12:19 p.m. UPDATE   TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Topeka teenager is charged with four felonies in what the Shawnee County District Attorney calls a planned school shooting.

The 17-year-old was charged Wednesday with four counts of soliciting first-degree murder.

District Attorney Chad Taylor says the teen was planning to shoot two administrators at Topeka West High School, a Topeka police officer and a school police officer working at the high school. Taylor did not release his name.

Taylor says the teenager was arrested Tuesday evening outside Topeka. He has a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Taylor wouldn’t release many details about the alleged plan but said the threat was viable and the situation developed in mid-December.

The defendant is being charged as a juvenile but Taylor says he’ll seek to have him tried as an adult.

 

TOPEKA (AP) — A Topeka teenager has been charged with four counts of soliciting first-degree murder for allegedly planning to shoot students at a local high school.

Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor says his office filed the felony charges against the 17-year-old, but the investigation is ongoing.

Taylor was expected to give further details at a news conference Wednesday morning.

(AP) — The federal government has agreed to redeem almost $862,000 in abandoned U.S. savings bonds held by Kansas after a 14-year battle waged by the state’s treasurers.

Current Treasurer Ron Estes says he’s hoping the government will redeem about $151 million more.

The 1,447 redeemed bonds include some that date back to World War I. They were recovered from abandoned safe-deposit boxes once rented by Kansas residents.

It’s the first time the federal government has agreed to cash out abandoned bonds. The state doesn’t get to spend the money, but it’s allowed to invest it and keep the interest and earnings.

Estes says the state’s unclaimed property fund now is at $260 million and generates $7 million to $8 million a year for the state budget.

Colonel Ron Replogle, the superintendent of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, announced the retirement of one long-time member of the patrol, and the promotion of another.

Captain Timothy McDonald is being promoted to the rank of major and will remain in his current position assigned to the superintendent’s office serving as chief of staff at the General Headquarters in Jefferson City. The chief of staff serves at the pleasure of the superintendent and is considered a member of the Patrol’s command staff.

Major Thomas E. Roam, a 33-year veteran of the patrol, will retire effective February 1, 2014. Roam began his career with the Missouri State Water Patrol in 1981, and served for 13 years on the Patrol’s dive team.

Major Roam grew up near Plato, MO. He graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy in 2006. Major Roam and his wife Wanda have three children and four grandchildren.

Major McDonald has served in the D.A.R.E. program, the Professional Standards Division, the Gaming Division and the Division of Drug and Crime Control. Major McDonald was born in St. Louis, MO.

(AP) – Airline representatives are warning that a proposal to reconfigure Kansas City International Airport could lead to less service for passengers.

A Southwest Airlines representative told a citizens task force Tuesday that airlines would not welcome changes that lead to substantially higher costs at the airport. Southwest executive vice president Ron Ricks said he was speaking for his airline, as well as Delta, United and American/US Air – the four major carriers at the airport.

The task force is taking public comments on whether to change the airport’s current structure of three separate terminals into one larger terminal.

Ricks predicted that KCI will see only “incremental” passenger growth for the near future, with or without a new terminal.

(AP)   The suspect in the abduction, rape and death of a 12-year-old southwest Missouri girl has been bound over for trial.

Barton County Prosecutor Steven Kaderly dropped a forcible rape charge against 34-year-old Bobby Bourne of Lockwood. Bourne is still charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and statutory rape in the death of 12-year-old Adriaunna Horton of Golden City.

Adriaunna was abducted Aug. 19 from a park in Golden City. Her body was recovered two days later in Dade County.

Bourne’s wife has said antagonism existed between her husband and the girl’s father, James Horton, who worked together on home repair jobs.

(AP) — The New York Times is reporting that the National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines.

The Times cites NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks.

The NSA calls the effort an “active defense” and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese Army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime U.S. partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.

The NSA says the technology has not been used in computers in the U.S.

(AP) – Kansas City received $1.47 million in revenue from events at the Sprint Center in 2013.

The city has a revenue-sharing agreement with the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which manages the Sprint Center. Since the center opened in 2007, the city has earned $9.3 million from the agreement.

The Kansas City Star reports an industry trade publication, Pollstar, ranked the Sprint Center as the eighth-busiest arena in the country last year for live entertainment, which does not include sports events.

The venues ahead of Kansas City were New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn.

Officials at the University of Kansas Medical Center today announced the launch of three projects aimed at figuring out which drugs and therapies offer the most effective cures and quickly sharing the findings with physicians throughout the United States.

The three projects are being funded by a $10 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, an independent, non-profit organization authorized by provisions in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

PCORI announced the grants – $93.5 million nationwide – last month.

The three grants awarded to KU Medical Center were:

$1.5 million for a three-year clinical trial to evaluate four drugs used to relieve pain, numbness, and tingling in the arms and legs.
$1.7 million for an evaluation of nicotine replacement therapies used to help patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease quit smoking.
$7 million to create a network of 10 medical centers in seven states that will build an electronic medical record-driven data base for evaluating cures for breast cancer, obesity, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“We’ll be able to see in real time if what’s working for breast cancer patients in Minnesota is leading to better results than what’s working for breast cancer patients in Texas,” said L. Russell Waitman, director of medical informatics and assistant vice chancellor for enterprise analytics at KU Medical Center.

The network, he said, will be called The Greater Plains Collaborative and will include research institutions in Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas.

The Greater Plains Collaborative, one of 11 data-sharing networks being underwritten by PCORI, will be housed at KU Medical Center.

PCORI also awarded clinical trial grants for assessing treatments meant for several conditions, including sleep apnea, mood disorders, lung disease, multiple sclerosis, kidney impairments, and heart disease.

Waitman said anyone interested in taking part in one the Greater Plains Collaborative trials is encouraged to check the Heartland Institute for Clinical and Institutional Research website: www.frontiersresearch.org.

The institute also is housed at KU Medical Center.

-KHI News Service