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Yahoo
09-08-2025
- Yahoo
Flint Hills walking, cycling, riding trail inducted into national hall of fame
The Flint Hills Trail State Park, pictured here on Aug. 4, 2025, near Miller, was inducted into a national hall of fame by popular vote. (Lynn Smith for Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — The Flint Hills Trail State Park, a 93-mile path that carves through grasslands and prairie, earned an induction in the national Rails to Trails Conservancy's hall of fame. The trail beat out two others in Florida and Utah by a landslide, with 80% of the vote, according to an announcement from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. 'The Flint Hills Trail isn't just a path across Kansas,' said Jeffrey Bender, a region supervisor for the department. 'It's a journey through the essence of Kansas — through the land, the cultures and the endeavors of the communities.' The trail is one of the longest rail-trails in the United States, and the longest in Kansas. It will eventually stretch 118 miles from Osawatomie to Herington. Rail-trails are multi-use paths converted from unused railway corridors. It is the second Kansas stretch to be inducted into the Rails to Trails hall of fame. The Prairie Spirit Trail was the first major rail-to-trail in Kansas and was added to the hall of fame in 2011 during its 15th anniversary month. The 51-mile trail connects to the Flint Hills Trail, running from Ottawa to Iola. The Kansas Legislature designated the Flint Hills Trail as a state park in 2018. In 2020, the U.S. Department of the Interior recognized it as a National Recreation Trail. In 2022, Kansas received nearly $25 million in federal grant funds to improve more than 40 miles of trail. Ryan Chao, president of the conservancy, said in a news release that the Flint Hills Trail 'has catalyzed the state's trail economy.' 'This trail stands out as a prime example of how trails bring joy, provide cultural and historic connection, and deliver economic opportunity — all critical to quality of life across America,' Chao said. The conservancy advocates for the creation of rail-trails across the United States. One of its major projects includes the Great American Rail Trail, a still-in-progress path that will eventually span the country from Washington, D.C., to Washington state. Flint Hills Trail users can walk, bike, hike and horseback ride on the trail. Portions are accessible by wheelchair. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said the induction was an honor and 'testament to the natural beauty of our state and the commitment of Kansans who have worked to preserve it.' 'In addition to promoting healthier lifestyles, Kansas state parks contribute millions to the economy annually,' she said. 'The importance of these parks to our state's economic well-being, as well as to the quality of life of Kansans, cannot be overstated.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- General
- Yahoo
It's been 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Time to raise some L.
The A Bomb Dome in Hiroshima stands in 2015. The dome, which was part of the city's industrial exhibition hall, was directly beneath the atomic bomb dropped Aug. 6, 1945. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) It was such a peaceful morning that Yoshito Matsushige could scarcely believe it was wartime. Matsushige, a 32-year-old newspaper photographer who had been up most of the night before covering air raid warnings, woke from a brief nap at army headquarters in time to see the sun rise over Hiroshima. It was Monday, Aug. 6, 1945. Now we know Matsushige was witnessing the last sunrise of the age before humankind had developed a weapon powerful enough to annihilate itself — and had demonstrated a willingness to use it. There had been just one other explosion of a nuclear bomb, a test shot July 16 of a plutonium implosion weapon at the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico. The resulting fireball had fused the sand of the desert floor into a kind of glass later named Trinitite. On the morning of Monday, Aug. 6, another atomic bomb — a uranium gun-type device — was bound for Hiroshima. Wednesday marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a grim milestone that has me pondering the nature of time, memory and hope. It's been slightly more than an average human lifetime since the bomb devastated Hiroshima, and those who are still around to recount the unthinkable are increasingly few. Once Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade from living memory, how will its warning be passed to future generations? At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, an American B-29 named the Enola Gay, after the pilot's mother, released a 12-kiloton atomic bomb over the city. The aircraft was flying six miles up. The aim point was a T-shaped bridge in the center of the city. The bomb fell for 43 seconds and then detonated at 1,968 feet. What happened next took only milliseconds. The temperature on the ground reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, vaporizing humans near the epicenter and leaving only their shadows behind. A 1,000-mph blast wave spread from the epicenter, destroying two-thirds of the city's homes and buildings and contributing to a massive firestorm. A dark mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, carrying deadly radioactive fallout. Matsushige had left army headquarters and returned to his home, about a mile and a half from the target bridge, where he was sitting shirtless in the August heat eating a meager breakfast of rice. 