When I met Ernest Curry, he had already survived the tornado that struck St. Louis on May 16, the daily drip of water leaking through the tarped ceiling above his head. What I didn’t know then was that he would not survive much longer.
The Trump administration’s cuts to biomedical funding could have big repercussions for potential cures, including drugs that promise to ease Parkinson’s Disease. Several of the most promising drugs were developed with significant federal funding and under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health and the Parkinson’s Research Program — among dozens of research programs threatened by budget cuts.
An EF3 tornado roared across north St. Louis on May 16 and sent 81-year-old Ernest Curry scrambling inside his home. Like so many families displaced or living in damaged homes, Curry has received financial help that falls far short of what’s needed to rebuild. For older residents on fixed incomes, the gap can feel insurmountable.
In a Cold War-era experiment, men in protective suits in the mid-1950s pumped a cloudy substance outside the giant Pruitt-Igoe apartment complex. Many residents at the time associated the fogging with mosquito control efforts. It wasn’t until 40 years later that the government revealed that the workers had sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide, a potential carcinogen around the complex and in other St. Louis places as well.
Neighbors wrestle with the creek’s dark legacy and long history of being dangerously contaminated with radioactive waste. The radioactive materials came from a factory in downtown St. Louis that during World War II had enriched uranium for the first atomic bombs.
A horrifying 2017 death sparked calls for change. But people who work within the system say the state failed to make any significant reforms.
Trump’s tough-talking “border czar” vowed to round up, incarcerate and ultimately deport at least 1 million undocumented immigrants a year. For the thousands of undocumented immigrants in Missouri, now is a time of hard decisions that could alter their lives forever.
While lawyers are taking on cases, the program is now being termed as a pilot project. It’s not anywhere close to where the city could say legal representation is a right — at least not yet.
It was August three years ago. The U.S. military was pulling out of the Afghanistan capital. Tens of thousands of Afghans had gathered at the Kabul International Airport, hoping desperately to get on a military flight to the U.S. But as the throngs pushed, thousands were separated from their families.
A nonprofit, North Grand Neighborhood Services, and two decades of hard work by a two-man team and volunteers has helped cut vacancy in a North St. Louis neighborhood from 55 percent to less than 5 percent.