Tag Archives: Missouri

Muslims raise $78,000-plus for vandalized Jewish cemetery in Missouri

Local and national media report on more than 170 toppled Jewish headstones after a weekend vandalism attack on Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, U.S. February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Muslim Americans have helped raise more than $78,000 to repair vandalized headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, according to an online fundraising page, amid attacks and threats against Jewish institutions.

About 170 headstones were toppled or damaged at the century-old Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery over the weekend, according to cemetery staff.

Some Jewish groups described the vandalism and threats as the latest evidence that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. His campaign last year drew the support of white nationalists and right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

“Muslim Americans stand in solidarity with the Jewish-American community to condemn this horrific act of desecration,” the fundraisers said on their website. More than 2,700 people had donated $78,546 as of Wednesday afternoon.

Jewish community centers across the United States have reported a surge in bomb threats, all of which have so far proved to be hoaxes. On Wednesday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish advocacy groups, said its national headquarters in New York City received an anonymous bomb threat but was later given the all clear.

Trump condemned the threats as anti-Semitism for the first time on Tuesday after repeatedly declining to do so when asked by journalists last week. Some Jewish organizations have criticized his approach, saying they fear that the groups that supported Trump had become more active.

The fundraising effort was launched by Linda Sarsour, a liberal political activist, and Tarek El-Messidi, the founding director of Celebrate Mercy, a non-profit organization that teaches the public about Mohammad, the founder of Islam.

On Tuesday night, Sarsour posted on Twitter that she was raising the funds “in solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers.”

Sarsour was a supporter of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his bid to become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and went on to become one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, which drew record crowds to the capital on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration.

Cemetery staff, who did not respond to a request for comment, were still calculating the cost of repairing the damaged tombstones as of Tuesday. The organizers of the fundraising campaign said they would donate any excess funds to repair “any other vandalized Jewish centers.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; editing by Grant McCool)

Trump issues first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents

Alveda King (C), the niece of slain U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., praises U.S. President Donald Trump as he visits the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, U.S., February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States on Tuesday after a new spate of bomb threats to Jewish community centers around the country and vandalism in a Jewish cemetery.

Several of the centers were evacuated for a time on Monday after receiving the threats, the JCC Association of North America said, and another center was evacuated on Tuesday morning in San Diego, California, according to police.

Also, vandals toppled about 170 headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, over the weekend.

“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Trump told reporters.

He was speaking at the end of a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, which Trump said showed “why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms.”

The comments marked a change for Trump, who had not explicitly and publicly condemned the threats against Jews when asked last week. Instead, he spoke more generally about his hopes of making the nation less “divided.”

The president reacted with anger at a news conference last week when a journalist from a Jewish magazine asked how his government planned to “take care” of a rise in threats.

Trump berated the reporter for asking a “very insulting” question, appearing to believe the reporter was accusing him of being anti-Semitic.

“Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” the president said, adding that he was also the least racist person. Trump has often noted that one of his daughters is a convert to Judaism, he has Jewish grandchildren and he employs many Jews in his business.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a close adviser to her father who practices Orthodox Judaism, responded to the latest threats in a message on her Twitter account on Monday evening.

“America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance,” she said. “We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers.”

On Tuesday, Trump again declined to answer a question about what action he would take to address the threats to Jewish organizations. Sean Spicer, a White House spokesman, said later that Trump would respond through “deed and action” over the coming months and years.

‘BAND-AID’

Trump’s derogatory campaign rhetoric against Muslims and Mexican immigrants won enthusiastic backing from prominent white supremacists who embrace anti-Jewish, anti-black and anti-Muslim ideologies. It also drew greater media attention to fringe extremist groups.

Trump has disavowed their support. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is the former publisher of Breitbart, a news website popular among right-wing extremist groups.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York, which has criticized the Trump administration repeatedly over anti-Semitism, said his comments were too little too late.

“The president’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” Steven Goldstein, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Spicer rejected the characterization.

“I wish that they had praised the president for his leadership in this area,” he told reporters when asked about Goldstein’s comment. “Hopefully as time goes by they’ll recognize his commitment to civil rights.”

Jewish groups criticized the White House for omitting any mention of Jews in its statement marking Holocaust Memorial Day last month. The White House said the omission was deliberate since the Nazis also killed people who were not Jews, if in smaller numbers. The stated goal of the Nazis was the extermination of Jews.

