Archives for January 2012

Petition campaigns have begun for groups wanting the limit interest rates on payday loans and for increasing the state minimum wage. The groups behind the efforts have held a joint kickoff event in Columbia. One group wants to limit payday loan rates to 36 percent. The other wants to hike the state minimum wage to $8.25 an hour. They’re shooting for a November election. Each group needs to get $105,000 valid signatures in six of the nine congressional districts.

Almost two dozen people have been forced out of their St. Joseph apartments by a fire that somebody set. The State Fire Marshal’s office says evidence has been sent to a laboratory for tests. 

Fire alarms alerted residents who got out without injury. Some had to be taken down fire ladders.

A state audit says ten of the members of the Missouri State University marching band were not enrolled for the fall semester of 2010 when they were marching … and another 11 students who were enrolled had not signed up for required band classes.

The audit also says several members were marching free. It says the band had not charged several of them a marching-band fee, which cost the school almost $5,400.

The Springfield News Leader had to file an open records request to get the information from the auditor’s office.

A company that supplies gambling machines to Missouri Casinos has been fined $375,000 dollars for keeping secrets.

International Game Technologies did not tell the state gaming commission the federal government and other law enforcement agencies have been investigating International Gaming’s bingo machines in Alabama since 2008. 

St. Joseph finally has permission to give mud back to the Big Muddy.

Tons of mud, silt, sand, and other stuff left from last year’s Missouri River flood has clogged a riverwalk between a nature center and a park. But the Corps of Engineers had to issue a permits for the city to dump stuff into the river. It’s thought there are 20,ooo cubic yards of material that will take more than a month to put back into the river.

More than a thousand people have said goodbye to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, the hospital destroyed by last May’s tornado. 

The ceremony that begins demolition of the wrecked building was part one of the event. The second part was the blessing  of the site where Mercy Hospital Joplin will be built as the St. John’s replacement.

The tornado hit the hospital so hard it moved the building four inches off its foundation. 

The new, billion-dollar hospital is to open in 2015.

No school today in Raytown. Flu-like illnesses have prompted the district to close all ten of its buildings and park all of its buses for disinfecting. More than one-third of the students and more than 40 percent of the staff called in sick at one elementary school last Friday.

The second debate for Republican candidates wanting to replace Senator McCaskill is tonight in Branson. Only two of the three Republican candidates will be there — Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman. The third candidate, John Brunner, is skipping this one, as he skipped the first one.

Listen live at 100.1 KOMC or on the station’s website.

The Springfield Police Department cautions about an increase in a common scam that targets elderly people.

It’s called the “Grandparent scam” and it’s when a random caller will say he or she is incarcerated for some reason or that another family member is in jail, and request money for a bond.

The caller usually asks for the money to be sent via Western Union and says they’re in a foreign country.

A Milan woman has been returned to Minnesota to face charges that she killed her newborn baby hours after she was born. Prosecutors are not saying why it took nearly 12 years to bring charges against Amy Romero.

The infant was born in April, 2001, then left in some woods near Henderson to die.

Romero, 29, is charged with first-degree murder.