Missouri News

The Kansas City Symphony wrapped up its seven-month national search for a new executive director and hired Daniel Beckley, the Kansas City Business Journal reports.

Beckley most recently was vice president and general manager of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Beckley succeeds Frank Byrne, who's retiring this year after a 19-year tenure.

A St. Louis nonprofit is sending outreach workers to city streets to dispense life-saving treatment from a newly refurbished ambulance.

The Missouri Network For Opiate Reform and Recovery will use the vehicle to dispense the overdose-reversal drug naloxone to active drug users and those in recovery. It also provides testing for sexually transmitted diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV and information about treatment programs.

The mobile unit extends the nonprofit’s reach beyond its headquarters at 4022 S. Broadway.

For the past 30 years, Keith Winstead has been tracing the many generations of his family history.

“When I first started genealogy, I thought I’d be lucky to go and find a third great-grandparent. I got pictures now of ten generations,” Winstead said.

On a cold and windy day he was at Bellefontaine Cemetery with about 15 other family members who hail from different parts of the U.S., such as Louisville, Atlanta, New York and Cincinnati.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he misses Kansas and would like to go back into business in the state someday. But at the Road to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Overland Park Monday, the former congressman was cagey about his future in public office.

The annual conference gives business people a chance to rub elbows with potential funders in government, foundations and the private sector. Pompeo said it’s no coincidence that this year’s summit was in his home state.

The country’s top elected Democrat came to Ferguson Monday to push the party’s efforts to expand voting rights across the country.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, are among hundreds of co-sponsors of two bills: one that sets new requirements for when states must get federal approval to change their voting or election laws, and another that reduces the amount of money in campaigns, including eliminating so-called "dark money" from unidentified donors.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the appeal of a Kansas death row inmate who claims the state unconstitutionally abolished his right to use insanity as a defense for his crimes.

Nobody disputes that James Kahler murdered four family members in 2009. But Kahler's attorneys argued at trial and in subsequent appeals that he had spiraled into a mental health crisis in the months preceding the murders and was psychotic during the attack. The murders took place in Burlingame, about 30 miles south of Topeka.

Three Kansas hospitals are among six hospitals once run by a North Kansas City-based company that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The name Terence Blanchard is well known in the worlds of jazz and opera. The Academy Award nominee and Grammy Award-winning composer/trumpeter scored a big hit a few years ago with “Champion”, a joint co-commission by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) and Jazz St. Louis about boxer Emile Griffith.

On Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Don Marsh talked with Blanchard about his latest OSTL commissioned production, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” as well as his work on the recent Spike Lee film, "BlacKkKlansman."

Social workers can perform a myriad of tasks. Some check on children in abusive homes and some train foster families. Others support patients through medical procedures like kidney dialysis or provide talk therapy to mental health patients.

But there are too few of them in Kansas.

Including Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, the Ozarks is a geographic region known for its mountainous topography, forests and tourism.

The region also has a unique culinary history.

On Tuesday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Don Marsh will be joined by St. Louis native and chef Rob Connoley. The James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef Southwest is planning to open Bulrush, a restaurant rooted in Ozark cuisine, this April in Grand Center.

This interview will be on “St. Louis on the Air” over the noon hour Tuesday. This story will be updated after the show. You can listen live.

On Tuesday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Don Marsh will talk with lifelong St. Louisan Beverly Buck Brennan leading up to her upcoming show “Love and Marriage,” which she describes as “an inside take on long-term relationships – the good, the bad and the outrageously funny.”

The on-air interview will preview Brennan’s cabaret presentation set for Friday evening – an event at the Kranzberg Arts Center that is expected to include songs, stories and humor, drawing on the Great American Songbook as well as musical theater and a variety of classic hits.

Republicans in the Kansas Senate seem ready to end a long-running lawsuit by complying with a court ruling that said the state sends too little money to local school districts.

The Kansas House? Not just yet. It’s advancing a plan that would continue adding school spending for another year, and only another year.

Several hundred coffee lovers and coffee experts converged on Kansas City, Missouri, over the weekend for the U.S. Coffee Championships.

The baristas who competed were looking to win a trip to the world championships in Boston next month. And a local woman did just that: Kaley Gann with Messenger Coffee won the 2019 Brewer's Cup category.

On April 2, residents of Kansas City, Missouri, will cast their votes on a slate of candidates in the mayoral primary, narrowing the field to two candidates ahead of the general election on June 18.

Residents will also be asked to vote for city council members, and to weigh in on a plan proposed by outgoing Mayor Sly James to fund pre-kindergarten education with a ⅜ cents sales tax that would generate $30 million a year for the next ten years.

A Webster University chess coach will today become the youngest woman to be inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.

Susan Polgár was the first woman to win the coveted grandmaster title through traditional tournament play in 1991. The Hungarian-born champion has broken gender barriers in the male-dominated chess world during a career that spans five decades.

“There will be naysayers, and there will be men that don’t want to see women succeed, especially in a male-dominated field,” she said. “But don’t let that hold you back — just work harder and prove them wrong.”

Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe joins Politically Speaking to talk about his first few months in office — and some of the issues that his Republican legislative colleagues are dealing with during the 2019 session.

Kehoe spent nearly eight years as a state senator representing several mid-Missouri counties, including Cole. After he became chief executive last year, Gov. Mike Parson appointed Kehoe as lieutenant governor.

School districts in west and south St. Louis County are seeking voter approval to make significant facility upgrades that officials say will ease overcrowding and improve security.

There are four districts with funding propositions on the April 2 municipal election ballot. Lindbergh, Webster Groves and Bayless are all proposing no-tax-rate-increase bonds. Clayton is asking voters to approve a 56 cent property-tax increase.

The lead public defender in St. Charles County says a new mobile phone app he helped design could reduce the need for cash bail.

Michael Sato and a team of five developers came up with the idea for Freecog as part of the Global Legal Hackathon, which looks to use technology to solve criminal justice issues. Their proposal won the St. Louis event — the team will know by March 25 if they have advanced to the finals.

You might not know it from looking at her business card, but MacKenzie Mallon is a detective of sorts.

Mallon is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's specialist in provenance, which means she researches the records of ownership for works in the museum's collection.

Karen Houck referred to her grief as a "bag of rocks" for years before she ever painted one or lived in a Lee's Summit house landscaped with a hundred tons of them.

The last season of My Fellow Kansans ended with Democrat Laura Kelly elected as governor. In this episode of Statehouse Blend Kansas, she talks with host Jim McLean a few months into her term about how her agenda is faring in the Legislature.

Subscribe to Statehouse Blend Kansas wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Just after approving the school funding Gov. Laura Kelly asked for, the Kansas Senate turned around and gave the final okay to a tax relief package she opposes, daring the new governor to issue her first veto. 

Typically in the Muslim community, women and men do not hug one another unless they are relatives. Nevertheless, in a crowded meeting space inside the Daar Ul-Islam Mosque, about 200 heavy hearts and sympathetic spirits embraced and consoled each other in the wake of a terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday.

New Zealand authorities say a 28-year-old white nationalist gunman killed at least 49 people while they were praying at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque. 

At the end of Friday prayer, dozens of worshippers at Masjidu Nuur Islamic Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri, said an extra one. They prayed for Allah to take the victims of the New Zealand shooting to paradise. 

Updated 5:30 p.m. March 16 to correct headline, characterization of investigation — Kansas City wide receiver Tyreek Hill is involved in an investigation into an alleged assault on a juvenile at his home.