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The Kansas State Fair is reviving its fair parade through Hutchinson to celebrate the fair's 100th anniversary.

Back when the carnival traveled by train, people would line up on Main Street in Hutchinson to see the procession of rides and animals from the depot to the state fairgrounds.

The Topeka Zoo says it's happy to announce that a 3-year-old golden lion tamarin named Devra gave birth to twins Wednesday.

She and the babies' father, Charlie, are first-time parents. They arrived in Topeka in December as part of the Golden Lion Tamarin Species Survival Plan.

The zoo says it will post updates and daily pictures of the baby monkeys on its Facebook page.

Wichita State University’s three-decade-old agave plant is due to bloom within the next couple of weeks. After a lifetime in a campus greenhouse, the plant has been moved to the university’s Fairmount Street entrance south of the Ulrich Museum of Art.

The agave, also known as a century plant, can only bloom once in a lifetime, making this a rare botanical occurrence. The average century plant blooms in 10 to 30 years, and after it blooms it will die.

The plant sent out a flower stalk June 19 and has grown several inches per day since.

The Kansas Historical Society has added three Wichita apartment buildings to the National Register of Historic Places.

Two historians are marking the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg with a debate, asking whether the war could have been avoided.

Dr. Tom Morain of Graceland University in Iowa and Dr. James Juhnke, formerly of Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., will square off Saturday at the Sedgwick County Historical Museum in Wichita.

Morain said the debate's been held in Iowa for years, but this is the first time in Kansas.

The University of Kansas is starting a new program to address a shortage of social workers in western Kansas.

Wichita has not had a fireworks display for an Independence Day celebration since 2010, as the Wichita Eagle recently reported, but luckily there are locations in and around the city that will be hosting festivities that include some pyrotechnics:

Crews from the city of Wichita are currently clearing tree limbs and debris that fell into streets and onto public property during the Thursday night wind storm.

However, they will not pick up debris from private property owners. Instead they are encouraging homeowners to work with their trash haulers to remove debris or take it to one of four Wichita locations for a fee. 

Since his arrival on campus in 2011, Wichita State University history professor Robert Weems, Jr. has been busy researching the history of African-American businesses in Wichita.

Weems, a Chicago native, has a longstanding interest in this area.

A task force appointed by the governor has wrapped up a series of meetings looking for ways to reduce childhood poverty in Kansas. They discussed three so-called "pathways out of poverty," which include ways to improve education, get more Kansans working and strengthen families.

The committee was told that in 2011 around 19 percent of Kansas kids lived in poverty, and they’re hoping that focusing on some key areas can reduce that.