WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers hired at a healthy pace in May for a fourth straight month, fueling hopes the economy will accelerate after a grim start to the year.
The Labor Department says employers added 217,000 jobs last month. That’s down from 282,000 in April, which was revised slightly lower.
But job gains have now averaged 234,000 in the past three months, up from only 150,000 in the previous three.
Despite the gains, the unemployment rate, which is calculated from a separate survey, remained 6.3 percent.
The job market has reached a significant milestone. Nearly five years after the Great Recession ended, the U.S. has finally regained all the jobs lost in the downturn.
Yet that’s hardly cause for celebration: The population has grown nearly 7 percent since then.
JOPLIN (AP) – A coroner has ruled the shooting death of a 3-year-old Joplin girl was an accident.
Newton County coroner Mark Bridges says Miranda Doerr was shot by someone Monday at her home east of Joplin.
Her 6-year-old brother was in the room with her but Bridges told The Joplin Globe that he can’t say definitively who shot the girl. He says he can only rule that she did not shoot herself.
Sheriff Ken Copeland says a loaded handgun was in the room where the children were playing. The mother was home but in another part of the residence.
PLATTE CITY (AP) – A man who ran naked and bleeding from a northern Kansas City apartment is now charged with stabbing his girlfriend to death.
Clay County prosecutors on Thursday charged 30-year-old Marcus J. Simms with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the April death of 31-year-old Michele Boldridge.
Boldridge’s neighbors told police they saw a naked, bloody man running around the complex yelling that someone was trying to kill him. Police say he later stole a minivan, and was captured after running the van off a road.
The Kansas City Star reports Boldridge has been in jail since Simms’ death and the new charges were filed after DNA tests linked him to the crime.
Online court records do not show that Simms has an attorney.
This is the first time Missouri has won the golden shovel award
Office of Missouri Governor
Jefferson City–Gov. Nixon today announced that Area Development magazine has named Missouri as one of only four states to receive a Golden Shovel award, recognizing the Show-Me State as a top state to attract high-value investment projects. Additionally, Cerner Corporation’s multi-billion dollar expansion in Kansas City is recognized as Area Development magazine’s Economic Development Project of the Year.
“From my very first day in office, I’ve focused on creating good jobs and growing our economy, so it is great to see the Show-Me State’s success continue to earn national recognition,” said Gov. Nixon. “This award is proof positive that with a highly-skilled workforce and favorable tax climate, Missouri has become a national leader in attracting the high-growth high-tech industries of the future.”
Last year, more than 125 companies announced expansions in Missouri and the state added nearly 44,000 jobs, resulting in a higher rate of employment growth than all of its surrounding states. Area Development cited Missouri’s favorable tax structure as a top reason for its growing jobs numbers. The magazine also noted Missouri’s strengths across diverse industry sectors including automotive, bioscience, information technology, energy, advanced manufacturing, life science, and transportation logistics.
This news follows Missouri’s recognition last month by Site Selection Magazine for ranking first in its region for attracting or expanding businesses.
Last August, Cerner Corporation announced plans to invest more than $4 billion to expand its Missouri campus, adding 15,000 new jobs. This monumental expansion is lauded as the largest economic development in project in state history and according to Southern Business & Development magazine, it is the largest expansion in the South’s history when it comes to jobs.
The Shovel Awards are given annually to recognize state economic development agencies that spur significant job creation and capital investments. Area Development selects the award winners based off each state’s top ten largest economic development projects. Projects are evaluated based on the number of high-value added jobs per capita, amount of investment, number of new facilities, and industry diversity of the 10 submitted projects. Gold Shovel Awards are given to the top state in each of four population categories. Missouri received the Golden Shovel award in the 5 to 8 million population category. Silver Shovel Awards are given to runners up in each category.
This is the first time Missouri has received the Golden Shovel Award from Area Development. The state received Silver Shovel Awards in 2007 and 2012.
They need no free speech protection — no government can forever silence their message. No dictator can prevent the living from taking notice. And no earthly authority can erase or demean their sacrifice.
Gene Policinski is senior vice president of the First Amendment Center
On several occasions recently, we are reminded of the men and women who sacrificed their lives for the greater good of many.
There are news reports from France, and the beaches of Normandy, on the 70th anniversary, June 6, 1944 — D-Day — and of the survivors then and their dwindling numbers today. There are the televised images of the flowering of free expression in China 25 years ago, in 1989, when student-led demonstrations showed the power of speech, assembly and petition — and of an indelible news photo from June 9 of one man standing up to a tank in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
And on June 9, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., we once again will be reminded that there are journalists from many nations, in many places, who risk their lives to gather and report information, and to offer informed opinion, so that “we” may know the news.
A number of international organizations, from the Committee to Protect Journalists, to Reporters Without Borders, to the International Press Institute and more, track and combat crimes against reporters, photographers and others who gather the news.
