(Missourinet) – With classes underway in many schools across Missouri, the State Highway Patrol reminds motorists to watch for students.

Patrol Lieutenant Paul Reinsch said drivers must stay alert when they see a stopped school bus.

“It’s not only those school buses but it’s the drivers around them that we’re asking to be extremely cautious,” Reinsch said. “These children are excited they’re going back to school and they’re going to be eager to get out there and they’re going to make some mistakes. So we just ask the drivers to be careful.”

Reinsch said that in 2015, most traffic crashes involving drivers under the age of 21 happened between 3 and 4 p.m., when school typically ends. The Patrol reminds drivers to pay attention around buses and in school zones.

“One of the most dangerous times is when they get out of school and they’re unloading those school buses,” Reinsch said. “They’re very excited to get home, they see maybe parents waiting for them, maybe a dog comes running up to them, then the wind catches some paperwork, anything could cause that child to run out into traffic.”

Reinsch said that in 2015, one person died and 376 others were injured in school bus crashes in Missouri. He encourages parents to speak to their children about riding a bus, walking or driving to school in a safe manner.

Reinsch said driving is a full-time job and reminds motorists that texting while driving is against the law for anyone under the age of 22.

(Missourinet) – A group of 22 clergy members, known as the Medicaid 23, has been found guilty of trespassing, but not guilty of obstructing a government function.

After a three day trial in a Cole County Court and deliberating for four hours, the jury handed down its decision.

The Medicaid 23 staged a 2014 protest in the Missouri Senate chamber during debate, singing hymns and chanting, “Expand Medicaid.” The protest temporarily shut down debate in the Senate that day. The group refused to leave the chamber, leading Capitol police to arrest them.

Jefferson City state Representative Jay Barnes and Rod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP, served as defense for the Medicaid advocates.

Critics argue that the trial was racially motivated. Most of the protesters are African-American.

Sentencing is scheduled for Thursday morning. The protesters face fines or up to six months in jail.

(Missourinet) – Missouri businesses can get information about preparing for a federal overtime rule through a webinar being offered by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The rule, which begins in December, will extend overtime pay to those making up to $47,000 a year and working more than 40 hours a week.

Chamber general counsel Brian Bunten said several businesses have been asking questions about the rule.

“We had a large demand for something, some sort of insight from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce on how businesses and corporations and other entities are to respond to this new Department of Labor overtime rule,” Bunten said. “Folks are calling in and asking us questions. We are getting emails almost every day. Surprisingly, we are getting a lot of questions from local Chambers of Commerce because it impacts them too. It’s a very broad, far reaching rule.”

President Obama ordered the rule change earlier this year.

“No matter what type of enterprise you are engaged in, whether it’s for profit, non-profit, small or big, this (rule) probably has some sort of impact on you,” says Bunten.

Supporters of the rule say it will help workers receive a fair wage, while critics of the rule say it will force some employers to cut full time workers’ hours and benefits.

“I think a lot of our more established, larger employer members have the resources to kind of adapt and maybe bring people up to that threshold and it’s not a big deal. It’s the smaller employers and smaller entities who are members of the chamber who are reaching out to us and they are panicking,” Bunten said. “They don’t know what to do. They operate on slim margins as is. Now they’re being told by the federal government that you have to adjust how you run your business and they are pretty fearful.”

The 25-minute webinar is available until August 23rd to chamber members for $25 and non-members for $50. Labor law experts Randy Thompson and Anthony Grice with Husch Blackwell will give an in-depth perspective about the new federal rule and give advice about how employers should prepare.

The webinar is available on the Missouri Chamber’s website, www.mochamber.com. Webinar participants can also join a question and answer conference call at 10 a.m. on August 23.

(Missourinet) – The Missouri Transportation Department hopes to decide by the end of September which projects will be awarded funding through its cost share program. MODOT Director Patrick McKenna tells Missourinet more than 100 applications have been submitted for the Missouri Moves program, which would allow local governments to split with the state the cost of local infrastructure projects. More than $72 million in funding requests have been made, which surpasses the $20 million put into the program by the legislature and Governor Jay Nixon.

“What it does is it sets up a lot of disappointment too. There’s certainly a lot of needs out there, as expressed by the applicants. More applicants will get rejected that accepted,” says McKenna. “We understand that there is a great gap in need for transportation projects relative to the funding that exists today.”

The cost share program was re-launched this fiscal year, after a two year hiatus.

McKenna says the department will be fair when deciding which projects to select.

“The geographic distribution is that no one district can receive more than 25% of the funding. Three of our districts are primarily urban and four of them are primarily rural,” says McKenna.

Two-thirds of the program’s funding will go to road and bridge work, with the rest to things like pedestrian and bicycle paths.

The St. Louis district submitted the most applications, with 30 totaling $23.3 million in projects. The northwest district had six applications worth $6.6 million. The northeast district submitted eight applications, with a total request of $2.6 million. The Kansas City district had 18 applications, totaling $15.4 million. The central district submitted 16 applications, worth nearly $9 million. The southwest district’s 14 applications included $13.1 million in funding requests. The southeast district had 10 applications with $2.2 million in total requests.

The deadline to submit applications was the end of July. Local projects awarded funding must spend it by the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30.

(Missourinet) – The state’s largest utility plans to build electric car recharging stations along Missouri’s busiest travel corridor.

Ameren filed Monday with the Public Service Commission to construct five charging islands on I-70 between St. Louis and Booneville, as well as one in Jefferson City.

The outlets would be spaced 20-to-45 miles apart to accommodate the driving ranges of the vehicles. Ameren’s Mark Nealon said Kansas City and St. Louis are not currently connected by enough charging stations to allow continuous travel between the two cities.

