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Emergency crews were at the scene of a house fire in north St. Louis City.

More help is available for people needing disaster assistance after the flooding of last July.

A crash on westbound I-64 early Wednesday morning injured at least one person.

The state of Missouri is set to execute a convicted killer just days into the new year, but some lawmakers are working to stop it.

Look, 2022, well, it was not always that great. We got things off to a not-strong start with a still-lingering pandemic.

In February, two boozy legends captured our hearts. The first heavy snowfall of the year spurred Kris Naeger and Kevin Venice to come to Art Hill and enjoy the snow as many St. Louisans do. But local stores were sold out of sleds.

The Kia Boyz TikTok challenge phenomenon was a fun story for a whole two minutes, but St. Louisans are long sick of getting their Kias and Hyundais stolen en masse. Over two weeks this summer, 356 were stolen in the city alone.

From deadly heat waves in Europe to continued wildfires in California, extreme weather was the trademark of summer 2022. St. Louis was no exception.

The Supreme Court's June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a seismic event in this country, one whose aftershocks will be felt for years to come. That the highest court in the land would vote to strip away an essential human right and open the door to the criminalization of a basic health-care procedure was seen as an appalling development by a majority of the country — and an ominous sign of that court's radicalization. But while many despaired, St. Louis activists got to work.

Not to kick the city when it's down, but controlling crime is not one of its strong suits. This year was especially bad — almost eye-poppingly so, with the massive rash of 69 restaurant and small-business burglaries that happened throughout the fall.

Sometimes we need to be forced into self-care. The ongoing pandemic has done so much to injure our mental health, but the ways we've found to cope will stick with us forever.

There's no soft way to say it: The pandemic really lobbed a loogie at the arts. After all, if we're all staying inside to avoid contagion, then we can't be sitting thigh to thigh in a packed theater or breathing in each other's bacteria in a concert venue.

October 24, 2022, is a day St. Louis will never forget. That day, we lost an innocent and vibrant young woman who, before a broken 19-year-old shot and killed her, had big dreams for the rest of her life. That day, we lost a beloved teacher and mother who gave her life to save her students.

By the spring of 2021, it seemed like restaurants had reason to celebrate. Vaccines were readily available, dining rooms were back to unrestricted capacity, and hungry diners with money to spend were eager to return to their favorite spots.

For years, St. Louis has clamored for an MLS team. Nearly begged.

Cannabis companies are finding increasingly creative ways to get us high, and it's been one of our favorite things about 2022. Even if you don't partake, you have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit that brought the world treats such as marijuana-infused Red Hot Riplets. Riplets have long been a favorite snack of St. Louis stoners, so to be able to buy Riplets that get you stoned is just efficient, really.

There's a lot to celebrate when it comes to Missouri's recent approval of legal recreational weed. The notion that we'd no longer lock people up over putting a relatively harmless substance into their own bodies is at the top of the pile; that those who've already run afoul of the legal system over a plant will have their records expunged is right up there with it. But while we'll certainly be among those partaking now that it's legal to do so, we still think the road to legalization could have ended in a better place.

In 2022, St. Louis stank — often quite literally. The problems seemed to start way back in June 2021, when a worker shortage had the city throwing away the alley recycling and asking residents to bring their recyclables to designated drop-off points.

In June, two Starbucks, one in Ladue and one at Kingshighway and Chippewa, voted to unionize, becoming the first in the St. Louis area to do so. At the time, they were joining 150 other Starbucks locations across the country that had voted to unionize, but that number has since grown to over 250.

St. Louis should consider itself lucky that when Norwegian Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen lobbed thinly founded cheating allegations at San Francisco-born professional chess player Hans Neimann, our fair city was the metaphorical board upon which these greats would play their ultimate match. The brouhaha began in September when Carlsen abruptly withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup tournament held here, making cryptic remarks that were widely interpreted as accusations against Neimann for cheating.