1 charge against Mo. governor is dropped
Compiled from news services
JEFFERSONCITY, Mo. — Prosecutors agreed to drop oneof two felony criminal casesagainst Missouri Gov. EricGreitens after the governor’ s attorneys said he would resignif the allegations were dismissed,a spokeswoman forSt. Louis’ top prosecutor saidWednesday.
A day after Mr. Greitens announced he would step down, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said her office decided to dismiss a charge of computer data tampering following conversations with the defense team for the governor, who was once a rising star in the Republican Party.
Mr.Greitens’ departure becomesofficial at 5 p.m. Friday, markinga stunning political defeatfor the 44-year-old, selfmadewarrior-philosopher whohad aspirations of somedaybecoming president.
Shooting game removed
BELLEVUE,Wash. — A Seattle-area company has removed a school shooting video game from its online platform following widespread backlash.
The “Active Shooter” video game was pulled days before it was to be released on the video game marketplace Steam.
Valve Corp. as Steam’s parent company said Tuesday that it was removing the computer video game because the developer was a “troll with a history of customer abuse.”
The game allows players to re-create school shootings by stalking school hallways and racking up kills.
Thegame was developed byRevived Games, published byAcid and led by a person namedAta Berdiyev. Valve spokesmanDoug Lombardi saysBerdiyev had previously beenkicked off the platform undera different business name.
School security enhanced
AUSTIN,Texas — Two weeks after a student armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a revolver killed 10 people at a high school outside Houston, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Wednesday proposed spending more than $100 million to put more police and armed guards on school campuses and expand programs to identify students at risk of engaging in mass violence.
Mr.Abbott, a Republican, alsoproposed stepping up securityat schools by limiting thenumber of entrances and exits,and installing alarms specifically designated to warnof active shooters.
Heavy rain plagues N.C.
BATCAVE, N.C. — Gov. RoyCooper declared a state ofemergency for North Carolina’smountain counties Wednesdayafter heavy rains triggeredmudslides and landslides that closed Interstate40 east of Asheville and forcedevacuations downstreamof a McDowell Countydam that was thoughtto be near collapse.
Bythe end of the day, the LakeTahoma dam near Marionhad been declared safe andI-40 reopened. But rivers acrossthe mountains surged withrecord-high water levels.Four to 7 inches of rain fellin the 24-hour period endingWednesday morning.
Va.’s Medicaid expansion
RICHMOND,Va. — The Republican-controlled Virginia General Assembly gave final approval Wednesday evening to a state budget expanding Medicaid coverage to the state’s poor, ending years of partisan gridlock on the issue.
The state Senate voted in favor of expansion after a full day of debate. The House, which had had previously endorsed expansion, gave its final approval shortly afterward.
Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to sign the budget in coming days, and the roughly 400,000 newly eligible low-income Virginians will begin enrolling at the start of next year.