The Illinois Department of Employment Security says the state's unemployment rate increased to 8.9 percent in May. That's up from 8.7 percent just a month earlier and the first monthly increase since January 2010.

The department said Thursday in its monthly release on the statewide unemployment picture that:

The Illinois Supreme Court calls it "absurd" to let inmates earn money in prison and then take it away to pay the cost of keeping them behind bars.

The court dismissed a lawsuit in which the Department of Corrections tried to take $11,000 from the savings of convicted murderer Kensley Hawkins. He saved the money working at a furniture-assembly job at a Joliet prison.

Army Corps to Begin Immediate Repairs to Mississippi River Levee

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers intentionally breached the Mississippi River levee during flooding earlier this spring.

Gov. Jay Nixon announced Wednesday that Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, who ordered the breach in early May, said the levee in southeast Missouri will be rebuilt at three breach points. The corps breached the levee to relieve pressure on the floodwall at nearby Cairo, Ill., which spared the town from being flooded but inundated about 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland.

The millionaire brothers who ran US Fidelis, the country’s largest auto-warranty service provider have been indicted on multiple felony charges.

Darain and Cory Atkinson founded US Fidelis in 2003 selling the kind of extended auto warranties often advertised in junk mail or TV.

Over a three-year period the Better Business Bureau received over a thousand complaints and 33,000 inquiries.

Today on St. Louis on the Air, we got a little peek at what Ira Glass fans can expect this weekend at Powell Hall.  The voice behind PRI’s This American Life will recreate moments from the show live on stage with the distinctive sounds, voices, and music TAL fans have come to know-- but there won’t be any fancy mixing console or many recognizable radio props on stage.  Glass says, “I’ll run it all from my iPad."

The USDA has chosen two new areas in Missouri to participate in a program promoting biomass energy crops.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the program will pay farmers to plant giant miscanthus, a perennial grass that can be used for energy production.

St. Louis police say stepped-up patrols and a change in patrol tactics have brought a recent upward trend in burglaries back down.

Overall, burglaries are up in the city 11 percent since last year, driven by a large jump in the theft of material that can be sold for scrap, like copper pipes.

A House panel has approved $1 billion in emergency money to repair levees and other flood control projects damaged by the devastating flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen said billions of dollars more will be needed once full Army Corps of Engineers estimates are in for repairing breached levees and other flood control projects damaged by this year's devastating storms and floods.

In the wake of “Weiner-gate,” in which Congressman Anthony Weiner has acknowledged exchanging sexually suggestive messages and photos through Twitter, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill says the scandal will not change the way she uses social media.