Stories from Friday, November 15, 2013

BENTON, Mo. -- At a prosecutor's request, a Scott County judge found Keith Monia indigent Thursday and ordered the public defender's office to represent him in a financial exploitation case filed in July. Since April, prosecutors in two counties have filed a total of 15 felony charges against Monia...

Two men with bandanas over their faces broke into a home on the 500 block of South Benton Street and made threats to people living there, police say. Cape Girardeau police still are investigating the burglary reported at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday. Darin Hickey, public information officer for the Cape Girardeau Police Department, said officers responded to a call of a burglary in progress. ...

WASHINGTON -- Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced changes to his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled. The administrative changes are good for just one year, though senior administration officials said they could be extended if problems with the law persist. Obama announced the changes at the White House...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said Thursday he is directing officials to accept tax returns jointly filed by same-sex couples who were legally married in other states. The Democratic governor said his executive order deals solely with tax filing status and does not authorize or sanction same-sex marriage in Missouri...

Three days after letting a big second-half lead slip away, the Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team found itself in a similar situation. This time there would be no comeback by the opposition. The Redhawks held off visiting Missouri-Kansas City 76-74 Thursday night, easing some of the sting from Monday's home loss to Bradley in which the Braves erased an 18-point second-half deficit...

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. -- Staff Sgt. Eric W. Summers survived five deployments in combat zones, but he was one of four U.S. Marines killed Wednesday while clearing a range of unexploded ordnance at Camp Pendleton near San Diego. "He had been thinking about getting out of the Marines," said his grieving mother, Melodie Summers of Poplar Bluff, Mo...

Full architectural plans for a community center in Jackson are now in the hands of city officials, meaning the center is a step closer to being built. Jackson Mayor Barbara Lohr said the city recently received the plans from an architect hired by the group donating the money to build the center. The next step is to send specifications to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to complete a grant approval that will fund the building of a safe room/multipurpose room inside the center...

Walking my dogs at a local park and saw this deer at less than 40 yards. We stared at each other for about two minutes then he went off into the woods.

Before she started home schooling her two children, Andrea Roseman of Jackson was "adamantly opposed" to the idea. But when her son, Grant, turned 1, she said she felt God telling her it was the right thing to do. She fought it for about a year. "At the time, I didn't know anyone else who was home schooling. I found out there were four other ladies in my church [Lynwood Baptist] who were home schooling," Roseman said...

The Cape Girardeau Boys & Girls Club and Cape Girardeau Evening Lions Club present a check for $600 to Ranae Masters of the American Cancer Society. The funds were raised through the Spook Your Neighbor Drive and will be used locally.

The Meadow Heights Panthers Junior High A-Team finished the season with a 14-0 record. This is not an easy accomplishment. They worked hard and had a great season. They are coached by Mark Verticchio.

Christmas Drop-and-Shop Hosted by the Southeast Sundancers Sunday, December 8 4-7 pm Drop off the kiddos at LeBounce in Cape Girardeau and do your Christmas shopping! Snacks, entertainment and supervision will be provided by the Southeast Missouri State University Sundancers...

Today is Friday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2013. There are 46 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Nov. 15, 1942, the naval Battle of Guadalcanal ended during World War II with a decisive U.S. victory over Japanese forces...

Congrats to the Oak Ridge cross country team. And good job to coach Niswonger! Factors? "Many factors led to Jackson test success" read your headline. The number of real factors mentioned in the accompanying article was zero. Restaurant etiquette Some people need to learn restaurant etiquette. ...

Standards do not make students smarter. If they did, then the Grade-Level Expectations from No Child Left Behind would have accomplished this. Any unencumbered educator will tell you that NCLB was doomed to failure. The Houston School District model that President Bush used to get elected as the "Education President" was based on faulty data. ...

This is an exciting part of the season for some high school athletic programs. After months of practice and competition, individual athletes and teams are doing their best to advance to the next level in the MSHSAA playoffs. The Perryville soccer team defeated De Soto 6-0 in Tuesday's Class 2 sectional contest at the Perryville Soccer Complex. The Pirates move on to quarterfinals and will face St. Mary's Saturday...

People are so nice in Southeast Missouri. I know this because they are so nice to me, sometimes when I least expect it. I am still both pleased and surprised when folks I have never met before come up to me at restaurants or in supermarkets and tell me they love my column...

NEW YORK -- Six months before he died, John Lennon set sail from Newport, R.I., on an ocean adventure to Bermuda that awakened his desire to make music again. That is being chronicled in an electronic format he could not have conceived of. A new app, "John Lennon: The Bermuda Tapes," is being offered for sale on Apple devices for $4.99. It's loaded with interactive features, music, photos and interviews that detail a relatively unexamined slice of the former Beatle's life...