'There is an explosive called magnesium that is used for photographic (lighting) and everything went white as if that magnesium had been fired,' Matsushige told me through an interpreter in 1986, when I was a young reporter in Japan on a grant project to interview those who had experienced the bomb. 'It seemed the light was an electrical short, or spark. So I was about to stand up and try to switch off the light, … and then came the blast.' The force lifted Matsushige from his feet and slammed him into a far wall. He was covered in debris and broken glass, and his bare chest was bleeding, although he wasn't badly hurt. He and his wife ran outside and hid in a sweet potato field for 40 minutes in the dirty brown gloom of ash and dust. Then Matsushige put on his uniform, retrieved his Mamiya camera from the rubble of his home and two rolls of film, and set out for newspaper office in the heart of the city. Matsushige was a photojournalist but like most everyone else in Japan had also been pressed into military service. He worked for both the city newspaper and military headquarters, wearing a uniform with no rank insignia. Civilian photography was prohibited. When he was about a kilometer, or six-tenths of a mile, from the center of the city, he had to turn back because the fire was too intense. He made his way to the Miyuki Bridge. The bridge was a landmark in a city known for its bridges and river, but this morning it was swarmed by thousands of wounded and dying civilians. In 1986, I stood with Matsushige on the Miyuki Bridge and he told me what he had seen 41 years earlier. It was one of the last times the photographer, then in his early 70s, would visit the bridge, which was closed and about to be demolished to make way for a new structure. My interview with Matsushige originally appeared in my newspaper, the Pittsburg (Kansas) Morning Sun, which had sponsored my application for the Akiba Project travel grant to interview the aging hibakusha, a Japanese term translated as those who had received or been exposed to the bomb. In 2021 I wrote about my memories of that assignment for the Reflector. Matsushige told me in 1986 that he had yet to take a single photograph on his grim trek into the city but here, at the bridge, he readied his Mamiya. Many of those on the bridge were junior high school students. Unlike elementary school children, most of whom had been evacuated to relatives and others in the hills around the city, the junior high students had been kept in the city to clear fire lines or to work in the ammunition factories. The victims on the bridge looked as if their clothes were hanging from their bodies, but they weren't trailing fabric, it was tattered pieces of their own skin. 'I thought that I would take a photo of (the scene on the bridge), so I checked the camera in my hands,' Matsushige said. 'When I saw this tragic scene, I was unable to push the shutter button. Among these people, there was a person holding a child. She was crying the name of the baby, and the baby probably was dead. The mother was saying, 'Please open your eyes, please open your eyes.'' It took Matsushige more than a quarter of an hour to make a photo. 'I felt as if the eyes of these people were piercing me,' he said. 'These people had black faces because of the burns. It was such cruelty. I couldn't stop my tears as I tried to take that second picture, and I remember that the viewfinder of my camera was blurred because of the tears.' He returned home but set out again that afternoon. He attempted to go to the newspaper office again but found it ablaze. He passed Hiroshima University, where he saw corpses at the bottom of a swimming pool that had been nearly emptied by the heat. The deeper he went into the city, the greater the destruction. 'People were under collapsed buildings and utility poles and were buried alive,' he said. 'Among (the corpses) there were some mothers with children. I was totally numb. I didn't feel anything, didn't feel any heat or pain.' He found a streetcar filled with corpses. 'All their clothes were burnt off,' he said. 