JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Over the past several years, Missouri voters have amended the state constitution to create abortion rights, legalize marijuana and sports betting and expand Medicaid healthcare coverage for low-income adults.
None of those initiatives would have passed under a ballot measure getting decided by voters Tuesday.
Missouri's proposed Amendment 4 would make it significantly harder to amend the constitution by requiring citizen initiatives to pass in all eight of the state's diverse congressional districts instead of by a traditional, simple statewide majority. No other state has such a high standard — or has even asked voters to consider it.
"This is a first-of-its-kind," said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a national group that backs progressive ballot initiatives like the ones Missouri's Republican lawmakers are hoping to quelch.
"It would be nearly impossible for citizens to participate meaningfully in any sort of direct democracy," said Hall, who believes other states could try to copy Missouri's proposal.

#voters #initiatives #constitution #medicaid

A top US general said a Ukrainian F-16 scored the country's first air-to-air kill.
He said it showed how far Ukraine's layered defenses have developed.
The general did not specify what kind of Russian fighter jet was shot down in the engagement.
Ukraine's F-16 fighter jets scored their first air-to-air kill by shooting down a Russian fighter jet, a top US general said, calling the engagement a sign of Ukraine's improving air defenses.
US Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that "recently we had the first air-to-air kill where a Ukrainian F-16 shot down a Russian fighter."

#first #kill #down #ukrainian

By Rene Wagner and Maria Martinez
BERLIN, July 8 (Reuters) - Germany could benefit from planned U.S. port fees ‌on merchant ships built in China, with its ‌exports to the United States potentially rising by around 2% compared with a scenario without fees, according to a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
The reason is that German freight fleets rely less on Chinese-built ‌vessels than those of ⁠some competitors, allowing German exporters to gain market share, the study found.
The U.S. government plans ⁠to introduce the fees from November in an effort to curb China's dominance in shipbuilding, citing national security concerns. The charges would be based on where a vessel was built, rather ‌than whose goods it carries.
DIW said the measures would primarily hurt the U.S. itself, estimating that U.S. imports and exports would fall by 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively.

By Lewis Jackson and Ben Blanchard
BEIJING/TAIPEI, July 4 (Reuters) - China said on Saturday it had launched a new coast guard patrol east of Taiwan, drawing a sharp response from Taipei after a task force last ‌month off the island's coast caused alarm in some Western capitals.
China's military operates almost daily around Taiwan, which ‌Beijing views as its own territory. But China has begun using its coast guard to enforce its territorial claims in what Taiwan calls "lawfare" to claim a legal basis for Chinese actions.
The fleet will conduct "law enforcement patrols" in the area, China's Coast Guard said in a statement, adding it would strengthen such patrols in what it called China's jurisdictional waters.
The coast guard will "firmly safeguard China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests", it added.

Chief financial officers (CFOs) across U.S. companies said they've been able to navigate the challenges of increased energy costs as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but that's done little to ****** uage their anxieties around future inflation, according to new Fed data.
A survey published on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business surveying 530 financial executives found a growing disparity between CFOs' trust in their own companies versus the economy more broadly as the war in Iran ostensibly concludes. Executives reported being able to absorb increased costs, but feel more pessimistic about rising prices more broadly. While two-thirds of companies saw increased production costs last quarter as a result of energy price shocks, only one-third passed those increases to consumers. However, inflation was a growing worry, with 25% of firms naming it as their most pressing concern in second-quarter 2026, up from 9.5% last quarter. CFOs slashed U.S. economic growth projections from 2.1% last quarter to 1.8% this quarter.
The pattern of a widening gap between one's personal financial health and the broader economic health extends beyond the C-suite. The Federal Reserve's annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking released last month found Americans' overall financial wellbeing has held steady for years, with 73% of survey respondents saying they were doing OK or lived comfortably in 2025, compared to 75% in 2024. However, only 25% saw the national economy as "good" or "excellent," mirroring 2024's 28%, but falling far below the pre-pandemic 49%.
But with energy costs likely to persist above prewar norms, Atlanta Fed economist Brent Meyer suggested companies' concerns about the economy may catch up to their own bottom lines. He noted that while pass-through rates have remained low now, if oil prices continue to rise or remain elevated, pass-through would skyrocket to about 90%.
"This suggests that in an environment of sustained higher cost pressures, firms may be unwilling or unable to absorb any more costs," he said in a statement.

Ana Vanessa Herrero, reporting for NBC News in Venezuela, sheds light on the hundreds of people looking for loved ones who might be missing under the rubble after two major earthquakes hit near the country's capital on Wednesday.

Fertility may not be a reason for men to avoid GLP-1 medications. In fact, they could see an improvement.
After 24 weeks of treatment with GLP-1s, a class of medications that treats diabetes and is prescribed widely for weight loss, men ages 18 to 65 saw improved testosterone levels, sperm count, and size and shape of sperm, said principle investigator of the study Dr. Pratibha Natesh, a consultant endocrinologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire and honorary clinical lecturer at Warwick Medical School in England.
About 15% of couples in the United States have trouble conceiving, and more than half of those couples have a male infertility problem, according to Yale Medicine. Healthcare providers define infertility as not conceiving after 12 months of regular, unprotected ***** ual intercourse.
More studies need to be done before GLP-1s are prescribed as a first-line treatment for male infertility, said Dr. Lidia Mínguez Alarcón, a Spanish reproductive epidemiologist and ***** istant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. She was not involved in the research.
However, the results do suggest that men considering GLP-1s for weight loss or medical conditions may want to ponder possible benefits for their fertility as well, Natesh said.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — When Marharyta Nekhoroshyva first saw her newborn son, she was gripped by fear. Born after just 26 weeks of pregnancy, he weighed only 940 grams (2 pounds) and wore diapers no larger than the palm of an adult hand.
"The doctors told me that if he survived the first three days, everything would be OK," she said, tears filling her eyes. "I don't believe in God, but I was praying."
Now 9 months old, Mark is energetic and lively, but he has chronic breathing problems and requires frequent hospital stays.
Nekhoroshyva must navigate her son's illness while living under the constant threat of attack in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, where hospitals board up their windows because blast waves from Russian strikes routinely shatter glass. She is doing it alone while her husband fights in the war.
A rising number of babies are being born prematurely — before 37 weeks of pregnancy — in Ukraine, particularly in regions near the front lines, where some areas have seen rates nearly double since the conflict started with Russia's invasion in 2022.