says the government still mails out 160 million paper checks every year to elderly or disabled Americans who quality for Social Security payments.She says it costs the government about 62 cents more to process and mail a check than it does to send those benefits electronically to an individual’s bank account. Cabral says that translates into 100-million dollars the government could save every year if everyone who gets Social Security benefits converts to direct deposit. Cabral says a paper check is a false sense of security.Cabral says checks are sometimes stolen from mail boxes. Some use a Social Security check to steal someone’s identity. And she says some people who go to a check cashing center to cash their Social Security check — rather than a bank — have been robbed. “We’ve had too many cases of that occurring,” she says. “And ultimately, checks get lost.”"In all the time that we’ve been doing electronic transmission, we’ve never lost a single payment, but if you rely on paper checks you’re…30 times more likely to have problems with your payment than you would if you went over to electronic transmission.” Cabral is urging the nation’s financial institutions to talk to their clients about converting to an electronic funds transfer for their Social Security benefits. Cabral was in Des Moines Wednesday, speaking to a meeting of credit union executives.
Program uses cans, construction and planning to fight hunger
A national program that combines architecture and food to help the needy gets underway today (Saturday) at a Des Moines mall. Nancy Iseminger is one of the organizers of the “Canstruction” project. She says architects, engineers and others in the design community get together and build structures out of non-perishable food items. She says they also get local middle school students involved. Iseminger says all the food used in the structures is donated to the Food Bank of Iowa. She says there’s not set theme for what they build. She says they try to build hunger into their structures in some way, but they don’t have any strict theme and leave it to the imagination of the builders. She says the structures the designers create are “amazing.” She says it’s unbelievable what they can come up with just using the labels of cans. They use the front and back labels depending on the color of the cans. Construction starts at seven A.M. and runs through 11 at Merle Hay Mall. The completed structures will be on public display for one week.
Increase in Cancer diagnoses indicates better awareness
The number of Iowans who are diagnosed with cancer this year is expected to rise, but officials with the American Cancer Society say, in a way, that’s a good thing. Kerry Finnegan, a spokeswoman for the A-C-S chapter in Des Moines, says more people are finding cancer early — and they’re beating it. The number of Iowans who are expected to be diagnosed with cancer this year is 15-thousand-910, while the number of Iowans who are expected to die of cancer this year is six-thousand-610. Finnegan says those two numbers are going in opposite directions, which is what the Cancer Society wants to hear. More people are being diagnosed but less people are dying, which Finnegan attributes to more awareness of screenings and the importance of early detection. She says the earlier cancer is discovered and diagnosed, the greater the chances for a full recovery. In Iowa, there are three major forms of cancer to worry about. About 23-hundred Iowa women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, 18-hundred Iowa men and women will be hit with lung cancer this year and about 17-hundred will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Those are the top cancers which Finnegan says Iowans need to talk about with their doctors and have a screening done. For more information, call 800 A-C-S 2345 or surf to “www.cancer.org”.
Subject of "Good Morning Vietnam" movie talks to Iowa veterans
He’s a lawyer in Washington D.C. He’s been a broadcaster, an ad-agency owner, and wrote a book on radio announcing. But fans of Adrian Cronauer still know him best as the real soldier behind Robin Williams’ demented radio personality in the film “Good Morning Vietnam.” Cronauer was in Des Moines last (Friday) night to address the midwinter conference of the Iowa American Legion. He worked in broadcasting until the mid-80s, then became a lawyer. Cronauer says the last three years and four months he’s been a Special Assistant to the Director of the Prisoner of War and Missing Persons Office at the Pentagon, He says there still 88-thousand U.S. soldiers still missing from armed conflicts.Cronauer says 78-thousand of those are still missing from World War Two, about 8,100 from the Korean War, about 1,800 from the Vietnam war, 120 still missing from the era of the “Cold War,” and one unaccounted-for from each war in Iraq. He says about 120 people at his office in Washington work to keep the missing soldiers from being forgotten. He says they also try to keep people from being missing — by seeing that they have the best training and equipment “so we can find them before they get captured by the enemy.” Cronauer says he usually opens by answering questions about the film. After he talks about his work with POWs, he’ll close with a “few personal opinions” about patriotism and values for the next generation, he says.
Lions encourage donation of corneas
More than 32-thousand people in North America received sight-restoring corneal transplants last year, hundreds of them thanks to the work of specialists at the Iowa Lions Eye Bank at the University of Iowa. Donated corneas are vital in those cases, according to eye bank director Cindy Reed, who says age-related macular degeneration, or A-M-D, is starting to take a serious toll in Iowa. Macular degeneration essentially makes you progressively blind starting in the middle of your visual field. In Iowa, about ten-percent of people over 60 years old will develop A-M-D and one-third of people over 85 will get it. Reed says researchers at the University of Iowa were the first ones to discover the disease’s genetic link. She says the eye bank is key in helping A-M-D patients keep or regain their sight. Last year, the eye bank provided corneas for 686 corneal transplants, 132 took place in Iowa City while another 120 took place elsewhere in Iowa. The other corneas were sent across the U.S. and to several foreign countries. Reed says work is underway at the U-of-I on what’s called corrective gene therapy which could prevent A-M-D in future generations.
Scott County puts controls on pseudoephedrine
As Iowa legislators consider new restrictions on legal cold and allergy medications that are used to make the illegal drug meth, Scott County has become the latest county in Iowa to take action on the subject. Drugs containing pseudoephedrine will be going behind-the-counter in about 60 days. Scott County Attorney Bill Davis says the Iowa legislature is considering an even stronger law. Davis says a statewide law would be better, but if lawmakers don’t act, the county needs its own ordinance. Scott County supervisor Greg Adamson was a cop for 31 years. He says pseudoephedrine has been too easy to buy.Several counties or municipalities have moved cold and allergy drugs behind-the-counter, limited the number of boxes that can be purchased at once, and ask for I-D or have customers sign a log book.
