From the Wire

LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) -- Gov. Mike Parson on Monday said he will ask state lawmakers meeting in a special session to give state Attorney General Eric Schmitt's office authority to intervene in homicide cases in St. Louis that he said are not being prosecuted quickly enough.

State and local government officials across the U.S. have been on edge for months about how to keep basic services running while covering rising costs related to the coronavirus outbreak as tax revenue plummeted.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Kansas City police are investigating five homicides and an apparently accidental shooting death in the city over the weekend, including the latest Sunday evening on the city’s west side.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo (AP) -- Missouri health officials reported another 1,027 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday, continuing a trend of nearly 1,000 new cases every day since last week.

PARIS, Mo. (AP) -- Two people have been charged in the shooting death of a northeast Missouri who was reported missing last week.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) -- An armed man who police allege held his 11-month-old son hostage while standing on a southeast Missouri interstate had been charged with four felonies.

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) -- A 2-year-old child died and two adults were injured in a drive-by shooting in St. Joseph, police said

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) -- Family and friends of Black 18-year-old Michael Brown said his death after being shot by a white police officer in Ferguson remains painful and frustrating six years after it occurred.

SUGAR CREEK, Mo. (AP) -- A body was found Sunday in the Missouri River in a small western Missouri city.

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. (AP) -- Authorities were working Sunday to recapture two chimpanzees that escaped from a sanctuary in eastern Missouri.

BOUNTIFUL, Utah (AP) -- At a mostly white high school near Salt Lake City, the steps leading to the football field are covered in red handprints, arrows and drawings of Native American men in headdresses meant to represent the mascot, the Braves. "Welcome to the Dark Side" and "Fight like a Brave" are scrawled next to images of teepees, a tomahawk and a dream catcher.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Authorities are investigating the deaths of two men found with gunshot wounds in a backyard in southeast Kansas City, Missouri.

WEST ALTON, Mo. (AP) -- Authorities have identified the man shot and killed by police after a chase that ended in a field in St. Charles County.

SAVANNAH, Mo. (AP) -- A nearly all-white northwest Missouri town is divided over an effort to change its high school's "Savages" mascot that depicts a Native American amid a nationwide movement calling for racial justice.

BOSTON (AP) -- An emergency room doctor in Boston is assembling thousands of voter registration kits for distribution at hospitals and doctor's offices.

CROWLEY, La. (AP) -- Agriculture experts in Louisiana and Mississippi say the rice crop is looking good.

WARRENSBURG, Mo (AP) -- Two Warrensburg men have been charged in shooting at a large birthday party that left one woman dead and two other people injured.

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) -- A Carthage man has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a man at a storage unit in Joplin in December.

WEST ALTON, Mo. (AP) -- St. Charles County police said officers shot and killed a man after a chase that ended in a field.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The death of George Floyd and widespread protests over racial injustice have prompted several states to move at a lightning pace to pass significant policing reform proposals that in some cases have languished for years.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Los Angeles County must pay a full $8 million damage award to the family of a Black man whose death had similarities to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Governors and state labor department officials were scrambling Monday to determine whether they could implement President Donald Trump’s executive order to partially extend unemployment assistance payments to millions of Americans struggling to find work in the pandemic-scarred economy.

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The government of Mexico City will allow bars to operate as restaurants starting Monday in order to reopen as part of an easing of the coronavirus lockdown.

CHICAGO (AP) -- Hundreds of people descended on downtown Chicago early Monday following a police shooting on the city's South Side, with vandals smashing the windows of dozens of businesses and making off with merchandise, cash machines and anything else they could carry, police said.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- A rare storm packing 100 mph winds and with power similar to an inland hurricane swept across the Midwest on Monday, blowing over trees, flipping vehicles, causing widespread property damage and leaving hundreds of thousands without power as it moved through Chicago and into Indiana and Michigan.

SEATTLE (AP) -- The Seattle City Council approved proposals Monday that would reduce the police department by as many as 100 officers through layoffs and attrition -- an action supported by demonstrators who have marched in the city following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis but strongly opposed by the mayor and police chief.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Vilified, threatened with violence and in some cases suffering from burnout, dozens of state and local public health leaders around the U.S. have resigned or have been fired amid the coronavirus outbreak, a testament to how politically combustible masks, lockdowns and infection data have become.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The confirmed number of coronavirus cases in the world has reached 20 million. That’s according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A day after announcing that California's public health director suddenly resigned, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday dodged questions about her departure even as he stressed the importance of transparency and accountability.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not about to blink.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Confirmed coronavirus cases in the world reach 20 million.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- A Virginia man who a prosecutor described as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and who drove through a Black Lives Matter protest in June was sentenced Monday to six years in jail.

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A natural gas explosion destroyed three row houses in Baltimore on Monday morning, killing a woman and trapping other people in the debris. At least six people were seriously injured, and firefighters were searching for more survivors.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A confrontation between an elderly couple and a cow and her calf required the intervention of the California Highway Patrol in Northern California this weekend.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A judge on Monday ordered ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft to treat their California drivers as employees instead of independent contractors, a shift that would guarantee benefits like overtime, sick leave and expense reimbursement for workers who make up much of the freewheeling gig economy.

James Harris, a Mississippi-born sharecropper who gained international fame as "Kamala the Ugandan Giant," a massive professional wrestler who buried opponents with his trademark "splash," has died.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A Black woman who became a leading activist in the Black Lives Matter movement after she was assaulted by a white supremacist three years ago won't be charged after her arrest early Monday fueled anger among protest leaders in Portland, Oregon, authorities said.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. envoy for Guinea-Bissau said Monday the "political crisis and the parliamentary paralysis" following elections this year have left the impoverished West African nation in a fragile state as the United Nations prepares to end its peace-building mission at the end of the year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles County sheriff said Monday he has concerns about tactics deputies used to detain three Black teenagers at gunpoint after the youths were threatened by a man holding a knife.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- The Scripture quite literally came to life for several Catholic churches in North Carolina as a rare earthquake rattled portions of the state over the weekend.