Stories from Wednesday, April 4, 2018

The Portageville School District conducted active shooter training on Monday, April 2 in the Portageville Middle School. A similar training session was also held in the elementary school. "This was a coordinated training effort with state, county and local law enforcement agencies, as well as the county ambulance department," said Superintendent of Schools Michael Allred...

COLUMBIA, Mo — Missouri State Treasurer Eric Schmitt last Thursday, March 29, joined Mid-Missouri small business, economic development and agriculture leaders at the Columbia Chamber of Commerce to announce he has approved $10.4 million in new small business and agriculture investments through his Missouri FIRST initiative...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) encourages hunters to think safety while in the woods turkey hunting. Youth spring turkey hunting season is April 7-8 and regular spring turkey hunting season begins April 16 and runs through May 6. Shooting hours for regular turkey season are from a half hour before sunrise to 1 p.m...

April 2, 2018 -- Consider the following: “I have little patience with current statements that the new tariff is retarding business…Thousands and thousands of people are at work today…who would be idle except for the new tariff.” A Trumpian rant against those opposing his recently imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and Canadian aluminum?  No.  Senator Reed Smoot (R-Utah), co-author of the calamitous Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, made it in 1930...

The members of the Missouri House of Representatives welcomed some of the state’s greatest heroes to the State Capitol this week to be honored for their service to this country. Vietnam veterans traveled to Jefferson City to be honored by lawmakers during the annual observance of Vietnam Veterans Day. ...

SIKESTON Jon Robert Scarbrough, 65, died April 3, 2018, at Miner Nursing Center in Sikeston.

I was a junior in college 50 years ago today attending Memphis State University. It was a turbulent time in American history. I worked on a college newspaper and spent many hours covering the civil rights demonstrations on campus along with the protests against the war in Vietnam. At about the same time, the city was in turmoil with riots and demonstrations by sanitation workers seeking a fair wage and improved benefits. The campus demonstrations were remarkably peaceful. A busload of students was "arrested" for occupying the university president's office and there was some shoving and words exchanged among students protesting the war. The sanitation workers' protests got out of hand a week earlier with substantial damage reported from bricks thrown into windows primarily in the downtown area of Memphis. And then the world changed.