From scratch to scratchTOPEKA — Twenty years ago this week, the Kansas Lottery sold its first ticket.To celebrate, 20 contestants, whose names were drawn from a second-drawing contest, will use paint scrapers to scratch off 20 giant lottery tickets. The biggest winner will get $200,000.The event will be held 4 p.m. Friday at the Capitol Plaza Hotel, 1717 SW Topeka Blvd.Tafanelli to speakLee Tafanelli, a Republican legislator from Ozawkie and colonel in the Kansas National Guard, will be the guest speaker at a Veteran’s Day salute at 11 a.m. Sunday at El Dorado Middle School in El Dorado.In 2005, Tafanelli served as commander of the 891st Engineer Battalion during a deployment to Iraq.Sloan participates in clean coal seminarState Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, recently participated in a National Conference of State Legislatures and Great Plains Institute seminar on advanced coal power technologies.”This was a unique opportunity for me to lean where cleaner air technologies are today and what is on the horizon,” Sloan said. Sloan saw presentations on two methods of capturing carbon during the process of generating electricity. One captures the carbon in the emissions stream and the other during the making of synthetic gas.”Both technologies offer opportunities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But capturing carbon is going to increase the cost of electricity by at least 20 percent,” he said.