The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has topped 600,000, even as the vaccination drive has slashed daily cases and deaths and allowed the country to emerge from the gloom. That’s according to the toll recorded by Johns Hopkins University. The number of lives lost is greater than the population of Baltimore or Milwaukee. It is…
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has signed a new law that will limit public health restrictions imposed by local governments. The law takes effect immediately, but most Missouri cities and counties already ended their coronavirus restrictions on businesses and public gatherings. Parson says the law signed Tuesday will primarily affect future…
(AP) — Kansas’ largest electric company expects to make its first big investments in solar energy over the next three years and is looking to produce no net carbon emissions as of 2045. Both goals are set by a long-term plan outlined by Evergy for regulators in Kansas and Missouri. Environmentalist don’t think Evergy is…
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed that the next planned relaxation of coronavirus restrictions in England will be delayed by four weeks until July 19 as a result of the spread of the delta variant. In a press briefing Monday, Johnson said he is “confident that we won’t need more than…
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Overnight summer camps will be allowed in all 50 states this season, but COVID-19 rules and a pandemic labor crunch mean that many fewer young campers will attend. Those who do go will have to observe coronavirus precautions for the second consecutive year. The Southeast is the first region to…
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A woman says a former Missouri police officer campaigning for a state House seat last year repeatedly told her to deny that they had sex years ago while she was drunk and he was on duty. Emily Orf spoke to The Associated Press about her interactions with now-Rep. Chad Perkins.…
LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) — Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler, who represents a very conservative and mostly rural area of central and western Missouri in Congress, has officially entered the state’s crowded Senate race. Hartzler announced her bid Thursday in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit. She’s seeking to replace Republican Roy Blunt, who won’t…
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Actress Ellie Kemper has apologized for participating in a debutante ball hosted by a St. Louis organization that she now says had “an unquestionably racist, sexist and elitist past.” The 41-year-old St. Louis native and star of TV’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” was criticized on Twitter after it was revealed that when…
LONDON (AP) — Dozens of websites briefly went offline around the globe Tuesday, including CNN, The New York Times and Britain’s government home page, after an outage at the cloud service Fastly. The incident illustrates how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet. Fastly is indicating the outage appeared…
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A former Democratic St. Louis County executive has been released from prison after serving less than two years of a nearly four-year sentence on corruption charges. A court official confirmed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Steve Stenger is under house arrest after serving at a federal prison camp in Yankton,…