Stories from Monday, November 1, 2021

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday she has contracted COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms. Psaki, 42, said she was last in contact with President Joe Biden on Tuesday, when she met him in the White House, where they were more than 6 feet apart and wearing masks. Biden, who is tested frequently, last tested negative Saturday, according to the White House...

Four municipalities — Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Scott City and Delta — will ask voters Tuesday to approve a use tax, also known as a levy on internet (or online) sales originating outside of the State of Missouri. The use tax will be at the same rate as the sales tax already collected in each community at bricks-and-mortar stores...

Unemployment in Cape Girardeau County fell to 2.2% in September, the lowest monthly jobless rate since September 2019, when it was also 2.2%, according to the most recent figures from the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR)...

Dawn and Mike Kirby have bought Simply Swirled, 274 S. Mount Auburn Road in Cape Girardeau, assuming operations Oct. 18. The Kirbys already own Ty's Summer Sno shaved ice shops in Cape Girardeau and Jackson. "We recently finished our fourth season at Ty's and have enjoyed it immensely," Dawn Kirby said. "We saw the opportunity to take over (Simply Swirled) and see it as a parallel business."...

Southeast Missouri State University president Carlos Vargas announced Friday the campus community exceeded its 70% COVID-19 vaccination goal. As a result, the university will be closed the week of Thanksgiving, Vargas said, as promised in an Aug. 26 email announcing The Great SEMO Vaccine Give Away Get Away incentive program...

Proclaiming it a "happy day in the banking world," Jay B. Knudtson, First Missouri State Bank executive vice president and chief banking officer, lauded the news late last week an Internal Revenue Service proposed rule is now off the table. The Missouri Banking Association (MBA) told its members in a statement Friday the plan to require institutions to turn over financial information for accounts with inflows or outflows totaling more than $10,000 is no longer part of the most recent version of the House budget reconciliation bill.. ...

A recent unanimous vote from the East Cape Girardeau (Illinois) Board of Trustees approved an ordinance for businesses with liquor licenses to close earlier. Beginning on the morning of Nov. 10, the Lone Star Saloon and The Pony, the only current operating businesses with liquor licenses in East Cape Girardeau, will have to close at 1:30 a.m. ...

More than 16,000 people from around the world contributed to Barb Bailey and Aaron Horrell's collaborative mural commemorating Missouri's bicentennial. Now, the two artists want to help those who contributed to the mural to keep a piece of it for themselves...

Laura Coalter Parker of Coalter Insurance Group — a second-generation family-owned business founded in 1984 with offices in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Perryville — was elected by her Leadership Missouri peers to be their 2021 class president earlier this year...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Eighteen states filed three separate lawsuits Friday to stop President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors, arguing the requirement violates federal law. Attorneys general from Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming signed on to one lawsuit, which was filed in a federal district court in Missouri. ...

Abelardo's Mexican Fresh restaurant will open no later than Nov. 10 at 1740 Broadway in Cape Girardeau, according to owner and proprietor Jesus Flores. The previous eatery in that space, Mario and Angela's Italian Cucina, closed in July, with the Grippo family citing a long struggle in finding and retaining workers...

Today is Monday, Nov. 1, the 305th day of 2021. There are 60 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Nov. 1, 1765, the Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists...

O Heavenly Father, may all turn to you in life's storms. Amen.

The joke goes that a slip of the tongue for a politician means that they accidentally said what they actually believe. Now Democrats are trying to clean up the mess created by Virginia Democratic candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe when he said in a debate on Sept. 28, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."...

Democrats used to be the party of working people. Now, they sneer at people who work hard. Democrats pushing to pass the Build Back Better bill want a single parent with two kids to be able to take home well over $31,000 in cash and noncash federal benefits a year, tax-free, without having to work. The handouts are even higher in states that offer generous benefits. So why get a job?...

Shirley Jean Sander Dippold, 94, of Cape Girardeau died Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021, at Lutheran Home. She was born Oct. 27, 1927, to Charles Henry and Olga Minnie Meyer Sander in Jackson. She graduated from Jackson High School and attended Southeast Missouri State Teachers College until her husband returned from service in the U.S. Navy...

NEW YORK — How did Gordon Ramsay spend his pandemic lockdown? Getting frenetic in a kitchen, of course. The chef with a dizzying number of books, restaurants and TV shows was home in Cornwall, England, with mouths to feed last year when he did a series of lives on Instagram cooking meals in 10 minutes or less. The fast-moving endeavor he began on YouTube the year before culminated in "Ramsay in 10," his latest cookbook filled with recipes made against the clock...

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Dad bod, amirite, TBH and FTW are now dictionary-appropriate. Merriam-Webster has added 455 new words to its venerable dictionary, including several abbreviations and slang terms that have become ubiquitous on social media. "Just as the language never stops evolving, the dictionary never stops expanding," the nearly 200-year-old Springfield, Massachusetts-based company said on its website. "New terms and new uses for existing terms are the constant in a living language."...

