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Missouri lawmakers have approved legislation that would require education officials to seek grants and donations to help children with special needs such as autism.

Financial resources could be devoted to scholarships or clinical trials for behavioral interventions. Scholarships could be used to help students attend a public school outside the student's home district or a private school.

Missouri senators have given up their attempt to pass an overhaul of the some of the state's tax credit programs for businesses and developers.

Supporters of the bill set it aside Friday after Republican Sen. Brad Lager, of Savannah, spoke against it for an hour in a filibuster that could have otherwise continued until the session's mandatory end at 6 p.m. The legislation would have created tax incentives for international air cargo exports, computer data centers and investors in startup technology companies.

Missouri lawmakers have passed legislation that could patch a hole in the state budget for early childhood programs and health care for the blind.

A bill given final approval Friday would transfer $55 million from general revenues into a new fund to finance the programs. The move was necessary because the 2014 budget passed last week by lawmakers called for funding the programs with savings from the repeal of a tax break for low-income seniors and disabled residents who live in rental housing.

Pakistan has reached a milestone for democracy. For the first time, the country has transferred power from one democratically elected government to another. Voters on Saturday rejected the incumbent party and picked the party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Rain is drizzling on the roughly 40 people standing in line outside the Good Samaritan Care Clinic in rural Mountain View, Missouri. Some have been standing for hours. At 5:30 pm, the clinic doors swing open, and the patients flood into a clean, bare bones waiting room.

Missouri prosecutors want a judge to let them keep closer tabs on the former head of a failed artificial sweetener plant in Moberly.

Missouri welfare recipients would be barred from spending their cash benefits at casinos, liquor stores or strip clubs under legislation sent to Gov. Jay Nixon.

Missouri lawmakers have given final approval to legislation replenishing an insolvent state fund for disabled workers and changing the way people get compensation for job-related illnesses.

The bill sent to the governor Thursday marks a compromise among some business groups and attorneys who represent injured workers.

Missouri's official state manual has been banished to the Internet for the past few years. But it could make a return to print.

The Legislature has sent the governor a bill that would let the secretary of state's office share the electronic publication with a nonprofit organization, which would then print it and distribute to the public.

Known as the "Blue Book," the Official Manual of the State of Missouri contains information about public officials, state agencies, local governments, elections, political parties and various other things.

  The American Humanist Association is demanding that weekly prayer sessions at Fayette High School be stopped on grounds that they are unconstitutional.