TACLOBAN, Philippines -- The air was thick with the stench of decay as sweating workers lowered the plastic coffins one by one into a grave the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Scores of unidentified bodies were interred together Thursday in a hillside cemetery without any ritual -- the first mass burial in this city shattered by last week's Typhoon Haiyan...

TORONTO -- Toronto's mayor denied Thursday he pressured a female employee for oral sex, in an obscenity-laced statement on live television in which he also threatened to take legal action against former staffers who spoke to police about his drinking and drug use...

BENTON, Mo. -- At a prosecutor's request, a Scott County judge found Keith Monia indigent Thursday and ordered the public defender's office to represent him in a financial exploitation case filed in July. Since April, prosecutors in two counties have filed 15 felony charges against Monia...

Just a few days remain for mayor and city council candidate hopefuls in Cape Girardeau to finish gathering signatures and turn in petitions. The deadline to file as a candidate for the April 8 municipal election is 5 p.m. Tuesday. The offices of mayor and three city council representatives will be decided in the election...

A woman charged in October with breaking a school bus window with pruning shears says she can't understand why she wasn't allowed to remove her special-needs son from the bus when he arrived home from school. Kinyinna Stevenson, 35, of Cape Girardeau was tased and arrested by police officers after her Oct. 21 attempt to get her son off the bus and was subsequently charged with property damage and resisting arrest...

Filing for the April 8 municipal election in Perryville, Mo., which includes three school board positions, begins at 8 a.m. Dec. 17 and ends 5 p.m. Jan. 21. The spots up on the Perry County District 32 School Board are held by G. Scott Cooper, Jeff Weibrecht and Scott Hotop...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- There is a place where Snoopy frolics carefree with the scandalous Yellow Kid, where Pogo the possum philosophizes alongside Calvin and Hobbes. It's a place where Beetle Bailey loafs with Garfield the cat, while Krazy Kat takes another brick to the noggin, and brooding heroes battle dark forces on the pages of fat graphic novels...

Prospective Southeast Missouri State University students interested in majoring in dance are invited to attend Dance Day 2013 on Nov. 23 in the Holland School of Visual and Performing Arts at Southeast's River Campus. The Department of Theatre and Dance will host the event. ...

When famous American authors are discussed, it's likely that Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are a part of the conversation. Fans of more contemporary authors might say that Stephen King, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth should also be included on a list of America's top writers...

Orchard Drive Elementary School first-grade teacher Lindsay Miller was so excited Thursday when she was awarded a $500 grant from the Jackson R-2 School Foundation a large grin burst across her face. "I could cry," Miller said after Merideth Pobst, director of foundation/communications and several foundation board members arrived in her classroom...

Ernest Lee Corbin Jr., 48, of Cape Girardeau passed away Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013, at Southeast Hospital. He was born Dec. 30, 1964, in Cape Girardeau, son of Ernest Lee and Tommie Lois Clifton Corbin Sr. Ernest was a plumbing contractor for Lowes in Cape Girardeau until his health failed. He was a former member of Eagles Aerie 3775 in Cape Girardeau...

Patricia A. "Patty" Baugh, 53, of Jackson passed away Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013, at her home. She was born Jan. 6, 1960, in Cape Girardeau, to Robert L. and June Martin Baugh. Patty was a 1978 graduate of Jackson High School. After attending Southeast Missouri State University and University of Oklahoma, she was a pharmacy tech at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Oklahoma City, Jones Drug Store in Jackson and Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. She was of the Baptist belief...

Ilena C. Hartle, 87, of Jackson passed away Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013, at the home of a daughter. She was born Sept. 6, 1926, in Daisy, daughter of Ellis and Hannah Barks Seabaugh. She and Jesse "Jay" Hartle were married Sept. 27, 1944. He passed away Sept. 16, 1996...

Odell Ruthford "Dick" Cook, 77, of Jackson passed away Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013, at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. He was born March 1, 1936, in Patton, Mo., son of Rufus and Myretta Graves Cook. He and Amy McCaleb Smith were married June 27, 1998...

Robert Konrad Heisserer, 37, of Indianapolis passed away Monday, Oct. 28, 2013, while on a business trip in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He was born Aug. 12, 1976, in Cape Girardeau, to Karl Michael and Barbara Diane Curtis Heisserer, the oldest of six sons. He married Sandra Hartmann on June 30, 2001, in Cincinnati...

Daughter to Jason Alan and Lora Marie Myers of Sedgewickville, Mo., Saint Francis Medical Center, 1:36 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013. Name, Ivy Kay. Weight, 8 pounds, 13 ounces. Third child, first daughter. Mrs. Myers is the former Lora Howard, daughter of J. Doyle Howard of Patton, Mo. She is a paper making technician at Procter & Gamble. Myers is the son of Dave and Wanda Foster of Marble Hill, Mo. He is a Diesel technician at Larry Schmidt Truck Parts...

