Category Archives: Missouri

Mississippi tornado: death toll of 25 highest in the state in 21st century

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Fatalities from tornado the worst in 50 years, with more severe storms expected in the region on Sunday

Devastating storms and at least one large tornado which ripped through rural Mississippi on Friday night left 25 people dead in the state, dozens injured and rescue workers hauling people from rubble throughout Saturday, as the state reeled from its highest tornado-related death toll in decades.

Severe weather pounded several southern states overnight as the centers of destruction emerged on Saturday morning as the small, majority Black towns of Rolling Fork and Silver City in the Mississippi delta.

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Missouri emergency rule would limit gender-affirming care for minors

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Directive sidesteps Republican-controlled state legislature, which wasn’t able to pass similar legislation before recess

Missouri’s Republican attorney general on Monday said he will limit access to gender-affirming care for minors, sidestepping the GOP-led state senate as it struggles to pass a law banning the practice for children completely.

As hundreds of activists rallied at the state capitol to pressure lawmakers to act on the bill, Andrew Bailey announced plans to file an emergency rule.

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‘I would never give up’: how a Missouri man was exonerated after decades in prison

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Lamar Johnson’s long fight to prove his innocence paid off and helped change state law: ‘I can’t say I knew it would happen’

As he languished in a Missouri prison for nearly three decades, Lamar Johnson never stopped fighting to prove his innocence, even when it meant doing much of the legal work himself.

This week, a St Louis judge overturned Johnson’s murder conviction and ordered him freed. Johnson closed his eyes and shook his head, overcome with emotion. Shouts of joy rang out from the packed courtroom, and several people – relatives, civil rights activists and others – stood to cheer. Johnson’s lawyers hugged each other and him.

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Missouri man freed after serving nearly three decades in prison for 1994 murder

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Lamar Johnson, convicted to life for the killing, was released after judge found ‘reliable evidence of actual innocence’

A Missouri judge on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man who has served nearly 28 years of a life sentence for a killing that he has always said he didn’t commit.

Lamar Johnson, 50, closed his eyes and shook his head slightly as a member of his legal team patted him on the back when Judge David Mason issued his ruling. In coming to his decision, Mason explained that there had to be “reliable evidence of actual innocence – evidence so reliable that it actually passes the standard of clear and convincing”.

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Transgender Missouri inmate executed for fatal stabbing

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Two members of Congress campaigned for Amber McLaughlin’s sentence to be commuted over alleged shortcomings in trial

A Missouri inmate has been put to death for a 2003 killing, becoming what is believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the US.

Amber McLaughlin was put to death on Tuesday night, hours after the Republican governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, declined a clemency request. McLaughlin was convicted in 2006 of killing a former girlfriend in suburban St Louis in 2003.

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US federal judge denies 19-year-old’s request to attend her father’s execution

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Judge upholds Missouri law that bars anyone under 21 from witnessing an execution

A federal judge in the US has denied a request from a 19-year-old woman to allow her to watch her father’s death by injection, upholding a Missouri law that bars anyone under 21 from witnessing an execution.

Kevin Johnson is set to be executed Tuesday for killing Kirkwood police officer William McEntee in 2005. Johnson’s lawyers have appeals pending that seek to spare his life.

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Marijuana, abortion, climate crisis: what was down the ballot in the midterm

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The ‘green wave’ expanded to Maryland with voters opting for recreational cannabis while California voted to enshrine abortion

Voters across the US weighed in on a variety of ballot measures during the US midterms on Tuesday, passing judgement on everything from recreational drugs to abortion rights, to sports betting and the climate crisis.

Multiple states voted on whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana, part of a growing “green wave” that has already seen many relax their laws on cannabis use.

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US elementary school tested for nuclear bomb waste from Manhattan Project

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Report finds levels of the radioactive isotype lead-210 as much as 22 times the expected levels at Missouri school serving mostly Black students

The US army corps of engineers is testing for radioactivity in the kindergarten play yard, sports fields and classrooms of a Missouri school serving mostly Black students, after an independent report revealed the school may have been contaminated by nuclear bomb-making waste dumped from the second world war’s Manhattan Project.

Children from Jana elementary school in the Northern St Louis area were sent home to do online learning last week, following an independent report that found levels of the radioactive isotype lead-210 as much as 22 times the expected levels in the school’s play yards and some indoor spaces.

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Two shot dead at St Louis school as White House condemns ‘senseless violence’

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Gunman, 20, shot and killed two people at Central Visual and Performing Arts high school before police shot him dead

A gunman broke into a St Louis high school on Monday and killed two people before police shot him dead.

Several other people were wounded in a deadly intrusion that is certain to reignite debate about gun control in the US, even after Congress passed a bill earlier this year that tightened restrictions on access to firearms for some people who are considered to be at risk of carrying out violence.

