MERRIAM, Kan. (AP) — A new Ikea store opens in northeast Kansas on Wednesday, but some shoppers couldn’t wait to get their hands on some of the Swedish furniture company’s products.

KCTV reports customers began lining up at 9 a.m. Monday outside the store in the Johnson County city of Merriam.

Ikea was offering incentives, including a free sofa to the first 40 people in line and a free chair for the next 100.

About 300 people have been hired to work at the 359,000-square-foot store, which will also have a restaurant and a Swedish food market.

Merriam police are expecting up to 10,000 shoppers at Wednesday’s grand opening. Electronic signs are being placed on Interstate 35 to direct people to the store, and police will be at several intersections beginning at 6 a.m. Wednesday.

OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — The Baltimore Ravens released running back Ray Rice on Monday after a new video appears to show him striking his then-fiancee in an elevator last February. The video was released Monday on a website.  The NFL also suspended the star running back indefinitely.

The grainy video by TMZ Sports apparently shows Rice and Janay Palmer in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. Each hits the other before Rice knocks Palmer off her feet and into a railing. An earlier TMZ video showed Rice dragging Palmer, now his wife, from the elevator.

Rice’s lawyer, Michael Diamondstein, would not comment to The Associated Press. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello says the latest video was not made available to the league and “no one in our office has seen it until today.” Phone messages and emails to the Ravens were not immediately returned.

Rice was suspended for two games by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who later toughened penalties for domestic violence.

 

 

LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer

CHICAGO (AP) — Hundreds of children in about a dozen states have been sickened by a severe respiratory illness that public health officials suspect may be caused by an uncommon virus similar to the germ that causes the common cold.

Nearly 500 children have been treated at one hospital alone — Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri — and some required intensive care, according to authorities.

The suspected germ, enterovirus 68, is an uncommon strain of a very common family of viruses that typically hit from summertime through the fall.

The virus can cause mild coldlike symptoms but this summer’s cases are unusually severe, said Mark Pallansch, director of the viral diseases division at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It’s not highly unusual but we’re trying to understand what happened this year in terms of these noticeable and much larger clusters of severe respiratory disease,” Pallansch said Monday.

The virus typically causes illness lasting about a week and most children recover with no lasting problems.

Authorities in Illinois and Colorado said their states are among those with suspected or confirmed cases.

Children with asthma and other health problems are especially at risk, but reported cases include children without asthma who have developed asthmalike breathing problems, Pallansch said. He said no deaths have been reported in the outbreak.

Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, director of infectious diseases at Children’s Mercy, said local cases began appearing in mid-August and they appear to have peaked in her area.