Stories from Monday, November 2, 2020

Travelers driving past the Anhueser-Busch campus just off I-55 in St. Louis might look at the buildings and think, "That's a lot of brick!" Southeast Missourians can drive by and be proud knowing thousands of bricks for those buildings came from the dirt of Jackson, Missouri...

ST. LOUIS -- Missouri Gov. Mike Parson steadfastly refused to mandate mask-wearing even as the coronavirus spread across the state this year, telling a group of cattlemen in July, "You don't need government to tell you to wear a dang mask. If you want to wear a dang mask, wear a mask."...

In observance of Veterans Day, Jackson’s Sanitation Department will not operate Nov. 11. Trash normally collected on Wednesdays will instead be picked up Nov. 12, along with garbage normally collected Thursdays. Jackson’s Recycling Center will also be closed Nov. 11...

Staff members of the Arrow, Southeast Missouri State University’s student newspaper, received six awards during the virtual Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) and College Media Association (CMA) national convention late last month. The Arrow was named a newspaper Pacemaker finalist by ACP, making the newspaper one of 46 organizations to receive the honor across the nation. ...

SIKESTON, Mo. — A Sikeston man faces charges after allegedly attempting to rob two banks Friday in Southeast Missouri. Keith L. Dunlap, 54, is charged through Mississippi County with first- degree robbery, according to Charleston Department of Public Safety director Robert Hearnes. Dunlap faces a similar charge through Scott County...

There are many ways to learn life lessons. Education is the most important. Extracurricular activities are a close second. Growing up, we had a rule in the Breen house; you had to participate in something. Playing sports or an instrument, working on community events and helping others. I participated in several, but the game of football helped prepare me for life...

Missouri's Department of Labor and Industrial Relations released the state's unemployment data for September late last week and guess what? The unemployment rates for many parts of the state, including Cape Girardeau County, have dropped to pre-pandemic levels...

Sho Rust, co-founder of Sho.ai, an agency that helps businesses with branding, believes Cape Girardeau has what his business needs to succeed. Why Cape Girardeau? He has family here, but he also finds the city to be a great place for a tech startup business...

Area Properties Real Estate has partnered with Drury Properties to promote Deerfield Estates, a new residential subdivision on Cape Girardeau's west side. The new subdivision just inside Cape Girardeau's city limits is along County Road 313 about a quarter-mile north of Deerfield Lodge and immediately south of Klaus Park on 40 acres of rolling countryside. ...

Today is Monday, Nov. 2, the 307th day of 2020. There are 59 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Nov. 2, 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War to be elected president as he defeated incumbent Gerald R. Ford...

O Lord God, may we resist evil, standing firm in our faith in you. Amen.

We are just one day from the most important election in modern times, and sanctimonious scolds are still telling conservatives they’re immoral for supporting the main person fighting to prevent this nation’s destruction. Seriously? Your shaming isn’t working. We don’t believe we are betraying our values for standing with the person who is pursuing policies that will sustain America’s liberty tradition and opposing those that will enslave and impoverish us...

To the person who abandoned the 6-week-old precious yellow kitten in the box, in the middle of the road between Chaffee and Scott City at 5 a.m., please know she was found, and loved. Our 18-year-old granddaughter couldn’t drive by the random box in the middle of the road — and couldn’t believe what she found. ...

Even if we can’t agree on whom to vote for, surely we can agree to go vote. This year more than ever, we’ve seen a large push by both parties to register voters; even celebrities are touting the importance of registering and exercising the right to vote...

It's been more than two months since movie theaters started reopening in the U.S., but there is still a fair amount of consumer confusion about moviegoing in the COVID-19 era. Movie studios and theater owners have found themselves in the unique position of having to re-educate audiences on how to see movies now. Warner Bros. even recently revamped the website for "Tenet," Christopher Nolan's sci-fi espionage thriller, to help take some of the mystery out of going back to the movies...

IZMIR, Turkey -- Rescue workers in western Turkey extricated a 70-year-old man from a collapsed building Sunday, some 34 hours after a strong earthquake in the Aegean Sea struck Turkey and Greece, killing at least 75 people and injuring close to 1,000...

A vast swath of West Texas has been without an abortion clinic for more than six years. Planned Parenthood plans to change that with a health center it opened recently in Lubbock. It's a vivid example of how abortion-rights groups are striving to preserve nationwide access to the procedure even as a reconfigured Supreme Court -- with the addition of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett -- may be open to new restrictions...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are fighting to save their majority, a final election push against the onslaught of challengers in states once off limits to Democrats but now hotbeds of a potential backlash to President Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill...

More U.S. patients will soon have free, electronic access to the notes their doctors write about them under a new federal requirement for transparency. Many health systems are opening up records today, the original deadline. At the last minute, federal health officials week gave an extension until April because of the coronavirus pandemic...

PHILADELPHIA -- Joe Biden was spending the final days of the presidential campaign appealing to Black supporters to vote in-person during a pandemic that has disproportionately affected their communities, betting a strong turnout will boost his chances in states that could decide the election...

PERRYVILLE, Mo. — Sarah Lee Oakes, 89, of Perryville died Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020, at Perry County Memorial Hospital. Friends may call from 9 to 10 a.m. Tuesday at Perryville United Methodist Church. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the church, with the Rev. Kevin Barron officiating. Burial will be at 2 p.m. at Metropolis Memorial Gardens in Metropolis, Illinois...

O'FALLON, Mo. -- Missouri's health department reported more than 5,300 new coronavirus cases over the weekend, along with a positivity rate that remains alarmingly high. The dashboard for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services showed 185,535 COVID-19 cases, a rise of 5,335 from Friday. The death toll for the pandemic has topped 3,000. The dashboard shows 3,026 deaths; 82 over the past seven days...

Friends of U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson say he will fight his recently diagnosed lung cancer the way he fights for constituents and issues: head-on with a positive attitude; the eight-term Republican from Southeast Missouri's 8th District disclosed yesterday that he has lung cancer and plans to begin a series of treatments Friday at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C...

"Blessed is the righteous judge." Someone had painted this on the side of a building in lower Manhattan. It wasn't the first of my encounters with memorials to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I passed this one, though, the night after the Girl Scouts were pressured into taking back their congratulations to Amy Coney Barrett for succeeding the late Supreme Court justice on the court. ...

For now, Vladimir Putin has been supplanted as the chief threat to the integrity of the presidential election by an American in a black robe -- Brett Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court justice's concurrence in an Oct. 26 decision slapping down a district court's extension of a Wisconsin election deadline has been universally condemned by the center-left as a damning preview of an attempt by the court to hand the election to President Donald Trump...

Cape Girardeau County Rotary partnered with Southeast Missouri Food Bank to hold a mobile food distribution in midtown Cape on Saturday, Oct. 31. Rotary members -- some in costume for Halloween -- distributed boxes of food, bags of potatoes and frozen chicken to more than 200 families. ...