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St. Louis Police will be out in force today, patrolling a north side neighborhood that has seen three murders in the past two weeks.

About 80 officers will saturate the College Hill neighborhood this morning. And Chief Sam Dotson says the extra patrols will be there until they've contained the violence.

Dotson says the College Hill intervention is an extension of the city's hot spot policing program.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that police plan to conduct roll call in the street, station a command vehicle on site, use dog patrols and make a door-to-door plea for help in solving recent shootings in the neighborhood just west of I-70 and north of downtown.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - Two guards and a chaplain have been released from a hospital after being hurt in an Illinois prison attack that union officials say involved up to 15 inmates.

Tuesday's assaults were the latest in a series of violent incidents over the last month at Menard Correctional Center and other Illinois state prisons. Last Thursday, a Menard inmate died in what one official called suspicious circumstances.

Union officials say the violence is a result of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's decision to close several prisons around the state to save money.

Tuesday's assaults happened as about 200 union members marched outside the prison in the southern Illinois town of Chester. They were protesting over what they say are growing threats to their safety.

Corrections officials say the attack led to a lockdown.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Missouri Senate has endorsed a measure that could speed up state intervention in failing school districts.

The bill given initial approval Tuesday night is aimed mainly at the Kansas City School District, which lost its accreditation in January 2012.

Under current law, Missouri officials must wait until at least June 30, 2014, before intervening in the Kansas City district.

The Senate legislation would let the state intervene immediately after a district loses its accreditation. The state Board of Education could prescribe conditions under which the existing local school board could continue to oversee the school, or it could set up an alternative governing structure.

Those alternatives could include creating a special administrative board, merging the district with neighboring ones or splitting the district into several new ones.