OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A northeast Kansas teenager will spend five years and four months in a juvenile facility for killing his father during a custody exchange.

The Kansas City Star reports the Bonner Springs youth was sentenced in Johnson County on Monday, which was his 16th birthday. He pleaded guilty earlier to second-degree murder.

The fatal shooting occurred in July 2013 outside a Shawnee business where the boy’s mother and stepfather had arranged to turn him over to his 46-year-old father. The mother and stepfather were inside when the teen walked to his father’s car and fired several times with a handgun.

The teen told police and mental health professionals that he had suffered years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse by his father. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

BRANDON BAILEY, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple says it sold 39.3 million iPhones in the last quarter, or 16 percent more than a year ago, which is a record for the quarter. That’s partly due to excitement over new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models that Apple began selling last month.

The surge in iPhone sales helped the company beat Wall Street’s expectations for the three months that ended Sept. 27. Overall, the company’s profit rose more than 12 percent from a year ago, to $8.5 billion. Total sales also rose more than 12 percent, to $42.1 billion.

While iPhone sales were up, Apple also sold 13 percent fewer iPad tablets than it did a year ago. That follows an industry-wide decline in tablet sales. But the company reported lower iPad sales than analysts had expected.

 

By Andy Marso
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — Health officials say the chances of the Ebola virus spreading to Kansas are remote, but they are preparing for it anyway.

State officials have developed a Kansas Ebola Preparedness and Response Plan that is based on a more generic infectious disease plan but offers specific guidance on Ebola for the state’s health care providers.

Participants in a recent meeting to review the plan included Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, a plastic surgeon; Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Robert Moser, a family physician; and Charlie Hunt, the state epidemiologist.

Sara Belfry, a KDHE spokeswoman, said state officials have worked on Ebola preparedness since August, when American health workers infected while treating patients in West Africa were flown to the United States for treatment.

Health officials say anyone who has traveled to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of Congo within the last 21 days and develops a fever should contact a health care provider and disclose their travel history.

But at this time, Belfry said those who have not traveled to the African nations where the virus is spreading have little to fear.

“Ebola poses no substantial risk to the general population in the U.S.,” Belfry said.

Still, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Friday found that 45 percent of respondents were worried that they or a family member would contract Ebola, and 22 percent said it was likely there would be a widespread outbreak in the United States.

But health officials say the United States is well-equipped to contain the virus, which does not spread as readily as illnesses like measles or the flu.

Ebola spreads only through contact with the body fluids of those infected and is not contagious until an infected person is symptomatic. The first symptom is fever.

Two health workers and an NBC news cameraman were repatriated to the United States for treatment after acquiring Ebola in West Africa. Thomas Duncan, a Liberian national who traveled to Dallas to visit family, developed symptoms of infection once he arrived in the United States and subsequently died. Two nurses at a Dallas hospital who assisted in his treatment contracted the virus and are being treated. One of them took a flight to Cleveland while she had a mild fever.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stepped up efforts to isolate and monitor other workers who treated Duncan and may have been exposed. The CDC also has worked to contact those on the flights with the infected nurse and to ensure other health care facilities nationwide are deploying proper protocols if they encounter suspected cases of Ebola.

President Barack Obama on Friday appointed Ron Klain, former chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, to coordinate the federal government’s Ebola response efforts.

Belfry said the state’s recent Ebola preparedness meeting also included officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and local health agencies.

Shawnee County health officer Gianfranco Pezzino said he was among those at the meeting who are now educating frontline health care workers about control and containment protocols.

Those protocols, he said, are constantly being improved as officials learn more about previous outbreaks in Africa and the few scattered cases in the United States.

He said health care facilities within Shawnee County are “as ready as we can be” and getting more ready by the day.

“They’re taking it very seriously, and we are too. And we are talking, so that’s a good thing,” Pezzino said. “I think communication is going very well.”

Pezzino – who also works for the Kansas Health Institute, parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service – said county health officials met last week with law enforcement officials to discuss quarantine protocols and have talked with the medical community, hospital officials and first responders.