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Appeals court temporarily halts Biden’s student debt cancellation scheme

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Program has been paused as the court considers a motion filed by six Republican-led states

Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court as it considers a motion from six Republican-led states to block the program.

The eighth circuit court of appeals issued the temporary stay on Friday, ordering the Biden administration not to act on the program while it considers the appeal.

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Woman who escapes month-long captivity says other Black women killed by abductor

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Missouri woman, 22, escapes less than a month after police dismissed concerns about a serial killer as ‘completely unfounded’

A 22-year-old Black woman in Missouri who escaped after a white man abducted, tortured and held her captive for weeks in a basement has said several other Black women were killed by her captor – less than a month after police dismissed community concerns about a serial killer as “completely unfounded”.

The woman, who has not been named, escaped on 7 October after about a month in captivity, still wearing a metal collar locked with a padlock that authorities had to remove.

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Missouri cave divers rescue dog stranded for nearly two months

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Divers discovered Abby about 500ft below while exploring the Berome Moore cave system

Cave divers in Missouri recently rescued a dog stranded hundreds of feet underground almost two months after the animal disappeared from its family’s home.

A small group of divers discovered Abby, a 13-year-old pet, while exploring the passages of the 18-mile Berome Moore cave system in Perry county on 6 August. They alerted the local fire department and members of the Cave Research Foundation at the surface of their discovery about 500ft below.

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Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’

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Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate

Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”

Kunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.

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Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paper

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Kansas City Star editorial excoriates Republican as ‘laughingstock’ as memes based on January 6 video proliferate

Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator shown running from the mob he incited on January 6, is “a laughingstock” who should be afraid of what the Capitol attack committee might disclose next, a leading newspaper in his home state said.

Hawley was widely criticised for raising a fist to protesters outside Congress on 6 January 2021, then after the mob sent by Donald Trump failed to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win, voting to object to results anyway.

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Three people killed as Amtrak train hits dump truck and derails in Missouri

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Southwest Chief train crash left at least 40 injured in remote rural area, according to unconfirmed reports

Three people were killed and several others were injured when a passenger train traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago struck a dump truck and derailed in a remote, rural area of Missouri on Monday, officials said.

Two of the people who died were on the train and one was in the truck, Missouri state highway patrol spokesman Corporal Justin Dunn said. It was not immediately clear exactly how many people were hurt, the patrol said, but hospitals reported receiving more than 40 patients from the crash and were expecting more.

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Insurers Geico ordered to pay woman who caught STD having sex in car $5.2m

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Missouri appellate court rules Geico must cover ‘injuries and losses’ from disease after 2014 incident in Hyundai Genesis

The insurance giant Geico must give more than $5m to a woman who had sex with a motorist in his car and contracted a sexually transmitted disease, a Missouri appellate court ruled.

The ruling represents a preliminary legal victory for the plaintiff over the company best known for commercials starring an anthropomorphized gecko which speaks with a British accent.

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Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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Nobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.

The board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.

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At least 70 dead as tornadoes rip across central and southern US states

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Kentucky was hardest hit as four tornadoes, including a massive storm, devastated a town and collapsed a factory building

Seven central and southern US states were picking up the pieces Saturday after a series of powerful tornadoes intensified by severe storms ripped across the region, leaving an estimated 70 to 100 people dead.

Kentucky was hardest hit as four tornadoes, including a massive storm, devastated Mayfield, a small town 134 miles (215 km) north-west of Nashville, Tennessee. A candle factory partially collapsed when the tornado struck on Friday evening.

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Josephine Baker, music hall star and civil rights activist, enters Panthéon

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French-American war hero is first Black woman inducted into Paris mausoleum for revered figures

Josephine Baker, the French-American civil rights activist, music hall superstar and second world war resistance hero, has become the first Black woman to enter France’s Panthéon mausoleum of revered historical figures – taking the nation’s highest honour at a moment when tensions over national identity and immigration are dominating the run-up to next year’s presidential race.

The elaborate ceremony on Tuesday – presided over by the French president, Emmanuel Macron – focused on Baker’s legacy as a resistance fighter, activist and anti-fascist who fled the racial segregation of the 1920s US for the Paris cabaret stage, and who fought for inclusion and against hatred.

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Fundraiser for US man exonerated after 43 years in prison tops $1.4m

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  • Kevin Strickland, 62, wrongly convicted of 1978 triple murder
  • Says criminal justice system ‘needs to be torn down and redone’

By mid-afternoon on Saturday, a fundraiser for a man who spent 43 years in prison before a judge in Missouri this week overturned his conviction in a triple murder had raised more than $1.4m.

The Midwest Innocence Project set up the GoFundMe page as it fought for the release of Kevin Strickland, 62, noting that he would not receive compensation from the state and would need help paying basic living expenses while struggling with extensive health problems.

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