JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Health care plans would have to cover eating disorder treatments under proposed Missouri legislation.
State Sen. David Pearce of Warrensburg recently filed a bill requiring coverage for diagnosis and medically necessary treatment of the disorders. Coverage would include specialist services recommended by a patient’s treatment team.
Under the measure the Department of Insurance would be required to make an annual report to lawmakers regarding those insured and treated for eating disorders.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill that keeps the government operating over the next nine months.

The legislation was a bipartisan compromise that angered liberals and conservatives alike but avoided a government shutdown and put off partisan clashes over immigration to next year.

Ensuring a debate over immigration, though, the legislation only finances the Homeland Security Department until Feb. 27.

The bill was one of the last acts of Congress under the current Republican House and Democratic-controlled Senate. In January, the new Congress will return with Republicans in charge of both chambers.

The spending bill retains cuts negotiated in previous budget battles and rolls back some banking regulations. But it retains spending for Obama’s health care law and pays for the administration’s fight against Ebola.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Federal funds will provide $30 million for Alzheimer’s disease research at Washington University in St. Louis over the next five years.

The university announced Tuesday that the National Institutes on Aging and the National Institutes of Health have renewed grants that provide the funding.

The research includes an effort to identify biological changes or biomarkers that can detect the disease and track its progression. The goal is to start Alzheimer’s treatments years before patients develop memory loss and dementia.

Researchers hope to determine if sleep disruption accelerates development of symptoms and help predict when dementia begins. They are also looking at whether genetic variations can reduce the rate at which Alzheimer’s symptoms progress, and if those variations explain why some people with Alzheimer’s avoid memory loss and other cognitive problems.

MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, has detected spikes of methane in the planet’s atmosphere. That suggests something is producing or venting the scientifically tantalizing gas, but no one knows what.

Most of Earth’s atmospheric methane comes from animal and plant life, and the environment itself. So the Martian methane raises the question of past or present microbial life. Or the gas elevations could come from geological sources, comet impacts or something else entirely.

The latest study, released Tuesday by the journal Science, indicates there’s less than half the expected amount of methane in the atmosphere around Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater. But over a full Martian year, the rover measured fairly frequent occurrences of elevated methane levels — tenfold increases.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Christopher Webster led the international study.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest point in more than six years.
The state Department of Economic Development released data Tuesday showing the seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped from 5.9 percent in October to 5.6 percent in November.

That puts the unemployment rate at its lowest rate since May 2008.
Seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment grew by 4,500 jobs in November, bringing the number of new jobs for the year at more than 42,000.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Pittsburgh is declaring that President Barack Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab says Obama’s order in November designed to spare millions living illegally in the United States from deportation amounts to “unilateral legislative action” in violation of the Constitution. Schwab issued his opinion Tuesday in a criminal case involving an immigrant here illegally from Honduras.

The administration has said the new policy does not apply to criminal cases.

Schwab’s opinion puts forth some of the same arguments made by Texas and 23 other states in their challenge to Obama’s actions on immigration. Schwab was appointed by President George W. Bush.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler says he’s skeptical that Schwab’s opinion will stand.

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says approving the Keystone XL pipeline will top the Senate agenda in January. The issue could set up an early 2015 veto confrontation with President Barack Obama.

Congressional Republicans have been pushing for approval of the pipeline for years. Obama has resisted because of environmental concerns.

The pipeline would carry oil from Canada into the United States and eventually to the Texas Gulf Coast.

The Republican-led House has repeatedly passed legislation approving the pipeline. But the bills have died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republicans will take control of the Senate in January, and McConnell said approving the pipeline will be the first issue on the agenda.

McConnell said the pipeline would create jobs.