One day after speaking at a security summit in Munich, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence spent Sunday morning walking through the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany with a camp survivor.

Over the course of the U.S. Presidents Day holiday on Monday, bomb threats were sent to 11 Jewish community centers, including ones in the Houston, Chicago and Milwaukee areas, according to the JCC association. They were found to be hoaxes, as was another threat that forced the evacuation of a center in San Diego on Tuesday morning, according to police.

No arrests were made. The FBI has said it is investigating recent threats as “possible civil rights violations.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim human rights group, has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone behind the threats, saying Muslims felt a duty to support any targeted minority group.

The incidents on Monday followed three waves of bomb threats so far this year. In all, at least 69 incidents at 54 Jewish community centers in 27 states and one Canadian province have been reported, according to the JCC association.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Tom Gannam in St. Louis and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Frances Kerry and Jeffrey Benkoe)

U.S. cities move to curb lead poisoning following Reuters report

Environmental Protection Agency signs that read "DO NOT play in the dirt or around the mulch" are seen at the West Calumet Complex in East Chicago, Indiana, U.S.

By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cities and towns across the United States are taking action after a Reuters report identified thousands of communities where children tested with lead poisoning at higher rates than in Flint, Michigan.

From California to Pennsylvania, local leaders, health officials and researchers are advancing measures to protect children from the toxic threat. They include more blood-lead screening, property inspections, hazard abatement and community outreach programs.

The University of Notre Dame is offering a graduate course to study and combat local poisoning problems the report helped bring to light.

“This has just laid out that it’s not just a Detroit issue, it’s not just a Baltimore issue,” said Ruth Ann Norton, president of Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, a Baltimore-based nonprofit. “This started conversations with mayors and governors.”

In an investigation last month, the news agency used census tract and zip code-level data from millions of childhood blood tests to identify nearly 3,000 U.S. communities with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint. More than 1,100 of these neighborhoods had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher than in Flint.

A Reuters interactive map, built with previously unpublished data, allowed users to track local poisoning rates across much of the country for the first time. In many areas, residents and officials weren’t previously aware of the scope of local children’s exposure. The poisoning hazards include deteriorating lead paint, tainted soil and contaminated water.

To read the December investigation and use the map, click here:  http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-testing/

Flint’s lead poisoning is no aberration, Reuters found, but one example of a preventable health crisis that continues in hazardous spots in much of the country.

Lead poisoning stunts children’s cognitive development, and no level of exposure is considered safe. Though abatement efforts have made remarkable progress in curbing exposure since the 1970s, children remain at risk in thousands of neighborhoods.

In South Bend, Indiana, for instance, the data showed several hotspots. In one tract, 31.3 percent of small children tested since 2005 had blood lead levels at or above 5 micrograms per deciliter, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s current threshold for elevated levels in children under age 6. Children at or above this threshold warrant a public health response, the CDC says.

Across Flint, 5 percent of children tested had high levels during the peak of the city’s water contamination crisis.

After Reuters published its findings, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg held a press conference with county health officials to address local poisoning. Several actions followed:

– County health officials have begun a surveillance effort to track childhood blood-lead testing, encouraging more screening.

– Officials plan to press for an Environmental Protection Agency grant to boost environmental testing and lead abatement.

– Notre Dame is offering a semester-long graduate level class for students to research the local poisoning problem and assist health officials. A summer research program, “Get the Lead Out,” will send students into homes to measure lead in paint, dust, soil and water and inform families about risks. These programs will help pay for hundreds more childhood blood lead tests, after testing stalled due to funding shortfalls.

“Everything has moved into fast-forward pace here since your story,” said Heidi Beidinger-Burnett, a county health board member and professor at Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health. “We are acting with a sense of urgency because kids here depend on it.”

Other officials in Indiana are exploring additional measures to protect children. State Senator Jean Breaux introduced a bill this week to compel the state health department to double blood lead screening rates among Indiana children enrolled in Medicaid. The screenings are required for Medicaid-enrolled children, but major testing gaps remain.

CALIFORNIA REACTS

In Oakland, California, 7.57 percent of children tested in the Fruitvale neighborhood had high lead levels, a result largely of old lead paint or tainted soil.

Two Oakland council members introduced a city resolution Jan. 12 that, if approved, will require property owners to obtain lead inspections and safety certifications before renting or selling housing built before 1978, when lead paint was banned. Oakland would also provide families in older homes with lead safety materials, and urge more blood screening.

