Missouri Congressman Todd Akin on Friday held a news conference to confirm what his campaign has been saying all week: he will not pull out of the race for Claire McCaskill’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

Akin has come under fire from supporters within his own party, and many large national campaign donors, after televised comments last week made him the subject of news stories across the country.

Akin has since said he used the wrong words, and apologized for his comments about rape and pregnancy.

During a news conference Friday afternoon in St Louis County, Akin said he’s going to win in November:

“We’re going to be here through the November election and we’re going to be here to win. There may be some negotiations but they don’t include me,” he said.

Akin pointed out that he won by six points in the GOP primary, despite being outspent. He says he’s staying in because he was elected by the state’s Republicans.

“We try to just stick with what’s the right thing to do. This is an election, not a selection.”

Akin made a brief statement, and the took just five questions from the assembled media.

St Joseph police now say there could be additional victims in the case of a school district employee who worked with children and who now faces charges of sexually abusing a young boy.

In a news release, Commander Jim Connors says new information has surfaced indicating there may be additional victims in the case. Connors says their investigation into the activities of Patrick D. Banks continues.

 

Banks, 24, was charged Wednesday with one count of Sodomy in the first Degree, Deviate Sexual Intercourse with a person under 14. He is being held without bond in the Buchanan County Jail.  He was arraigned via video on the original charge in Buchanan County Court on Friday.

Connors says police have conducted interviews with two more children as part of their ongoing investigation.

The original victim came forward after he and his mother moved out of town.  (click here for more)

Commander Connors says the victim in the original case was ten years old when the report was filed in July of this year.   The incident upon which the charges are centered is alleged to have occurred in St. Joseph between January 2010 and February 2012.

Connors says the two new victims in the case are slightly older than the first, but both are under the age of 14.

Banks has held several jobs within the St Joseph School District.  The District has placed him on paid administrative leave.

“None of the incidents in question occurred at any of Mr Banks’ places of employment,” Connors said.

 

City officials in Maysville are asking residents to conserve water.

At their Board of Aldermen meeting last night, they voted to ask residents to restrict their water usage.

That includes watering yards and gardens or adding water to swimming pools. They say any other way water consumption can be limited, residents should do so.

The board contributes the water restriction request to the level of a lake supplying the town with water.

Once that water level gets back to normal the restriction will be repealed.

 

Tropical Storm Isaac is expected to affect southern Florida as early as Sunday.

Four Midland Empire Chapter Red Cross volunteers will leave Friday to open shelters as families evacuate coastal and flood prone areas. More volunteers are on standby to deploy from our area.

Keith Hawxby, Robert Gergeni, Elaine Tretter and Don Crane will set-up evacuation shelters and care for people.

The Red Cross will be providing a safe place for people to wait out the storm and continue to provide safe shelter for people if Hurricane Isaac develops and hits the area flooding and destroying homes.

The St Joseph School District reports an increase of 20 students for the 2012-2013 school year. In a news release Friday, district officials pegged enrollment at 11,473.

Dr. Melody Smith, Superintendent of Schools, says the 1,004 kindergarten students enrolled this year are believed to be the largest kindergarten class since 1996. Smith calls that a positive sign for the future. The class was large enough that the district added four more sections since the first day of school.

The district’s elementary schools say an increase of 60 students for the year at 6,286 students. Middle school enrollment dropped by 29 students. In the high schools, enrollment increased by 42, at 3,279 students.

The number of English Language Learner students, who received English as a Second Language services, increased to 424 from 345 a year ago. The number of Language Minority students was up to 569 from 530 a year ago. These students who may be fluent in English but come from homes in which another language is spoken.

District officials say the seventh day enrollment figures are used to fine-tune staffing levels. Doug Flowers, the Director of Human Resources, says the process went smoothly, but said three teachers had to be moved to accommodate class size guidelines by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Formal arraignment is scheduled Friday for a 24-year-old St Joseph man accused of deviate sexual intercourse with a 10-year-old boy.

A charge of Sodomy in the first Degree, Deviate Sexual Intercourse with a person under 14 was filed Wednesday against Patrick Daniel Banks of St.Joseph.

Bond was originally set at $35,000, but on Thursday, a judge denied bond.

 

Commander Jim Connors of the St Joseph Police Department says in a news release that the victim and his mother moved from St Joseph to Vermont, where they contacted the Vermont Highway Patrol. Connors says the investigation required coordination and cooperation between the Crittenden Unit for Special Investigations in Burlington, Vermont and the St. Joseph Police Family Crimes Unit.

The incident is alleged to have occurred in St. Joseph between January 2010 and February 2012.

Connors says the investigation into this case began in late July when the St.Joseph Police Department was contacted by the Missouri State Highway Patrol who was following up on a contact they had from the Vermont Highway Patrol.

 

An automated telephone poll conducted Tuesday shows a dramatic turnaround in Senator Claire McCaskill’s fortunes.

But McCaskill is not buying it.

Based on a Rasmussen Reports poll of 500 likely voters in Missouri, McCaskill has jumped to a 10-point lead over her Republican challenger, Congressman Todd Akin, in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race.

On Twitter Thursday, the Senator indicated she doesn’t believe the poll, or the pollster.

Here’s the tweet: “Rasmussen poll made me laugh out loud. If anyone believes that, I just turned 29. Sneaky stuff.”

She offered a link to a news account of the president of Rasmussen Reports schmoozing with Karl Rove and other conservative luminaries just after the November elections — a sign Democrats say shows the pollster is biased toward Republicans.

This is the first poll since Akin’s televised comments about rape and pregnancy prompted many high-profile Republicans to urge him to quit the race.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey finds McCaskill earning 48% support to Akin’s 38%.  Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Forty-seven percent of those polled now voiced a “very unfavorable” impression of Akin, compared to 36% for McCaskill. Of those surveyed, just 11% had a “very favorable” impression of Akin, while 19% responded with a “very favorable” impression of McCaskill.

To see the wording of the survey, click here.

The following statement was released by Perry Akin, Campaign Manager for Todd Akin for Senate, in response to the Rasmussen poll released Thursday morning:

“The fact that Claire McCaskill is only polling at 48% after 72 hours of constant negative attacks on Todd Akin shows just how weak she is. If she can’t break fifty percent after a week like this, Democrats should ask Claire to step down. Todd is in this race to win; we will close this gap and win in November with the support of the grassroots in Missouri and across America.”