From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 4, 1988:

• Independence Day festivities across the nation were darkened somewhat by reports that a U.S. Navy cruiser, the USS Vincennes, had shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Persian Gulf after mistaking it for an attacking warplane. All 290 people aboard the plane had perished in the missile attack. President Reagan today issued a statement of “sympathy and condolences” and called the attack “a terrible human tragedy” but strongly defended the Navy’s actions, saying that the approaching jetliner had failed to respond to broadcast warnings and that the USS Vincennes crew had only “followed standing orders and widely publicized procedures, firing to protect itself against possible attack.”
• A Kansas University professor whose research had been helping the Kansas oil industry was named Ross H. Forney distinguished professor of chemical and petroleum engineering. G. Paul Willhite assumed the professorship from Stanley Rolfe, who was remaining at KU as a distinguished professor of civil engineering. Willhite, who had joined the KU chemical and petroleum engineering faculty in 1969, had helped found the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project in 1974. The TORP group had been studying ways to harvest more oil from fields after conventional extraction methods had been completed. “The Kansas oil industry is unique,” Willhite said this week. “Most operators are independent and have no research capabilities. We’ve demonstrated that university research can be put directly to use in an industry important to the state.”