“We need to address that issue, that’s the bottom line,” said councilman Noel Gallo, who grew up in Fruitvale.

Larry Brooks, director of Alameda County’s Healthy Homes Department, wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial that “Oakland has thousands of lead-poisoned children.” Before the Reuters report, he added, “whispers about potential lead poisoning in Oakland were dismissed as an ‘East Coast phenomenon’ or a crisis contained to Flint.”

The Reuters analysis found high poisoning rates in spots across Texas, where the office of Austin City Council member Delia Garza said she may use the information to press for more aggressive lead abatement measures. City officials are urging the state health department to release more blood testing data.

Local data can detect clusters of poisoned children who remain hidden in the broader surveys states usually publish. The news agency obtained local data covering 21 states, and about 61 percent of the U.S. population, through public records requests.

In the Dallas area, clean air advocacy group Downwinders at Risk is holding an event to address lingering hazards, including shuttered lead smelters. The group cited Reuters’ work, which helped to identify Dallas areas with high poisoning rates.”Having five to six times the national average of high blood lead readings in a zip (code) just south of downtown certainly has been getting people’s attention,” said group director Jim Schermbeck.

In St. Joseph, Missouri, where testing data showed at least 120 small children have been poisoned within a 15-block radius since 2010, the city manager convened department heads to address the problem.

Pennsylvania had the most census tracts where at least 10 percent of children tested high for lead. In Warren, where the rate was as high as 36 percent, the city manager said she’s considering distributing home-testing kits to families. County officials will meet to consider several additional measures, including boosting blood screening and increasing funding for prevention. County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said he wasn’t aware of the full scope of poisoning in Warren until the Reuters report. It hit close to home. A few years ago, Eggleston said, his infant son was poisoned by lead.

(Reporting by Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell. Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Missouri lawmakers override gun, voter ID vetoes

Handguns for sale

By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) – Missouri lawmakers pushed through bills on Wednesday eliminating the need for permits to carry concealed weapons and requiring voters to show a photo identification before casting a ballot, overriding Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s vetoes of the bills.

Both votes by the Republican-controlled state House and Senate reached the two-thirds majority required to enact legislation over the governor’s veto.

The weapons bill abolished a state law requiring a permit, training and background checks for people who want to carry a concealed weapon in the state.

The House voted 112-41 to override Nixon’s veto and the Senate voted 24-6.

Supporters of the bill said it will make the state safer by allowing more residents to carry firearms in self-defense, while still banning certain criminals and mentally incompetent people from having a gun.

In vetoing the bill in July, Nixon said the measure struck an extreme blow to sensible safeguards against gun violence.

Earlier on Wednesday, the state Senate voted 24-7 and the House 115-41 to override Nixon’s veto of a bill requiring voters to produce a government-issued ID instead of less official identification such as a utility bill or bank check.

The bill would not take effect until 2017, after this year’s presidential election, and only if voters in November pass a state constitutional amendment in support of the new law. That is necessary because the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 10 years ago that such a statute violated the existing state constitution.

Courts in recent months have blocked voter ID laws passed in several states by Republican-led legislatures after civil rights groups argued the measures were discriminatory against poor and minority voters.

In Missouri, voters without a photo ID can still vote if they sign an affidavit swearing that they lack any type of identification. However, election officials can take their picture, and steps must be taken to get a photo ID for later use, with the state covering the cost.

Supporters of the bill said it will help prevent voter fraud.

“Why not have more certainty in the election process?” Republican Representative Justin Alferman, the bill’s main sponsor, said in a statement before the vote.

Opponents had argued that the ID requirement places an undue burden on young, minority and low-income voters who tend to support Democratic candidates.

“Putting additional and unwanted barriers between citizens and their ability to vote is wrong and detrimental to our system of government as a whole,” Nixon said in explaining his veto.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Missouri governor vetoes bill to abolish concealed weapon permits

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon

By Kevin Murphy

(Reuters) – Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a bill on Monday that would eliminate the need for a permit, training and background checks for persons who want to carry a concealed weapon in the state.

The Republican-led bill passed the Missouri House and Senate this spring with enough votes to override the veto when lawmakers convene in September. Two-thirds majority is required.

In a news release accompanying his veto message, Nixon, a Democrat, said he has supported prior legislation to expand concealed carry laws during his seven years in office.

