11 years ago
Kansas school kids are not likely to dismissed for "tornado days". Officials in Oklahoma have been talking about whether to institute "tornado days" in which classes would be called off when the threat of tornadoes is unusually high. Their Kansas counterparts say they haven't even considered such a move, which could create more problems than ...

11 years ago
A motorcycle rider wakes up cold in a ditch after a crash on Friday night. The Saline County Sheriff's office says 25-year-old Paul Bennett of Enterprise was northbound on New 81-Highway riding his 2006 Suzuki when he rolled down the off ramp and failed to stop at K-143 Highway. He was thrown off the bike as it ...

11 years ago
Police say a Wichita man has been hospitalized in critical condition after being shot in the face during a dispute about marijuana. Sgt. John Ryan says the shooting happed Saturday night in southeast Wichita. The say a police helicopter helped locate a suspect, who was taken into custody later that night. No charges were reported. Ryan says the ...

11 years ago
The BTK serial killer says in a letter from prison that he's cooperating with a book about the 10 killings he committed from 1974 to 1991 in the Wichita area. Dennis Rader is serving a life sentence for the killings. His self-coined moniker was BTK, which stood for "bind, torture, kill." The Wichita Eagle reports that Rader ...

11 years ago
State records show that fewer irrigators are pumping more than they are allowed but that the issue remains a problem. The Hutchinson News reports that 114 water right holders received a first-offense warning of civil penalties so far this year for overpumping in 2013. Another 70 irrigators were warned a second, and, for a few, a ...

11 years ago
The southeast Kansas town of Galena is shedding ten employees and raising taxes to correct a budget shortfall. The Joplin Globe reports that Mayor Dale Oglesby says the city had a $260,000 cash shortfall. After the 2011 Joplin tornado, the city's construction and demolition landfill brought in additional revenue that was used to keep the mill ...

11 years ago
Monarch butterflies are rebounding after three years of significant drops. Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas says the number of Monarchs wintering in Mexico could be two to four times more than last year. Monarch Watch organizes tagging to track the migration of the butterflies. The Wichita Eagle reports that favorable weather seems ...

11 years ago
A company in Neodesha is building drones that its owner believes could someday help farmers watch over their fields without spending hours walking or driving through their property. The company, called AgEagle, has shipped 125 unmanned aircraft systems to customers across the world since January 1st. AgEagle was started by Bret Chilcott, a former aircraft employee ...

11 years ago
Hours digging in the August sun rewarded Kris Super, a Wichita freshman at Fort Hays State University, with a remarkable discovery -- more than half a skeleton of an 85 million-year old bird. Super and a few of his paleontology friends spent their last weekend before school "in the chalk" looking for fossils near Castle ...

11 years ago
On what turned out to be a blessing of an afternoon, animals at Rolling Hills Zoo, and some of their keepers, were blessed Saturday afternoon. The Rev. Robert Nelson Smith, President and CEO of Saint Francis Community Services, performed a blessing of the animals. On what was a beautiful fall day, Father Bobby visited the ...

11 years ago
A student housing project at Bethany College in Lindsborg is underway. Increasing enrollment at the school has caused officials to scramble for accomodations. The school is leasing space at two nearby motels, the Coronado Motel and the Viking Motel, for student housing. A more long-term solution is a new residence hall. That project began this week. According to the ...