Soaring Heights Elementary School is a hot spot of activity this week as construction crews race to prepare the school for the first day of classes on Monday. “We’re doing construction work while the faculty’s moving into their classrooms all at the same time, so it’s a madhouse,” said Mike Johnson, the Joplin School District’s director of construction.

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A homeless man, who acted as a lookout during a burglary at Stone’s Corner Pharmacy and may have set a fire at a nearby business as a diversion, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

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A New York man was charged with kidnapping after a woman hailed a police officer in Joplin’s motel district Saturday night and reported being held against her will on a cross-country drive.

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Area law enforcement agencies — and some local taxi companies — are gearing up for what they expect will be a busy New Year’s Eve. And the goal is the same for officers and cabbies: keeping drunken drivers off the road.

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Missouri is preparing to start screening every newborn baby for congenital heart defects, although local medical personnel say they already have added the test to their list of checkup procedures for infants.

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Taxpayers in Missouri have one last day to pay real estate and personal property taxes without penalty, and that deadline has resulted in long lines in county collectors’ offices in Jasper and Newton counties.

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Missouri workers making the minimum wage will receive an automatic increase on Wednesday of 15 cents an hour, to $7.50 an hour. That’s 25 cents more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

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A Kansas City couple is having a very happy holiday season after winning a $71.5 million Powerball jackpot in the Christmas night drawing.

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The abduction and killing of a 12-year-old Golden City girl, the parking lot shooting of a university coach, and the murder of a Parsons, Kan., mother and her three children shocked the area as details of each story unfolded. The top headlines of the year, as selected by Globe editors and staff members, weren’t all crime-related, however.

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The documentary film “Deadline in Disaster” was named best foreign language film on Sunday at the third China Academy Awards of Documentary Film in Beijing. The film, which was screened in Joplin in 2012 and has been shown on Public Broadcasting Service stations across Missouri, follows the staff of The Joplin Globe in the aftermath of the May 22, 2011, tornado.

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