News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
100 years of history at Union Station
“All of my life I had lived in very small farming communities. Coming into Union Station was entering a shocking, different world. I still remember the great, big doors, the very tall, tall ceilings, and lots of people. I had never seen so many people, enormous numbers of people. And all that huge, large hall…
Egg lawsuit costs Missouri
Airline flights and legal fees in California; rental cars and hotel rooms in Indiana; $19 at Yogurtland in Los Angeles and expert witness fees of $500 an hour, plus expenses. That’s just part of the $83,711.59 that Missouri taxpayers will pony up for Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster’s brief — and failed — legal foray into…
On-time vaccination rate for Kansas kids tumbles
TOPEKA — The percentage of Kansas students entering kindergarten in 2012 who had been immunized on the medically recommended schedule tumbled to 61 percent from about 72 percent the previous year. The drop, highlighted in KIDS COUNT data released Tuesday by Topeka nonprofit Kansas Action for Children, puts on-time immunization rates at their lowest in at least five…
National Latina advocate returns home, encourages KCK community to vote
A packed meeting room buzzed with excitement Tuesday morning at the South Branch library in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. Families and friends huddled together, chatting animatedly. Students from El Centro’s Academy for Children squirmed in their seats. As soon as Irene Caudillo, president and CEO of El Centro, stepped up to the podium,…
Video: First World Series tailgate at Kauffman in 29 years
Kansas City Royals fans gathered at Kauffman Stadium to celebrate game one of the World Series versus the San Francisco Giants. Here are some sights and sounds from the first World Series tailgate at the K in 29 years. Video produced with assistance from Bridgit Bowden.
Lenexa man’s exercise obsession underscores eating disorders’ gender neutrality
At one point when he was in college at Kansas State University, Jon Smith would jog as many as 20 miles a day. “If I wasn’t in the library and not in class,” he said, “I was running.” But Smith was far from healthy. His over-the-top regimen was a manifestation of an eating disorder known…
Blue Cross picket highlights insurance conundrum with eating disorders
The business day was ticking away as Sarah Wilcher waited on the phone. She was an hour into a desperate protest of an insurance decision about her seriously ill daughter, Piper. By around 5:10 p.m., she realized everybody was gone. “They just left me on hold,” Wilcher recalled recently of that day four years ago….
Kansas City-area supporters strive to reopen eating disorder clinic
Approximately 30 million Americans – two-thirds of them women – battle a clinically significant eating disorder during their lifetime, and hundreds of thousands of these people live in Missouri or Kansas,
Ebola crisis hits home for KC’s West African community
Peteh Jalloh lives in Kansas City, but he lived in Sierra Leone until 1995. Lately, he has limited his communication with friends and family in Africa who are dealing with the Ebola crisis to messaging back and forth on Facebook. He says talking on the phone has become too painful. “Every day I get Facebook…
At harvest, corn huskers still pick by hand
Dick Humes squinted and sweat as he moved down a row of corn. He sliced through the husk with a metal hook in his right hand, snapped the ear from its stalk with his left and threw it over his shoulder into a wagon rolling alongside him. Every other second, the corn hit the floor…