Missouri News

When Dan Hoyt started graduate school at the University of Kansas in 2016, he knew he had anxiety and depression. He worried about being able to find a job after graduation. And, sometimes, he couldn’t get through his assigned reading.

“When you have anxieties, that gets impossible,” he said. “I'll think about the same things over and over and over again.”

But when he reached out to KU’s counseling services, he was told he had to wait five months before he could get an appointment with a therapist at the Lawrence campus. And getting there from KU’s Overland Park campus, where he took classes, complicated things.

BELLEVILLE — The outcome of the 2020 census will have lasting implications for people and communities in Illinois and across the U.S. 

Mainly, the once-a-decade headcount provides a framework for how more than $1.5 trillion in federal money is distributed to states every year. The census begins on April 1.

It seems odd that Sporting Kansas City would make a presentation this week at a national sustainable agriculture summit. 

After all, professional sports eat up lots of resources: jet and diesel fuel for trips to away games, water to keep the turf or fairways looking lush and electricity to fire up their fans and keep score.

A Columbia, Missouri, man faces at least 5 years in prison after admitting he torched the Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia in February.

Wesley Brian Kaster, 42, pleaded guilty on Thursday to maliciously using explosive materials to damage a building owned by an organization that receives federal funding and to violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Nico Leone, KCUR’s general manager for more than seven years, will leave the station at the end of the year to take the helm of KERA in Dallas.

Since joining KCUR in 2012, Leone has led Kansas City’s NPR station through a period of exceptional growth in audience, staff size and recognition among the nation’s public media stations.

Under Leone’s leadership, the newsroom staff more than doubled, KCUR’s share of radio listening grew by 35% and the station’s digital audience grew more than 300%.

On one busy corner of Kansas City's St. John Avenue, a community is coming together to create a piece of art that reflects the whole world.

Home to culturally and ethnically diverse businesses and many artists, the city's Historic Northeast neighborhood is already a colorful place.

The Maryland Heights Tax Increment Financing Commission could soon approve a plan to use tax money to build pumps and levees in a frequently flooded area near the Missouri River. 

City officials and the urban planning group PGAV Planners propose to redevelop the Maryland Park Lake District. That’s a 2,215-acre agricultural area near Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park that is protected by the Howard Bend levees. 

While population numbers decay across so much of the Great Plains in Kansas, Dodge City, Liberal and Garden City stand out as growth stories. Their cattle trade draws immigrants, and those newcomers drive change. Dodge City likes to play up its gunslingin' Wild West reputation, formed in its earliest days in the cattle business. Now giant industrial meatpacking plants define the economy of a modern cowtown.

Saying there’s more work to be done, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page officially announced his bid to keep his job on Thursday.

With a Democratic primary on the horizon, Page told a crowd of supporters at the Machinists Hall in Bridgeton that he’s the best person to pick up the pieces of a county that went through a tumultuous time — and still faces big challenges.

A state audit gave the city of St. Louis poor performance reviews in regard to its handling of 138 special tax districts. 

State Auditor Nicole Galloway discussed the findings Thursday in St. Louis and said the city needs to change its procedures to ensure responsible spending of tax dollars. 

“When these districts operate unchecked, taxpayers do not have assurance their money is being used efficiently, effectively and for the benefit of the public in the community,” Galloway said. “And that's just what we found: rampant use of local taxing districts throughout the city.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about the ear? What defines what’s musically beautiful? The Chamber Project St. Louis is exploring the concept by digging beneath the surface and asking questions about what should be considered beautiful, who gets to decide and why it matters.

John Sherman has been a familiar face to Major League Baseball owners. To Kansas City Royals fans, he will become one after the other MLB owners officially approved his ownership of the team at their meeting in Arlington, Texas, on Thursday.

After the meeting ended. Sherman opened his brief statement by acknowledging his partnership with the Cleveland Indians as a 30% owner.

Immigrants and U.S.-born Latinos account for more than a third of residents without health insurance in the Kansas City area’s three largest counties.

