State News

WENTZVILLE, Mo. -- General Motors will invest $1.5 billion to make what it calls the "next generation" of midsized pickup trucks at its plant near St. Louis, the company's president said Friday. GM will use the money to upgrade its Wentzville Assembly and Stamping Plant in preparation for the new products, GM President Mark Reuss said at a news conference inside the plant, about 40 miles west of St. Louis. The company already produces the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups there...

ST. LOUIS -- The president of General Motors is expected to be in Missouri today for what officials are calling a "major announcement" at the company's plant in Wentzville that makes trucks and vans. Gov. Mike Parson, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt and other government officials are scheduled to join GM president Mark Reuss at the Wentzville Assembly and Stamping Plant. Representatives for GM and Parson on Thursday declined to discuss details...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A Missouri lawmaker has asked Gov. Mike Parson to prevent the state from reinstalling a statue of a Roman goddess on the dome of the state Capitol, saying a statue of Jesus could be disputed so a pagan idol should not be allowed...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Feral hog hunting in the Mark Twain National Forest has been curtailed, but limited opportunities to kill the damaging animals are emerging on state land. After weighing a change for more than a year and receiving more than 1,000 public comments, the U.S. ...

BENTON, Mo. -- Current and former inmates say Scott County Jail has been denying detainees basic necessities such as soap and shampoo. Allen Towe of Sikeston, Missouri, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch female inmates at the jail such as his 30-year-old pregnant daughter, Tiffany Vaughn, have even been denied feminine hygiene products...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- A Springfield man awaiting trial in the killing of a toddler has been sentenced to two life sentences plus another 10 years for abusing a different child. Judge Thomas Mountjoy said 33-year-old Kenneth Davis had demonstrated he "simply cannot be around children" in ordering the sentence Friday for seven counts of child abuse for the July 2018 beating of an 8-year-old girl, the Springfield News-Leader reported...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Employees at Missouri's veterans home could see wages climb as turnover soars in the state. This comes as Gov. Mike Parson and legislators attempt to boost the pay for all state workers to stop high turnover rates and growing overtime costs. Most state workers received a 3% raise this year...

RICH HILL, Mo. -- Relatives of a missing Missouri mother say they are growing increasingly concerned after deputies found the woman's phone, backpack and shoes. Nicole Mallatt's belongings were found Thursday within 100 yards of her home in Bates County, about 70 miles south of Kansas City. Mallatt, 36, went missing two days before Thanksgiving. Her mother, Debbie Lewis, said her daughter had been planning a big meal...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A Grinch has stolen a large Santa Claus from the porch of a historic mansion in the Kansas City area. Police in Independence say the jolly old elf was snatched Tuesday or Wednesday from the Vaile Mansion. Built in 1881, the three-story Gothic-like structure is open to the public as a museum...

ST. LOUIS -- Dozens of sinkholes, some up to 12 feet deep, are dotting the landscape in the small southeastern Missouri city of Caruthersville, forcing road detours, swallowing sections of people's yards and leaving city leaders scrambling to make repairs...

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- An aviation student from Saudi Arabia opened fire in a classroom at the Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday morning, the Florida governor said, an attack that left three dead in addition to the assailant. The assault, which left eight others injured, was the second at a U.S. Navy base this week and prompted a massive law enforcement response and base lockdown...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri's minimum wage is set to increase again as part of a voter-approved plan to gradually hike pay. The minimum wage rate will hit $9.45 an hour beginning Jan. 1, up from the current $8.60 an hour mandated by the state. Voters in 2018 approved a plan to raise wages for some of the state's lowest-paid workers. The plan requires wages to go up by 85 cents an hour every year until the minimum wage rate hits $12 an hour in 2023...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- About half a dozen people have applied for an influential new job in Missouri to draw state legislative districts under a nationally unique mandate to achieve "partisan fairness" and "competitiveness" in elections. Missouri's "nonpartisan state demographer" position was created by a voter-approved constitutional amendment last year to try to diminish the potential for political gamesmanship when state House and Senate districts are redrawn after the 2020 census...

ST. LOUIS -- A former priest has sued the Archdiocese of St. Louis, alleging it libeled and slandered him by including him on a list of clerics credibly accused of abusing children. Michael Toohey, 77, of Creve Coeur, Missouri, claims in the lawsuit filed last month in St. Louis County Circuit Court the archdiocese intentionally damaged his reputation, refused to provide more details of any allegation against him and denied his challenge of the claim, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported...

