Stories from Thursday, January 25, 2018

Nearly two dozen citizens gathered before a closed session meeting of the Poplar Bluff City Council Wednesday evening following the release of building assessments last week of Northwest Medical Center. City Manager Mark Massingham confirmed this morning Northwest Medical Center was on the agenda of the private meeting, but said no votes were taken and he could not comment further on discussion...

VAN BUREN, Mo. -- Carter County commissioners say they will decide the fate of the community's historic courthouse after final data regarding funding and costs to recover from an April 2017 flood is gathered. The courthouse and a justice center were the main topics Wednesday of a community meeting that drew approximately 100 people to the Van Buren Youth and Community Center...

Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center CEO Bryan Bateman has been on the job a little over a month and already has several goals in place for the next couple years. His immediate goal Bateman is to get to know the entire hospital staff. "I know there are 1,400 people here, but it's important to me," he said...

Sacred Heart Catholic School in Poplar Bluff has cancelled classes through Friday due to widespread illness among faculty and staff. School officials said the decision to close school is to give everyone a chance to recover. Classes are scheduled to resume on Monday...

To the Editor, St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans , Durham and Memphis. These were cities in the U.S. in which Confederate monuments were removed in 2017, most in the dead of night. In Memphis, it was even more tragic. A Shelby County , Tn, Commissioner formed a "non-for-profit" corporation, that "bought" the land from the City of Memphis for $1000.00 and then tore down the monuments to Jefferson Davis and General Nathan Bedford Forrest. ...

BY MICHELLE MALKIN It's elementary. Education control freaks will use any excuse to crack down on competition. With two million K-12 students now educated at home (including our 9th grade son), the temptation to exploit the most marginal cases of alleged child abuse by home-schoolers has proven irresistible to statist politicians and government apologists...

WASHINGTON -- During World War I, chemist James Conant was deeply involved in research on what was considered the worst imaginable weapon: poison gas. During World War II, as a science adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, Conant was so central to the development of the atomic bomb that he was at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. ...

PUXICO, Mo. -- Cleo M. Hargrave, 89, of Puxico died Monday, Jan. 22, 2018 at the Puxico Nursing Home. Visitation will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Morgan Sifford Funeral Home Chapel followed by the funeral at noon also in the chapel. Scott Sifford will officiated. Burial will be in Morgan Memorial Park in Advance...

By MARK SKELTON Mo. Dept. of Conservation With all portions of deer season coming to a close, there is still some work to be done. Hunters of public lands owned by the Missouri Department of Conservation should keep in mind the regulation for tree stand removal. All tree stands left on department areas must be removed from the area before Feb. 1...

By PAUL DAVIS Outdoors Editor Ducks and geese have returned to Southeast Missouri in a big way after all the widespread ice melted over the weekend. When everything was locked up with ice, there were very few birds hanging around what open water they could find, which was mostly on the rivers and a few isolated pockets in the open...

Haven House, Inc of Poplar Bluff will host its annual Volunteer Training and Orientation Tuesday. For more than 30 years, the non-profit organization has served as the only designated domestic violence shelter in a five county area. In 2017, the organization provided assistance through its hotline to more than 1800 persons in need of help due to domestic violence or sexual assault. The program employs 12 full time positions...

Tanner Dunivan dressed in the Dallas Cowboys locker room, walked onto the field at the massive AT&T Stadium and played one more game of high school football Monday night. "Walking in there and everything is a little intimidating," the Poplar Bluff senior said of the 100,000-seat stadium in Arlington, Texas...

Katelyn South can already do something most college players can't. The Twin Rivers shooting guard is skilled enough with both hands, that she's been known to drive and shoot a floater with either her left or right hand. South added that she shoots a gun left-handed, plays pool and cuts scissors left-handed, but writes right handed...

A new partnership between area medical programs offers veterans more ways to learn about their veterans administration benefits. John J. Pershing VA Medical Center will offer a telebenefits program through an effort with the St. Louis Regional Office...

DONIPHAN -- The Doniphan boys basketball team moved into a three-way tie atop the Ozark Foothills Conference standings with a 79-52 win over Naylor on Wednesday night. The Dons, Neelyville and Twin Rivers all sit at 3-1 in conference play with the Tigers set to play at Doniphan on Tuesday...