SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft says a newly discovered flaw in its Windows software was used by a hacking group that other researchers have linked to Russia’s government and computer intrusions at the Democratic National Committee.

The flaw was detected by researchers at Google, who recently alerted software makers Microsoft and Adobe Systems about vulnerabilities in their programs. Adobe issued a fix for its software last week. Microsoft says it’s testing a patch and will release it next week.

Microsoft acknowledged the problem Tuesday, saying only that it affected older versions of Windows and was used by a group called Strontium to target “a specific set of customers.”

The security firm Crowdstrike and others have linked Strontium, also known as “Fancy Bear,” to recent attacks on government, media and political targets in several countries.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas health officials are investigating an outbreak of E. coli among people who attended the Louisburg Cider Mill Ciderfest.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced Wednesday that seven cases have been confirmed so far but the investigation is continuing.

The festival was held Sept. 24-25 and Oct. 1-2 in Louisburg.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture, the state health department and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conducted an on-site assessment Oct. 27.

Anyone who became ill within one to 10 days after attending the Ciderfest is asked to call the state health department’s Epidemiology Hotline at 877-427-7317.

FORD COUNTY- Kansas Senior Senator Pat Roberts voted Wednesday in his hometown of Dodge City.

He encouraged Kansans, “If you haven’t voted yet, skip the lines on November 8th and vote early.”

Last week, the Kansas Secretary of State’s office reported nearly twice as many Kansas voters were casting ballots at early polling sites across the state, compared to the last presidential election.

The deadline for advance voting is Monday at noon.

SALINE COUNTY – A Kansas teen was injured in an accident just before 2:30p.m. on Tuesday in Saline County.

A vehicle driven by Paige Sharp, 19, Saline was westbound on Burma Road, according to Saline County Undersheriff Roger Soldan.

The car collide with a pickup driven by 67-year-old Mario Martinez of Assaria at the intersection of Water Well Road and Burma Road.

Sharp was taken to Salina Regional Health Center for treatment of a possible hand injury. A passenger in her car was not hurt.

Martinez and a passenger in his pickup escaped injury. Soldan said Sharp failed to stop at the stop sign.

By JIM MCLEAN

Out on the campaign trail, there are a couple of competing narratives about what’s going on with the Kansas budget.

Both acknowledge that plummeting revenues have delayed road projects, increased the state’s bond debt and forced cuts in higher education, health care and safety net programs for poor Kansans.

But that’s where the stories diverge.

Moderate Republicans and Democrats running for the Legislature are blaming the 2012 income tax cuts championed by Gov. Sam Brownback for crashing the state budget.

Democrat Adrienne Olejnik made that case early and often during a recent candidate forum on Emporia radio station KVOE.

“The top priority as we all know is the financial cliff that Kansas is now on,” Olejnik said. “We have to re-evaluate the 2012 tax changes because they have proved to be nothing but a disaster for our state.”

Olejnik, director of the Rossville Public Library, is just one of the upstart candidates across the state challenging incumbents on this issue. On the surface she looks like a long shot to win the 51st House District, which covers parts of five Flint Hills counties where Republicans outnumber Democrats roughly three to one.

But as she knocks on doors, she’s being greeted by a surprising number of Republicans who agree with her about “the mess” in Topeka.

“People are frustrated, especially with the LLC exemption,” Olejnik said, referring to the income tax exemption the 2012 law gave more than 300,000 business owners.

“That comes up quite often,” she said. “(Voters) recognize there are groups of people and individuals who are not paying their fair share and yet the person at the door, their taxes are going up.”

In 2015, Brownback and lawmakers raised sales and tobacco taxes to stabilize revenue collections and balance the budget. Spending cuts at the state level also have forced counties, cities and school districts to raise property taxes to maintain services.

Kenneth Kriz, a professor of public finance at Wichita State University who has studied the impact of income tax cuts on the economies and budgets of states, said there is a direct connection between the income tax cuts and the state’s plummeting revenues. He said the first full year after rates were reduced, revenues dropped by $700 million.

“We’ve never recovered the $700 million in lost revenue,” Kriz said. “And every year that goes by we fall farther behind where we would have been under the existing tax code as of 2012.”

If rates had not been reduced, Kansas would be collecting approximately $920 million more in income taxes in the current fiscal year, according to estimates compiled by the Kansas Legislative Research Department.

Conservative Republicans, many of the incumbents, are telling a different story.

“There are a lot of things that have happened that are beyond our control,” said Republican Rep. Ron Highland, from Wamego, the incumbent Olejnik is challenging.

Highland said macroeconomic forces are the reason the tax cuts that he supported haven’t generated the shot of adrenaline that both he and Brownback anticipated.

“The situation has been exacerbated by the economy, both national and international and again in our state, especially here in the Midwest with the falling agricultural commodity prices and the cattle prices,” Highland said.

Highland’s explanation tracks with the talking points that Brownback is using. When the governor appeared recently on Joseph Ashby’s conservative talk radio show in Wichita, he said: “We’ve got in essence a commodity-led rural recession going on in the state. It’s low oil prices, low gas prices, it’s low agricultural commodity prices.”

Kriz said the agriculture, energy and aircraft manufacturing sectors of the Kansas economy are facing “some headwinds.” But he said they are not the main cause of the state’s ongoing budget problems, which, he noted, started several years ago when oil and crop prices were much higher.

“It’s quite possible that there are other factors that are causing kind of marginal changes, a little bit of weakness in revenues,” Kriz said. “However, one can’t get past the fact that individual income tax revenues fell by 25 percent. And that’s a big hole.”

When it comes to how to fill that hole, candidates from both parties appear to agree on one thing: The need to revisit one of the most controversial features of the tax cuts – the exemption given to business owners.

Olejnik said it should be repealed. Highland isn’t that definitive, saying it’s something that lawmakers “need to take a close look at.”

“The concept was to encourage businesses to grow,” Highland said. “The problem is we didn’t put in a stratification where if you grew your business so much, we gave you a little tax break. We just had a blanket (exemption).”

Repealing the so-called LLC exemption would generate between $200 million and $250 million. That’s well short of what most think will be needed to close the hole. Depending on what the Kansas Supreme Court orders in a pending school finance lawsuit, some officials say the state may need up to an additional $1 billion to fully fund next year’s budget.

That means even if control of the Legislature shifts from conservative to more moderate Republicans, lawmakers may once again be forced to choose among raising taxes, cutting spending or doing some of both to keep the budget in the black.

Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.