News

SSM Health Care will not Hire Smokers Starting in July

A St. Louis-based health care organization says it wants to improve the health of its employees and set an example, so smokers need not apply.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that SSM Health Care will begin a tobacco-free hiring policy in July.

St. Louis-based Midwest BankCentre has settled a case with the Justice Department over alleged redlining in its lending practices.

Under the settlement the bank has agreed to open a branch in Pagedale and invest  a total of $1.45 million in predominantly black neighborhoods.

Eric Halperin is special counsel for the Justice Department.  He says racial discrimination in the lending market has increased as the economy continues to struggle.

Above: A National Weather Service map of projected flooding along the lower Missouri River, based on an average amount of summer rain, falling in a concentrated time period. This map assumes a river elevation of 37 feet at St. Charles, three feet below the 1993 record. Flood stage at St. Charles is 25 feet. Click here to see a larger version of the map.

The U.S Army Corps of Engineers says we can expect only minor flooding along the lower Missouri River if we get average rainfall through August - but, a stormy summer could change all that.

Back in April we told you that former St. Louis County Planning Commission chair, Douglas Morgan, 65, from Chesterfield, had been indicted on a charge of federal bank fraud.

With that charge, Morgan could face a maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison and/or fines up to $1,000,000 if convicted.

Today, the Eastern District of Missouri division of the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a release that Morgan now faces an additional charge: wire fraud.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security says the state's unemployment rate increased to 8.9 percent in May. That's up from 8.7 percent just a month earlier and the first monthly increase since January 2010.

The department said Thursday in its monthly release on the statewide unemployment picture that: