Missouri News

As a pediatrician who is also an accomplished cabaret artist, Dr. Ken Haller says he may play several roles over the course of a day: teacher, doctor, friend, singer. He says those roles are all different aspects of his chief pursuit: being a healer.

Researchers at Washington University have found that paramedics and emergency medical technicians are seven times as likely as the general public to have thought about suicide in the past year.

Five emergency medicine doctors surveyed more than 900 paramedics in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Iowa over three months in 2017. The results were published in an industry journal this month.

Kansas City threw a party 50 years in the making on Wednesday with a parade to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs' victory in Super Bowl LIV.

After the Board of Freeholders formed in September 2019, some supporters of the process were bullish that the 19-member panel could recommend significant changes to city and county government.

There’s just one big problem: The board hasn’t been able to do anything, thanks to a prolonged deadlock to approve the St. Louis appointees. It’s an outcome that’s left city policymakers frustrated — and vulnerable to costly consequences. 

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS — The City Council voted nine to one on Tuesday to approve regulations for recreational marijuana businesses that want to open in the community. 

The ordinance specifies which kind of businesses can open in Fairview Heights — whether that be a dispensary, cultivator, craft grower or other facility. 

Prosperity Connection, a St. Louis nonprofit financial education provider, has launched an initiative to help people with their credit scores. St. Louis Builds Credit aims to build credit scores and wealth, while also teaching people to become financially resilient.

Paul Woodruff, executive director of the nonprofit, said good credit is often the gateway to more opportunities.

“When you think about opportunities for employment, for housing, for transportation, and for insurance," Woodruff said, "the common denominator in being able to access all of these things that provide quality life is rooted in strong credit history for families.”

More artists will now have a say in what public art will look like at Kansas City International Airport's new $1.5 billion terminal.

With a construction budget that devotes $5.6 million for public art as part of the city's 1% for art program, where that art will be located and who gets to decide have been pressing issues. Construction is already underway, with the new terminal scheduled to open in 2023. 

A St. Louis County jail inmate suffered a stroke before he died at a hospital in December, according to an autopsy  report.

Jo’von Mitchell, 31, died of a brain hemorrhage related to a stroke, the autopsy report released Tuesday said. His death wasn’t caused by trauma or drug use, though “Mitchell’s age and the location of the stroke are uncommon,” according to a press release from the county. 

The county released information about Mitchell’s death after coming under pressure from a citizens advisory board and county council members to be more transparent. 

Absentee voting is already underway for Missouri’s presidential primary on March 10.

But it’s unclear how much attention the primary will receive from candidates or voters. Or how important Missouri’s votes will be in choosing the two major parties’ nominees.

Would-be voters in Missouri have until Feb. 12 to register.

Washington University’s Adia Harvey Wingfield, who is a professor of sociology, has long been interested in the ways that race, class and gender influence everyday workplace structures and interactions. Her most recent book, “Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy,” looks closely at the experiences of black workers in health care — as does a new study of which she is the co-author.

Focused around 60 in-depth interviews with black doctors, nurses and technicians, the study suggests that among people of color, one’s professional status within an organizational hierarchy has a significant effect on how one perceives instances of racial discrimination.

On Wednesday’s St. Louis on the Air, Harvey Wingfield joined host Sarah Fenske to discuss the implications of this research for the health care industry and beyond.

In January, St. Louis’ regional transit agency considered taking on operation of the embattled Loop Trolley — and ultimately declined to do so. At this month’s meeting of the Bi-State Development board, a totally different project’s future will come before the agency: the two shipping-container-sized grocery stores located along MetroLink in north St. Louis County.

The directors and subject of “St. Louis Superman,” the documentary film showcasing the story of former Missouri state Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., are headed to Los Angeles for this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. The film has been nominated for a Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar.

The documentary follows Franks’ journey as a lawmaker and his push for a proposal to recognize youth violence as a public health epidemic.

Students grumble about having to take another test. Turns out, teachers do, too.

About a third of St. Louis Public Schools’ elementary-level buildings are assessing their students less often this school year, at the suggestion of teachers, with the hope of leaving more time for instruction.

Last week, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis announced the latest multidisciplinary artist patrons can expect to see at the space during its First Fridays and other CAM events. James Biko is an East St. Louis-born and St. Louis-based artist prominent in the local hip-hop and soul scene. 

