NEW YORK (AP) — Apple says it sold more than 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, a record for a new model, in the three days after the phones went on sale.

A year ago, Apple Inc. said it had sold 9 million of the then-new iPhone 5C and 5S models.

The iPhone is available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the U.K. It will go on sale in 20 more countries on Sept. 26 and others by the end of the year.

CEO Tim Cook said Monday that demand for the phones has exceeded the company’s expectations. Besides larger screens, the new phones offer faster performance and a wireless chip for making credit card payments. The phones start at $199 with a two-year service contact.

 

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas is benefiting from donated land by using it to raise funding and offer research opportunities.

The school’s endowment, which is the nonprofit fundraising arm of the university, owns about 45,000 acres of land in Kansas and other states, including Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming.

Its spokeswoman tells the Lawrence Journal-World that much of the endowment’s land is farmed. The income from it goes toward the university as specified by the donors’ intentions. She says that over the past five years, farm and mineral holdings have averaged $3 million in income per year.

Donated land also includes the University of Kansas Field Station, which is used for research by the Kansas Biological Survey.

 

CHILLICOTHE- A Missouri woman was injured in an accident just before 7 a.m. on Monday in Livingston County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1997 Pontiac Bonneville driven by Kimberly L. Donoho, 44, Chillicothe, was southbound on Route A four miles west of Chillicothe.

The vehicle failed to negotiate a curve and traveled off the west side of the road. The driver overcorrected, the vehicle traveled off the east side of the road and hit an embankment.

Donoho was transported to Hedrick Medical Center by private vehicle. The MSHP reported she was properly restrained at the time of the accident.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Dozens of law enforcement authorities are searching for a man who reportedly fired at a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy before fleeing.

The deputy was not injured in the shooting early Monday in southern Johnson County. Authorities say the deputy was investigating a reported break-in at a construction site when the shot was fired and the man fled.

Police did not return fire at the suspect.

Johnson County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jill Koch says people in the area should carefully check for anything suspicious on their property and notify the sheriff’s office.

 

By Mike Sherry
Hale Center for Journalism

OLATHE — Olathe Medical Center officials say they have added a building block to their vision of providing cradle-to-grave care.

On Wednesday, in front of a crowd of about 300 donors, employees and other well-wishers, the hospital officially opened a freestanding inpatient hospice on its land at Interstate 35 and 151st Street.
“In the early 1980s, when we were considering what someday would be on this campus, our board of trustees and leadership discussed the full continuum of care — the continuum of care from birth to the end of life,” CEO Frank Devocelle said. “So it is with great pride that we take another step in that vision here today.”

Officially called Hospice of Olathe Medical Center, the $4.3 million facility covers about 10,000 square feet. It is opening with eight beds, but future plans call for an expansion to 32 beds.

The official opening came after about three years of fundraising and roughly 18 months of construction. Officials said they will continue fundraising to help finance operations.

It will likely be a few weeks before the facility gets the go-ahead from the state to start admitting patients, said Sally Lundy, director of hospice and home health for the medical center.

“This day has been a long-awaited dream of mine and for many in the community,” she said.

The primary purpose of an inpatient hospice facility, she said, is to stabilize medically fragile patients so they can return to a home-based setting. Inpatient hospice stays are typically no longer than a week, Lundy said.

Olathe Medical Center officials said their building is the first inpatient hospice facility on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Myra Christopher, an expert on pain and palliative care at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo., noted that the opening coincided with the release of a much-anticipated national report by the Institute of Medicine.

The authors of the report, “Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life,” concluded that the nation’s health care system is “increasingly burdened by factors that hamper delivery of high-quality care near the end of life,” including a fragmented care structure and payment models that incentivize use of acute-care services, such as intensive care units, “that often are costly and poorly suited to the needs, goals, and preferences of patients and their families.”

Christopher attributed some of that to a mindset among caregivers that death is tantamount to failure. That, she said, is beginning to change with the emphasis in the Affordable Care Act on continuity of care and seamless transitions among settings.

A lot of that emphasis is driven by efforts to keep a lid on health care costs, and Christopher said hospice care is unquestionably less expensive than an ICU.

She added, however, that the primary aim of hospice care is to provide the most comfortable and calming environment for terminally ill patients and their families.

Christopher said she’d heard of hospices honoring a patient’s request for a meal of lobster. She’d also heard a story about a facility in Las Vegas that paid to have a rancher’s horse transported to the hospice and tethered outside his room where he could see it.

“Could you imagine telling a hospital that is what you want them to do?” Christopher asked.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.), who co-chairs the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, sent a letter on Friday demanding answers from the Obama Administration surrounding reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is forcing Americans to declare their race and ethnicity when purchasing a firearm.

“The right of law-abiding citizens to own firearms is an individual right guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Blunt wrote. “The constitutional right of a citizen to own a firearm has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It is disconcerting that the U.S. government is gathering this type of data on citizens when there is no connection between purchasing a firearm and an individual’s race or ethnicity. Any measure that may interfere with a citizen’s ability to exercise his or her constitutional right to purchase a firearm needs to be questioned.”

According to a report in the Washington Times this week, “With little fanfare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2012 amended its Form 4473 — the transactional record the government requires gun purchasers and sellers to fill out when buying a firearm — to identify buyers as either Hispanic, Latino or not. Then a buyer must check his or her race: Indian, Asian, black, Pacific Islander or white… The ATF declined to comment on why race and ethnicity information are needed in the first place or what they are used for.”

According to previous reports, the ATF claimed, “Question 10 was revised due to an Office of Management and Budget requirement that every form issued by the federal government that collects race and ethnicity information must use separate questions wherever feasible for reporting race and ethnicity.”