“But I cannot support the extreme step of throwing out that process entirely, eliminating sensible protections like background checks and training requirements, and taking away the ability of sheriffs to protect their communities,” Nixon said.

Debate over gun control in the United States has increased after a gunman pledging allegiance to the Islamic State militant group killed 49 people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub on June 12 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Nixon, who cannot seek re-election this year due to term limits, said the law would allow people with criminal records, such as misdemeanor assault and drug possession, to automatically carry a concealed weapon.

“Allowing currently prohibited individuals to automatically be able to carry concealed would make Missouri less safe,” Nixon said.

Lawmakers and other supporters of the bill have said the law is an important step forward in gun rights and will not make the state less safe.

“Every time we change the concealed carry law people say there will be blood in the streets,’ said Kevin Jamison, a lawyer who is president of the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance, which lobbied for the bill. “There is never blood in the streets.”

Jamison said nine other states already allow concealed carry without permits and associated training and background checks.

The new law would also expand the so-called “stand your ground” law to allow persons to use deadly force not only in their homes but in other places if they feel threatened. They would have no duty to retreat to safety under the bill.

(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Mo.; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Flash flood watches issued in four Southern states ahead of thunderstorms

Portions of four Southern states are bracing for the possibility of flash flooding later this week.

The National Weather Service on Monday issued flash flood watches for parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana ahead of a series of thunderstorms that is expected to bring anywhere between three and 10 inches of rain to those regions between Tuesday and Thursday.

The flash flood watch states the heaviest rains are expected in eastern Texas, western Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas, increasing the risk of flash flooding in those communities.

The storms are expected to bring lighter precipitation totals across the Great Plains, South and Midwest over the next three days, and National Weather Service forecasts indicate that some parts of Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi could all receive three or more inches of rain.

Residents of all of the affected states are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

The service also said there is a slight chance of severe thunderstorms across the Southern Plains tonight, but had yet to issue any watches or warnings for those storms as of 1 p.m. Central time.

The flash flood watches come after California was hit with heavy rains over the weekend.

The National Weather Service’s unofficial totals show more than 10 inches of rain fell in parts of Monterey, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties between Friday morning and Monday morning.

The weekend storms also brought more than two feet of snow and wind gusts that topped 60 mph to some mountainous areas, the service said, including an 88-mph gust near Mount Diablo.

Those topped trees and power lines, knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses.

Utility company PG&E said reported more than 265,000 of its customers in the Bay Area lost power during the storm, though all but 8,700 had their service restored as of Sunday morning.

Radar showed some California communities were receiving additional rain and snow Monday, and the National Weather Service warned that some areas could see another 10 inches of snow.

FFRF criticizes group prayer in Missouri middle school

A lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation contacted a Missouri school district after watching a video that purportedly shows a ministry official leading students in prayer in the lunchroom.

The organization, which describes itself as a watchdog that strives for a separation of church and state, wrote a letter to the Hollister R-V School District’s superintendent, saying a concerned parent contacted them after the video was shared on social media.

The 10-second cell-phone video was uploaded to Facebook on February 5. It appears to show Robert Bruce, the local chapter director of the Christian youth ministry K-Life, standing in the center of a circle of students in the Hollister Middle School lunchroom and leading a prayer. Dozens of students are holding hands in the circle, while a few remain seated at lunch tables.

In his Feb. 10 letter to Hollister’s superintendent, Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Patrick C. Elliott called the practice “an egregious violation of the First Amendment,” which forbids schools from promoting religion, and said it “must be stopped immediately.”

“It is unconstitutional for a public school to allow an evangelical Christian organization to impose prayer on all students,” Elliott said in a statement. “Giving the group access to all students as part of school programming suggests that the school district has preference not only for religion over nonreligion, but also evangelical Christianity over other faiths. This sort of entanglement between religion and public education is inappropriate.”

The letter argues that allowing the ministry into the school allowed its representatives to “proselytize” and students who did not participate in the prayer were made to feel like outsiders.

According to Elliott’s letter, the child of the parent who complained said that students had been directed in similar prayers on other occasions around the time the video was originally posted.

“No religious organization should have direct access to students at school,” Elliott argues in the letter. “This predatory conduct should raise red flags, especially since these adults are conversing with students without parental knowledge.”

The prayer circle video had been viewed more than 10,000 times as of Thursday afternoon.