He’s been on the radar of music aficionados in the city and is a 10-time Riverfront Times Music Award winner. He also co-hosts the Rawthentic radio program, with Cleo Jones on KDHX, which plays hip-hop, R&B and soul on Thursday evenings. 

Stéphane Denève will lift the baton on his second full season as music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 16 with a free concert in Forest Park. The 2020-21 classical season will get underway Sept. 19-20 and marks the first of many concerts throughout the season that will feature women performers, composers and conductors — or music about women.

The Sept. 19-20 concert will feature prominent violinist Hilary Hahn performing Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. It also will include former SLSO composer-in-residence Joan Tower’s "Fanfare for The Uncommon Woman No. 1." The organization is billing Tower’s work as “a musical homage to a season honoring risk-taking and influential women throughout history and in today’s world.”

Long lines, closures and shortages of product have frustrated consumers of legal weed in Illinois since the first of the year.

But state officials said the slow start to the sale of recreational marijuana was intentional and one that cultivators also wanted. Both, however, say the eventual goal is a market where supply and demand are in balance.

New Northside Missionary Baptist Church — a predominantly black Jennings church — is a welcoming space on the inside. 

But on the outside, it’s fortified.

Armed security guards monitor the perimeter from the church’s parking lot, while there are several security cameras along the building's exterior.

Missouri’s Legislative Black Caucus on Monday highlighted legislation they’ve filed to honor and remember the work done by African American Missourians. 

State Rep. Steven Roberts, D-St. Louis, spoke about the “perseverance and triumphs” of African Americans to begin the celebrations of Black History Month at a press conference at the Capitol. 

“When I think about black history in this country and in this state, ‘celebrate’ is not the first word that comes to mind,” he said. 

BELLEVILLE — Illinois’ recreational cannabis industry is off to a strong start. 

Sales of recreational marijuana totaled $39.2 million in January, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation announced Monday. 

In the 31 days after recreational marijuana became legal in the state, consumers bought almost one million individual cannabis products. Illinois residents accounted for the majority of transactions, buying $30.6 million of legal marijuana. Out-of-state residents bought $8.6 million.

On Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske talked with our partners from Sauce Magazine about the latest additions to the St. Louis region’s food-and-beverage scene. 

Joining this month’s Hit List segment discussion were Heather Hughes Huff and Meera Nagarajan, managing editor and art director, respectively.

In the first half of the 20th century, armed conflicts claimed the lives of an unfathomable number of civilians. Stunned by the horrors of war in Europe, President Dwight Eisenhower sought out a different way to prevent future cycles of war. He proposed a program that connects citizens of nations abroad with U.S. cities: Sister Cities International. 

The program began in 1956, and the people-to-people, citizen diplomacy initiative took off across the country. A few years later, in 1960, St. Louis’ first partnership abroad flourished in Stuttgart, Germany, through the World Trade Center St. Louis' international mission. Now St. Louis has 16 sisters abroad, from Argentina and Senegal to Indonesia. 

Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, joins Politically Speaking to talk about proposed changes to Clean Missouri’s redistricting plan and other debates in the 2020 legislative session.

Schatz is helping to push legislation that would return Missouri’s political district drawing system to something closer to the state’s previous format. The new system, which relies on a nonpartisan demographer, was approved by voters in 2018. If the Missouri General Assembly reworked redistricting, voters would also have to approve the changes later this year.

Kansas City will be a sea of red as Chiefs fans get a chance to celebrate the team’s victory with a parade and rally on Wednesday. 

Car horns blared throughout downtown Sunday night as fans celebrated the Kansas City Chiefs' stunning comeback over the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl LIV.

“We’re so happy and so grateful," said Logan Lund, a student at The University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, Kan.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University, Tom Cohen realized he had a slim shot at landing a tenure-track job. But in the business world, his expertise offered lots of opportunities.

That’s why he joined the Biotechnology and Life Science Advising Group, founded by Wash U students and called BALSA for short.

It allows Ph.D.s and postdocs from universities in the area to gain industry experience while businesses commissioning projects get the work done for a fraction of the cost. 

When he was in his early 20s, Matt purchased a pound of weed to split with his friends. The drug dealer dropped it off at his apartment in central Illinois. Moments later, he said, police stormed in and arrested Matt and his friends. He spent a night in jail and two-and-a-half years on probation, and for nearly a decade he’s lived with a felony on his record. 

Matt is now a father in his early 30s, and cannabis is a legal product under Illinois’ new legalization law. Illinois Newsroom is using Matt’s first name only to protect his family’s privacy.