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The Kansas House has endorsed a plan that would require some potential voters to prove their U.S. citizenship before the November election. The bill moves ahead a requirement for people to prove citizenship when registering to vote for the first time in Kansas. That law is currently set to take effect in January 2013. The House bill would move it to June of this year.

On this Central Standard, meet the new quarter-time African Art curator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nii Quarcoopome. He’s seeing us on the side while staying in a committed relationship with the DIA in Detroit.

A daily digest of news from KCUR.

Missouri Supreme Court Strikes Down MOSIRA
Senate Committee Looks At Governor’s Education Plan
Kansas House Passes Bill To Join Health Care Compact
Bill Would Allow More Charter Schools

Days before his trial was to begin, the Kansas City North man accused of killing his wife in 2009 has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge than that of first degree murder.

Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is no stranger to the rough and tumble world of politics. After all, she’s been at it for three decades in a state that is traditionally tough on Democrats. Now she is facing another campaign, this time to keep her seat in the U.S. Senate.

Barbara Jordan was a lawyer and educator who was a congresswoman from 1972 to 1978 , the first African American congresswoman from the deep south and the first woman ever elected to the Texas Senate. Although she acquired a reputation as an effective legislator, Jordan did not become a national figure until 1974, when her participation in the hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of Pres. Richard M. Nixon was televised nationwide. Jordan's keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention confirmed her reputation as one of the most commanding and articulate public speakers of her era.

While sitting in the UMKC course “The Kansas City Black Experience,” Emiel Cleaver decided to write a paper on KC's first black political group, Freedom Inc.

In the last year, a movement to limit or outlaw Shariah, or Islamic Law, has been gaining momentum in the U.S. Legislators in more than 20 states, including Kansas and Missouri, have introduced new laws they say are needed to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islam. And many of the Republican presidential candidates have spoken out in favor of these laws. According to critics, however, these efforts are anti-Muslim, and in the past couple of months, they’ve been working to change the tide in the Shariah debate.

A mid-city school, abandoned for the last 12 years, will become the next most visible project in the urban-renewing Green Zone of Kansas City.

Free health clinics have long been caring for people who have no health coverage and limited resources to pay for private care. That’s why services are free. Well, mostly. A down economy and growing demand has many clinics, including a Kansas City mainstay, reassessing.