TOKYO — A man dressed in a Joker costume and brandishing a knife stabbed at least one passenger on a Tokyo commuter train before starting a fire, injuring passengers and sending people scrambling to escape and jumping from windows, police and witnesses said...

Former President Donald Trump is trying to block documents including call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from his chief of staff relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection from being released to the committee investigating the riot, the National Archives revealed in a court filing early Saturday...

DALLAS — American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights Sunday for a third straight day as it struggled with staffing shortages and upended weekend plans for tens of thousands of travelers. By late afternoon Sunday, American had canceled more than 900 flights — one-third of its schedule for the day — after scrapping nearly 900 flights over the previous two days, according to tracking service FlightAware...

GLASGOW, Scotland -- A crucial U.N. climate summit opened Sunday amid papal appeals for prayers and activists' demands for action, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic negotiations by almost 200 countries aimed at slowing intensifying global warming and adapting to the climate damage already underway...

ROME — Leaders of the world's biggest economies agreed Sunday to stop funding coal-fired power plants in poor countries and made a vague commitment to seek carbon neutrality "by or around mid-century" as they wrapped up a Rome summit before the much larger United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Fraternity and sorority presidents at the University of Missouri were told last week fraternity events were allowed to resume Friday. The email from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life said events such as new member education and social functions may resume, The Columbia Missourian reported...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri sports teams are trying to put a proposal to legalize sports betting on the ballot, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday. A Jefferson City lawyer last week filed nine ballot proposals on the issue on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis Blues, St. Louis City soccer club and Kansas City Royals...

Two business license applications were received by the City of Cape Girardeau's community development office. n Rush Truck Centers of New Braunfels, Texas, to open Rush Truck Center, 403 Rambler Drive — formerly Summit Truck Group of Cape Girardeau. Opening date is listed as Dec. 13...

n First Friday Coffee will be hosted by the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber on Commerce on Friday at the Century Casino Cape Girardeau Events Center. Doors open at 7 a.m., with program starting at 7:40 a.m. A continental breakfast will be provided. The program, a workforce development update, may also be viewed remotely on Facebook Live...

n The Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce will note an anniversary for Pulse Fitness & Nutrition with a ribbon-cutting at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the chamber's offices, 220 N. Fountain St. n A ribbon-cutting will mark the grand opening of the The Bridge Church, 2125 William St., at 1 p.m. Friday, hosted by the Cape Girardeau chamber...

In 2018, Missouri adopted individual and corporate income tax reforms to be phased in over time. The fruits of those changes have improved the Show Me State's national ranking on corporate taxes from fifth to third. Overall, Missouri moved up three spots to 12th in the Tax Foundation's 2021 State Business Tax Climate Index (SBTC)...

The United Way of Southeast Missouri will hold "community conversations," to help guide the not-for-profit's next funding cycle, in various communities this month. UWSEMO reports new partners for the funding cycle will be identified prior to July 1 when the not-for-profit begins its 2022 fiscal year...

Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick reported the Missouri MOST 529 college savings plan has won a silver medal rating by Illinois-based Morningstar — one of 11 plans nationwide so recognized. Morningstar, an investment research concern, said in a published review MOST's "industrious approach to overseeing this plan buffers investors from the sharpest gales of the 529 industry."...

The name Etan Patz might not ring a bell, but the boy's disappearance in 1979 resulted in a cultural icon — pictures of missing children on milk cartons. Patz was 6 when he vanished while he walked to his school bus stop in New York City. More than 35 years later, a man who had been a clerk at a local bodega was convicted of killing the boy, though his body was never found...

The two leading candidates in the 8th District congressional race combined will spend an estimated $1.4 million, campaign officials say; business and agriculture political-action committees are major backers of independent-Republican candidate Jo Ann Emerson, Federal Election Commission records show; labor unions are the biggest contributors to Democrat Emily Firebaugh's campaign...

Today Nancy Pelosi said the Build Back Better plan will create 7 million new jobs. Employers can't find enough employees now no matter what the pay is. Every business is paying at least double what they paid just a few years ago. What would help is tie all welfare programs to employment. ...

For release immediately, with photo November 1, 2021 DARBY RECEIVES LIFE LEADER AWARD Kelly Darby of Jackson, a financial representative with Modern Woodmen of America, was Life Leader in the Missouri East Region for the month of October. Darby joined Modern Woodmen in November 2010. Modern Woodmen of America is a fraternal life insurance society headquartered in Rock Island, IL. Modern Woodmen provides life insurance, annuity, and security products to over 744,000 members nationwide...

For release immediately, with photo November 1, 2021 VOLKERDING RECEIVES LIFE APPLICATIONS LEADER AWARD Ken Volkerding of Jackson, a financial representative with Modern Woodmen of America, was Life Application Leader in the Missouri East Region in October...

Super great to have the grandkids here at Cape for Halloween 🎃