Pezzino said getting new triage protocols – including asking patients immediately about travel history – in place for the smaller, acute care providers who might see patients with fever posed a larger challenge than instituting them in Topeka’s two “top-notch hospitals.”

One of them, Stormont-Vail HealthCare, has tested the protocols. Nancy Burkhardt, a hospital spokeswoman, said multiple patients have been isolated after telling staff they had been to one of the African nations in the midst of an Ebola outbreak. Further examination determined the patients were geographically mistaken or did not have Ebola symptoms.

“I think it should be reassuring that the process is working,” she said. “We are getting a ‘yes’ answer and we are doing what we need to do and then we’re able to rule it out.”

Burkhardt said the extensive media coverage of Ebola has caused some patients with no risk factors to nonetheless worry that they might have it.

“I have heard anecdotally from patient care staff that patients are talking about it,” she said. “We have had a patient or two that has asked the question or wondered, ‘Could I have Ebola?’ So, yes, our staff has had to do some education. They’ve had to reassure patients that if they haven’t traveled to those areas or haven’t had immediate contact with people who traveled to those areas, they don’t have Ebola.”

Burkhardt said members of the public who are feeling worried or helpless can assist health care workers in one key way: get a flu shot.

“The less people we have showing up in our ER with flu-like symptoms, the better able we’ll be to determine if we really do have an Ebola patient,” she said.

Pezzino said that if Shawnee County does get a confirmed case of Ebola, it will be “disruptive” and “scary” for the community. There is no known cure for the virus, though treatments and vaccines are in different phases of testing.

“It’s something to be concerned about,” Pezzino said. “This is a horrible disease. It’s horrible for the people affected and it’s horrible for health care workers to witness any patient with that disease. But they have to balance that concern with the reality that the probability of contracting this disease in our community today is extremely low. It’s not zero, but it’s extremely low.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is suing several law firms that represented a man who claimed he owned half of the company and was entitled to billions of dollars.

The case was dismissed in April and the man is facing related criminal charges. Facebook Inc. filed a lawsuit Monday against DLA Piper and other law firms and lawyers, saying they knowingly conspired to file and prosecute a fraudulent lawsuit. DLA is one of the world’s largest business law firms.

The man, Paul Ceglia, claimed that he and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a 2003 contract that included a provision entitling him to half-ownership of Facebook.

DLA Piper and the other firms in the suit, including Milberg LLP and Paul Argentieri and Associates, could not immediately be reached for comment.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — An Olathe man has pleaded no contest to an involuntary manslaughter charge in the death of his brother’s estranged girlfriend.

Thirty-year-old Samuel L. Moore originally was charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 death of 25-year-old Laura Coltrane in Olathe but he pleaded to the lesser charge Monday.

He will be sentenced Dec. 29.

The Kansas City Star reports that Moore’s brother, 33-year-old Derek Deon Owens, is serving a 74-year prison sentence after he was convicted of strangling and beating Coltrane in her apartment. He also found guilty of rape, aggravated criminal sodomy and violation of a protection order.

Coltrane was a radiologic technologist from Humboldt, Kansas.

 

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney plans to campaign for Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts in suburban Kansas City next week, the latest national figure working to save the embattled three-term incumbent.

Romney is to headline a rally with Roberts next Monday at the Prairie Fire shopping and residential complex in Overland Park.

In a statement, Romney calls Roberts “a conservative champion for Kansas.” The former Massachusetts governor has also endorsed Senate nominees in battlegrounds such as Colorado, Iowa and Louisiana.

Romney in recent weeks has stepped back into the limelight, acting as a national GOP leader in a party searching for one.

Roberts is facing independent candidate Greg Orman, an Olathe businessman, in what has become a surprisingly competitive race in GOP-heavy Kansas.

By Andy Marso
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — Advocates of licensure for mid-level dental providers have been stymied in Kansas for five years. They say the need for dental care remains high, especially in the state’s rural areas, and they’re pushing for legislative movement next session.

