Ozark Mountains

For decades, Missouri's charcoal industry has produced 80% of the nation's barbecue fuel in a crude process as old as the log cabin, cooking up the blackened wood in giant kilns that billow forth columns of black, acrid smoke. Now, Missouri charcoal makers have finally been tugged into the 20th century--agreeing, in a deal reached with state and federal regulators, to end one of the most visible examples of open-country air pollution.

For decades, Missouri's charcoal industry has produced 80% of the nation's barbecue fuel in a crude process as old as the log cabin, cooking up the blackened wood in giant kilns that billow forth columns of black, acrid smoke. Now, Missouri charcoal makers have finally been tugged into the 20th century--agreeing, in a deal reached with state and federal regulators, to end one of the most visible examples of open-country air pollution.

Until a couple of years ago, Richard Schoeninger was a dropout. He figured the system could get along fine without him and vice versa. His address used to be a post office box with an assumed name--Schoe. No first name, just Schoe. Then he decided he wanted to be mayor of Eureka Springs, a town of 2,000 nestled in the Ozark Mountains. He registered to vote at about the same time that he filed to run for office. He cut his hair and put on a pair of wing tips and a suit.

An appeals court upheld a ban on dances in the high school in the small Ozarks mountain town of Purdy in southwestern Missouri. U.S. District Judge Russell Clark had ruled that the nearly century-old ban on dancing unconstitutionally promoted the values of residents who opposed dancing for religious reasons. Most people in the area are religious conservatives.

An appeals court upheld a ban on dances in the high school in the small Ozarks mountain town of Purdy in southwestern Missouri. U.S. District Judge Russell Clark had ruled that the nearly century-old ban on dancing unconstitutionally promoted the values of residents who opposed dancing for religious reasons. Most people in the area are religious conservatives.

The leader of a white supremacist commune and four neo-Nazis he was harboring walked out of a heavily wooded Ozark mountain compound Monday and gave themselves up, ending a tense, three-day siege by more than 70 state and federal law enforcement officials.

The FBI is looking for a man believed to have sought a remote hide-out in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri with Oklahoma City bombing suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, CNN and Time magazine reported. The FBI wants to question Robert Jacques to help reconstruct McVeigh's and Nichols' activities leading up to the April 1995 bombing. The network released a sketch of a man believed to be Jacques.

A Missouri wildlife official has made the state's first documented sighting of a wild mountain lion since 1927, officials said Friday. Despite several reported sightings in recent years, biologists had never been able to prove that mountain lions were living in the wild in Missouri. But Jerry Elliott, an agent with the Missouri Department of Conservation, filmed a large cougar in the Ozark mountains of southeast Missouri this week.

Who Said What?: Waylon Jennings says he's had a lot of explaining to do since he was quoted on "60 Minutes" as saying, "Will the last one to leave Nashville for Branson (Mo.) please turn out the lights?" Jennings claims the remarks were aired out of context and misrepresent his feelings toward Nashville. He says he was repeating a "quote by my buddy Mel Tillis" in response to a question from a "60 Minutes" interviewer.

A Bible institute bus carrying about 38 worshipers went off an embankment and overturned in the Ozark Mountains on Friday night, killing five persons and seriously injuring at least seven others, authorities said. The crash, which involved only the bus, occurred about four miles north of Eureka Springs in northern Arkansas near the Missouri border, said Carroll County Deputy Rand Langhover. The bus was carrying worshipers from the Ozark Bible Institute in Neosho, Mo.

Until a couple of years ago, Richard Schoeninger was a dropout. He figured the system could get along fine without him and vice versa. His address used to be a post office box with an assumed name--Schoe. No first name, just Schoe. Then he decided he wanted to be mayor of Eureka Springs, a town of 2,000 nestled in the Ozark Mountains. He registered to vote at about the same time that he filed to run for office. He cut his hair and put on a pair of wing tips and a suit.

The leader of a white supremacist commune and four neo-Nazis he was harboring walked out of a heavily wooded Ozark mountain compound Monday and gave themselves up, ending a tense, three-day siege by more than 70 state and federal law enforcement officials.

It's hard to believe that it was only two years ago that Jennifer Lawrence, at 20, was in the running for her first Oscar. As Ree in "Winter's Bone," Lawrence cut a swath through the bloody Ozark mountains that no one will soon forget. The film, and her Oscar nomination, was an extraordinary coming-out party. Just as hard to believe that in such a short time - and seven films later - Lawrence is back for another round. This time with the win, taking home an Oscar for her off-kilter and impossibly energetic young widow in "Silver Linings Playbook.

The state Supreme Court on Monday postponed the execution of murderer R. Gene Simmons, who had pleaded after his sentencing last month that there be no such delays. The action came one week before Simmons, 47, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection for killing two people in Russellville during a 40-minute shooting rampage that left four others wounded on Dec. 28. It would have been the state's first execution since 1964. When he was sentenced on May 12, Simmons told Judge John S.