(AP)  The company owned by Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s husband purchased an airplane that she could occasionally use, the federal lawmaker disclosed Friday.

McCaskill’s office said Joseph Shepard’s company took possession of the single-engine Pilatus PC 12/47E a week ago and that it will be used primarily for his business. The plane also will be chartered for use by others by an independent charter company.

McCaskill spokesman John LaBombard said Friday that the senator was publicly and immediately disclosing the plane purchase.

“Any use of the plane by Claire will never be paid with taxpayer dollars, and Joseph has implemented strict safeguards to ensure every cost associated with the plane is paid fully and on time,” LaBombard said.

Shepard’s company is to file a personal property declaration for the airplane with the tax authority in St. Louis County on Jan. 2. An independent company will manage compliance and monitoring of tax and financial reporting and disclosures.

McCaskill is a former state auditor and won her first U.S. Senate term in 2006. She won re-election in 2012 by defeating Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Akin.

JEFFERSON CITY – The winning $71.5 million Powerball ticket from the Christmas Day drawing was sold at Autobahn BP in Platte Woods.

“This lucky location will receive a $50,000 bonus for selling this prize, so we are very excited for them, as well as the winners,” said May Scheve Reardon, executive director of the Missouri Lottery.

The winning numbers from the drawing were 23, 28, 38, 39, 56, and the Powerball number was 32.

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 1 million Americans are bracing for a harrowing, post-Christmas jolt as federal unemployment benefits come to a sudden halt this weekend.

The development entails potentially significant implications for the recovering U.S. economy and sets up a tense battle when Congress reconvenes in the new year.

For families dependent on cash assistance, the end of the federal government’s “emergency unemployment compensation” will mean some difficult belt-tightening as enrollees lose their average monthly stipend of $1,166.

Jobless rates could drop.

But analysts say the economy may suffer with less money for consumers to spend on everything from clothes to cars. Having let the “emergency” program expire as part of a budget deal, it’s unclear if Congress has the appetite to start it anew.

(AP)  Two people have been killed and four people were injured in a crash in southwest Missouri.

The three-vehicle crash occurred Thursday afternoon in Pineville. The Missouri State Highway Patrol says 20-year-old Bethany Boxx and 16-year-old Katelyn Boxx were killed in the crash. They were both from Bentonville, Ark.

The patrol says the crash occurred as two cars were northbound in U.S. 71 and one of those cars passed the other. The car in the back then struck the car in front, sending it crossing the center line where it collided with the victims’ van.

The patrol says four other people in the victims’ van sustained injuries ranging from minor to serious.

(AP) About 2,000 students have transferred from their home districts near St. Louis and more could follow suit in Kansas City, increasing pressure on Missouri lawmakers to address a broad school transfer law that requires struggling districts to pay for children to enroll in nearby higher-performing school systems.
Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey said tackling the law and unaccredited districts is a key priority for the legislative session starting Jan. 8.

“What we want is for our children to have access to a high quality education, and we would prefer that to be in their neighborhoods and communities,” said Dempsey, R-St. Charles. “It’s really how we get to those two questions where we devote most of our time this year.”

Under the 1993 Missouri law, districts without state accreditation must pay tuition and provide transportation for students who want to attend an accredited school within the same county or a bordering one. No exception is made for those without room. State education officials have offered voluntary guidance for implementing the law that includes advising districts to set class sizes and student-teacher ratios and to develop procedures giving applicants an equal chance for admission if there isn’t sufficient space.

The transfer law several times has gone before the Missouri Supreme Court, which this month upheld it for the third time. That has helped switch the spotlight to the state Capitol, where lawmakers previously have struggled to find consensus on education issues.
Several St. Louis-area lawmakers already have proposed identical measures that would let districts develop policies to control class sizes. They call for the State

Board of Education to separately accredit individual buildings within unaccredited school systems while requiring students to transfer first to a well-performing school within their home district before setting out elsewhere if there isn’t space. Accredited districts also could sponsor charter schools within unaccredited ones.

