By Elle Moxley – KCUR

LENEXA — An international aid organization based in Lenexa on Tuesday announced plans to operate a medical facility in Liberia to treat Ebola victims.

Heart to Heart International CEO Jim Mitchum said running the 70-bed Ebola treatment unit will be the largest and most challenging humanitarian effort the organization has undertaken. It will cost approximately $6 million to operate the facility, which should open in November, for six months.
Mitchum said Heart to Heart will recruit doctors and nurses for six-week deployments, when they’ll work with approximately 200 Liberians to staff the treatment center.

“They will spend the first week attending training to assure all the necessary protocols are well-understood and that they are able to keep themselves and their co-workers safe,” he said.

The announcement comes on the heels of the first reported case contracted outside the United States, by a nurse in Spain who cared for evacuated Ebola victims.

Lee Norman, chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Hospital, said, “We at KU Hospital have systems in place to assure you that should Heart to Heart volunteers and staff – and their worried families – need our care, we are here to help you.”

Ebola can only be contracted through contact with bodily fluids. Contrary to internet rumors, there have been no confirmed cases in Kansas City.

There have been just under 4,000 reported cases of Ebola in Liberia, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say those numbers could balloon to 1.4 million there and in neighboring Sierra Leone. The Ebola treatment unit Heart to Heart will operate is one of 27 the CDC says Liberia needs to contain the epidemic.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A judge in northeast Kansas has ordered a county to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following actions earlier this week by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Johnson County Chief District Judge Kevin Moriarty issued the order Wednesday. He says it was meant to avoid confusion about the legal climate surrounding gay marriages.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans on gay marriage. One of them was Utah, which is in the same federal appeals court circuit as Kansas.

The Kansas Constitution has banned gay marriage since 2005.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic challenger Paul Davis is proposing to reverse a piece of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s overhaul of the Kansas Medicaid program opposed by some advocates for the mentally disabled.

The plan Davis outlined Wednesday during a Statehouse news conference would end three private health insurance companies’ management of in-home support services for the mentally disabled.

Brownback’s administration turned over management of Medicaid to the private insurers in 2013. But it delayed the inclusion of support services for about 8,500 mentally disabled Kansans in the overhaul until February following vocal protests by advocates.

The $3 billion-a-year Medicaid program covers medical services for the poor and disabled and services designed to allow the disabled to continue living in their homes.

Officials in Brownback’s administration rejected Davis’ criticism that the overhaul has been harmful.

PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — A judge has found enough evidence to try a man in the deaths of a woman and her three children last November in southeast Kansas.

KOAM reports that 23-year-old David Bennett Jr. was bound over for trial Wednesday. He is charged with threatening, raping and killing 29-year-old Cami Umbarger, along with killing the children.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents and forensic specialists testified at the preliminary hearing that the body of Umbarger and her 9-year-old daughter were found under different beds in the same bedroom of their Parsons home. The body of Umbarger’s 6-year-old son was found beneath clothes in a utility room. Her 4-year-old daughter’s body was stuffed into a clothes dryer, buried under clothes.

Bennett was arrested in Independence after a massive manhunt.

EUDORA, Kan.- A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 12-noon on Wednesday in Douglas County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Harley Davidson driven by Alastair Fraser III, 38, Lenexa, was eastbound on Kansas 10 in Eudora. A dog entered the highway from the north.

The motorcycle went down while attempting to avoid the dog.

Fraser III was transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

The KHP reported he was wearing a helmet.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge has summarily ruled in favor of Boeing and one of its suppliers in a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged the company’s planes were unsafe.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot sided with the aircraft maker and one of its California-based suppliers, Ducommun Inc., in the lawsuit filed in 2005 by three former Wichita workers who claimed Boeing defrauded the U.S. government by using “bogus parts” in a $1.6 billion contract for 24 planes.

Wednesday’s 79-page decision rejected all claims brought by former employees Taylor Smith, Jeannine Prewitt and James Ailes. Their attorney, Corlin Pratt, said in an email that his clients are “extremely disappointed in the ruling” and are continuing to analyze the lengthy court opinion.

Boeing was reviewing the decision and its spokesman had no immediate comment.

STRONG CITY, Kan.- Two Kansas women were injured in an accident just after 11 a.m. on Tuesday in Chase County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Toyota Corolla driven by Connie Jean Helm, 70, Wichita, was eastbound on U.S. 50 four miles west of Strong City passing a vehicle.

The Toyota driver didn’t see a westbound 2000 Saturn S driven by Lori A. Mann, 56, Emporia.

Both vehicles tried to go north into the ditch. The Saturn struck the Toyota on the passenger side rear corner. The Toyota rolled into the ditch.

Helm and Mann were transported to Newman Regional Health in Emporia.

The KHP reported both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

BURLINGTON, Kan. (AP) — Workers at an eastern Kansas nuclear power plant are working to repair fire-damaged equipment and avoid a shutdown.

The damage occurred Monday when a fire broke out in a room that houses a backup generator. Federal law requires that the generator is operational within 72 hours or the Wolf Creek plant will have to be taken offline.

Shutting down the plant would cost the utilities that own it — and eventually their customers — more than $300,000 per day.

Plant spokesman Terry Young says workers were spending Wednesday conducting testing on a transformer and cabling that were replaced after the fire.

Young says the backup generator is used only when the plant shuts down and stops making its own energy. The plant has other backup energy sources.

ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press
MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government plans to begin taking the temperatures of travelers from West Africa arriving at five U.S. airports as part of a stepped-up response to the Ebola epidemic.

A federal official said Wednesday the screening will begin Saturday at New York’s JFK Airport. Screenings will start next week at Newark, Dulles, Chicago and Atlanta. The official was not authorized to describe the change by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Separately, Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Customs and Border Protection agents are handing out information sheets to travelers with details of what symptoms to look for and directions to call doctors if they become sick within 21 days — the incubation period for Ebola.