“The whole purpose of our pilot project concept is to provide a fast charging means that tailors specifically to the long-distance driver,” Nealon said. “Especially given that what we understand will avail themselves to the consumer public in 2017 are the first EVs that offer a 200 mile driving range, and a price range of $30,000.”

Each recharging outlet would allow up to four customers to recharge their vehicles simultaneously.

“There will be a combination of what the industry calls ‘fast chargers’ and equipment that is the more standard speed type of charge,” Nealon said.

Fast charging will cost $2.50 for fifteen minutes while using the slower charging equipment will cost 30 cents for the same period of time.

Nealon said Ameren is planning to place the recharging stations in areas where amenities such as restaurants and shopping exist because the typical amount of time spent recharging electric cars is 25 minutes.  The stations will also offer every type of plugin utilized by electric car sold in the U.S.

A press release for Ameren said the first charging island would be constructed this year in Booneville with exact locations to be announced at a later date. The charging stations would let customer’s pay-at-the-pump through existing credit card swipe technology. The project’s estimated cost is $600,000.

James Owen, acting director of Missouri’s Office of Public Counsel said his agency is looking into the Ameren proposal. He said one possible concern is financing of the project.

“We’ve been involved with questions about, are (recharging stations) something that the average ratepayer should be responsible for when it’s only being used by people who drive electric vehicles?”

Owen also mentioned concerns over the heavy reliance on coal power to supply electricity for stations.

“It promotes the use of coal power which a lot of people say we should be moving away from,” Owen said.  “Ameren is still a very coal heavy utility.”

(Missourinet) – The state is warning residents about hackers who are freezing computers, and then demanding money to unlock the devices.

Joe Bindbeutel with the Missouri Secretary of State’s Consumer Protection Division notes there have been about three-dozen complaints from people who have fallen victim to a scam known as “ransom-ware”.

“(It’s) a program that gets into your computer and essentially locks it down that you can’t use it,” Bindbeutel said. “The scammers can then offer to free-up that virus for an amount of money. It’s a very effective scam because once they’ve locked you down, it is very difficult to unhook that virus and get your computer back running.”

The ransom-ware scams are typically packaged in email messages where the recipient is encouraged to click a link to get information about an offer. Once the computer connects to the link, the virus is downloaded.

Bindbeutel said the hackers then have an advantage over frustrated consumers.

“Lots of folks that fall to this have decided to actually to go ahead and pay the ransom, which is unfortunate.  That just encourages more ransom scams,” Bindbeutel said.

Bindbeutel also notes the current outbreak of scams appears to be aimed at individuals with personal computers rather than businesses, which often have mechanisms in place to protect against security breaches.

“Sometimes a ransom can be very significant, but the ranges we’re seeing on most of these, the total amount of ransom is under $1,000,” Bindbeutel said. “So that obviously is focused on individual users.”

(Missourinet) – Researchers at the University of Missouri are serving as a Zika resource for the state.

There are only four reported cases of the virus not related to travel in the continental U.S. – all in one neighborhood in Miami, Florida.  But the mosquito which carries the disease could reach other parts of the country, including Missouri.

Dr. Christelle Ilboudo with the MU School of Medicine said the insect, known as the Aedes mosquito, can be found in the southern part of the state.

“Just based on the pattern and the temperature that the mosquito needs, the pattern that the mosquito needs, this is a mosquito that’s been found in the state of Missouri in the past,” Ilboudo said. “So it is a mosquito that’s around here.”

Ilboudo thinks the virus is unlikely to spread around the country because the U.S. has better public health controls than Brazil, where the outbreak started last year.

“Old tires is an example that some of the people in Brazil were giving where you just have enough water standing there that the mosquitoes can go in and reproduce, and continue to spread infections,” Ilboudo said.

The insects need shallow, calm water to multiply and carry the virus.

Ilboudo notes people who contract Zika typically don’t even know they have the virus.  She said

“Four-out-of-five people have no symptoms, so people do not even know that they’ve been infected by (the) Zika virus,” Ilboudo said. “Out of those that are infected, we really get more concerned about pregnant women or people who are trying to get pregnant, because that’s where we see the most long term damage.”

The main concern with Zika is its link to birth defects.  The disease can cause Microcephaly in pregnant women, which can prevent a baby’s brain and head from developing properly.

As part of its function as a resource for Zika, MU Health Care is offering informational links:

http://www.muhealth.org/zika

(Missourinet) – A state lawmaker is highly critical of a new ranking which places Missouri in the top 10 for election management.

Secretary of State Jason Kander announced this week the state had climbed from 13th to 8th place in the Pew Elections Performance Index.

The state was given high marks in five categories, including online voter registration and low rates of voter registration and ballot rejections.

But Representative Shamed Dogan of Ballwin thinks the index is flawed because it fails to consider elections where large numbers of people weren’t allowed to vote.

“There’s nothing in this index that Pew put together that seems to take into account actual voter disenfranchisement, which is kind of shocking,” Dogan said.  “I think it kind of renders all of these other criteria they’re basing their judgments on pretty irrelevant.”

In April, 60 precincts in St. Louis County were issued incorrect or too few ballot for an election.  A similar problem occurred in 2014, the year the index is based on.  Dogan contends Secretary Kander is not taking responsibility for the problem.

“He takes credit for all the good things that happen, and he takes none of the blame when there are screw-ups,” Dogan said.

Dogan further said there are significant problems in the Secretary of State’s office under Kander’s watch.

“Their registration data base has lots of flaws, and just the lack of communications from his office,” Dogan said. “Local election authorities on both sides of the isle testified to our election task force that that was the case. Based on his performance as Secretary of State, I don’t think it’s appropriate for him to be seeking higher office.”

Kander’s the Democratic nominee in this fall’s U.S. Senate race.