(AP) — Human breast milk is sold for babies on several online sites for a few dollars an ounce, but a new study says buyer beware: Testing showed it can contain potentially dangerous bacteria including salmonella.

The warning comes from researchers who bought and tested 101 breast milk samples sold by women on one popular site, which over the weekend said it was making changes to its policies. Three-fourths of the samples contained high amounts of bacteria that could potentially sicken babies, the researchers found.

The results are “pretty scary,” said Dr. Kenneth Boyer, pediatrics chief at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “Just imagine if the donor happens to be a drug user. You don’t know.”

The research published in medical literature cites several cases of infants getting sick from strangers’ milk.

Breast milk is also provided through milk banks, whose clients include hospitals. They also charge fees but screen donors and pasteurize donated milk to kill any germs.

With Internet sites, “you have very few ways to know for sure what you are getting is really breast milk and that it’s safe to feed your baby,” said Sarah Keim, the lead author and a researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “Because the consequences can be serious, it is not a good idea to obtain breast milk in this way.”

The advice echoes a 2010 recommendation from the federal Food and Drug Administration.

“When human milk is obtained directly from individuals or through the Internet, the donor is unlikely to have been adequately screened for infectious disease or contamination risk,” the FDA says. “In addition, it is not likely that the human milk has been collected, processed, tested or stored in a way that reduces possible safety risks to the baby.”

The researchers believe theirs is the first study to test the safety of Internet-sold milk, although several others have documented bacteria in mothers’ own milk or in milk bank donations. Some bacteria may not be harmful, but salmonella is among germs that could pose a threat to infants, Boyer said.

Sources for bacteria found in the study aren’t known but could include donors’ skin, breast pumps used to extract milk, or contamination from improper shipping methods, Keim said.

The study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers attempted to buy milk from women on two websites but only tested milk obtained from women on one site, onlythebreast. An unidentified administrator for that site issued a statement saying the Incline Village, Nev.-based company is planning to stop informal milk sharing and will seek to improve donor screening and pursue “professional milk processing.” The website appeared to be down Monday morning.

There are many milk-sharing sites online, including several that provide milk for free. Sellers or donors tend to be new mothers who produce more milk than their own babies can consume. Users include mothers who have difficulty breast-feeding and don’t want to use formula and people with adopted infants.

Breanna Clemons of Dickinson, N.D., is a donor who found a local woman who needed breast milk through one of the online sites where milk is offered free.

“A lot of people are like, ‘Ewww, it’s weird,’ but they haven’t been in a situation where they didn’t want their child to have formula,” or couldn’t produce enough milk, Clemons said. She said she shared her medical history with the recipient.

Clemons is breast-feeding her 7-month-old and stores excess milk in her freezer. Every few weeks, she meets up with the recipient and gives her about 20 6-ounce bags. Clemons said the woman has a healthy 9-month-old who “loves my milk.”

Keim said it’s unclear if milk from sites offering free donated milk would have the same risks because donors might be different from those seeking money for their milk. And in a comparison, the researchers found more bacteria in breast milk purchased online than in 20 unpasteurized samples donated to a milk bank.

Bekki Hill is a co-founder of Modern Milksharing, an online support group that offers advice on milk donation. She said there’s a difference between milk sellers and donors; milk donors “don’t stand to gain anything from donating so they have no reason to lie about their health.”

Hill, of Red Hook, N.Y., used a donor’s milk for her first two children and plans to do so for her third, due in February, because she doesn’t produce enough of her own.

“Breast milk is obviously the preferred food” for babies, she said.

(AP) — Some Missouri high school students will be getting some one-on-one help this week applying for colleges.

The Missouri Department of Higher Education says the state is participating for the first time in what’s known as “College Application Week.” Similar events are held each fall in 24 other states.

Members of the Missouri College Advising Corps will be available to help students at 26 high schools in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas and parts of rural Missouri.

The goal is to increase the number of college applications coming from students in low-income families and from those who would be the first in their families to attend college.

The advisers are recent University of Missouri graduates. The university got a $1 million grant in 2007 to launch the adviser corps.

The ObamaCare exchange website won’t work because it’s based on premises that won’t work. Watch US Senator Roy Blunt’s discussion about Obamacare and the need to focus on reining in government spending, and tax and entitlement reform with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

(AP) — Two men who were riding in a gyrocopter are alive after the copter plunged about 20 feet to the ground south of St. Louis.

The accident happened Sunday afternoon at the Festus Airport in Jefferson County, Mo. Names and conditions of the men have not been released.