Those organizations also update regularly their lists of journalists who have been killed and imprisoned in a given year. This year, they report more than 20 journalists have been killed and more than 100 have been jailed. In 2013, as many as 77 journalists were killed, the groups say.
The Newseum’s Journalists Memorial — a gallery marked by soaring glass panels bearing more than 2,200 names dating back to 1837 — will add 10 representative names on June 9 to its long list. The memorial is intended to remind us of all of the deadly challenges facing journalists globally, from firefights to death squads funded by organized crime to kidnapping and execution by terrorists and political factions — of fatal wounds from shrapnel to death by bullets fired from speeding motorcycles to beatings with iron bars.
The stories from the Newseum’s biographies of this emblematic group are chilling testimonies to courage and commitment. Among those accounts:
Killers were waiting for Akmednabi Akmednabiyev, editor for Novoye Delo newspaper in Russia, outside his home in the volatile republic of Dagestan. He was shot in the head at virtually the same spot where he survived an assassination attempt six months earlier.
Helicopters circled overhead and clouds of tear gas filled Cairo streets as British cameraman Mick Deane — a 40-year veteran of reporting on war and world events — filmed a clash between security forces and supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Deane was shot by a sniper.
Philippines radio commentator Fernando Solijon, a relentless critic of government corruption, received an on-air death threat that “Your coffin’s already made” just hours before he was shot multiple times by gunmen who fled on a motorcycle.
Some weeks ago, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama said the event “reminds us that we really are lucky to live in a country where reporters get to give a head of state a hard time on a daily basis. … But we also know that not every journalist, or photographer, or crew member is so fortunate, because even as we celebrate the free press tonight, our thoughts are with those in places around the globe like Ukraine, and Afghanistan, and Syria and Egypt, who risk everything — in some cases, even give their lives — to report the news.”
On rare occasion, death visits journalists in the United States. In a corner of the Newseum’s News Corporation News History Gallery sits a small white car with a buckled hood, a driver-side door flung open, and the floorboard peeled up into metal shards — the result of a 1976 bomb that fatally injured Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. He had been lured to a meeting with a source who offered information on local mobsters.
In the Newseum’s 9/11 Gallery, the battered cameras and personal items of William Biggart can be found. Biggart, a freelance news photographer, was killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Biggart had rushed to the scene shortly after hearing about the attacks. His body was recovered near those of several firefighters.
The First Amendment protects freedom of the press and of speech — and the ability of critics of the news media to both to point out legitimate shortcomings and imagined slights.
But that valuable exercise in “monitoring the monitors” ought rightly to pause briefly on June 9, when the world is again reminded that journalism is a profession in which many face danger each day — and in every year, some make the ultimate sacrifice.
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Washington-based Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. gpolicinski@newseum.org
DALLAS (AP) — Health officials say a Texas patient is the fourth person in the United States to die of a rare brain disorder that is believed to be caused by consumption of beef products contaminated with mad cow disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in a statement that recent laboratory tests confirmed a diagnosis of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the patient.
The CDC says that in each of the three previous U.S. cases, infection likely occurred outside the U.S. And the center says the Texas patient’s history included extensive travel to Europe and the Middle East and suggests the infection occurred outside the country.
The CDC says that worldwide more than 229 variant CJD patients have been reported, with a majority of them in the United Kingdom and France.
The Texas Department of State Health Services says there are no state public health concerns or threats associated with the case. The CDC and DSHS are investigating.
The CDC says there is no known treatment for the disease and it is invariably fatal.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The authors of a book about the creation of Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir will discuss their work next week in Jefferson City.
Both lakes were created by damming the Osage River. The sprawling Lake of the Ozarks is formed by a power company dam. Upstream of the river, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the dam that created Truman Reservoir.
Crystal Payton and Leland Payton examine the effects of those projects on nature and society in their book, “Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.”
They will speak the evening of June 12 at the Missouri State Archives building in Jefferson City.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Anglers get to fish for free in Missouri and Kansas this weekend.
The Kansas City Star reports that Saturday is a Free Fishing Day in the two states, which means anglers won’t need a permit, trout stamp or trout park daily tag at most reservoirs and state fishing lakes.
But other regulations on such things as size and creel limits will still be in place, and some private fishing areas may also still require permits.
The annual promotion is part of National Fishing Day.
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill has canceled a planned trip to France for D-Day events because her husband is ill.
McCaskill’s office said Thursday that her husband was admitted to a hospital to treat an infection and is being kept overnight for observation.
As a result, McCaskill decided not to attend the 70th anniversary events commemorating the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France. The Allied forces invaded Western Europe during World War II on June 6, 1944.
McCaskill would have been the most senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to attend the ceremonies. Her father was a World War II veteran.