In the video’s description on Facebook, the boy who uploaded it to the social media website wrote “we chose to do this” as a way of “Respecting Our God.”

On Thursday, after local media reported on the letter, a student from Hollister High School tweeted that “HHS supports HMS as well as Robert Bruce” and shared a 17-second video of students gathered in a prayer circle in what appears to be the high school’s cafeteria.

The student tweeted that it was a “110% student led prayer,” and the dozens of kids who appear in the high school video all participated voluntarily.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has written many letters to schools and government agencies across the country about the presence of religious tones in those environments.

On Thursday, it announced it had contacted lawyers for the Bentonville School District in Arkansas, claiming that the Feb. 19 inauguration of a new fitness trail at Cooper Elementary School had unconstitutional components, including a nun blessing the trail with holy water.

“Even when outside the typical school environment, the Supreme Court has found prayers taking place at school-sponsored events unconstitutional,” Elliott wrote in the Feb. 23 letter.

Death Toll Rises as Floodwaters Continue to Plague Missouri, Other States

Large portions of the central United States remained under flood warnings on Thursday morning as high waters continued to wreak havoc on dozens of riverside communities.

The National Weather Service issued the warnings for significant swaths of Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, where floodwaters reached historic levels following a powerful winter storm, but also issued isolated flood warnings throughout the southeast. The service also issued flash flooding watches in large portions of Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

While floodwaters began to recede in many locations, particularly around hard-hit greater St. Louis, they remained at critically high levels. The National Weather Service warned that towns and cities further south along the Mississippi River could experience “significant river flooding” into mid-January as the massive amounts of water flowed downstream, according to its website.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 365 river gauges remained at flood stages on Thursday, 44 of which were at “major flooding” levels. The river gauges don’t always consider lakes, creeks or streams, many of which also breached their banks.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, who declared a state of emergency and mobilized the National Guard in the wake of the flooding, said the floods are responsible for killing 14 people in the state, according to a news release from his office. The Missouri Department of Transportation said at least 200 roads were submerged statewide early Thursday, according to a news release.

A busy 21-mile stretch of Interstate 44 remained closed near St.Louis, and the statement from Nixon’s office indicated it was the first time floodwaters shut down the road since 1982.

The Meramec River in Valley Park, Missouri, near St. Louis, crested at a record level of 44.11 feet early Thursday, according to the NOAA, which was more than four feet above a 33-year-old record and only the second time the river reached 38 feet in the past century. The river receded slightly to 43.57 feet later Thursday, the NOAA said, but that was still 27 feet above flood stage.

The community ordered those in low-lying areas to evacuate as the waters surged toward historic heights, according to a posting on its Facebook page. The city is protected by a levee, the posting indicates, but there was still “significant flooding” in several portions of the city.

The Meramec River flooding also damaged “hundreds of homes and businesses” in Pacific, Missouri, according to the governor’s office. The city, located upstream from Valley Park, crested just shy of its all-time record, the NOAA said, but that was still 18 feet above flood stage.

As the waters departed Valley Park and Pacific, they arrived further downstream.

NOAA data indicates the Meramec River in Arnold climbed to an all-time high of 47.22 feet on Thursday morning, nearly two feet above the record and roughly 23 feet above flood stage. The city recommended people evacuate because of the danger to residences, according to its website.

The Meramec flows into the Mississippi River, and communities downstream were expected to see waters rise further. In Chester, Illinois, the NOAA said waters were already at 44.26 feet on Thursday, 17 feet above flood stage and its second-highest level ever, and forecasts called for another 3-foot rise this week. Several roads in the city were already closed, its website indicates.

“This historic flooding event will continue to cause significant hazards and disruptions – from Missourians being forced from their homes, to businesses temporarily closing, to traffic congestion and impacts on interstate commerce due to the closure of a major trucking corridor,” Nixon said in a statement. “I thank the many Missourians who are assisting their neighbors by providing rooms in their homes, helping with sandbagging efforts and countless other acts of kindness.”

Missouri wasn’t the only state affected by the extreme weather.

The storm dumped snow, ice and rain throughout Oklahoma, prompting Governor Mary Fallin to extend a state of emergency. The state Department of Emergency Management reported Wednesday evening that five people lost their lives and another 104 were injured in the storm.

Earlier this week, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner said “significant issues related to flooding” had occurred in seven counties and he issued a disaster proclamation for those areas, according to a news release from his office.

