JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A convicted sex offender has admitted that he had sex with a 13-year-old Alabama girl who was brought to Missouri by the man’s grandmother and mother.

Twenty-one-year-old Michael James Collins, of Fulton, pleaded guilty Monday to transporting a minor across state lines to engage in sexual activity. He also pleaded guilty to committing the offense while he was registered as a sex offender.

Federal prosecutors say Collins paid his grandmother $400 to drive to Alabama and pick up the girl, who he met on a website in 2017. Collins’ mother went along and the women brought the girl back to Missouri.

The Callaway County, Missouri, sheriff’s office found the girl in December 2017 after a cell phone ping placed her at a home in Fulton.

Collins was on probation at the time for a prior conviction involving a child.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Leavenworth police say a 74-year-old woman fatally shot a man who she thought was trying to burglarize her home.

Police Chief Pat Kitchens says when officers responded to the woman’s call early Saturday they found the 41-year-old suspect, Ralph Byrd Jr., of Leavenworth suffering from a gunshot wound.

Byrd was pronounced dead at the scene.

Kitchens says the woman suffered a “medical event” after the shooting and was taken to a hospital but was expected to survive.

Kitchens says the focus of the investigation will be to determine if Byrd was committing a burglary when he was shot.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A government watchdog group has filed an IRS complaint against a group that donated millions of dollars to a PAC that helped Eric Greitens’ Missouri gubernatorial campaign.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the complaint this past week against Freedom Frontier. The group alleges the nonprofit violated its tax-exempt status by contributing more than half of its total spending to political organizations.

An Associated Press request for comment to Freedom Frontier was not immediately returned Monday.

IRS filings show the nonprofit spent about $5.9 million in 2016. It gave close to $4.4 million to LG PAC, which ran attack ads against Greitens’ opponents in the 2016 primary. As a nonprofit, it’s required to disclose its donors.

Greitens won election but resigned amid personal and political scandal in June.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Kansas has agreed to cover the cost of drugs to treat Medicaid patients with chronic hepatitis C without subjecting them to a lengthy list of requirements.

A legal settlement, which awaits final court approval, resolves a class action lawsuit alleging the state made it too difficult for hepatitis C patients to receive the potentially life-saving treatments.

The parties first notified the court in July that they had resolved the case after mediation. On Tuesday, the court set deadlines for approval of a final settlement.

“Essentially, the agreement is that all hep C patients who use Medicaid to get their drugs will be entitled to Mavyret or Harvoni, the two curative drugs, regardless of their fibrosis score,” said Lauren Bonds, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, which along with the Shook Hardy & Bacon law firm, sued Kansas officials over the state’s hep C treatment guidelines in February.

Fibrosis scores measure the health of the liver. Scores range from F0, referring to mild or no scarring of the liver, to F4, referring to significant liver damage or cirrhosis. Kansas’ privatized Medicaid program, known as KanCare, had limited coverage to patients with a fibrosis score of F3 or F4.

Theresa Freed, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, confirmed that Kansas has stopped limiting coverage to patients with F3 or F4 scores.

The state had imposed other conditions for treatment as well, including denying direct-acting antiviral drugs, the current standard of care, to patients who tested positive for alcohol or illicit drug use. In addition, patients had to undergo six months of “abstinence” testing before KanCare would consider covering the drugs.

Bonds said the settlement resolves all the claims laid out in the lawsuit.

KanCare has about 360,000 enrollees. The U.S. Census Bureau in 2014 estimated that about 35,000 Kansans had hepatitis C, but it’s not known how many of them are enrolled in KanCare. The lawsuit estimates the number to be in the thousands.

“I think the law is very clear on this front,” Bonds said. “We’re one of probably 15 cases on this issue that have been filed and there’s been a very clear trend of how they’re being resolved — and that’s in favor of the plaintiffs.”

Many states balked at paying for the high-priced drugs and limited treatment for Medicaid patients and prison inmates. But recent court decisions have ruled that states cannot deny treatment because of the drugs’ costs.

Most recently, a federal judge in Indiana found that withholding hepatitis C treatment from prison inmates violated the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishments” clause. Similar rulings have been handed down or settlements reached in other states, including Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington and Colorado.

A lawsuit against Missouri was dropped in November 2017 after the state agreed to cover the cost of direct-acting antiviral drugs.  

Hepatitis C is a contagious infection that can cause severe damage to the liver and even death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 2.7 million and 3.9 million people in the United States have chronic hepatitis C. Most people become infected by sharing needles, syringes or other equipment to inject drugs.

Until recently, there was no effective treatment for chronic hepatitis C infections. But in 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new class of highly effective direct-acting antiviral drugs that have few side effects and boast a cure rate of more than 90 percent.

The drugs are extremely expensive. Mavyret runs about $26,400 per treatment course, before discounts. And Harvoni runs about $94,500 per treatment course, also before discounts.

