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   With rains on the way and levees around the soccer fields already pushed to the brink, the St. Louis Youth Soccer Association has canceled this year's Lou Fusz Soccer Club Midwest Cup. 

Floodwater continues to threaten the area around Newtown and Highway 370 in St. Charles. The water is near the top of an agriculture levee next to the St. Louis Youth Soccer Association (SLYSA) fields.  '

   Instead of getting ready to hit the fields, youth soccer players and coaches have been working alongside the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers and St. Charles firefighters to reinforce more than a mile-long stretch of a levee near the field.

   St. Charles Fire Chief Rick Daly says keeping the wall intact is about a lot more than protecting the soccer field. "If the levee fails here," he said, "it can potentially compromise areas in both the city and the county, and we don’t want that to happen."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The mother of a Newtown, Conn., shooting victim is making a deeply personal plea from the White House for all Americans to take action on gun violence.

Francine Wheeler's 6-year-old son, Ben, was killed inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. She's stepping in for President Barack Obama to deliver the president's weekly radio and Internet address. She is the first person to deliver the address other than Obama or Vice President Joe Biden since the two took office in 2009.

Wheeler says thousands of families are drowning in her family's grief and asks for help to do something, in her words, "before our tragedy becomes your tragedy."

In the Republican address, congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana criticizes Obama's budget blueprint as a blank check for more spending and debt.