That’s one of the findings in a study about the fastest growing segment of the local workforce, commissioned by the Reach Healthcare Foundation.

From afar, cricket might look like a slightly tweaked version of baseball. After all, there are hardballs, bats and bases involved. But the intricacies of the game distinguish the sport from America’s pastime. 

Invented in England, the sport later spread throughout the world due to the British Empire’s cultural influence on its former colonies in places like Pakistan, Australia and India. And, thanks to the American Cricket Academy and Club, it’s absolutely thriving in the St. Louis region. 

On Friday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske talked to the academy’s founder and president, Ajay Jhamb, about what the sport is all about and how local kids can get involved. Joining the discussion were cricket players Taine Dry, 15, and Pooja Ganesh, 11. 

Berkeley Mayor Theodore "Ted" Hoskins has been charged with five felony counts of election fraud.

A special prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, announced charges Thursday that allege Hoskins tampered with absentee ballots for a municipal election in April 2018. 

He is accused of filling out absentee ballot applications for voters and having his campaign workers do the same. He is also accused of altering absentee ballots. Hoskins faces 25 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted. 

Richmond Heights officials and residents will come together on Sunday to dedicate a plaque to a historic black neighborhood in the city, which has nearly disappeared.

At one time, the Hadley Township neighborhood was among just a few places African Americans could live within St. Louis County. It was founded in the early 1900s by the Evens and Howard Fire Brick Company as a way to attract and keep employees. 

Segregation in the city and county limited where African Americans could live. The lack of public transportation made it even harder to fill the positions. In an effort to solve the problem, Evens and Howard met with county officials to build homes for black families in Brentwood and Richmond Heights.

Since 2005, the Grannie Annie Family Story Celebration has encouraged young people to discover, write and share stories about their family history. 

Monday on St. Louis on the Air, Sarah Fenske talked with Grannie Annie board member Martha Stegmaier, as well as Karissa Hsu, who wrote a story about her grandmother’s journey to America after fleeing conflict in East Asia during WWII. Her father Leo also joined the conversation.

The new artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Hana Sharif, makes her directorial debut at the Rep this December with an adaption of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”

On Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air, Sarah Fenske spoke with Sharif about the production and her background.

KCUR 89.3 has hired Traci Bauer to lead its news operations as the director of journalism. Bauer, who grew up in southwest Missouri, is a veteran journalist and newsroom leader with vast experience in digital transformation and strategy.

After counting out the last in a series of chest compressions, Harry Painter Jr. sets up a nebulizer and begins piping oxygen into his patient’s lungs.

“Mr. Jones, you scared us there. How are you feeling?” he asks. The lifelike mannequin blinks back. 

Everything around Painter looks exactly as it would in a hospital, but this is a simulation room at St. Louis Community College’s new health care facility on the Forest Park campus.

Developers of the old Crestwood mall site insist work is being done behind the scenes to redevelop the nearly 50-acre property along Watson Road. But right now, it is still a huge patch of dirt and weeds in the center of the south St. Louis County municipality.

The mall has been closed since 2013 and was demolished in 2016.

The St. Louis Chess Club has made it a tradition to organize four strong round-robin invitational events throughout the year — one for each season. The purpose of these events is to give the opportunity for talented American titled players to gain experience battling it out against players of similar or higher levels. They can improve their game while also potentially winning a prize fund of over $30,000 among the two events. The Winter Chess Classic was the final event, rounding out the quarterly strong series of 2019. It was, by far, one of the most exciting events this year, allowing for some records to be achieved over the board as well as during the live commentary show.

A Missouri appeals court has ordered the natural gas company Spire to pay customers at least $4 million in reimbursements after it improperly charged them for pipe repairs.

In a trio of decisions, judges from the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals ruled the utility improperly used surcharges to fund infrastructure improvements that were not eligible for those fees.

The Illinois State Board of Education announced on Wednesday that it will take emergency action to end isolated seclusion of children in schools, saying the practice has been “misused and overused to a shocking extent.”