Lockridge man in crash; Iowa Medicaid prescription limit draws complaints; more

Lockridge man in crash

WEST DES MOINES (AP) ? West Des Moines police say four people died as a result of a collision between a semitrailer and a car Tuesday afternoon.

The four dead victims were the driver, 86-year-old Arlene Laughlin, and her three passengers: 85-year-old Frances Sechler, 83-year-old Marilyn Harper and 95-year-old Margaret Bannister. Laughlin and Sechler were pronounced dead at the scene. All four victims lived in West Des Moines.

Police say the truck driven by 43-year-old Kenneth Snow of Lockridge failed to stop for a traffic signal and struck the driver?s side of the car. Snow wasn?t injured.

The accident is being investigated.

Iowa Medicaid prescription limit draws complaints

 DES MOINES (AP) ? A new state Medicaid rule that limits psychiatric patients to 15 days? worth of medicine in new prescriptions is drawing fire from mental health advocates and pharmacists.

The rule that took effect Sept. 1 is designed to save money for the state and avert the waste of expensive medications. In the past, patients could receive a month supply of new prescriptions.

Nancy Hale is executive director of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Iowa. She told The Des Moines Register that many drugs don?t take full effect for several weeks and that the new rule burdens depressed or otherwise ailing people.

Iowa Human Services Director Chuck Palmer says doctors routinely adjust doses of psychiatric drugs, so patients often are left with unused portions of earlier prescriptions.

Lincoln pair marry as military ends ban on gays

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) ? A Nebraska couple has marked the end of the U.S. military?s ban on gay service by tying the knot.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that 48-year-old Gregory Smith, a full-time member of the Nebraska Army National Guard, married 39-year-old John Burns on Tuesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The wedding occurred just hours after the military ended its so-called ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy.

The couple had originally planned to marry next spring, but Smith told family members he wanted to marry on the first day he could serve openly as a gay man in the military.

Burns told the newspaper that if the ban had not been lifted, he and Smith probably would not have married until Smith finished his military service.

Class ring, its owner reunited after 26 years

PHOENIX (AP) ? This is a high school reunion that came as a very big surprise for Phoenix Trevor Browne graduate Cindy Herzner. During her senior year in 1985, Herzner saved up for months to buy a class ring.

But six months after Herzner bought the ring, it went missing. And a few weeks after it disappeared, Herzner assumed she?d never see it again.

Twenty-six years later, Herzner was proved wrong.

Last month, an Iowa resident digging in her yard unearthed the white-gold ring, tracked Herzner down in Arizona and returned the ring to her. Herzner says it looks just like it did when it went missing.

Herzner tells The Arizona Republic the strange thing is she?s never been to Iowa and has no idea how the ring got there or how it ended up buried in a stranger?s yard.