'I thought about taking a picture, I put my hands on my camera at one time, but since all these dead people were naked, I felt (ashamed) to take such a photo.' Hours later he found himself back at the Miyuki Bridge, where he took a photograph of an injured policeman writing out relief certificates for food rations. The photo of the policeman was the last Matsushige would take that day. He had carried enough film for 24 exposures but ended up making only five. Two of the photos were at his home, two on the bridge, and one at an intersection near the bridge. Matsushige took some of the hardtack biscuits next to the policeman's station for his and his wife's dinner. After it was dark, he developed the film in trays in the kitchen sink and washed the negatives in a nearby creek. He hung the strip of film in a tree to dry. The photos weren't published in the Hiroshima newspaper until the next year. They didn't appear in the United States until Life magazine published them in 1952. The death toll at Hiroshima was horrific. Estimates vary widely, but at least 70,000 died from the bombing. Three days later, on Aug. 9, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 40,000. These are conservative estimates, however, and the actual number might be double for each city. When I went to Japan to interview Matsushige and the other hibakusha in 1986, it was the height of the Cold War. There were 70,374 nuclear warheads deployed or in stockpiles around the world, according the Federation of American Scientists, an all-time high. Of those, all but a few thousand belonged to the United States and the Soviet Union. The Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist's graphic representation of how close we were to nuclear annihilation, was at six minutes to midnight. Now the Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds. There are fewer nuclear weapons — about 12,000, according to the FAS — but there are hot wars around the world, tensions are high, and the Doomsday Clock now takes into account other existential risks. 'We now move the Doomsday Clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight — the closest it has ever been to catastrophe,' the Bulletin said in a January 2025 statement. 'Our fervent hope is that leaders will recognize the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, and the potential misuse of biological science and a variety of emerging technologies.' The Bulletin cited emerging and re-emerging disease and the military use of artificial intelligence as concerning. It also said threat of nuclear war had been exacerbated by various conflicts. 'The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world,' it said. 'The conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation. Conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral out of control in a wider war without warning.' The 10 or so countries that possess nuclear weapons are increasing the size and the role of their arsenals, the Bulletin said, and the nuclear arms control treaty process is collapsing. We seem hellbent on our own destruction. In my hand is a relic of the birth of the nuclear age, a bit of Trinitite that my wife, Kim, bought at a rock shop in New Mexico near Alamogordo. Yes, it's legal to possess because it was gathered from the site decades ago, and no, it's no longer dangerously radioactive. Why did she want it? Because she gathers information of all kinds — books, objects, experiences — that will help her understand the beauty and darkness of the world. The Trinitite sample cost a few bucks and is only mildly radioactive. It's about the size of a peanut, is greenish black, and weighs about the same as the albatross in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Trinitite is among the artifacts that were to be included in the Library of the Great Silence, a catalog of objects representing transitions and periods of existential threat. The project was part of the SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the search for intelligent life beyond earth. The library is a response, in part, to the Fermi Paradox. Posed by physicist Enrico Fermi, the paradox asks why, given how vast and old the universe is, we haven't found evidence of other communicative technological civilizations? I won't bore you with the math behind the Drake Equation, which seeks to estimate how many intelligent worlds there might be out there, except to cite the most important variable, L. That stands for the average lifespan of technological civilizations. One explanation for the great silence is that civilizations have a tendency to destroy themselves. Nobody knows what L might be, because we have a lack of observable data, but our current estimate is at least 80 years. If we are not to fall into the great silence, we must learn to do a better job of passing on the lessons of the past. Part of that is honoring the testimony of those who have gone before, such as Yoshito Matsushige. Matsushige died in 2005, at the age of 92, but his words and his pictures live on. They were given to me in 1986, and now I share them with you. The time the bomb detonated will be observed with a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday in Hiroshima. That's 6:15 p.m. Tuesday for most of Kansas, because of the 14-hour time difference. Honoring the dead is proper. But too many of us who yearn for peace content ourselves with prayer and visualization. This may be mentally healthy and personally satisfying, but it's not enough to turn policy or change minds. The pursuit of peace is an active one, requiring a knowledge of the past combined with a willingness to engage the future. It's 89 seconds to midnight. Let's raise some L. Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kansas Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt initiates Republican campaign for governor
