Associated Press

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin has said he was arrested as an abortion protester about 25 years ago, but he's not saying anything more about it.

Akin campaign adviser Rick Tyler said Wednesday that Akin never was charged and the campaign will not release any further details about the incident.

At a news conference last Friday in Kansas City, Akin acknowledged the arrest but did not go into specifics. An aide had said the campaign would release more details later.

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin is again drawing attention for comments about abortion — this time, for saying that doctors are "giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant."

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill says she raised about $5.8 million for her re-election campaign over the past three months.

Missouri officials say the former head of an artificial sweetener company has agreed to return from California to face charges of theft and securities fraud stemming from a failed factory project.

Bruce Cole was chairman and CEO of Mamtek U.S. Inc., which received $39 million of industrial development bonds from the city of Moberly to build a sweetener plant.

Cole is charged in Missouri with using bond revenues to avoid foreclosure on his Beverley Hills home and misleading investors about his company's financial health.

Opponents of a tobacco tax initiative on the Missouri ballot say local governments could lose money if the measure passes.

The proposal would raise the state cigarette tax from 17 cents to 90 cents per pack and also increase taxes on other tobacco products.

A federal judge in St. Louis has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the contraception mandate of the federal health care law.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Frank O'Brien and his company, O'Brien Industrial Holdings LLC of St. Louis, was one of nearly three dozen cases nationally challenging the constitutionality of regulations in the health care law. Among other things, O'Brien, a devout Catholic, claimed the requirement to pay for birth control infringes on his religious beliefs.

Republican challenger Todd Akin is going on the offensive against Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill by claiming her husband's businesses profited from the federal stimulus act.

Akin began running a TV ad Monday claiming "the stimulus made McCaskill rich." In an interview with The Associated Press, Akin noted that the 2009 stimulus law funded a federal program for low-income housing that directed about $1 million to corporations affiliated with McCaskill's husband.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is touting an endorsement from the National Rifle Association.

A Washington-based education group is suing the University of Missouri over its refusal to provide records related to teacher training at the university system's four campuses.

The former president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City will speak Monday in Fulton on the future of banking.

Thomas Hoenig's 4 p.m. lecture at Westminster College's Coulter Science Center is free and open to the public.
Hoenig is now a director and vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the number two job at the independent Washington agency.