News Archives

By Dan Verbeck

Kansas City, Kansas – General Motors has been banking on its popular Chevy Malibu to help lift it from a $3.3 billion loss in the first quarter.

The Malibu is built in two plants. One of them is struck today by United Auto Workers. It's in Kansas City, Kansas.

A few trucks move through the gates of this plant where normally more than 2500 UAW men and women work, but there's no one inside to unload a truck at the docks.

By Sylvia Maria Gross

Kansas City, MO – A petition to ban race and gender-based affirmative action in Missouri has failed to gather enough valid signatures. It's a second set-back for California businessman Ward Connerly's campaign to get the issue on the November ballot in five states, in what he was calling "Super Tuesday for Equal Rights."

By Maria Carter

By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO – Kansas City, Missouri motorists will soon be on candid camera at selected intersections, but they needn't smile. Only their license plates will be photographed.

The Kansas City Council set the wheels in motion Thursday for the installation of the first 12 red-light cameras. The cameras will photograph the license plates, but not the faces of motorists who run red lights. The vehicle owner would then get a $100 traffic ticket.

By Laura Spencer and Angela Elam

Kansas City, MO – The winners of the 2008 National Magazine Awards, the highest honor in the magazine industry, were announced Thursday at a gala event at Lincoln Center in New York. Kansas City-based New Letters won the essay writing award for Thomas E. Kennedy's account of his cancer scare. Other finalists in the essay category included The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and The New Yorker, among others.

By Sylvia Maria Gross

By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO – Another arbitration session was postponed Friday in the dispute over the eight school buildings in the area that voted to leave the Kansas City school district and join the one in Independence.

The Kansas City district's latest asking price is about $90 million. But Superintendent Jim Hinson says his Independence district should owe nothing for six of the buildings.

By Elana Gordon

By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO – From the start, the attempt to get Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier to build in Kansas City has been based on a new kind of tax credit from the state. And from the start, Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields has said it's a great idea for the Kansas City-St. Joseph area and for state economic development to come.

By Laura Ziegler

By Laura Ziegler

Shawnee Mission, Kansas – The Shawnee Mission School district will begin the next school year with a new superintendent. Dr. Gene Johnson, associate superintendent, will take over for Dr. Marjorie Kaplan on July 1st.

By Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO – The Charlotte Street Foundation has supported visual artists in Kansas City for more than a decade with unrestricted cash awards and a curated exhibition of work. The new awards for Generative Performing Artists support professionals who are actively creating new work in their fields, from dance to music to theatre and performance art.

By Elana Gordon

Kansas City, MO – A report is raising questions about the safety of artificial blood, including one tested by KU Hospital. A review of human trials found patients given one of five blood substitutes had a 30 percent greater chance of death and a threefold increase in heart attacks. KU Hospital stocked the blood-substitute Polyheme in local ambulances in 2005 and 2006. Trauma Director Michael Moncure says the report raises questions about the safety of blood substitutes, but that it does not look at the specifics of Polyheme (POLY-HEEM).

By Elana Gordon

Kansas City, MO – Kansas City, Missouri will go smoke free in a little more than a month. Voters narrowly passed the ban earlier this month. The city's current rules prohibit smoking before 9pm in restaurants with liquor licenses, but the new ban will prohibit it in restaurants and bars at all times. Several other cities in the region, including Independence, already have similar smoking bans in place. KCUR's Elana Gordon reports that the transition there took some getting used to.

By Frank Morris

Kansas City, MO – There's a place where most of the bad economic trends sweeping the United States are turned upside down. Home values are up, foreclosures and unemployment are down, and gas guzzlers are flying off the lot. Forget about China, we're taking about western Kansas. Kansas has 23 times more oil wells than Saudi Arabia. Record oil prices, coupled with soaring prices for grain, have sparked a dramatic economic reversal in the western part of the state.