OMAHA, Neb. -- The amount of water being released into the lower Missouri River is being reduced ahead of winter, so flooded areas along the river will get some relief. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the amount of water being released from the Gavins Point dam on the Nebraska-South Dakota border will be cut to about 27,000 cubic feet per second by mid-December...

ST. LOUIS -- Missouri became a national focal point for officer-involved shootings after Michael Brown's death in Ferguson five years ago, yet only a small number of police agencies in the state submit data to an FBI program designed to track those shootings...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The University of Missouri has received a $500,000 grant that will help it restart a law clinic dedicated to investigating possible cases of wrongful conviction. KMIZ reported the grant from the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice will fund the MU Innocence Clinic. The money will pay for DNA tests on evidence involved in cases where eyewitnesses may have misidentified a suspect...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri activists are suing the Environmental Protection Agency over the state's lake water quality. The Missouri Coalition for the Environment filed a federal lawsuit against the EPA on Tuesday. The group is suing the agency for approving what advocates describe as lax regulations for water quality in Missouri lakes...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- A federal judge has ruled an 1851 maritime law does not protect a company from making payments to families of people aboard a tourist boat that sank on a Missouri lake, killing 17 people. After the July 2018 sinking at Table Rock Lake near Branson, multiple lawsuits were filed against Ride the Ducks International, which owned the boat before Ripley Entertainment bought it...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri emergency management officials are buying a $200,000 machine that will simulate an earthquake to prepare residents for a big temblor in a region where one of the most powerful earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains occurred in the 1800s...

SEATTLE -- Nancy Haque worried about the conditions in sweatshops around the world. For Lynne Dodson, it was the possibility of attacks on public education. The plight of imperiled sea turtles got Lisa Wathne. An array of issues brought tens of thousands of protesters to Seattle 20 years ago Saturday, with one unifying theme: concern that the World Trade Organization, a then-little-known body charged with regulating international trade, threatened them all...

A powerful storm making its way east from California is causing major disruptions during the year's busiest travel weekend, as forecasters warned that intensifying snow and ice could thwart millions of people across the country hoping to get home after Thanksgiving...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- After a year with some of the worst flooding ever in parts of the Midwest, concern is already rising that the spring of 2020 may bring more high water to places that still haven't fully recovered. Flooding ravaged much of the Missouri and Mississippi River basins and their tributaries earlier this year, reaching record levels and overwhelming levees in many places. ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Taylor and Ally Moreland were preparing dinner one night when they glanced into their living room and realized their 1-year-old son had disappeared. "Where's Brody?" Ally asked. "I don't know," her husband replied. They looked in the living room; Brody wasn't there. After calling for him a few times, they eventually found him in a bedroom down the hall...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Saint Luke's hospital is caring for 12 sets of twins this week in its neonatal intensive care unit. All of the twins were born between five and 14 weeks early. The hospital said staffing has been a challenge. Twelve sets of twins is a record at the hospital. New mother Amanda Tollifer said her twins, Kara and Isaac, were born eight weeks early. She said she had no idea having twins right now was "such the 'in' thing."...

KENNETT, Mo. -- Authorities say a 14-year-old was killed when the all-terrain vehicle he was on crashed in southeast Missouri. The Missouri State Highway Patrol says the accident occurred Wednesday afternoon on a Dunklin County road just west of Kennett. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the ATV ran off the road and crashed, throwing him off...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri is cracking down on drivers who use fake temporary license plates with new holographic, temporary tags. The Department of Revenue this month unveiled new tags with a holographic image that can be seen in the day and night, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The word "void" will appear if anyone tries to copy them...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri residents could soon find it easier to update their addresses for voter registration under a settlement voter advocates reached Thursday with the state's revenue department. The League of Women Voters of Missouri and the Kansas City-area chapter of the A. ...

ST. LOUIS -- The 81-year-old mayor of a St. Louis suburb was charged Thursday with submitting fraudulent absentee voter applications in what prosecutors say was an effort to illegally influence the city's municipal elections. Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins is charged with four counts of committing an election offense and one forgery count. ...

