News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
Student poets slam dropout crisis through spoken word contest
Unique Hughley likes to compose poetry by the glow of his iPhone while he walks around at night through the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri, where he grew up. “I grew up in a bad place. I grew up right on Prospect and that’s like a horrible place where I come from,” Hughley said….
KC Week In Review: The Missouri Transportation Tax Debate
Critics call it the biggest tax increase in Missouri history. Proponents call Amendment 7 on the August 5 ballot a crucial vote to improve highways, bridges and transit in the state. The 3/4 cent sales tax increase would bring in more than $5 billion dollars over 10 years and add about 8 cents to a…
Med school program emphasizes career possibilities for urban teens
Shannon North can preach and preach to her students that their aspirations are achievable, that advanced education is attainable. And she does just that, as the college and career facilitator at Hogan Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Mo. The charter school, at 1221 E. Meyer Blvd., has a student population where virtually all the attendees…
Missouri becomes third state to enact ‘Right To Try’ drug therapy law
Missouri residents who have exhausted conventional disease cures will have access to experimental drugs under legislation signed on Monday by Gov. Jay Nixon. The so-called Right to Try legislation gives patients and their doctors the ability to procure drugs that have yet to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration if the pharmaceutical…
KC Week in Review: Meet KC’s new Tourism & Convention chief
Nick Haines dissects the convention business with the new chief of Kansas City’s Convention and Visitors Association, Ronnie Burt. Also on this edition: Missouri transportation sales tax, Tea Party candidate Milt Wolf, Google Fiber comes to Overland Park and other stories with news reviewers Garrett Haake, 41 Action News, Steve Kraske, KCUR and Dave Helling…
Dental funds for the poor caught in Missouri budget battle
Approximately $18 million that would restore basic dental benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income Missouri adults is in limbo due to a sweeping budget action by Gov. Jay Nixon. Acting under what he termed his constitutional duty to balance the state budget, Nixon late last month restricted or vetoed approximately $1.1 billion in spending…
KU Med Center Tests Promising Alzheimer’s Drug As Part Of International Trial
It’s a form of dementia that afflicts as many as 5.2 million people in the United States. It has no cure. And as the population ages, the number of people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to quadruple over the next 35 years, according to a study from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health….
Rural Kansas hospital bolsters recruitment by enticing “missionary” doctors
Though 25 percent of Americans still live in rural areas, only 10 percent of doctors do, according to the National Rural Health Association, and finding physicians and other medical professionals willing to work in the hinterlands remains a serious, growing problem in Kansas and other parts of the United States. But in Kearny County, on…
Lenexa middle school teachers go green at Honeywell boot camp
Come fall at Mill Creek Middle School, some students will get to build something in their math and English language arts classes other than equations and essays: wind turbines. English teacher Kristan Langton and math teacher Amber Boyington were two of 70 teachers from around the world who were invited to spend a week at…
KC Week in Review: KC eliminated from RNC 2016 Convention quest
When Mayor Sly James decided to dance on the tarmac of the downtown airport with the head of the Republican National Convention site selection committee, it was seen as a powerful symbol of Kansas City’s warmth and hospitality. Combined with fireworks at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, city leaders went all out to…