Bonds said her understanding is that the state has funding in place to cover the drugs.

“We were assured about that, but don’t know a ton of the specifics,” Bonds said. 

U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree must approve the settlement, final details of which are being hammered out.

Jennifer Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Attorney General’s office, which defended the lawsuit, said work on the settlement was proceeding and the office was “optimistic about getting it resolved.”

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a Columbia man has been shot and killed near a golf course.

The Columbia Missourian reports that the victim has been identified as 26-year-old Ahmonta Harris.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release that officers responded Saturday night to a call about gunfire near the Lake of the Woods golf course and found him wounded inside a residence. He died at the scene.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids says she plans to cast one of her first votes for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.

In an announcement posted on her campaign website, the newly elected congresswoman also said she planned to vote for “several younger and newer members” for other leadership roles in the Democratic Caucus.

Davids says no one else has stood up to challenge Pelosi. She adds Kansans didn’t elect her to go to Washington to play political games and take symbolic protest votes.

Her announcement says the best way to move forward is to unite behind the speaker who will stand up to threats to health care access and to democracy.

She says she appreciates that Pelosi has embraced proposed new rules that will begin to make Congress work better.

DETROIT (AP) — The Latest on General Motors’ restructuring plans (all times local):

10:30 a.m.

General Motors will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.

The reduction includes 8,100 white-collar workers, some of whom will take buyouts and others who will be laid off. Most of the affected factories build cars that won’t be sold in the U.S. after next year. They could close or they could get different vehicles to build. They will be part of contract talks with the United Auto Workers union next year.

Plants without products include assembly plants in Detroit; Lordstown, Ohio; and Oshawa, Ontario. Also affected are transmission factories in Warren, Michigan, as well as Baltimore.

About 6,000 factory workers could lose jobs in the U.S. and Canada, although some could transfer to truck plants.

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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is closing a Canadian plant at the cost of about 2,500 jobs, but that is apparently just a piece of a much broader, company-wide restructuring that will be announced as early as Monday.

A person briefed on the matter told The Associated Press that the plant being shuttered in Canada is just the beginning as GM prepares for the next economic downturn, shifting trade agreements under the Trump administration, and potential tariffs on imported automobiles.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement hasn’t been made public.

In the fall, the Detroit automaker offered buyouts to 18,000 white collar workers, but it has yet to say how many accepted, or if its’s close to meeting the staff reduction goals it set to better withstand leaner times.

The Monday closure of GM’s plant in Oshawa, Ontario, was confirmed late Sunday by an official familiar with the decision. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly ahead of the announcement.

GM needs to reshape the company as it shifts its focus to lower emitting hybrid vehicles, technology that is not at the forefront at the Canadian plant.

Too many GM factories are devoted to making slow-selling cars and the company can no longer afford to keep them all operating without making some tough decisions. But the political atmosphere might limit realistic choices for the Detroit automaker.

Industry analysts are already plotting out possible targets for GM, including its sprawling Lordstown plant in northeastern Ohio. The car produced there is also is built in Mexico. The once-bustling factory already has lost two of its three shifts and 3,000 union jobs since the beginning of last year.

But moving that car, the Chevrolet Cruze, south of the border brings the risk of provoking a backlash from President Donald Trump. And GM also isn’t sure whether he’ll make good on threats to impose 25 percent tariffs on vehicles imported from Canada and Mexico.

What’s more, the Cruze plant just outside Youngtown is in a Democratic and labor stronghold, where Trump won over a surprising number of voters two years ago by reaching out to what he called America’s “forgotten men and women.”

At a rally near the plant last summer, Trump talked about passing by big factories whose jobs “have left Ohio,” then told people not to sell their homes because the jobs are “coming back. They’re all coming back.”

Altogether, GM has five car factories with plenty of unused capacity in Kansas City, Kansas; Lordstown; and Detroit-Hamtramck, Lansing, and Orion Township, Michigan.

GM opened its factory in Oshawa, near Toronto, in 1953. The plant is used to make the Cadillac XTS and Chevrolet Impala sedans as well as the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks.

A GM spokesman declined to comment. GM had been expected to close plants because of struggling sales.

Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, said in a prepared statement that it does not have complete details of Monday’s announcement, but it has been informed that there is no product allocated to the Oshawa plant past December 2019.

“Based on commitments made during 2016 contract negotiations, Unifor does not accept this announcement and is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit of that agreement,” the union said in a statement on its website.

“Unifor is scheduled to hold a discussion with General Motors (Monday) and will provide further comment following the meeting.”

Oshawa Mayor John Henry said he had not spoken to anyone from GM. Jennifer French, who represents Oshawa in the provincial legislature, said she finds the news “gravely concerning.”

“If GM Canada is indeed turning its back on 100 years of industry and community — abandoning workers and families in Oshawa — then this is a callous decision that must be fought,” she said in a statement.