Authorities Investigating Batches of Suspicious Cell Phone Purchases in Missouri

The FBI is investigating multiple reports of bulk purchases of prepaid cell phones in Missouri.

According to various local media reports, law enforcement officials in at least six Missouri towns reported that customers bought a large quantity of the prepaid phones at local Walmart stores.

Prepaid cell phones are popular for a number of reasons, including that they can be bought with cash and don’t require a contract or a credit check like many wireless plans. People can pay for the minutes as they use them, and buy more calling time whenever they need it. But the phones are also attractive in other circles because they’re difficult to trace and can be easily disposable.

Criminals have been known to use prepaid phones, often called burners, to avoid police detection because they can be purchased anonymously and don’t require disclosing a lot of personal information. Terrorists have also been known to use cell phones to detonate explosives.

The first batch of bulk cell phone buys was on Dec. 5, when buyers reportedly went to a Walmart in Lebanon around 4 a.m. and bought 59 cell phones. Law enforcement officials in Macon, Ava, Jefferson City, Columbia and Cape Girardeau also reported similar phone buys on that weekend. Fox News reported that more than 200 prepaid cell phones were purchased in total at the stores.

The purchases came days after a husband and wife killed 14 people and injured 21 more in a Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in what has been called an act of terrorism.

The American public has been on high alert since that attack.

Searches for concealed carry permits, which allow people to carry hidden handguns in public, have surged to record levels, and a Public Religion Research Institute survey released last week found 47 percent of all Americans fear they or someone in their family will be a terrorism victim.

Americans have long been encouraged to report any kind of suspicious activity through the Department of Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign. That’s exactly what the Walmart stores and local law enforcement authorities appear to be doing.

Speaking to the Kansas City Star, FBI spokesperson Bridget Patton said law enforcement officials were “acting out of an abundance of caution” in alerting the FBI about the phone buys.

“We have seen similar purchases of bulk cell phones in the past, and it has been concluded that these transactions were unrelated to terrorism,” Patton told the newspaper.

The Kansas City Star also spoke to law enforcement officials in Macon. Sheriff’s Sgt. Curt Glover noted that people have been known to purchase burner phones and resell them at higher prices.

“I do not feel there’s an immediate threat to the community,” Glover told the newspaper. “This has been going on for the last 15 years. They sell them and make a whole lot more money.”

There weren’t any arrests this month because buying a lot of cell phones at once isn’t illegal, and retired FBI Agent Jeff Lanza told the Kansas City Star that a link to terrorism appears unlikely.

“If you were planning to use those in a terrorist act, you wouldn’t be buying in bulk and attracting attention to yourself,” Lanza told the newspaper. “It would be a stupid way to start buying things to be used as bomb detonators because the first thing people do is call the police.”

The FBI has also been notified about a theft of propane canisters in Kansas City, Patton told the Kansas City Star, but the bureau is leaving the investigations of those thefts to local authorities.

The fact that propane can be used in improvised explosive devices raised some alarm bells, particularly because they reportedly occurred around the time of the prepaid phone purchases. But there’s currently no evidence suggesting the propane thefts and phone buys were related.

Americans are asked to remain vigilant and tell police if they notice suspicious activity.

Davis Case Brings Religious Freedom Issues to Forefront

The recent jailing of a Christian in Kentucky because of her stand for her beliefs is bringing about a national debate on the issue of religious freedom and religious accommodation.

Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, recently spent five days in jail because she refused to compromise her Christian beliefs.

“Thank you all so much. I love you all so very much,” she said. “I just want to give God the glory. His people have rallied, and you are a strong people. We serve a living God who knows exactly where each and every one of us is at. Just keep on pressing. Don’t let down, because he is here. He’s worthy.”

The lawyers in the case say the problem is that the judge involved with the case will not make an accommodation to Davis based on her faith that would allow her to complete her tasks without violating her “Constitutionally protected” freedom of speech.

“We’ve asked for a simple solution — get her name and authority off the certificate. The judge could order that,” attorney Mat Staver said.

Now, the Kentucky legislature has a majority of members calling on the Governor to hold a special session to look at religious accommodation laws and ways that the religious freedom of people of all faiths can be protected.  The Governor has refused stating a desire to not spend taxpayer dollars.

Missouri lawmakers have also announced an intention to introduce laws to “protect religious liberty.”