HOUSE SPRINGS, Mo. -- Missouri Department of Conservation officers are investigating after a rare albino deer was shot and killed by a hunter in eastern Missouri. KMOV-TV reported the deer was killed Tuesday near a subdivision and a school in the Jefferson County town of House Springs, south of St. Louis...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Federal prosecutors say a man has admitted he tried to burn down a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia because it provides reproductive services. Forty-two-year-old Wesley Brian Kaster of Columbia pleaded guilty Thursday to maliciously using explosive materials to damage a building owned by an organization that receives federal financial assistance and to violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act...

OZARK, Mo. -- A southwest Missouri sheriff's office is investigating after four deputies were sickened by a suspicious substance at a courthouse. Christian County Sheriff Brad Cole said a deputy fainted after searching the purse of a woman going through courthouse security Thursday. Three other deputies became ill a short time later...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — A sweeping review has found close to 90% of the backlog of Missouri rape kits has not been tested. Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced Wednesday only 830 of about 7,000 total kits in the backlog were previously tested. Rape kits are DNA samplings and other evidence secured via medical procedures conducted immediately after an attack. They can be used by law enforcement and prosecutors to catch and convict rapists...

ST. LOUIS -- Republican legislators and Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Tuesday laid out legislative priorities for 2020 aimed at fighting violent urban crime, but they made it clear those priorities don't include stricter gun laws...

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. -- Human remains discovered in a Nebraska stock trailer appear to be from one of two Wisconsin brothers who were fatally shot by a Missouri farmer, authorities said Monday. The Lincoln County sheriff's Office in North Platte announced a local rancher found the remains mixed with dirt in a plastic tub inside the trailer...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri officials are stepping up enforcement of laws banning the sale of vaping products to minors. The move is part of a state campaign launched Monday to deter young people from vaping. Missouri's health department so far has reported two vaping-related deaths...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Washington University has contributed $250,000 to an effort to place a Medicaid expansion question on Missouri's November 2020 ballot. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the university contributed the money Friday to the campaign committee Missourians for Healthcare. On Nov. 4, Washington University's chancellor and its medical school dean issued a joint letter endorsing the ballot initiative...

WASHINGTON -- He was proud of his reputation as a practitioner of political dirty tricks and frequently boasted about the extent of his contacts and the depth of his insider information. Now Roger Stone, a longtime friend and ally of President Donald Trump, faces a prison sentence for a collection of crimes essentially amounting to exaggerating how much he knew, then lying and scrambling to keep those boasts from being exposed...

HOUSTON -- The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday recommended delaying the execution of inmate Rodney Reed, whose conviction is being questioned by new evidence his supporters say raises serious doubts about his guilt. The parole board unanimously recommended a 120-day reprieve for Reed...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said Friday he has "absolutely zero regrets" about moving the headquarters of two research agencies from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, despite continuing criticism the move would harm agricultural research and make it less available to federal lawmakers...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- President Donald Trump has announced plans to nominate the executive director the Kansas City Public Library to lead a little-known independent federal agency the White House has tried to shutter. The Kansas City Star reported Crosby Kemper III will become director of the Institute of Museum of Library Sciences, pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate...

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- Investigators said Friday they have yet to find a diary, manifesto or note explaining why a boy killed two students outside his Southern California high school on his 16th birthday. No motive has been established in the Thursday morning shooting at Saugus High School in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Clarita, said sheriff's homicide Capt. Kent Wegener...

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- A student pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire at a Southern California high school Thursday, killing two students and wounding three others before shooting himself in the head on his 16th birthday, authorities said...

ST. LOUIS -- A self-described advocate for police accountability is suing St. Louis for the release of police stop records he believes could prove certain officers target black motorists but he says the police department has refused to supply. Black drivers in Missouri are 91% more likely than white motorists to be pulled over by police, according to a report released by Missouri's attorney general this year. But the annual vehicle stops report does not include data on specific officers...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for his tax returns, in a test of the president's ability to defy investigations. The filing Thursday sets the stage for a high court showdown over the tax returns Trump has refused to release, unlike every other modern president. The justices also could weigh in more broadly on Trump's claim that sitting presidents can't be prosecuted or investigated for crimes...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Authorities have arrested a woman whose husband's corpse was found in a freezer in a bedroom inside their southwest Missouri home, where it may have been stored for nearly a year. Barbara Watters, 67, of Joplin, was arrested Thursday, a day after she was charged with abandonment of a corpse, a felony that is punishable by up to four years in prison...