Jacob McCleland

St. Francis Medical Center genetic counselor Melanie Baxter says Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a preventive mastectomy is the right choice for her, but it might not be the right choice for other women.

On average, women have an 11 to 12 percent chance for developing breast cancer. Baxter says women like Angelina Jolie, who have a BRCA gene mutation, have an 87 percent chance of breast cancer. 

Members of the Missouri National Guard 1138th Engineering Company are at Southeast Missouri State University this week to hone their job searching skills. The 1138th just returned from  an eight-month deployment in Afghanistan on Sunday, where they cleared improvised explosive devices near Kandahar for other units.

This week’s workshop gives soldiers job seeking and  interviewing skills, and assists their transition to the civilian workforce.

Efforts to update Missouri’s criminal code have stalled in the state Senate, where Senator Tom Dempsey declared the bill is dead for this legislative session. The legislature will adjourn on Friday.

The criminal code is a compilation of the state’s criminal violations and punishments that are attached to those crimes. 

Patrick Starke is the president of the Missouri Bar Association, who helped write the bill. He said the criminal code is just “too big of a whale for the legislature to swallow” in the last few days of the session.

Chilly temperatures and wet conditions have put farmers behind schedule this year. Only 28 percent of Missouri’s corn acres and 17 percent of Illinois’ have been planted. By comparison, both states’ farmers had planted over 90 percent of their acres at this point last year.

Indi Braden is an agriculture professor at Southeast Missouri State University. She said the weather has not been cooperating.

Southeast Missouri State University’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is developing a new mobile platform for its Operation Jumpstart program to bring entrepreneurial training to more communities.

Operation Jumpstart has trained over 1,000 entrepreneurs who have started 350 businesses. With the web-based platform, Operation Jumpstart will reach individuals and communities that cannot attend face-to-face classes, and take advantage of digital technology to link budding business owners with mentors and coaches throughout the region.