JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A new report shows Missouri’s jobless rate is ticking down.

Missouri Department of Economic Development data released Tuesday show unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent in January from 4.4 percent in December.

That’s also down compared to January 2016, when the jobless rate was 4.5 percent.

Data also shows Missouri is gaining more jobs. The state seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment reached more than 2.97 million in January, up more than 7,300 jobs from the previous month.

Employment was up more than 10,000 jobs in January compared with the same time last year.

The increase in nonfarm employment came as the seasonally adjusted civilian labor force grew by nearly 1,700 people from December to January. The labor force counts people with jobs and those who are on unemployment but looking for work.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis Alderwoman Lyda Krewson could be on the verge of becoming the city’s first female mayor after winning the Democratic primary election Tuesday.

Unofficial results show Krewson won 32 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating city Treasurer Tishaura Jones, who received 30 percent. Five other candidates, including Aldermanic President Lewis Reed and two other aldermen, were far behind.

St. Louis is overwhelmingly Democratic, and Krewson will be a strong favorite in the April 4 general election against Republican nominee Andrew Jones, who defeated two other candidates. Libertarian Robb Cunningham and Green Party candidate Johnathan McFarland also are on the April ballot.

Four-term incumbent Democrat Francis Slay chose not to run, creating a vacancy in the city’s top job for the first time since 2001.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say severe thunderstorms that raced across Iowa spawned tornadoes and left behind damage and power outages.

The Muscatine Fire Department says several homes and businesses were damaged Monday night as power lines were knocked down. The department answered several medical calls, but it’s not yet clear whether they were related to the weather.

The National Weather Service says tornadoes were reported in Clinton County, and a service employee reported sighting a twister southwest of the Davenport Municipal Airport in Scott County. The reports have yet to be confirmed.

A suspected tornado damaged a school in the south-central Iowa community of Seymour. A straight-line wind gust of 90 mph was reported near Belle Plaine in eastern Iowa. There were several reports of inch-diameter hail elsewhere.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Anti-Defamation League and several Jewish community centers across the country have received a new round of bomb threats.

New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce says there were five threats in New York City on Tuesday morning, including to the ADL.

The JCC Association of North America says several Jewish community centers got email or phone threats overnight and early Tuesday.

Federal officials have been investigating more than 120 threats against Jewish organizations in three dozen states since Jan. 9 and a rash of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries.

On Friday, they arrested a Missouri man accused of making at least eight of the threats nationwide, including one to the ADL in New York.

Authorities said that case involved a bizarre campaign to harass and frame his ex-girlfriend.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — Between 10,000 and 12,000 people left their homes Monday night in Reno County in central Kansas. Hundreds of other people were evacuated in other counties as fires burned 625 square miles.

Smoke from grass fires is forcing closures of a couple of short stretches of Interstate 70 in central Kansas.

Authorities say a one-mile length of the freeway in central Kansas’ Lincoln County was shut down Monday afternoon in both directions, as well as a short section of I-70 in nearby Ellsworth County. The Kansas Highway Patrol says traffic was being rerouted.

A section of U.S. 54 in south-central Kansas also was closed Monday because of smoke linked to a fire near a cotton gin and surrounding grassland. Pratt County’s emergency services chief, Mark McManaman, says crews have managed to contain the blaze Monday to what he calls “a huge pile” of cotton burrs near the gin, which has escaped structural damage.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback says the state faces a few more days of dry, windy weather that has made battling wildfires more difficult. Brownback said Tuesday that Kansas is seeing dry conditions across the state. He made his comments in a video posted on the state Division of Emergency Management’s Facebook page.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Crews plan to assess the damage Tuesday after the National Weather Service says at least two tornadoes touched down in Missouri.

Several homes were damaged or destroyed in the Kansas City area Monday night as a line of severe storms moved across the state.

Oak Grove Emergency Management Director Mark Sherwood says a tornado damaged about 20 homes in the town and 10 to 15 people suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

In Smithville, north of Kansas City, Police Chief Jason Lockridge says 20 to 25 homes were damaged. Local media reports also described damage to planes and hangars at the Johnson County Executive Airport in Olathe, Kansas.

The website for the utility company Kansas City Power & Light showed about 40,000 customers without power early Tuesday. That’s down from more than 100,000 late Monday night.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Payroll records show that Missouri’s former conservation chief is still getting paychecks even though he left the job more than seven months ago.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that records show that Robert Ziehmer already has received more than $87,000 from the state for doing no work.

He gets an additional $5,800 every two weeks as payouts that the newspaper says were not disclosed when he departed last July after nearly three decades at the department.

Ziehmer was paid $140,000 a year to oversee a staff of 1,450 full-time and 500 hourly employees.

The newspaper says documents show that the payouts to Ziehmer are the result of a separation-and-release agreement between Ziehmer and the Missouri Conservation Commission, which oversees the Missouri Department of Conservation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has signed a revised travel ban that temporarily halts entry to the U.S. for people from six Muslim-majority nations who are seeking new visas and suspends the country’s refugee program.

That’s according to White House spokesman Michael Short, who says the signing was done privately.

The new directive aims to address legal issues with the original order, which caused confusion at airports, sparked protests around the country and was ultimately blocked by federal courts.

The revised order is narrower and specifies that a 90-day ban on people from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen does not apply to those who already have valid visas.

The White House also dropped Iraq from the list of banned countries.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — With opioid abuse on the rise in Kansas, some officials are worried the state isn’t adequately prepared. A measure passed by the House last week and some preparations by state agencies could help.

The House bill would expand access to lifesaving drugs that stop overdoses by allowing first responders to carry and administer them. The state is also working to enhance addiction prevention and treatment.

Overdose deaths in the state more than tripled between 1999 and 2015, but Kansas still sees far fewer deaths than parts of the Northeast, Southwest and eastern Midwest that have been hit hard by opioid addiction.

The state is working on an action plan to deal with rising overdose rates and could get funding through a grant for prevention and treatment.