Kansas Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt, shown taking the oath of office in 2023, is a candidate for Kansas governor in 2026. The Republican previously served in the Kansas Senate. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Kansas Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt launched Wednesday a campaign to win the Republican Party's nomination for governor. Schmidt worked for more than four decades as a pharmacist and served in the Kansas Senate before elected state insurance commissioner in 2018. She was reelected in 2022 by a wide margin. 'Throughout my personal and professional career, I have a track record of serving Kansans and actually getting things done,' Schmidt said in a statement. 'If elected governor, my top priority is the people of Kansas and making their lives better.' Schmidt joined other prominent Republicans, including former Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Scott Schwab, in the GOP primary scheduled for August 2026. Colyer, who became governor in 2018 after resignation of Gov. Sam Brownback to take a position in the first administration of President Donald Trump, said Schmidt's candidacy wouldn't deter his effort to unite the Kansas GOP behind a pro-Trump agenda. 'Welcome to the race, Vicki Schmidt,' Colyer' statement said. 'Never Trumpers deserve a candidate, too.' Interest in the 2026 contest for Kansas governor will be driven by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's inability to seek reelection to a third term. Schmidt's statement said as insurance commissioner she lowered business costs by more than $75 million. She asserted she was known for 'her work ethic, scrutiny of government operations and customer service approach to serving Kansans.' In 2023, she publicly shared her diagnosis of breast cancer and made use of the personal health challenge to encourage women to get yearly mammograms.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kansas tax collections better than expected in 2025, exceeding $10 billion
House Speaker Dan Hawkins converses with Minority Leader Brandon Woodard before a rules debate on Jan. 23, 2025. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Kansas brought in more than $10 billion in tax revenue in the most recent fiscal year, which is about the same as the previous year's totals but better than state analysts predicted. Tax revenues in fiscal year 2025 were about $249 million, or 2.5%, above what state analysts predicted when they revised their forecast in April. In weighing all of the state general fund's revenues, expenditures and transfers from the past year, total receipts to the state general fund were about $10.02 billion, exceeding estimates by about $132 million, or 1.3%, but dwarfing the previous year's total by about 1.2%. Around $124 million was transferred out of the general fund into the state's rainy day fund, a move that is required under law but was an unexpected transfer to state analysts. The receipts were a glimpse at the end of the first full year of tax cuts passed during a special session last year, which promised $1.2 billion in tax relief over three years. The 2025 Legislature similarly passed tax relief measures that promised to lower individual and corporate income taxes, but only if the state exceeds revenue estimates and maintains its rainy day fund. The Legislature also passed legislation that will modestly reduce property taxes by eliminating statewide tax levies. Those recent cuts have yet to go into effect. Gov. Laura Kelly attempted to veto the income tax cut legislation in April, but both chambers overrode the veto almost along party lines. Kelly warned at the time of a serious 'financial predicament ahead,' referring to 'bizarre and irresponsible budget gimmicks' from the Republican-led Legislature. When combining the Legislature's 2025 spending plan with income tax cuts and 2024 relief efforts, the state is expected to be $461 million in the red by fiscal year 2028. 'Ultimately, this will lead to a historically large budget deficit, rivaling the worst of the Brownback years,' she said in an April 18 statement following the release of updated revenue estimates. House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican running for state insurance commissioner in 2026, pushed back against Kelly's warnings. 'Governor Kelly's repeated vetoes of tax cuts and her sky-is-falling rhetoric look especially foolish now,' he said in a statement Thursday. Hawkins credited the Republican supermajorities in both chambers with saving Kansas taxpayer dollars and energizing the economy. 'Moving forward, we will continue with the budgeting reforms we implemented this year to reduce wasteful spending and ensure a strong financial future for our state,' he said. At the time Republicans passed tax cuts and the budget, Democrats criticized them for failing to deliver on meaningful property tax relief, a major campaign topic for 2024 candidates of both parties.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New Jersey lawmakers eye hiking nicotine taxes to boost revenue
