Missouri

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday tentatively threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman for her role in a cruel Internet hoax on a teenage girl who ended up committing suicide. The decision by U.S. District Judge George H. Wu, which will not become final until he files a written ruling, was a blow to prosecutors who had hoped to send the message that cyber-bullying is a crime. Wu had repeatedly delayed sentencing to consider a defense motion to dismiss the entire case. U.S. Atty.

Intent on dismantling affirmative action, activists in five states have launched a coordinated drive to cut off tax dollars for programs that offer preferential treatment based on race or gender. The campaign aims to put affirmative action bans on the November ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The effort is being organized by California consultant Ward Connerly, who has successfully promoted similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington.

No one will ever confuse Jim Murray with a teenager. His tall frame, broad shoulders and clipped, gray hair give him away for the grandfather he is. But the 69-year-old retired police chief of this small Missouri farm town cuts a credible figure as a 13-year-old girl surfing the Web, looking for friends. He knows all the instant-messaging shorthand, the emoticons. Murray's retirement job from a rural home office has netted 20 arrests since he started in 2002.

John Edwards has heard the question for nearly a month from cable television correspondents, national newspaper reporters and small-town scribes. On this night in southwestern Missouri, it comes after a rally at a Teamsters hall, where the Democratic presidential candidate has just brought union workers, teachers and farmers to their feet, shouting in affirmation.

On behalf of John McCain, Tom Kuypers does his best. Addressing three dozen of his fellow members of the Pachyderm Club, a Republican organization that met Friday in the back room of a Golden Corral restaurant here, Kuypers, 69, talked movingly about McCain's service in Vietnam. Flashing polling data he found on the Internet, he argued that McCain had the best chance of winning the general election.

Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton wrote a goodbye note Thursday, one sentence on a single piece of paper: "The truth will win in the end." He laid it on his bed. Then he climbed into the aging ambulance he liked to drive and set out for City Hall. Within minutes, Thornton would kill five Kirkwood officials and injure two others, including the mayor, in an attack that shattered this quiet suburb. Police and witnesses said that shortly before 7 p.m.

As floodwaters slowly receded from much of Iowa on Wednesday, authorities focused their attention on a swollen Mississippi River that punched through at least two levees in western Illinois and increasingly threatened hamlets in Missouri. Federal officials said as many as 30 levees were in peril, mostly in rural stretches of northern Missouri and western Illinois. No large population centers were threatened. "The concern now is the Mississippi River between the Quad Cities and St.

Flooding continued to rip apart small towns along the Mississippi River on Friday as urban areas were spared -- the flood highs in St. Louis were about 10 feet below expected near-record levels. Some small communities were protected by levees that were not designed to hold back such high waters and couldn't resist the river. Others had no protection at all and saw the Mississippi claim what it wanted.

Bill and Virginia Russell woke up Friday morning at his brother's place. It was messy and cramped. But it was also high in the hills above the ungovernable Mississippi River, which, at present, was coursing through the couple's split-level ranch house on the flood plain below. Their four dogs were in a small pen in the brother's backyard, safe and dry. The cat was around somewhere. So far so good.

Twelve hours earlier, Spc. Mike Bruno was frantically hoisting sandbags onto a makeshift levee under the scalding sun, trying to protect this town of old brick storefronts and Victorian houses from the raging Mississippi. Now the National Guardsman leaned back in a plastic chair, propped up his boots on a wooden sawhorse and enjoyed the cool evening breeze. His new task: Every 30 minutes he needs to stand, walk a dozen paces and check the fuel levels in the nearby motorized pump.