“These situations are no longer embodied in legal theories or hypotheticals,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from St. Louis County. “We are dealing with kids who are leaving their communities, going to other places (and) other districts are doing their best to accommodate them.”
Others have suggested different ideas. Among those is legislation from the Senate Education Committee chairman that also would require state involvement in provisionally accredited districts and would establish a “statewide achievement school district” to oversee struggling schools. A House education committee’s report suggested limiting the tuition unaccredited districts could be charged and prescribing the scope of receiving districts’ control over the numbers and conditions of transfers. Next month the State Board of Education also plans to discuss ideas for struggling schools.

Missouri’s three unaccredited school systems are Normandy and Riverview Gardens in St. Louis County and Kansas City public schools. Normandy is projected to run out of funds in March. Another 11 Missouri school systems have provisional accreditation, which includes districts outside the metropolitan areas.
Kate Casas, state director of the Children’s Education Council of Missouri, said discussion should be about how Missouri got to this point and possible solutions for that and not just the transfer law. She said if lawmakers let districts limit transferring students, then those seats need to be replaced with an equal number of alternatives such as charters, virtual education and private school choice.
Casas said there are things to address with the transfer law but that the status quo isn’t as problematic as simply repealing it would be.
“I don’t see the actual transferring of students from one school district to another as a crisis,” Casas said.
Student transfers so far have been limited to the St. Louis region but could start in Kansas City, where there are about 15,000 students in kindergarten through high school in a district unaccredited since 2012. Superintendent R. Stephen Green said transfers could cost $120 million to $150 million from a $238 million budget.
“The constant turmoil and turbulence, whether it’s the transfer law, the threat of takeover, all of those things threaten the stability of us continuing to move in the direction that we have shown we are moving,” Green said.
The most recent state data show 13 schools in Kansas City performed at the accredited level, six at the provisional level and 12 at the unaccredited level. Green said the district hasn’t determined whether there would be room in the highest achieving schools for more students.
Officials in districts near those that are unaccredited also are watching. Bob Bartman, superintendent of the Center School District bordering Kansas City and a former state education commissioner, said the district heard from about 100 families interested in transferring after Kansas City lost accreditation. There is space for about 100-200 students.
“They’ve got a calamity going on in St. Louis County that isn’t good for anybody, and it is certainly something that wouldn’t be helpful to our general region either,” Bartman said. “We need to find solutions that are long-term solutions.”

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A proof-of-citizenship requirement for Kansas voters is likely to come under attack once the Legislature opens its annual session in January.

But the debate over the policy championed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach also will play in out in federal court.

The law took effect at the start of 2013. More than 19,000 Kansas residents have their registrations on hold because they haven’t provided election officials with papers documenting their U.S. citizenship.

Several Democratic lawmakers have proposed rewriting or repealing the proof-of-citizenship law. Even some of Kobach’s fellow Republicans in the GOP-dominated Legislature want to look for ways to shrink the list of affected voters.

Kansas and Arizona also have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to compel a federal agency to help their states carry out proof-of-citizenship requirements.

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) — The North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Santa-tracking program logged 19.58 million unique visitors to its website on Christmas Eve.

NORAD said Thursday that volunteers answered 117,371 calls from children seeking information on the jolly old elf’s whereabouts. First lady Michelle Obama was among the program’s 1,200 volunteers.

An additional 146,307 followed Santa’s progress on Twitter. The program also got 1.45 million “likes” on Facebook.

Those numbers are up from last year when volunteers answered 114,000 phone calls from around the world. The website had 22.3 million unique visitors. NORAD Tracks Santa had 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 129,000 on Twitter.

The Christmas tradition of tracking Santa began in 1955 when a local newspaper advertisement invited children to call Santa but mistakenly listed the hotline of NORAD’s predecessor.