VALLEY CENTER, Kan. (AP) — A 56-year-old man has been arrested in a shooting northwest of Valley Center that left another man in critical condition.

According to Sedgwick County Sgt. Nathan Gerdsen, a man called 911 just before 4 p.m. Saturday to report that he had been shot. Gerdsen says officers arrived at the scene and found the victim with gunshot wounds to the face and upper chest. He was taken to Via Christi Hospital St. Francis in Wichita.

The suspect faces several charges, including attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

NEOGA, Ill. (AP) — Crop experts say there should be enough pumpkins for Halloween, but that supplies of canned pumpkin could be scarce by Thanksgiving.

Illinois is the country’s top pumpkin-producing state. Mohammad Babadoost is a plant pathology professor at the University of Illinois. He says “we’ll have a pumpkin for everybody” for Halloween, but cautions that canned pumpkin could run low by Nov. 26’s Thanksgiving holiday. He says he’d “buy it whenever it comes to the store.”

Meanwhile the large canned pumpkin manufacturer Libby says yields in Illinois appear to be less than anticipated this year.

Farmers are blaming record rainfall in June for washing out crops. Jane Moran owns Moran Orchard in Neoga. She says they replanted and it rained more so they’re buying pumpkins at auction twice a week.

DALLAS (AP) — Passengers flying Southwest Airlines are being advised to get to the airport early and bring along pre-printed boarding passes. The Dallas-based company says it’s using back-up systems around the country to check-in travelers lacking printed or mobile boarding passes but technology problems that began Sunday morning continue, delaying hundreds of flights. Representatives for Southwest did not say what caused the problem or how long it would take to resolve.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — At least 16 children in the Kansas City metropolitan area have died in homicides in the last 12 months, with many of them being killed as their homes were shot up by reckless gunfire.

Police say this year does not appear statistically worse than most in the past decade. A common denominator for most is parents who are either perpetrators of the violence or the target of gunfire that instead claims their children.

The Kansas City Star reports five of the 16 cases remain unresolved. The killings have swelled the ranks of anti-violence neighborhood activists holding vigils and releasing balloons on city streets to draw attention to them.

Prosecutors say the senseless slayings of innocent children draw attention to the larger problem of violence in the area.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Douglas County residents are being encouraged to either get rid of their ash trees or commit to a lifetime of treating them against the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect that has devastated tree populations elsewhere.

State and U.S. departments of agriculture confirmed the presence of the insect last month in a tree in Eudora, southeast of Lawrence.

Kansas State University Extension horticulture agent Marlin Bates says with the insect so close, it’s best to assume every ash tree in the northeast Kansas county is in danger of infestation.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports the mortality rate for infected trees is 100 percent.

Bates says ash trees need to be treated every year, and owners who don’t want to do that should consider removing the tree before it becomes infected.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A surge in homicides involving women in abusive relationships and a rising number of women whose requests for shelter have been turned away are pushing some Wichita agencies to seek ways to expand capacity to help domestic violence victims.

A local convent will give those efforts a boost later this month when it starts accepting referrals from local shelters for what eventually will be more than 50 rooms by 2018.

The Wichita Eagle reports the 100-year-old Sisters of St. Joseph Convent has been rechristened The Mount and initially will have 14 rooms available. Twelve more are slated to open in January and a dozen more about three months after that.

Harbor House, a Wichita shelter for women, was forced to turn away 178 requests for shelter in August.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Highway Patrol says a woman is dead after trying to cross Interstate 135 in southern Wichita and being hit by a pickup truck.

The Wichita Eagle reports troopers were dispatched after getting a call of a hitchiker walking north on the highway shortly before 10 p.m. Saturday.

Master Trooper Eric Molleker says the woman tried to cross the highway from the east to west side. He says a van in the right lane slowed to avoid hitting her but a pickup truck in the left lane slightly behind the van struck her when she entered that lane.

A Sedgwick County emergency dispatcher described the woman as being 50 to 60 years old. She was pronounced dead at 10:06 p.m.

The driver of the pickup was not hurt.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A state official says $2.5 million is needed to fix problems with the plumbing, windows, roof and security at a Topeka building that houses members of the Kansas Supreme Court and Kansas Court of Appeals.

Mark McGivern, of the Kansas Department of Administration, said Friday that judicial branch leaders and state building administrators intend to ask the 2016 Legislature for an appropriation to begin addressing maintenance shortcomings at the Kansas Judicial Center.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that McGivern says the $70,000 that the Kansas Legislature allots annually for upkeep isn’t enough to address the problems at the building. He says that without the work, the 37-year-old building risks becoming as poorly maintained as the Docking State Office Building, which is slated for demolition.

DOUGLAS COUNTY – A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 7:30a.m. on Sunday in Douglas County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1999 Dodge Stratus driven by Jeffery J. Johnson, 47, Bonner Springs, was eastbound in the 700 Block of U.S. 56 when it left roadway.

The vehicle entered south ditch hit an embankment and went airborne.

Johnson was transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Interviews are underway as Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration searches for a new commerce secretary.