Authorities say the gyrocopter crashed in a grassy area near the runway. Emergency workers arrived to find one of the men still in the aircraft. He was taken to a hospital.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.

The copter is an experimental aircraft that looks like a small helicopter.

(AP) – Almost 6 million young people are neither in school nor working, according to a study released Monday.

That’s almost 15 percent of those aged 16 to 24 who have neither desk nor job, according to The Opportunity Nation coalition, which wrote the report.

Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.

“This is not a group that we can write off. They just need a chance,” said Mark Edwards, executive director of the coalition of businesses, advocacy groups, policy experts and nonprofit organizations dedicated to increasing economic mobility. “The tendency is to see them as lost souls and see them as unsavable. They are not.”

But changing the dynamic is not going to be easy.

The coalition also finds that 49 states have seen an increase in the number of families living in poverty and 45 states have seen household median incomes fall in the last year. The dour report underscores the challenges young adults face now and foretell challenges they are likely to face as they get older.

A young person’s community is often closely tied to his or her success. The Opportunity Nation report tracked 16 factors — Internet access, college graduation rates, income inequality and public safety among them — and identified states that were doing well for its young people.

Topping the list of supportive states are Vermont, Minnesota and North Dakota. At the bottom? Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico.

“Their destiny is too often determined by their ZIP code,” said Charlie Mangiardi, who works with Year Up, a nonprofit that trains young adults for careers and helps them find jobs.

“We have the supply. We don’t have a lack of young people who need this opportunity,” Mangiardi added.

Just look at some of the nation’s largest cities. Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Riverside, Calif., all have more than 100,000 idle youth, the Opportunity Nation report found.

“Often times they lack the social capital in life,” Mangiardi said. “There’s a whole pool of talent that is motivated, loyal and hardworking.” They just can’t get through an employer’s door, he added.

That’s why Year Up spends a year working with high school graduates to teach them career skills such as computer programming or equipment repair they can use when the program ends. It also includes life coaching so they can learn skills such as time management. More than 4,500 young adults from urban areas have completed the program and 84 percent of them have found work.

But it’s a far tougher time for other young people.

In Mississippi and West Virginia, 1 in 5 young people are idle — higher than their older neighbors. Mississippi has an overall unemployment rate of 8 percent, while West Virginia posts about 7 percent. Like most states, they saw their unemployment rate fall since 2011, but researchers caution that shift could come from fewer residents looking for work and from more who had simply given up their search for jobs.

And it’s not as though the challenges emerge from nowhere. Quality early childhood programs help students from poor families overcome societal hurdles, and on-time high school graduation rates often follow quality schools — other factors Opportunity Nation examined in its report.

“A lot of times we don’t want to look at data because we don’t want to be depressed,” said Rob Denson, president of Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa.

But it’s an uncomfortable reality that needs to be addressed, he said.

Using previous years’ reports from Opportunity Nation, Denson helped rally community organizations in his city to develop a pilot program to help students as young as 14 find summer work.

“When we got the index, it really allowed us to use it as a rallying point for all of the community-based organizations we work with to say, `Look, this is what the world sees when they look at Iowa,”‘ he said.

Starting next summer, Des Moines students will be placed in paying jobs, part of a citywide collaboration to help its urban communities. It will help older adults, as well, because crime rates are expected to fall, he said.

“If they’re not in school or at work,” Denson said, “they’re not usually doing something positive.”

After a series of recent car break ins, police in Kansas City are reminding the public and visitors to the area not to leave valuables in their car. Police produced this video to help tell story.

AP) — A large shipment of methamphetamine discovered in Oklahoma has led to the arrest of six people in southwest Missouri, including two who are facing federal charges.

Canadian County, Okla., sheriff’s deputies found 15 bundles of meth in a hidden compartment in a Ford Explorer loaded at the back a vehicle hauler Oct. 11. Investigators removed most of the drugs, took the hauler and driver to Joplin to install a tracking device in the vehicle, then sent the driver to make the scheduled delivery in Monett, Mo.

A man in Monett paid the driver $800 for the keys to the Explorer. Federal agents tracked the SUV to a home where they later served a search warrant and made the arrests.

A 41-year-old man who ran the Kansas City Marathon has apparently broken a record, but not for running.

David Babcock, a graphic design professor at the University of Central Missouri, broke the Guinness world record for longest scarf knitted while running a marathon.

Babcock’s scarf was measured by the president of an accredited calibration service, who will verify to Guinness the authenticity of Babcock’s accomplishment.

Babcock, who finished the marathon in under six hours, says he has a smooth gait.