Without discussion, the Joplin Charter Commission on Tuesday night voted to approve a report of its findings that will be forwarded to the Joplin City Council. The commission was appointed by the council to review nine questions. Of those, the panel endorsed three charter changes.

The Neosho School District is asking residents in a new survey whether a proposed junior high school is needed. The outcome of the survey, which runs through early next week, could spur the Board of Education to place a bond issue for construction of the school on the April ballot, Superintendent Dan Decker said.

A Joplin man charged with second-degree attempted arson at a Joplin restaurant has pleaded guilty to the charge. Brian D. Ferguson, 28, who along with his wife, Haley, 28, owned The Bistro restaurant, 1710 E. 32nd St., was sentenced Monday in Newton County Circuit Court to three years in prison.

Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins is holding an Open House at her Pittsburg office on Friday, December 20, starting at 10:30 a.m. Her Pittsburg office is located at 1001 North Broadway Street.

Poetry penned and read by Missouri Southern State University professors will be featured in a special program at 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 19, on 88.7 KXMS.

The United Way of Southwest Missouri and Southeast Kansas awarded $240,000 in long-term tornado relief funds today to several non-profit agencies in the Joplin area.

U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)—the Chairman and ranking Republican member of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial & Contracting Oversight—today released the following joint statement after Charles K. Edwards, the Homeland Security Department’s Deputy Inspector General who is under investigation by the senators’ subcommittee, stepped down from his post…

Today, U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), both members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the first major overhaul of the government information technology (IT) procurement process in over a decade.

Kansas has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a new EPA regulation affecting stationary-source businesses and industries that generate greenhouse gases, Attorney General Derek Schmidt said today.

A former South Middle School science teacher will spend 28 years in federal prison after pleading guilty Friday to a charge of sexually exploiting a child victim to make pornography.