CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. services firms expanded more slowly in October for the second straight month, but the pace of growth was still healthy and hiring rose.

The Institute for Supply Management says its services index dropped to 57.1 in October, down from 58.6 in September. The index reached 59.6 in August, the highest in eight years. Any reading over 50 indicates expansion.

The ISM is a trade group of purchasing managers. Its survey of services firms covers businesses that employ 90 percent of the American workforce, including retail, construction, health care and financial services firms.

AUBURN, N.Y. (AP) — The U.S. military says a central New York native has retired as the Army’s last Vietnam-era draftee.

The 2nd Infantry Division’s public affairs office at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea says Chief Warrant Officer 5 Ralph Rigby’s retirement ceremony was held Oct. 28, his 62nd birthday.

A native of Auburn in Cayuga County, Rigby was drafted in 1972. He’s believed to be the Army’s last continuously serving draftee.

In July 2011, the Army announced that Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Mellinger was retiring as the service’s last Vietnam-era draftee. But Army officials later had to issue a correction when they learned Rigby and another soldier also were drafted and remained on active duty.

The other soldier, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Franklin Ernst, retired in 2012.

U.S. military conscriptions ended in 1973.

(AP) — A new survey suggests that most people are still texting and driving, despite laws against it in some states.

In the survey, 98 percent of motorists who own cellphones and text regularly say they’re aware of the dangers, yet three-quarters of them admit to texting while driving.

Two-thirds say they have read text messages while stopped at a red light or stop sign, while more than a quarter say they’ve sent texts while driving.

More than a quarter of texting drivers believe they “can easily do several things at once, even while driving.”

The telephone survey of more than 1,000 adults is being released by AT&T, as part of an anti-texting-and-driving campaign.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri woman who deliberately struck a federal immigration agent with her car is going to prison for six years and six months.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says 33-year-old Alisha Johnson, of Springfield, won’t be eligible for parole under the sentence she received Tuesday. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $9,900 to the agent and $15,000 to the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs.

The incident happened in July 2013 while federal agents were trying to apprehend Johnson’s boyfriend for immigration violations.

Prosecutors said Johnson arrived at the scene and tried to pick up her boyfriend, then drove over a curb and struck an agent in the leg. He needed two surgeries on his left knee.

Johnson surrendered a short time later, but the boyfriend remains at large.

By DAN MARGOLIES, KUCR

Kansans voted to retain two Kansas Supreme Court justices under fire for their decision to overturn the death sentences of two brothers in one of the most notorious murder cases in the state’s history.

The two, Justice Eric S. Rosen and Justice Lee A. Johnson, were appointed to the court by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Kansas Supreme Court justices are appointed by the governor but stand for retention by voters at the end of their six-year terms.

Normally a placid and understated affair – no appellate judge in Kansas has ever lost a retention election – this year’s election drew unaccustomed attention after Republican Gov. Sam Brownback endorsed the efforts of a group called Kansans for Justice to persuade voters to oust Rosen and Johnson.

Eliminating “liberal” justices was one of Brownback’s central campaign promises. Had Rosen and Johnson been voted out, the governor would have appointed their replacements.

Both justices were part of a 6-1 majority that voted in July to overturn the sentences of Jonathan and Reginald Carr. The brothers were sentenced to death for killing four people in Wichita in a grisly weeklong killing spree in 2000.

The court ruled that there were procedural errors in the men’s sentencing. While awaiting resentencing, they remain in prison and could be sentenced to death again.

Rosen was appointed to the court in 2005 and Johnson in 2007.

This wasn’t the first time Supreme Court justices have been targeted for their perceived liberal views. In 2010, Kansans for Life led a campaign against Justice Carol Beier after she wrote opinions critical of then-Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline for his conduct during investigations of abortion clinics.

In another retention election that made news Tuesday, Johnson County voters retained District Judge Kevin Moriarty by a comfortable margin. Like Rosen and Johnson, Moriarty was the target of a campaign to remove him from office – in his case because he ordered the court clerk to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt later asked the Kansas Supreme Court to vacate Moriarty’s order. That case is set to be heard on Nov. 6.

