DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Rocker Jon Bon Jovi donned a New York Police Department T-shirt on stage. Well-wishers delivered cookies to police in Cincinnati. In Mooresville, North Carolina, officers were treated by residents to a chili dinner.

At a time when many in the nation’s police community feel embattled, Americans across the country are making an effort to express their support.

The immediate catalyst for the surge of support was the execution-style killings of two New York City police officers on Saturday. For many of those making appreciative gestures, there also was a desire to counter the widespread protests — steeped with criticism of police — that followed grand jury decisions not to charge white officers for their roles in the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York

MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is building a legal case against companies that sell pure powdered caffeine, which can be fatal even in small doses.

The FDA warned consumers to avoid pure powdered caffeine this summer after the death of an Ohio teen. Some major retailers have stopped selling it in bulk, but the substance is still widely available on the Internet and in some stores.

Even a teaspoon of the powder, which is equivalent to 25 cups of coffee, can be lethal. Eighteen-year-old Logan Stiner of LaGrange, Ohio, died in May after consuming it. It was also linked to the death of a Georgia man this year.

FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor says it is “inherently irresponsible” to market such a potentially dangerous product.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York prosecutor has announced five arrests in a brazen scheme in which guns — even an AK-47 rifle — were taken onto passenger jets for years in carry-on luggage.

Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson made the disclosure at a news conference Tuesday. He announced the arrests a day after charges were announced in Atlanta against an airline baggage handler.

He said he was not trying to scare anyone. But he called “truly frightening” what investigators learned after a probe that started as a way to reduce gun violence in Brooklyn.

He said former Delta Air Lines employee Mark Quentin Henry took guns aboard at least 17 commercial airliners this year from Atlanta to New York airports. The name of his lawyer wasn’t listed in court records.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Two of the biggest U.S. agribusiness companies say they have agreed to settle their patent-infringement lawsuits against each other that had been pending in a St. Louis federal court.

Terms of the deal announced Tuesday by DuPont Co. and Monsanto Co. were not announced.

St. Louis-based Monsanto had claimed that DuPont had infringed upon certain Monsanto patents for determining a seed’s genetics. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, DuPont had alleged that Monsanto had infringed upon certain DuPont seed-processing patents.

The presidents of both companies say settling the matter enables both companies to focus on their businesses.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc. has completed its acquisition of optical network device company Oplink Communications Inc.

The companies announced Tuesday that Koch Optics Inc. has acquired 14,701,501 shares at a price of $24.25 per share. The deal represents about 83.8 percent of Optlink’s outstanding shares.

Last month’s tender offer for all of Oplinks’ outstanding shares expired on Monday. The companies subsequently completed the merger, effective Tuesday, without a vote or meeting of Oplink’s shareholders.

Oplink survives as a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries. Its shares ceased trading on the NASDAQ Global Market prior to the Tuesday’s opening.

Wichita, Kansas,-based Koch Industries owns companies in various industries such as chemicals, refining, forest and consumer products, fertilizers, electronic components, minerals and energy.

Oplink is based in Fremont, California.

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — State officials say they’re having a hard time contacting people with disabilities who’ve expressed an interest in receiving Medicaid-funded services designed to help them live in community-based settings.

Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Secretary Kari Bruffett on Friday said that between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, the agency had reached out to 1,627 people on its waiting list for services for people with physical disabilities.

More than 830 of these individuals are now receiving services.

In November, agency officials renewed their attempt to contact individuals thought to still be on the waiting list. Those efforts, so far, have generated only another 150 responses.

“We’ve had a challenge in getting responses,” Bruffett said, acknowledging that the agency may not yet have valid addresses and telephone numbers for many of the would-be recipients.

In the past 11 months, 667 people have been dropped from the waiting lists because KDADS workers couldn’t find them, or because they have refused services or have been declared ineligible.

KDADS employees, Bruffett said, will continue reaching out to people — or their families — who have expressed an interest in obtaining services.

Eventually, she said, the department should be able to achieve significant reductions in the waiting lists for people with physical and developmental disabilities.

Last week, 2,058 Kansans with physical disabilities were known to be waiting for services as were 3,134 people with developmental disabilities.

Rosie Cooper is executive director of the Kansas Association of Centers for Independent Living, a coalition of regional programs that help people with physical disabilities navigate the state’s service delivery system.

She said problems remain with the KDADS list.

“On Thursday, I let KDADS know about a lady who’d gotten a ‘notice of action’ letter saying that she was being removed from the waiting list,” Cooper said. “She got the letter the day before Thanksgiving even though the date on the letter was Nov. 7. No one had ever contacted her with an offer.”

The woman has been on the waiting list since July 2011, Cooper said, and has made several calls to her local KDADS office since receiving her cut-off letter. As of Monday afternoon, she said, the woman’s calls had not been returned.

“I don’t want to say KDADS numbers are wrong,” she said. “I just don’t know how they came up with them. There seems to be a lot of confusion.”

ruffett spoke Friday during the department’s annual forum on KanCare, which is the state’s privatized Medicaid program that is administered by three for-profit managed care companies.

Approximately 30 people attended the hourlong meeting hosted by KDADS and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. About half of the people in the audience were KDHE or KDADS employees.

During the meeting’s question-and-answer session, most of the questions regarded advocates’ concerns with KDADS-proposed changes in the waivers that define the state’s approach to helping people with disabilities and frail elders who live in community-based settings rather than in nursing homes. KDADS collected public comment on the changes through Dec. 20.

The proposed changes are subject to federal approval. Bruffett said KDADS plans to file its proposed changes with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regional office in Kansas City, Mo., by Jan. 1.

Concerns raised during the public comment session, which began in mid-November, will be addressed in the department’s plan, she said.

Responding the audience’s questions, Bruffett and other KDADS officials said:

• They were aware of that some of the proposed changes could lead to a pay cut for attendant care workers.

• The final version of the waiver affecting services for people with traumatic brain injuries probably would not be open to a second round of public comment before being forwarded to CMS.

• Issues having to do with the state’s response to a federal rule that attendant care workers have to be paid minimum wage and overtime after Jan. 1 remain unresolved.

• The managed care companies appear to be having more success in reducing turnover among their front-line workers in recent months.

 

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

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A 20-year-old Kansas man has been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for stealing the wedding ring from the hand of a dying woman last year in the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant.

The Wichita Eagle reports Sedgwick County District Judge Christopher Magana sentenced Keith Byron Hickles Jr. on Monday to 94 months. He was one of three men convicted of stealing items from 43-year-old Danielle Zimmerman after she suffered a brain aneurysm on Dec. 29 in the drive-thru of a Wichita Taco Bell.

Zimmerman, who had gone to the restaurant to get dinner for herself, her husband and two teenage sons, crashed her truck into the speaker box. She died the next day.

Police recovered her purse Dec. 30, but the ring remains missing.