The Lawrence Journal World reports that Brownback spokeswoman Eileen Hawley says the administration doesn’t have a time frame for announcing a nominee. She also didn’t disclose how many potential candidates have been interviewed so far.

The Department of Commerce has been without a permanent chief since former Secretary Pat George resigned in July to accept a job to become president and CEO of a nonprofit alcohol and substance abuse treatment center based in Norton.

Brownback initially nominated Leawood businessman George Hansen for the post. But he withdrew on the eve of his confirmation hearing before a Senate committee, citing potential conflicts of interest because a relative has had extensive business dealings with the Commerce Department.

By ESTHER HONIG

Nineteen-year-old Claudia Rivera shares a single-story tract home in Liberal, Kansas, with her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jesùs Varela.

Last month, Varela’s mother moved in so she could watch Rivera’s baby boy, Fabian, while Rivera works at the Dollar General store and Valera pulls down a shift at the local meatpacking plant.

Getting pregnant at 17, Rivera says, changed her life – and her plans to go to college.

“I had him three months after I graduated,” she says. “I was going to go to school, but when it was my due date, that’s when classes started, so I delayed it two years and now next year for sure I’m going.”

The same year Rivera became pregnant, her best friend also had a baby.

In Liberal, she says, teen moms aren’t that unusual. In fact, southwest Kansas cities like Liberal, Dodge City and Garden City have the highest teenage birth rates in the state.

These towns also happen to have large Latino populations. Close to 60 percent of Liberal’s 20,000 residents are Latino. Many, like Rivera’s parents, emigrated from Mexico to work in the meatpacking plant.

The high teen pregnancy rates in this rural part of the state caught the attention of Dr. Romina Barral, a physician specializing in adolescent medicine at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

“When I came here to Kansas, I noticed that the teen pregnancy rates were higher than the rest of the country,” Barral says. “In fact, it was three times higher in the Latino or Hispanic community compared to other ethnic groups.”

According to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 6.4 percent of Latinas ages 15 to 19 will give birth. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s the fourth-highest rate in the country.

Barral, along with Juntos, a research center for advancing Latino health, has been surveying Latino youth in southwestern Kansas to understand why the numbers are so high. And what she found is that teens there know even less about safe sex and contraceptives than she expected.

“These are teens that are raised in a very conservative community,” Barral says. “So basically they’re engaging in sexual behaviors without knowing exactly how to prevent their consequences.”

Like all public schools in Kansas, Liberal High School, which Rivera attended, is required to teach about contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases. But Rivera says she never learned how to get the pill — or that she had other options.

“I knew that there was birth control but I thought that there was only the pills,” Rivera says. “I didn’t know about anything else, like the Mirena. But I didn’t ask my mom ’cause I was scared. She’s like, ‘Why are you having sex?’”

Mirena is a popular hormone-releasing intrauterine that lasts as long as five years. Barral thinks contraceptives like this should be readily available to teens like Rivera. She says that would be a big step in modernizing the state’s outdated approach to teen reproductive health.

“These methods are now first-line and should be offered first to these teenagers so that they can have their contraceptive needs covered for three to five years. Even up to 10 years if they choose a certain type of IUD,” Barral says. “So they can go ahead and enjoy their friendships, study and achieve their academic goals.”

Vincent Guilamo-Ramos is a professor at New York University who has studied adolescent health among Latinos for more than two decades. He says that while the national rate of teen pregnancy has decreased significantly in the past 20 years, it’s still unacceptably high for Latinos: About three out of 10 Latina teens will get pregnant before the age of 20.

That doesn’t mean Latino teens are more likely to engage in sex compared with other ethnic groups. Rather, Guilamo-Ramos says, the difference has to do with the resources available to them.

“If you’re Latino, you’re less likely to have a routine source of primary health care,” Guilamo-Ramos says. “You’re more likely to be under-insured or not insured, or you may be less likely to have access to reproductive health services.”

There are any number of reasons why that may be so. Many Latinos don’t have jobs that offer health benefits. Limited English proficiency can be a barrier. So can immigration status.

Crucially, Guilamo-Ramos says, teen pregnancy can perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Teen moms are more likely to drop out of school and face greater economic hardship than older mothers.

Rivera recognizes this. But she’s not sure she would have done anything differently.

“It’s kind of like a yes and a no,” she says. “If I was going to tell myself, ‘Don’t have sex without a condom,’ it’s kinda like, ‘Well, I don’t want my baby right now.’”

Now, Rivera says, she’d tell herself to wait – at least until she completed her education. At the moment, Rivera is focusing on work and saving money so that she can afford community college next fall.

Esther Honig is a freelance reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, which is based at KCUR.

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

CAWKER CITY -A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 7p.m. on Saturday in Mitchell County

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Chevy Impala driven by Jacob A. Campbell, 25, Manhattan, was eastbound on U.S. 24 one mile west of Cawker City.

The vehicle swerved across both lanes of traffic and struck the guardrail on the south side of the roadway, went airborne and rolled.

Campbell was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, Nebraska.

He was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.