Stories from Thursday, February 14, 2019

Community Caring Council is hosting its annual Fire and Ice affair to benefit families struggling with heating and cooling needs within Southeast Missouri on Saturday at Ray's Plaza Banquet Center in Cape Girardeau. Dwana Leible, Community Caring Council event coordinator, said during this time of the year there's a greater need for financial help within the community...

For fathers who have child support cases and may be struggling to make payments or have a criminal record, there's help: a project through the Community Caring Council called EDGE, or Empowering Dads to Gain Employment. EDGE program coordinator Christian Freeman said the project came about last fall, when a grant came through, and she stepped into the leadership role...

Room and board rates at Southeast Missouri State University are expected to increase slightly after action at today's board of regents meeting. On the agenda is an item to increase the combined room and board rates by approximately 2.8 percent for fiscal year 2020...

Cape Girardeau School District officials hope to convince the national YMCA organization to participate in the planned construction and operation of an indoor aquatic center. Superintendent Neil Glass and assistant superintendent Josh Crowell said Wednesday they have had discussions with YMCA officials in Chicago...

Today is Thursday, Feb. 14, the 45th day of 2019. There are 320 days left in the year. This is Valentine's Day. Today's Highlights in History: On Feb. 14, 2018, a gunman identified as a former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, killing 17 people in the nation's deadliest school shooting since the attack in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years earlier...

Perhaps more than any other holiday, Valentine's Day is complicated. It's a day to celebrate love and romance, and those terms have different definitions depending on who you are and where you're at in your life. Single people can loathe Valentine's Day...

While attending church this past Sunday, I glanced over and saw Southeast Missourian newspaper co-president and publisher Jon Rust and his wonderful wife Victoria! I couldn't help but feel how fortunate and blessed we are to have local media that truly cares about our community and the success we enjoy!...

TORONTO -- Canada's national game -- brought to you by China's Huawei. As a nasty diplomatic feud deepens between the two countries over the tech company, involving arrests and execution orders, it hasn't gone unnoticed that Huawei's bright red fan-shaped logo is plastered prominently on the set of "Hockey Night in Canada." TV hosts regularly remind the 1.8 million weekly viewers that program segments are "presented by Huawei smartphones."...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A man accused of kidnapping his girlfriend and their 10-year-old daughter then killing a man during an attempted carjacking was shot to death following a police chase through Missouri and Illinois, authorities said Wednesday. The chase began Tuesday evening in Jefferson City, Missouri, and ended about three hours later in Greenville, Illinois, after sheriff's deputies used stop sticks to deflate the tires on Leslie Austin's SUV, allowing the girlfriend and child to escape. ...

ST. LOUIS -- A judge has tossed out a lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police union that sought to block names of the more than two dozen officers placed on an "exclusion list" by the city's top prosecutor over credibility concerns. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer issued the ruling Wednesday, after a state appeals court earlier in the day said the St. Louis Police Officers Association lawsuit was "patently insufficient."...

TEHRAN, Iran -- A suicide car bomber claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group attacked a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard paramilitary force Wednesday, killing at least 27 people and wounding 13 others, state media reported. Tehran immediately linked the attack in Iran's restive southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province to an ongoing U.S.-led conference in Warsaw largely focused on Iran, just two days after the nation marked the 40th anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.. ...

NEW YORK -- First-time documentary filmmakers Tina Brown and Dyana Winkler lugged their cameras to Central Park in New York one day to capture the last few people still passionate about roller skating. Rinks across the country were gone. The activity seemed dead...

WARSAW, Poland -- Although it is absent from the stage, Iran is nevertheless taking the spotlight at a Middle East security conference co-hosted by the United States and Poland that has highlighted deep divisions between the U.S. and some of its traditional allies...

BEIJING -- U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators are meeting this week for talks President Donald Trump says will help decide whether he escalates a technology dispute by going ahead with a March 2 tariff hike on $200 billion of imports from China. Two days of talks starting Thursday allow too little time to resolve the war over Beijing's technology ambitions that threatens to drag on weakening global economic growth, businesspeople and economists say. ...

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria -- Islamic State group militants, many of them foreigners, surrendered to U.S.-backed fighters in eastern Syria on Wednesday, bringing the Kurdish-led force closer to taking full control of the last remaining area controlled by the extremists, a Kurdish official and activists said...

WASHINGTON -- A former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran despite warnings from the FBI has been charged with revealing classified information to the Tehran government, including the code name and secret mission of a Pentagon program, prosecutors said Wednesday...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom has set off a flurry of speculation after he said the state's consumers should get a piece of the billions of dollars that technology companies make by capitalizing on personal data they collect. The new governor has asked aides to develop a proposal for a "data dividend" for California residents but provided no hints about whether he might be suggesting a tax on tech companies, an individual refund to their customers or something else...

WASHINGTON -- Asserting congressional authority over war-making powers, the House passed a resolution Wednesday to force the administration to withdraw U.S. troops from involvement in Yemen, in a rebuke of President Donald Trump's alliance with the Saudi-led coalition behind the military intervention...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump isn't showing his hand yet. But with little Washington appetite for another shutdown, he's expected to grudgingly accept an agreement that would keep the government open but provide just a fraction of the money he's been demanding for a Mexican border wall...

WASHINGTON -- The government surpassed a dubious milestone this week: Its debt topped $22 trillion -- that's trillion, with a "t" -- for the first time. Piles of federal debt have been growing ever higher for years, fueled by accumulating annual deficits, which themselves have been driven by tax cuts, government spending increases and the mounting costs of Medicare and Social Security and interest on the debt itself...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Wednesday called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's refusal to accept humanitarian aid a "terrible mistake" and the decision an example of what can happen when the wrong government holds power. Trump seemed also to hint at future action by the U.S. ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate for just three months but kept going and going, rolling across the rocky red soil, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the planet. The six-wheeled vehicle that helped gather critical evidence that ancient Mars might have been hospitable to life was remarkably spry up until eight months ago, when it was finally doomed by a ferocious dust storm...

