St. Louis Public Radio is pleased to announce that local attorney Nicole Gorovsky has joined as a recurring contributor for the Legal Roundtable segments on St. Louis on the Air.

Three panelists, now regularly including Gorovsky, convene once a month to look closer at local and regional issues and developments as they pertain to the law and challenge the region.

On Feb. 6, 2018, Travis Claussen had his right hip replaced at Blue Valley Hospital in Overland Park.

The 40-year-old resident of Lawson, Missouri, had been experiencing severe back pain for years. Before then, he’d been a physical fitness buff who was into off-road motorcycle racing.

This is a developing story and will be updated.  

The parent company of the Kansas City Star has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York. 

McClatchy Co., which owns The Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle, says it hopes to shed about 60 percent of its $703 million in outstanding debt obligations as it continues its transition to digital media.

Missouri began offering chiropractic care, acupuncture, physical therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy for Medicaid patients in April, the latest state to try an alternative to opioids for those battling chronic pain.

Yet only about 500 of the state’s roughly 330,000 adult Medicaid users accessed the program through December, at a cost of $190,000, according to Josh Moore, the Missouri Medicaid pharmacy director. While the numbers may reflect an undercount because of lags in submitting claims, the jointly funded federal-state program known in the state as MO HealthNet is hitting just a fraction of possible patients so far.

Compared to other arts or sports, chess is an easy game to learn but a difficult one to master. Just how difficult?

Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book "Outliers: the Story of Success," postulates that “the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.” 

If St. Louis singer and songwriter Katarra Parson had to pick one of her songs to describe her life, it would be “Phoenix Rising.”

She appreciates the song because it's about flight, freedom and rebirth — the story of how she learned to take care of herself.

“'Phoenix Rising' is literally my journey of finding myself, of finding my power, stepping into that power, being comfortable with that power,” Parson said. “Now I'm at a point where I realized I got responsibility with that power.”

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says that without focusing on basic city services in 2020, any goodwill that’s been built up means nothing.

Lt. Keith Wildhaber has no plans to leave the St. Louis County Police Department anytime soon, even though the county is going to pay him millions of dollars over the next two years as part of a discrimination lawsuit settlement.

“I got 26 years in. I want to finish my career on my terms,” Wildhaber said Wednesday in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — the first time he’s spoken publicly since reaching the settlement.

The Major League Soccer ownership group is one step closer to securing the public financial aid it's seeking to construct a stadium in downtown St. Louis.

The aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee on Wednesday unanimously passed two bills outlining tax incentives for the project.

Jimenez Arms, the Nevada-based gun manufacturer that Kansas City sued last month, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Nevada.

The company’s bankruptcy petition listed assets of less than $50,000. That, coupled with more than $1,000,000 in outstanding liabilities, may make it difficult for Kansas City,  should it prevail in its lawsuit, to recover compensation from the company.

Pearl Tabb’s son was shot in her St. Louis apartment complex in September 2019. It wasn’t the first time he was shot, but this time, the wound was more serious. Tabb felt lost.

“I’m like, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t know what to do. I need help.’”

She found support through Better Family Life’s 24/7 hotline. Better Family Life is a nonprofit dedicated to tackling social and economic problems in St. Louis, and its hotline helps callers connect with people trained in de-escalation and mediation techniques. They also offer assistance with seeking counseling and medical supplies.

A Kansas City Police officer was using “reasonable” deadly force when he shot and killed 24-year-old Ryan Stokes, despite the fact that Stokes was unarmed and obeying another officer’s commands, a federal judge has ruled.

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

Washington University’s Clinic for Acceptance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) treats women who become pregnant while dealing with an opioid use disorder. It provides prenatal care, substance abuse treatment and extended postpartum support. 

Lately, the clinic is seeing more patients who are addicted to multiple types of drugs, otherwise known as “polysubstance abuse,” says Dr. Jeannie Kelly, the clinic’s medical director.

TOPEKA, Kansas — A flurry of proposals in the Kansas Statehouse this session take aim at rising medical costs, including one that may be the state’s first attempt to rein in “surprise bills.”