The campaign against Moriarty was spearheaded by Bruce Baumgardner, a physiology professor at Johnson County Community College who is married to Republican Kansas Sen. Molly Baumgardner. Moriarty was appointed to the court in 2004 by Sebelius.

 Dan Margolies is the Managing Editor  for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

DETROIT (AP) — Audi is recalling nearly 102,000 luxury cars because the front air bags may not inflate in a crash.

The recall covers certain A4 and S4 cars from the 2013 through 2015 model years, plus the 2013 through 2015 Audi Allroad.

Dealers will update an improperly programmed air bag control module to fix the problem sometime this month.

Volkswagen, which makes Audis, says in rare cases the air bags may not inflate in a secondary impact. That can increase the risk of injury.

Volkswagen says no crashes or injuries have been reported in the U.S.

The company says in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators that the problem was discovered in tests done in August. This led to a review of a small number of incidents in Europe.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Lawrence voters narrowly rejected a new sales tax for a $28 million police headquarters.

Unofficial results show the proposal for a 0.2 percent sales tax failed by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin — about 915 votes.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports opponents criticized the City Commission its handling of the proposal. The project was presented to voters after the commission used about $25 million in available funding for the Rock Chalk Park sports complex.

Police officials say the city’s aging, small headquarters is inefficient, forcing staff to work at two different locations. Evidence and equipment are stored at four other locations.

Mayor Mike Amyx said after the vote that the city’s next step is to determine what the public’s expectations are for public safety in Lawrence.

By Mike Sherry
Hale Center for Journalism

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Cerner Corp., the high-tech company based in North Kansas City, Mo., may be at the forefront of the electronic health records industry. But at the company’s annual health conference Monday, a behavioral health executive said innovations in health care don’t necessarily have to be as advanced as the solutions developed by Cerner.

Speaking on a panel that addressed coordinating care, Karen Suddath of Wyandot Inc. said her organization had improved its efforts simply by checking a website every morning for booking records at the local jail.

Suddath is chief operating officer of Wyandot Inc., parent company of a community mental health center, and she said that matching its information with jail records keeps some of Wyandot’s patients from falling through the cracks if they happen to get arrested.

By adopting that simple step, the center ensures that, for instance, case managers show up at court proceedings to avert additional patient tangles with law enforcement.

“It is really coordinating care for when the person comes out,” she said in an interview after the panel discussion.

Cerner is hosting more than 11,000 health professionals from around the globe at its 29th annual health conference, which runs through Wednesday at Bartle Hall in downtown Kansas City, Mo.

On the more high-tech side, Suddath said it had been a challenge to implement its system for sharing data among health providers.

“We are struggling with ours, I have to say,” she said. One challenge, she said, is getting doctors to run patient names through the health information database to see if it has information like, say, a recent trip to an emergency room.

Suddath said it can be hard to convince busy physicians to take the time when hits in the health information record can be infrequent.

Nevertheless, she said, the agency did have a recent success story involving a frazzled 21-year-old woman who came to the agency’s crisis clinic.

By accessing the woman’s medical record from other providers, Suddath said, Wyandot discovered that she had been treated for a gunshot wound to the head, among several hospitalizations and emergency room visits she’d logged in previous weeks.

The information helped staff devise a solution aimed at keeping her out of crisis.

“The hospital just wasn’t working,” Suddath said.

Also on the panel was Mike Dittemore, executive director of the Lewis and Clark Information Exchange, a nonprofit that enables health information sharing among providers in the area.

Dittemore offered an example of how the exchange had helped a woman who had recently given birth and presented at a clinic. Referral to an acute care clinic revealed the woman was septic, Dittemore said, and when professionals referred her to a hospital, workers there had the woman’s records electronically.

“That is why I get up in the morning,” he said.

Mike Sherry is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.