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Morning Headlines - Wednesday, May 2, 2012

(via Flickr/IndofunkSatish)

Cardinals will retire La Russa's jersey

No other player or manager will wear #10 for the St. Louis Cardinals after this season.

The team has announced plans to retire the number, worn last by manager Tony La Russa, at a ceremony before a May 11 contest against the Atlanta Braves.

La Russa retired last year after 16 seasons with the team, including two World Series titles. He is the winningest manager in franchise history, and trails just Connie Mack and John McGraw in total wins.

La Russa's jersey will be the 12th number retired by the Cardinals. Whitey Herzog's 24 was the last, in 2010. La Russa and Herzog are the only two managers to have their number retired without also playing for the team.

City official wants to require severe weather evacuation plan for tents

St. Louis’ public safety director says he wants to rewrite city regulations to require the evacuation of large party tents during severe weather.

Eddie Roth made the comments to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His effort follows the death of a Waterloo, Ill. man after a party tent at Kilroy’s Sports Bar near Busch Stadium blew apart on Saturday in a violent thunderstorm. Three people remain hospitalized, including one in intensive care.

The paper reports that restaurants operating a large tent must have an employee monitoring conditions and addressing concerns of public officials. There’s nothing specific about weather. Roth wants establishments to evacuate tents whenever the National Weather Service issues a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning. A severe thunderstorm warning was active on Saturday when the tent was destroyed.

Blunt critical of pace of Birds Point levee rebuild

Senator Roy Blunt is criticizing the pace of levee upgrades in southeastern Missouri.

The Missouri Republican senator sent a letter on Tuesday to the Army Corps of Engineers, urging the Corps to quickly restore the Birds Point levee to its original height of 62 point five feet. The Corps intentionally breached the levee last year to relieve the flooding risk to Cairo, Ill., flooding 130,000 acres of farmland and displacing 50 families in the process. 

The Corps has temporarily rebuilt the levee to 55 feet, and plans to get it back to its original height by the end of the year. Blunt calls that timetable unacceptable.

Corps spokesman Bob Anderson says the agency is rebuilding many levees at the same time.

Mo. Senate approves proposed changes to appellate judge selection

The Missouri Senate has approved a constitutional amendment that would change the selection process for the state’s appellate judges.

The proposed amendment would change the make-up of the special panel that currently submits Supreme Court and appellate court nominees to the governor.

Currently, the commission includes a Supreme Court judge, three lawyers, and three non-lawyers picked by the governor. They submit three finalists to the governor. Under the amendment, the Supreme Court judge would be replaced by a fourth non-lawyer, and a former appellate judge would become a non-voting member. The panel would also submit four finalists for a position.

The Senate vote on Tuesday was 19-12. The changes still need approval from the state House to be on the ballot in November.

Rachel is the justice correspondent at St. Louis Public Radio.