High Plains regional news
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Kansas professor falsely accused of espionage wants university to pay for firing, harm to reputationTao was a tenured chemical engineering professor at KU in 2019 when he became one of the first professors arrested under the first Trump administration’s “China Initiative,” a DOJ campaign purportedly created to thwart economic espionage and intellectual property theft. -
The spray can be used for prevention but not for treatment of wounds affected by the New World screwworm. -
Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, when George McGill won a re-election bid. -
To help meet growing electricity demand, Oklahoma's largest utilities are investing in battery energy storage systems. The facilities store extra energy and discharge it when the grid needs it. -
Kendria Dubois was fired while facing health issues from multiple sclerosis and hypertension. Now she's suing her former employer, arguing she was discriminated against.
Happenings across the High Plains
Regional Features
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Rosendahl, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsI’m Martin Fulmer from Goodwell, Oklahoma, here for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2026 Fall Read. When I picked up Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind, I remember wondering how anyone could write an entire book about the wind. It seemed like an impossible subject. -
Photo by Grace FlyingNo one really knows why a strong and widely-based love of flying developed in the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Perhaps it was the prairie itself, with its wide open spaces and lack of obstacles like mountains, forests, and other natural outgrowths. Perhaps it was the shifting currents of air that rose and fell from those flatlands. -
GerritR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsHello Radio Readers! This is Marit Ehmke coming to you from west-central Kansas in Lane County. If there’s one thing you can count on living in this part of the world, it’s the wind. Whether it be a gentle breeze or, more often than not, strong gusts bending what trees we have, the wind is a constant companion. -
We rarely stop to think about the wind. We feel it on our faces, watch it ripple through wheat fields, hear it rustle the trees, yet it remains one of nature's most familiar—and most mysterious—forces. Invisible but ever present, the wind has shaped landscapes, influenced history, inspired artists and scientists, and quietly touched our lives every day.
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Evan Agostini
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Invision via AP
A grand jury has indicted Nick Reiner on murder charges in the killings of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, and adds the allegation that he was lying in wait before attacking them.
Antonio Calanni
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AP
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