News

Missouri residents are encouraged to call a state consumer hotline for help if their electricity is shut off during the current heat wave because they couldn't pay the bill.

The state's hot weather rule forbids utilities from disconnecting electrical services when temperatures are projected to be higher than 95 degrees, or the heat index is expected to exceed 100 degrees.

Temperatures above both thresholds are expected to continue through the weekend and much of the summer in the Midwest.

A group of baseball players is battling triple-digit heat in an effort to set the world record for the longest game ever played. The 52 players will try to compete for 60 hours. The game started at 7:00 Monday morning and is scheduled to end at 7:00 Thursday night.

Money raised will benefit Backstoppers, which supports the families of fallen first responders in the St. Louis area. Organizer and player Steve Pona says they thought about postponing the game due to the extreme weather

The Kirksville R-3 School board has approved its budget for the next school year. The district expects to see a reduction in state and federal funding by almost $800,000.

Despite the cut in federal funding, the district doesn’t expected to make any drastic cuts. Superintendent Pat Williams says the district had actually expected the subsidy reduction and had already started taking steps to provide cushion for the next school year.

Several Republicans are criticizing the ballot summaries that Missouri Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan has prepared for measures dealing with health insurance and appellate judges.

The Republican-led Legislature referred both measures to the November ballot. Carnahan wrote the ballot summaries because lawmakers did not include their own.

Lawmakers who sponsored the measures say those summaries are misleading, and two GOP leaders pledged to file a lawsuit.

Columbia’s Mormon congregations celebrated religious freedom this morning and marked an event from the church’s history. 

"Hack” isn’t a word usually associated with agriculture, but that might be starting to change. A group of small farmers across the country has started to come together to pool their ideas for solutions to small-farming challenges, just like computer hackers working together to solve computer issues. They call it Farm Hack.

The Jefferson City Fire Department is asking voters to fund the plan that would purchase new equipment and trucks, cover technical upgrades, and pay for firefighter training. Captain Scott Spencer says unfortunately, a lot of the department’s equipment is getting old.

“This fire department improvement plan is for the community. It all transcends down to the end user, the taxpayer, the customer that might be relying on us for emergency medical services, which we’re going to be upgrading," said Spencer.

There will still be fireworks displays in Columbia and Jefferson City today, despite exceptionally dry conditions lately.

A southeast Missouri man died from a copperhead bite this past weekend. It’s only the second recorded copperhead bite fatality in the state and the first since 1965.

A copperhead bit 50-year-old Terry Brown Saturday night while he was camping  along the Current River  in southeast Missouri.

According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, these cases are extremely rare.  Most snakebites occur when people try to handle snakes, or from not watching  their hands and feet.

Republican businessman Dave Spence has chipped in another half-million dollars to his Missouri gubernatorial campaign.