Cape Girardeau County Commission 1 Barton Square, Jackson 9 a.m. today Approval of minutes n Minutes for the Feb. 11 meeting Communications/reports -- other elected officials n None at this time Public comments n Items listed on the agenda Routine business...

Think of it as decontaminating yourself. Hospitalized patients who harbor certain superbugs can cut their risk of developing full-blown infections if they swab medicated goo in their nose and use special soap and mouthwash for six months after going home, a study found...

WASHINGTON -- Paul Manafort intentionally lied to investigators and a federal grand jury in the special counsel's Russia probe, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was another loss for the former Trump campaign chairman, who faces years in prison in two separate criminal cases stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. ...

A building permit has been issued for the addition of eight loft apartments in the former Montgomery Ward building in downtown Cape Girardeau; Don Lowe of Sikeston, Missouri, owner of the building, announced earlier that the apartments would be added on the second floor of the building, with five of them providing river views...

Cecil G. Turner, 86, of Cape Girardeau passed away Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, at Southeast Hospital. He was born April 1, 1932, in Cape Girardeau to the late Cecil and Olive Opal Jones Turner. He married Marilyn Saupe in 1952. She preceded him in death...

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- Raymond A. Rudert, 96, of Perryville died Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, at Independence Care Center of Perry County. He was born April 7, 1922, in Shawneetown, son of Adolph and Pauline Ladreiter Rudert. He and Dorothea H. Hunze were married Aug. 25, 1946. She preceded him in death Jan. 29, 2004...

Billi Jo Knight, 38, of Gordonville passed away Monday, Feb. 11, 2019, at her home. She was born May 25, 1980, in Cape Girardeau, daughter of Richard Allen and Carolyn Diann Burns Knight Sr. Billi Jo was a 1998 graduate of Jackson High School. She worked at Jackson Walmart for 10 years, and for the last eight years she was a communication officer for the Jackson Police Department...

Lee Fullbright, 92, of Cape Girardeau died Monday, Feb. 11, 2019, at Missouri Veteran's Home. A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Ford & Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Home. Burial will be at Cape County Memorial Park in Cape Girardeau...

Lord Jesus, we give you praise for you alone are our Savior. Amen.

It's plain to see. We America have a President that has done more for America than any President. Democrats in Washington are upset because they wanted him to fail. I'm a Democrat in Missouri -- or was a Democrat. Being against the wall is not equivalent to being against border security, despite what Trump is repeatedly expounding. ...

ST. LOUIS -- A former alderman from a small eastern Missouri town has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for embezzling $187,000 of public money. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported 54-year-old Gary Keith Atchley also must repay the money to Olympian Village, a town of 700 people 40 miles south of St. Louis...

LEESBURG, Va. -- Lyndon LaRouche Jr., the political extremist who ran for president in every election from 1976 to 2004, including a campaign waged from federal prison, has died. He was 96. LaRouche's political action committee confirmed Wednesday on its website that LaRouche died a day earlier...

Today is Valentine's Day and many people are looking for ways to help celebrate this special day. With my wonderful husband, every day seems special and like Valentine's day, so we don't look for one special day to celebrate. For us, this week is very, very special because it is our daughter's 22nd birthday...

As their Facebook page says, ABSeafood is "owned and operated by fisherman from the Gulf Coast." What this means for you and me is that approximately every six weeks, we can taste the bounty of the Gulf and not have to go any farther away than Cape Girardeau or Sikeston...

ST. LOUIS -- A dog rescued from the cold last week in St. Louis County has been euthanized, angering the leader of the rescue group that saved her...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri Department of Natural Resources says crews are still working to clean up and identify the cause of an oil pipeline leak in suburban St. Louis. Agency spokesman Brian Quinn said contractors for the pipeline company, TransCanada Corp., were assessing an excavated segment of the Keystone pipeline Wednesday to pinpoint the problem...

TROY, Mo. -- An eastern Missouri man is charged with stalking after authorities say he repeatedly visited a Driver's License and Vehicle Registration Office for several months. The Lincoln County Sheriff's office says 34-year-old Timothy Howe, of Troy, is charged with first-degree stalking and three counts of first-degree harassment...

KELLER, Texas -- Virgil Eugene Britt Jr., 81, of Keller passed away Sunday, Feb. 10, 2019. No visitation or service is scheduled at this time. Announcement courtesy of Fort Worth Funerals and Cremations in Fort Worth, Texas.

The 2019 Junior Music Festival was held at the Southeast Missouri State University River Campus on Saturday, February 9. Laura Ryan is the Director of the Southeast Missouri Music Academy Suzuki Strings. The following Southeast Missouri Music Academy Suzuki Strings Students performed at the Festival:...

Ms. Ann Whistler's 5th & 6th grade class of Guardian Angel School in Oran decided to make learning fun by celebrating a different event each day of the week from Feb. 4 thru 8. Monday was "thank a mailman day". The students made cards and half were given to Terry Eftink, father of Michael Eftink (6th grade) and a supervisor at the Chaffee Post Office, and the other half to Derek Halter, who is in charge of the Oran Post Office. ...

Etty Soto of Cape Girardeau has been named a National Merit Scholarship Finalist, representing less than one-half of one percent of U.S. high school graduating seniors. Etty, a senior at Saxony Lutheran High School, has been involved in numerous academic and community activities, leadership positions, and has been a member of the Saxony soccer, tennis and cross-country teams. Etty is the daughter of Gabe and Jen Soto...