Politics, weather and tragedy shaped the year's news for Missouri

ST. LOUIS -- A new Democratic U.S. senator, high-profile ballot measures, suspension of the death penalty, as well as power outages, weather woes, and human tragedies by fire, drowning and kidnapping were among the state's major stories in 2006.

Missouri politics drew national attention this year, as Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill unseated Republican Sen. Jim Talent in one of the closer -- and most closely watched -- Senate races. Her victory helped give Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority over Republicans.

The Senate race also intertwined with a high-profile ballot measure engraving the right to conduct embryonic stem-cell research into the state constitution. Supporters spent a record $30 million, almost all of that coming from the founders of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. Missourians approved the measure by 51 percent of the vote, but opponents quickly vowed to push for a repeal in 2008.

A Kansas City federal judge's ruling that effectively halted executions in Missouri also got national attention and led the way for California and Florida to temporarily suspend death by lethal injection on similar grounds. Next stop for the Missouri case is the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Missourians overwhelmingly voted to raise the state's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.50 an hour, effective Monday, with an annual inflation adjustment. But for the second time in four years, they narrowly rejected a proposed tobacco tax increase to fund health-care and anti-tobacco programs.

The state Supreme Court struck down what could have been another major election issue: a new law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo identification at the polls.

Gov. Matt Blunt's administration was cleared of wrongdoing by an FBI investigation into the awarding of state contracts for driver's license offices.

The governor's most high-profile policy proposal -- to use profits from the state's student loan agency for university construction projects -- failed during the legislative session that ended in May. But Blunt revived the plan, and a revised version was endorsed in September by the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority. It now needs legislative approval in 2007 to kick in.

The Missouri Department of Transportation completed an initiative to repave Missouri's most highly traveled roads. But a smooth surface could do little for motorists who found themselves stuck in a Nov. 30-Dec. 1 snowstorm that dumped up to a foot and a half of snow in some parts of Missouri.

That same storm dumped ice in the St. Louis area, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity, some for up to a week. St. Louis-area residents endured a similar outage in summer caused by high winds. And a series of deadly tornadoes touched down across Missouri in March and early April. Other parts of the state, meanwhile, were hard hit by drought.

Missourians also suffered tragedy and grief from disasters of their own making.

The collapse in June of a three-story brick building that housed the Elks lodge in Clinton took the life of its 32-year-old leader. A month later, five children, including four siblings, drowned while on a church-sponsored picnic at a state park outside St. Louis.

By summer's end, the national press had returned to Missouri for a high-profile abduction of 7-day-old Abigail Lynn Woods in Franklin County. Shannon Torrez, accused of slashing the infant's mother, is undergoing a mental evaluation.

A Nov. 27 fire destroyed a group home for the mentally ill in southwest Missouri, killing 11 people, injuring more than a dozen others and exposing gaps in state oversight that had allowed a barred felon to remain involved in operating the facility. The state subsequently stripped the licenses for Joplin River of Life Ministries Inc. and ordered its four facilities to close. Attorney General Jay Nixon sued to try to recoup Medicaid payments made to the homes.

And only a week before Christmas, a Kansas City man described by police as depressed and acting irrationally for weeks fatally shot two women and four of his own children before taking his own life.

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Associated Press Writer David A. Lieb in Jefferson City contributed to this report.