Members of the Kansas Dental Project coalition met this week in Topeka to discuss the issue and hear from Steve Coen, president and chief executive officer of the Kansas Health Foundation, and Brenda Sharpe, president and CEO of the REACH Healthcare Foundation. Both groups are part of the Kansas Dental Project. The health foundation is the primary funder of the Kansas Health Institute, which is the parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.
Sharpe said their response to those who have blocked mid-level providers by raising fears about their safety should be simple: Show me the studies.

“The mid-level providers can provide safe care,” Sharpe said. “Frankly, after five years I’m sick to death of hearing the ‘they’re not safe’ argument.”

The mid-level providers, tentatively called registered dental practitioners, would be trained and licensed to perform higher-level dental procedures than hygienists, but not as high as dentists. Advocates say they could fill a critical public health need in a state where 95 of 105 counties have a shortage of dental providers.

“That’s something we’ve heard again and again (in rural communities),” Coen said.

The state’s dentists have opposed the move. Kevin Robertson, chief executive of the Kansas Dental Association, did not respond by Friday afternoon to messages left for him Thursday, but in the past has said allowing mid-level providers would lower the standard of dental care in the state.

Sharpe said she’s seen no evidence that mid-level practitioners provide lesser care than dentists, while several studies show they have a favorable effect on public health.

Coen said groups are working on economic models that show dentists concerned about a financial hit how adding the mid-level providers to their practices actually can increase revenue. Sharpe said the goal in Kansas is for the providers to be “part of a dental team” rather than working solo.

Alaska has employed mid-level providers for 10 years, while Minnesota and Maine have approved them more recently.

Some at this week’s Kansas Dental Project meeting suggested that the advocates try to engage physicians who initially were wary of licensing for physician assistants and nurse practitioners, or the mid-level medical providers themselves, to try to calm fears about mid-level dental practitioner proposal.

But Shannon Cotsoradis, president and CEO of Kansas Action for Children, said those groups have been reluctant to wade into scope-of-practice issues on the dental side.

Cindy Luxem, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Care Association, confirmed that statement and expressed frustration with doctors who see patients in poor oral health but won’t advocate for expanded dental licensure.

“They will not talk to each other about this issue,” she said. “They don’t want to talk about it. It is unbelievable to me that the professionals at the top of the food chain of health care, we can’t get them to talk about this.”

Instead, Luxem said the best legislative strategy might be to encourage rural lawmakers whose districts have a strong stake in mid-level providers to promote the issue and work against urban lawmakers who oppose it. A similar battle occurred last legislative session in the discussion of whether to repeal the state’s renewable energy standards.

“If we can figure out how to make this a wedge issue between those two constituencies, we can win it,” she said.

Legislators have resisted having hearings on the mid-level dental provider for several years, but that may change next year.

Rep. Susan Concannon, a Republican from Beloit who is vice chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Committee, said there has been enough study done to merit the next step.

“I think that’s got some legs,” Concannon said. “I think that’s going to come (next session) in the form of a bill.”

Concannon is unopposed in the November election and the current chairman of the health committee, Rep. David Crum, has said she would be his pick to succeed him in that role.

Cotsoradis, whose organization has made the mid-level dental provider a top priority for several sessions, said “meaningful policy change takes time.” But she thinks the issue is reaching a tipping point.

“I do believe we are on the cusp of change,” Cotsoradis said.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has set a hearing this week to hear arguments over whether he should order Kansas to allow same-sex marriages.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree has scheduled a hearing for Friday at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas. At issue is the request by the American Civil Liberties Union for a temporary injunction that would bring Kansas into line with a binding 10th Circuit Court of Appeals precedent set in other cases.

The ACLU argues gay couples should not be prevented from marrying, while government officials have vowed to defend the state’s constitutional prohibition against gay marriages.

The ACLU contends that a federal ruling specific to Kansas law would aid the state Supreme Court in a separate case.