Rachel Lippmann

The former director of Missouri's 21 adult prisons has been shot and killed.

Tom Clements, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections since 2011, was shot and killed at his Colorado Springs-area home on Tuesday night. The shooter was still at large Wednesday.

The El Paso County sheriff's office says Clements was shot when he answered his front door around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. A family member called to report the shooting. Clements was dead when officers arrived at his home.

Members of the military enrolled at two St. Louis-area universities will continue to get a break on their tuition, despite the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester.

Four of the five branches of the military suspended future grants earlier this month to meet the sequester requirements - but Lindenwood and Webster universities say they'll use their own resources to replace the federal tuition assistance program. 

Here are a few fast facts about what's involved:

Updated at 12 p.m. with comments from Dogtown Business Merchants Association.

Thinking of bringing your cooler to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dogtown this year? Don't.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Clayton-Tamm Neighborhood Association, and the Dogtown Business Merchants Association announced today an outright ban on coolers being brought into the annual event. It's the first time such a ban has been implemented in the parade's 29-year history.

The head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis says he is "delighted" with the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

White smoke from the Sistine Chapel  announced the selection of a new pope  just about 1 p.m. local time. Bergoglio's name was revealed about an hour later. Until today, he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

When the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its most recent data on sexually transmitted infections, the numbers once again showed bad news for St. Louis.

Chlamydia cases in the region climbed by almost 6 percent between 2010 and 2011. Gonorrhea was up 17 percent. That’s nothing new, especially in the city itself, which is consistently among the top five of infections per capita.

How do rates get so high in the first place? And how do you get them down after years above average?