News for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Top Stories: Dallas State Senator Visits Russia; Bob Ray Sanders Enters NABJ Hall Of Fame

Pavel Golovkin / AP
Top from left: a member of the Senate of the legislative Assembly of the state of Texas Peter Hettler, Texas Sen. Don Huffines, Sen. Rand Paul and his communications director Sergio Gor attend a meeting with Russian lawmakers in Moscow, Russia.

The top local stories this evening from KERA News:

A Dallas state senator met today with Russian officials in Moscow. A spokesman for Republican Don Huffines tells The Texas Tribune that he's in Russia for "frank discussions" and to demand that Russia stop meddling in U.S. elections.

The Washington Post reports Huffines was part of a private group that included Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow says it was not an official diplomatic trip.

Earlier this summer, Fort Worth Congresswoman Kay Granger visited Moscow as part of a Republican delegation.

Other stories this evening:

  • A couple of polls suggest a tightening Senate race between Ted Cruz and Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke. Over the weekend, as Cruz campaigned across Texas, the Republican incumbent expressed some unease about the November match-up. Mark Jones is a political science professor at Rice University. He talked with Alana Rocha on public radio's Texas Standard about whether or not Cruz has cause for alarm.

  • Most college students in the U.S. enroll at not-for-profit institutions. But just under a million of them attend for-profit colleges. Today on Think, Tressie McMillan-Cottom, author of "Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy,” talked to Krys Boyd about how IRS distinguishes between the two types of schools, and how that distinction affects the education that's offered.

  • Fifteen young North Texas space geeks competed this year in an international NASA contest for space station designs -- and they were named winners. KERA’s Bill Zeeble docked with them at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, where they showed off their projects.

  • The National Association of Black Journalists over the weekend inducted North Texas journalist Bob Ray Sanders into its Hall of Fame. Four decades ago, Sanders was one of the first three African-American reporters hired at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In the early 1970s, he worked as a reporter at KERA-TV, for the program "Newsroom,” where he witnessed the launch of KERA 90.1. Sanders served as a KERA vice president and station manager, and he hosted a morning news program on the radio. He returned to the Star-Telegram in the mid-1980s and retired from the paper in 2015.

You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.