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Recent rains and heavy downpours left standing water all over the St. Louis region. And that brings the return of mosquitoes.

While Missouri's neighboring states continue to allow sports betting, it's still illegal in the Show Me State to place a wager on your favorite team.

The death toll from numerous crashes on Interstate 55 that occurred amid a blinding dust storm has risen to eight.

ALTON - A 17-year-old Alton male has been charged with a count of Aggravated Battery With A Firearm in regard to the shooting incident that occurred at 2:59 p.m. on Tuesday in the 2600 block of Maxey Street in Alton. The Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office reviewed the facts of the case today and issued the following charges against the suspect: Jaylen T. Elliott, 17 years old, of Alton-Count I: Aggravated Battery with a Firearm. The arrest warrant was signed by the Honorable Judge Maher and the bond was set at $250,000. Alton Police Chief Jarrett Ford said today that Elliott remains in custody at this time.

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The East-West Gateway Council of Governments hosted Wednesday’s regional crime summit at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Alderwoman Cara Spencer, whose new ward includes part of downtown, said she filed Board Bill 29.

One hurdle defeated, two more to go. For months now, we have been discussing Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision for $69 billion. What would be the largest video game studio acquisition in history has faced several hurdles along the way, primarily from the EU, the UK, and the United States. While the UK’s CMA has […]

The bill would ban standing, sitting, and walking along roads where there are sidewalks available. Critics have argued it unfairly targets the homeless community.

The bills that made it through the House and Senate now await transfer to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, an ardent supporter of abortion rights.

El Niño may push global temperatures past 1.5C, the World Meteorological Organization warned.

The 31-story Laclede Gas Building at 720 Olive St., now known as Gallery 720, is being marketed for sale to potential buyers.

OTTERVILLE - By day, Maggie Bick is a Jerseyville West Elementary School teacher, but in her free time, she loves spending time doing outdoor activities on a family farm - recently, she and her daughter Olivia had a mushroom hunt to remember. Some of the Morrell mushrooms found on that day are showcased above, held by Maggie and her daughter on their farm in Otterville. Maggie said they ended up discovering 42 total mushrooms in the one particular day of hunting. To make the day even more special, it was Olivia's first time mushroom hunting at the age of 3 years old. Maggie said her daughter could barely contain her excitement when she found the huge mushroom. "One of the mushrooms weighed 7.5 ounces. We have never found any this big," she said. "We found most of these next to an Elm tree that was dying. We found a whole hill just covered by mushrooms. Four or five years ago, we found a great batch, but nothing like this. We were really excited to prepare them and eat them." Morel

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For more than a decade, groups of white St. Louis residents have used Shelly Tochluk's book, “Witnessing Whiteness,” to explore white racial identity and racism's role in individual and community life. We’ll hear from Witnessing Whiteness facilitator and St. Louisan Mary Ferguson; and talk with Tochluk about the place and purpose of her newest book, “Being White Today: A Roadmap to a Positive Antiracist Life.”

Missouri Governor Mike Parson flew to St. Louis for a one-hour meeting with prosecutors in the circuit attorney’s office in the aftermath of Kim Gardner’s resignation.

The owner of a Cherokee Street bar that many neighbors accused of being a magnet for crime was charged with murder earlier this week. Arnaud Jones, 41, the owner of the Exotic Bar and Grill, was charged on Monday for a September 2022 murder which occurred when Jones allegedly fired from his downtown apartment out onto Lucas Avenue at men whom he suspected of trying to break into his car. 

WOOD RIVER - During a heated Public Comment portion of the last Wood River City Council meeting , residents heavily criticized three councilmen - Jeremy Plank and newly-elected David Ayres and Bill Dettmers - for their behavior and obstruction of Mayor Tom Stalcup’s appointments at the last meeting. Pastor Dave Landry, who ran for City Council last election, referred to the councilmen as “The Angry Three.” “It’s time to stand up to these bully tactics of Jeremy, Dave, and Bill, and take our city back from outsiders who never grew up in Wood River and have no interest in Wood River’s success,” Landry said. “I’m not scared of bullies. I’m not scared of your money, I’m not scared of your tactics, I’m not scared of the anger that you stir up. “‘The Angry Three’ have no clue and haven’t even asked what great things are being developed in Wood River - only their own personal agenda …

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by Jeremy Schwartz

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas lawmakers have closed a loophole in state law that allowed people who had serious mental health issues as juveniles to legally purchase firearms.

On Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives voted 116-28 in favor of a bill that requires courts to report involuntary mental health hospitalizations of juveniles age 16 and older for inclusion in the federal gun background check system. The bill, which had already received unanimous support in the Senate, comes nearly a year after a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation revealed a gap in the law that required such reporting for adults but not for juveniles.

The passage of the bipartisan measure, authored by Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, offers a rare example of gun-related legislation that has cleared the Texas Legislature since last year’s school shooting in Uvalde. It is now headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. Huffman could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether he supports the bill.

“This bill will go a long way to ensuring that our state and federal databases are linked and that the process is more efficient and effective in keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous Texans who do not need to have them,” Jeff Leach, a Republican state representative from North Texas, who sponsored the legislation said on the House floor. Leach represents the city of Allen, where a gunman killed eight people at a mall on May 6.

Currently, Texas law requires county and district clerks across the state to send information on court-ordered mental health hospitalizations to the Department of Public Safety. The state’s top law enforcement agency is charged with sending those records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS. Federally licensed dealers must check the system before they sell someone a firearm.

Elliott Naishtat, a former state lawmaker from Austin who authored the legislation in 2009, said he intended for it to apply to juveniles as well as adults. But an investigation by the news organizations found that local court clerks were not sharing that information for juveniles, either as a matter of policy or because they didn’t believe that they had to because the law did not explicitly mention them.

Further heightening the importance of closing the reporting gap, Congress passed gun reform legislation in June that includes a requirement that federal investigators check state databases for juvenile mental health records. Such checks would not show many court-ordered juvenile commitments in Texas because they are not currently being reported.

The Texas Judicial Council, which monitors and recommends reforms to the state judiciary, called on lawmakers to clarify juvenile reporting requirements after the ProPublica and Tribune investigation, stating that there was widespread confusion about them.

Pro-gun groups sought to extinguish the bill, arguing that it was a “red flag law,” a reference to laws that allow judges to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat.

The Texas Gun Rights group on its website called the bill a “Draconian scheme” that “discourages kids from coming forward to seek help for mental health issues by stigmatizing them and removing their Second Amendment rights for the rest of their lives.”

Leach has denied the bill represents a red flag law, arguing that it does not change any existing state or federal laws.

Texas law allows those discharged from court-ordered mental health services to petition the court that entered the commitment order to restore their right to purchase a firearm.

Other legislation sought by Uvalde survivors and family members, including a bill that would have raised the minimum age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, has been stymied in the current legislative session, which ends May 29.

Kiah Collier contributed reporting.

Maureen Woodson, 68, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to repay the $487,673 she stole from the city.

A federal jury in St. Louis on Tuesday found a former Anheuser-Busch employee guilty on numerous counts in a disability payments scheme.