Top New Jersey Senate Democrats want to raise taxes on cigarettes and e-cigarette fluid sales to raise revenue for the fiscal year that begins July 1. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) Some state budget provisions are beginning to come into relief days ahead of a deadline to pass a spending bill before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. Top-ranking legislators in the Senate introduced tax proposals pitched as part of Murphy's budget plan that would raise levies on cigarettes and the fluid used in vaping devices. 'Hopefully, some of this revenue will be applied to smoking cessation programs,' Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), the chamber's health chairman and a sponsor of one of the bills, told the New Jersey Monitor. A bill sponsored by Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the chamber's budget chair, would nudge New Jersey's cigarette per-pack tax up from $2.70 to $3, while Vitale's bill would triple tax rates on electronic cigarette fluid sales at both wholesale and retail levels. Gov. Phil Murphy pitched both proposals in the budget plan he unveiled in February. They were among a raft of proposed tax increases meant to generate $1.2 billion in additional revenue as New Jersey faces tightening fiscal conditions, a deficit, and uncertainty over the future of its federal funding. In February budget documents, administration officials urged lawmakers to boost cigarette tax revenue as smoking wanes and is supplanted by newer nicotine delivery mechanisms. Absent the increase, the tax on cigarettes was expected to generate $365.3 million in the coming fiscal year, down from an estimated $374 million in the current one. With the higher rate, that tax would generate $406.3 million, according to treasury documents. The increase would allow some money from New Jersey's cigarette tax, about $10.7 million, to flow into the state's general fund. The first $391.5 million in cigarette tax revenue is dedicated to an off-budget fund that pays for smoking cessation and other health care programs, and some additional funds must be used to pay down bonds issued against cigarette tax revenue. Opponents warned raising the tax would harm convenience stores, gas stations, and other retailers that carry tobacco products. The changes would push smokers to cross state lines to purchase cigarettes in Pennsylvania, which charges a $2.60-per-pack cigarette tax, said Eric Blomgren, executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline, C-Store, and Automotive Association. 'For each individual that does so, there are two losses. One is to the retailer who not only lost that sale, but also the cup of coffee, snack, or other purchase that customer would have also bought,' he said. 'The other is to the state, which in an effort to squeeze $3.00 from a pack instead loses the $2.70 it was already getting, plus another roughly 77 cents in lost sales tax.' Excise taxes like those that New Jersey levies on nicotine products have dual roles. In addition to the revenue they generate, they are meant to deter taxpayers from certain activities, like smoking and drinking. Vitale, a longtime supporter of higher excise taxes on nicotine products, cautioned New Jersey might see limited success on that second prong. 'I think that the revenue's required, and it serves, at some level, as a disincentive to smoke, but the actual data doesn't support it as much as I thought it did,' Vitale said. 'The people who have an addiction have an addiction. Whether it's $2.70 a pack or $3 a pack, they're going to continue to smoke unless there's an alternative for them.' The nicotine taxes are among a range of revenue raisers Murphy has proposed for the next fiscal year. Legislators, including Sarlo, have stated opposition to some others, including a proposal to subject recreational activities like laser tag to the state's sales tax. Under Vitale's proposal, the state's tax on e-cigarette cartridges would rise from 10 cents to 30 cents per milliliter. That increase would add about 56 cents to a four-pack of Juul cartridges and roughly $1.44 to a four-pack of Vuse Alto cartridges. New Jersey's tax on e-cigarette cartridges can be applied to wholesalers or retailers, depending on the flow of goods. The bill would separately raise the tax rate on bottled vaping fluid to 30% of retail price, from 10%. It would also require distributors and retailers to take inventory of their stock of vaping fluid, report it to the state, and pay the additional tax within a month of the bill becoming law. Blomgren argued the state should enforce its existing ban on flavored vaping products before seeking to boost revenue by raising tax rates. Last year, Attorney General Matt Platkin fined 19 stores for selling illegal flavored vapes. In January, he sent warnings to nearly 11,000 businesses warning of a ban that had by then been on the books for five years. 'It is doubtful that many of the people selling an illegal product are paying the state the proper tax on vape products. In fact, one of our members recently purchased an illegal flavored product from a competitor, and found they did not even charge them sales tax,' Blomgren said. Murphy and lawmakers must pass and sign an annual spending bill before July 1 to avert a government shutdown. An earlier version of this story quoted Sen. Vitale saying lawmakers are mulling a tax hike on nicotine pouches. A Senate Democrats spokesman said that is not under consideration. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