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is set to release his proposed budget Thursday, and it’s roughly $3 million short of what transportation officials say they need to get rid of bus fares.

Kansas City, Missouri, got national attention last year when the city council pledged to find the money to go fare-free. Officials at the time estimated that it would cost $8 million to pull off.

Composer Tobias Picker has five operas to his credit, with commissions from the LA Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, among others, and serious acclaim. But his sixth opera, which makes its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis this June, will have particular personal resonance. The librettist writing the words to go with Picker’s music is his husband, Dr. Aryeh Lev Stollman.

And while Stollman has written three novels, this is his first time writing an opera libretto. Still, he brings a particular expertise to the show, which is an adaptation of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ nonfiction medical drama “Awakenings.” Like Sacks, Stollman is a physician who studies the nervous system (Stollman is a neuroradiologist, Sacks a neurologist).   

When Miles Davis gathered an expanded group for recording sessions in August 1969, the trumpeter and bandleader had already revolutionized jazz several times — from key bebop recordings in the 1940s through the gravity-defying post-bop of his mid-to-late '60s quintet. 

Across three days in a New York City studio, he did it again. 

Tonight, Jazz St. Louis celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of “Bitches Brew,” an album that pushed jazz further into the realm of rock 'n' roll, pleasing and angering fans on either side of that divide. 

Spouses of military members are used to moving every few years, and they often have to put their careers on hold when they need a professional license to work in their new state.

A proposal in Missouri’s Legislature would ease that problem by having the state honor professional licenses held by military spouses who are transferred from other states. 

“If we can do this to show our support for our military families and getting our military spouses jobs quickly and easily, that not only benefits that spouse, it benefits the whole family,” said state Rep. Steve Lynch, R-Waynesville.

Kansas City’s business leaders have officially come out in favor of expanding Medicaid in Missouri. 

In a move that could put more political and financial heft behind a campaign effort, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, United Way of Greater Kansas City and Civic Council of Greater Kansas City on Tuesday announced their support for a petition drive to put Medicaid expansion on Missouri’s November ballot.

The St. Louis County Council will consider a bonding plan to pay, at least temporarily, for a discrimination settlement with a St. Louis County police officer.

It’s a move that’s likely to pass, even as St. Louis County Executive Sam Page’s administration will seek to recoup the funds from insurance plans.

Updated at 3:10 p.m., Feb. 12, with comments from Collinsville's mayor

COLLINSVILLE — Illinois Supply and Provisions recorded $5 million in sales of recreational marijuana in the first month of the year, city officials announced Tuesday. 

The preliminary figures come after a strong month of sales across the whole state. Illinois sold nearly $40 million of legal marijuana in January alone. 

Alex Che, president of the Kansas City Chinese American Association, estimates there are between 10,000 and 20,000 Chinese and Chinese American residents in the area, although it’s hard to know for sure because they're spread out all over the metro. 

Many have friends and family in China, and as deaths from the new coronavirus — officially named COVID-19 on Tuesday by the World Health Organization — exceeded 1,000, concern grew among the community here as well.

Missouri state Reps. Kip Kendrick and Martha Stevens, both Democrats from Columbia, appeared on Politically Speaking to talk about Medicaid expansion, the possible repeal of Clean Missouri and other topics.

Both Kendrick and Stevens support the Medicaid expansion initiative that is expected to appear on the ballot later this year. 

Kendrick and Stevens said they don’t think Medicaid expansion will cost the state as much money as Republican opponents have suggested. Stevens said adopting Medicaid expansion could save the state money in the long run because the federal government pays a larger portion of the bill. 

Missouri has an updated rubric for measuring whether school districts are educating kids the way they should be.

The State Board of Education approved the changes at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

“It is an exciting day,” said Assistant Education Commissioner Chris Neale as he sat down in front of the board in Jefferson City.

The virus that has upended China and caused a frenzy around the globe is affecting students at St. Louis-area colleges who are studying abroad. 

Katelynn Portell, a Lindenwood University-Belleville student, knows about the change firsthand. Portell was a week into her Mandarin-language program in Chengdu, Sichuan, when she had to leave China. Chengdu is a 14-hour drive from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak.