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Today’s announcement comes after many customer’s recycling was due to be collected; for the second week in a row, the City of Columbia will not be collecting recycling from residential customers.

The city announced last week that it would not collect recycling due to staffing shortages as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Several solid waste employees in Columbia were placed into isolation due to exposure to the coronavirus, as well as several employees of the temporary staffing agency used to collect recycling and trash. 

MU athletics coaches in recent days spoke out about the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the subsequent protests around the country.

The national movement comes almost five years after a series of racist events, student protests and resignations by campus leadership put MU in the national spotlight.

Any Missouri resident can get tested for COVID-19 during upcoming testing days throughout the state.

A testing site will operate 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at Hickman High School in Columbia. According to the registration site, all appointments have been filled.

St. Louis County police are investigating the theft of nearly three dozen guns from a pawn shop, all of them semi-automatic weapons. Officers responded at 1:10 a.m. Sunday to an alarm at Southside Pawn and Jewelry in Affton and found that windows had been shattered. Police spokesman Benjamin Granda said Monday that the business operators determined that 34 firearms were stolen — 32 semi-automatic handguns and two semi-automatic rifles. Granda says that at least six vehicles were involved in the burglary, with at least 10 suspects. No arrests have been made.

Local election officials across Missouri who have scrambled to make polling places as safe as possible during the coronavirus pandemic will see if their efforts pay off Tuesday. While each county is different, voters in local elections are likely to see poll workers wearings masks or face shields, social distancing requirements and single-use styluses to fill out their ballots. Concerns about voter safety prompted Republican Gov. Mike Parson to move local elections from April 7 to this Tuesday.

Health officials say they're seeking to “inform mass numbers of unknown people” after a person who attended crowded pool parties over Memorial Day weekend at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks tested positive for COVID-19. Camden County Health Department said in a release that the resident of Boone County in mid-Missouri tested positive on Sunday after arriving at the lake area a day earlier. Officials said there have been no reported cases of the virus linked to coronavirus in residents of Camden County, where the parties seen in videos and photos posted on social media took place.

Missouri has reported another 34 COVID-19-related deaths over the weekend. The state has 772 deaths attributed to COVID-19 as of Sunday.

The number of patients suing two MU doctors with Mizzou BioJoint Center and the MU Curators has grown to 21 after a new lawsuit was filed on behalf of four patients May 22.

A motion to consolidate all of the lawsuits for pretrial purposes was granted by 13th Circuit Judge J. Hasbrouck Jacobs on Tuesday.

More than 50 people marched in downtown Columbia at 2 p.m. Sunday, joining a nationwide protest of the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

The march began at Francis Quadrangle on MU's campus, took a route around downtown Columbia and got back to campus where it started.

"No violence, no peace! No racist police!" yelled Ashton Brown, one of the leaders of the rally.

Kansas City officials imposed a curfew on some areas of the city Sunday evening through Monday morning as the city braces for another day of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and law enforcement's treatment of blacks.

In-person classes will resume at Columbia College on Aug. 31 and will continue that way until Thanksgiving break, according to a news release Friday from the college. After the break, students will finish their classes online.

Some classes will have a virtual option throughout the semester, the release said. Social distancing, wearing masks and deep disinfecting will be implemented for the fall.

Great Clips has temporarily closed its salons in Springfield, Missouri, after receiving threatening messages following the news that two hairstylists at one of the locations tested positive for the coronavirus and may have exposed 140 customers. Great Clips Inc. announced the closure on Thursday. It wasn't clear when the franchises would reopen. One threat came in a Facebook message to an employee on Saturday. The other was phoned to a salon Wednesday. Police are investigating.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City says it will begin bringing back faculty, staff and students to its two campuses in Kansas City starting next week following its shutdown during the coronavirus outbreak. The university said Thursday in a news release that the campuses will open in three phases. The first phase will begin Monday, when a small group of employees engaged in critical operations will be brought back through July 5. The second phase will bring back senior administration and departmental leaders from July 6 through Aug. 2.

Churches in St. Louis city and county can reopen to in-person services starting in June, and many predominantly black churches plan to do so, despite the fact that the coronavirus has been particularly lethal in the black community. This week, three black clergy groups are handing out nearly 150,000 free masks to church leaders. Organizer Darryl Gray says the church “has been the surviving force for the black community since slavery.” Pastors say they're taking extra precautions for hygiene and social distancing, in addition to the masks.

Any Missouri resident can get tested for COVID-19 during upcoming testing days throughout the state.

A testing site will operate 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at Hickman High School in Columbia.

To read more on this story, visit our partners at the Columbia Missourian.

Columbia and Boone County’s health department plans to automate its contact tracing efforts of COVID-19 positive residents through a secure data collection software called REDCap.

The software was created in 2004 at Vanderbilt University to track medical and research data. The health department would join the REDCap Consortium, giving it free access to the software.