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- Norma Schlobohm Crader, 86, of Marble Hill died Nov. 14, 2013, at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. Visitation will be from 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Hutchings Funeral Chapel in Marble Hill. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at the funeral home. Burial will be in Bollinger County Memorial Park Cemetery...

Work is progressing to repair a slide along the middle third of the 1,800-foot slackwater harbor at the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority site; Luhr Brothers Construction Co., which built the harbor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is making the repairs...

A Cape Girardeau man is in custody on charges of attempted robbery and armed criminal action in connection with a shooting outside a convenience store last week, police reported Thursday. Evan Johnson Jr., 30, is accused of trying to rob a man of an Xbox video game system near the intersection of Bloomfield and Hanover streets, court records show...

The Jackson Police Department released the following items. Theft Miscellaneous...

Firefighters responded to the following calls Wednesday:...

The Cape Girardeau Police Department released the following items. Arrests do not imply guilt. Arrests Summonses Burglaries Thefts Miscellaneous...

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Residents of several Florida homes have been evacuated due to a possible sinkhole that opened in a backyard in Pinellas County on Thursday. Dunedin deputy fire chief Trip Barrs said the hole appeared to be about 12 feet wide when officials arrived on the scene. Residents of the neighboring houses also were evacuated as a precaution...

BOSTON -- Former Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger was sentenced to life in prison Thursday at 84 for his murderous reign over the city's underworld in the 1970s and '80s, accepting his punishment with stone-faced silence even as a judge castigated him for his "almost unfathomable" depravity...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Over the past few decades, as an exotic pet trade boomed and Americans bought cute tiger cubs and baby monkeys, sanctuaries sprang up across the nation to take care of the animals that were abandoned when they reached adult-size or were no longer wanted...

CAIRO -- In an echo of the Cold War, Egypt gave the red carpet welcome Thursday to senior Russian officials aiming to expand Moscow's influence through military and economic cooperation with a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. The flirtation underscores how U.S.-Egyptian relations have soured lately over the Obama administration's criticism of the July 3 military coup. ...

WASHINGTON -- Janet Yellen made clear Thursday she's prepared to stand by the Federal Reserve's efforts to pump up the economy when she's chairman, if that's what it needs. During a two-hour confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen embraced her so-called "dovish" reputation and expressed strong support for the Fed's low interest-rate policies. ...

Kirby Cannon expected rough sledding in his first year after taking over a struggling Austin Peay football program. In that regard Cannon has not been surprised by much he has encountered. Austin Peay (0-10, 0-6 Ohio Valley Conference) is still looking for its first win entering Saturday's 1 p.m. contest against visiting Southeast Missouri State (2-8, 1-5) in Clarksville, Tenn...

ST. LOUIS -- Alexander Steen scored his league-leading 15th and 16th goals and the St. Louis Blues' slumping power play woke up with three goals in a 7-3 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night. St. Louis has won seven of nine and is off to the fastest start in franchise history with 12 wins in its first 17 games...

St. Louis' Molina, Carpenter finished third and fourth, respectively

Northbound Interstate 55 in Cape Girardeau County will be reduced to one lane as Missouri Department of Transportation crews make repairs to the bridge located at the Dutchtown exit. The work will take place from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today...

Class 4 Miller Career Academy (11-0) at Central (8-4) 1:30 p.m. Saturday District 1 final: (2) Central 59, (1) Hillsboro 33 District 2 final: (1) Miller Career Academy 48, (3) St. Mary's 21 Winner plays: Webb City (11-1) vs. Westminster (10-2)...

O Lord Jesus, we praise you, our Prince of Peace and Everlasting Father. Amen.

I read with interest the article that Ms. Priddy wrote for your Nov. 5 paper concerning the "confusion and disruption" in the courts during the Nov. 4 docket due to computer issues and the electronic docket. I wish to point out that the article was only partially correct and did not come close to reflecting the true picture of the day's activities. ...

Mrs. Brown, lock up your daughter. Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone will perform two shows, at 6 and 8 p.m., Saturday at Isle Casino Cape Girardeau's Event Center. Herman's Hermits, including original group member and vocalist Peter Noone, was one of the bands at the forefront of the British Invasion of the 1960s with their No. ...

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- It took 150 years, but a Pennsylvania newspaper said Thursday it should have recognized the greatness of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at the time it was delivered. The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, about 35 miles northeast of Gettysburg, retracted a dismissive editorial penned by its Civil War-era predecessor, The Harrisburg Patriot & Union...