News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
NIH director talks about one and done at KU — for flu shots
That annual flu vaccine could be a thing of the past by the end of the decade, the director of the National Institutes of Health said during a Monday visit to the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Francis Collins said that NIH-funded researchers are perhaps five years away from developing a universal flu vaccine,…
Working together for safe, inclusive communities
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel Perpetrators of hate crimes seek to victimize entire communities. The shootings at two Jewish centers in Overland…
Q&A with robotics competition co-founder Dr. Woodie Flowers
Lindsey Foat – The Hale Center for Journalism Instead of seeing 58 robots competing, Dr. Woodie Flowers sees 58 solutions to a problem he created. Flowers is a Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, original host of the PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers” and the co-founder and creator of the…
KC Week in Review: Will she come back to Kansas? Sebelius resigns. Plus, analysis of this week’s local elections…
It’s not often someone from our area gets to hold a national cabinet level post. But that’s coming to an end for the embattled former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who resigns this week as our nation’s Health Secretary. Not since former Missouri Governor John Ashcroft was picked by President George W. Bush to be…
Students Solve Old Problem with New Ketchup Cap
Video: John McGrath — The Hale Center for Journalism High school seniors Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson have spent a lot of time thinking about ketchup. As students in the Project Lead the Way program at North Liberty High School, Richards and Thompson have researched and developed a bottle cap that prevents that first squirt…
Kansas educators take battle over school finance bill to Twitter
For the last 35 years school librarian Nancy McFarlin has been connecting Kansas students with information, but the veteran educator said she didn’t personally realize the informative power of Twitter until last weekend. “I thought it was just one more thing to learn to do, (but now I find it) informative and current,” McFarlin, who…
Kansas Citians speak at Middle of the Map Fest Forum: live blog
[View the story “Middle of the Map Fest FORUM live blog” on Storify]
KU Hospital, others attacking problem of child deaths
Mike Sherry – The Hale Center for Journalism Chloe Robinson was about the size of a bag of frozen spinach at birth. Born 15 weeks early and weighing only 1 pound, she spent her first eight months in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Kansas Hospital. That was five years ago, and,…
Moveon.Org poll shows most Kansans support Medicaid expansion
But Brownback campaign skeptical of the results By Jim McLean KHI News Service April 8, 2014 TOPEKA — Poll results released today indicate that the Medicaid expansion issue could be a factor in the Kansas governor’s race. The poll, conducted last week for MoveOn.org Political Action, a left-leaning group dedicated to “progressive change,” showed that 52 percent…
Wyandotte County officials face trust issue with healthy campus
A town hall forum on a Wyandotte County health initiative drew a standing-room-only crowd to City Hall Thursday evening, but that level of interest didn’t mean participants believed government officials would follow through with the plan. In reporting feedback from their break-out sessions, facilitators said many attendees were skeptical because they felt City Hall had…