CHARLESTON, Mo. — As a huge storm settled over southeastern Missouri on Sunday, the Army Corps of Engineers began the overnight task of filling an 11,000-foot system of buried pipes with an explosive material to blow a two-mile-long gap in the Birds Point levee here. The breach would inundate about 130,000 acres of farmland to relieve pressure on the overburdened system of levees to the north.

“We’ve been told to go, but we’ve got two more cells of lightning that need to move through here before we start to pump,” Jim Lloyd, the corps’ operations team leader, said as he walked through the wind and rain late Sunday afternoon. “We’re going to work through the night to get this loaded.”

Mr. Lloyd, who had just left a briefing, emphasized that although Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, who commands the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, had ordered that the explosives be loaded, he had yet to give the final word to blast the levee.

“He’ll still have to make the decision,” Mr. Lloyd said, adding that although the explosives were extremely stable and would not be primed, the lightning was “going to complicate our lives something fierce.”

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

Uprooted by Rising Waters, but Not Ready to Walk Away

Joon Powell for The New York Times

By MALCOLM GAY

LA CENTER, Ky. — If there ever was a time for Bob Simpson to retire to his farm near this Kentucky high ground, it is now.

CAIRO, Ill. — Chugging north along the Mississippi River, twin barges laden with more than 250 tons of explosive material were ordered to dock at a final staging area on Saturday in an apparent sign that the Army Corps of Engineers was making further preparations to breach a nearby levee, inundating roughly 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland to relieve pressure on the groaning levee system upstream.

“There are still a lot of decision points as we move forward,” Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh said Saturday, stressing that no final decision had been reached. “The system has never been under this type of pressure.”

For days now, General Walsh, the man charged with making the final call, has toured the area and huddled with experts as he has weighed this decision worthy of King Solomon: blast a two-mile breach into the levee at Birds Point, Mo., and inundate roughly 200 square miles of farmland and some 90 homes, or hold steady and risk drowning this once-proud city that is now struggling for survival along a narrow spit of land bounded by the surging Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Meanwhile, the rivers have continued to swell toward what analysts say will be historic levels, prompting Mayor Judson Childs of Cairo to issue a mandatory evacuation for this city of 3,000. The National Weather Service has forecast up to 5 inches of rain in coming days, leading corps analysts to warn that the river could stay at historic flood stages for more than five days.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

CHARLESTON, Mo. — Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers is likely to make a lot of people angry over the next few days.

But which group of people is not so clear. It will depend on whether he decides to flood farmland in Missouri in order to save a town in Illinois from the ravages of the rising Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

If the general gives the word, his team will blow up a two-mile stretch of levee, sending torrents of water across more than 200 square miles of Missouri farmland to take pressure off the levees that protect Cairo, Ill., to the north.

As tornadoes stormed across the Deep South this week, Missouri officials sued to block the corps from moving forward with the plan to swamp the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway. Cairo has about 3,000 people; the 130,000 acres of farmland is home to about 200 residents in 90 homes. On Friday morning, Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. of Federal District Court in St. Louis ruled that the corps could go forward, if necessary.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

ST. LOUIS — Several tornadoes ripped through this area Friday evening, and one of them touched down right by Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, blowing out windows, panicking airline passengers and filling once-orderly terminals with flying glass and ferocious winds.

The damage forced the airport to shut down, but officials said they expected a few inbound flights to land Saturday night. They also hoped to be operating at 70 percent of the usual capacity on Sunday.

In a news conference on Saturday, Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, the airport director, said the airfield was fully functional.

“We’re not going to have the prettiest airport tomorrow, but we will have an operating airport,” Ms. Hamm-Niebruegge said.

Mayor Francis Slay said he hoped the airport would be up to full capacity by the middle of the week.

Half the windows were blown out in one section of the airport, and large chunks of the roof were peeled away by the wind in another. Debris and broken glass were scattered across terminals and runways.

“Glass was blowing everywhere,” Dianna Merrill, 43, told The Associated Press. Ms. Merrill was waiting in the airport when the storm struck.

“The ceiling was falling,” she said. “The glass was hitting us in the face. Hail and rain were coming in. The wind was blowing debris all over the place. It was like being in a horror movie. Grown men were crying. It was horrible.”

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

By MALCOLM GAY

ST. LOUIS — Scientists and animal rights advocates have enlisted DNA evidence to do for man’s best friend what the judicial system has long done for human crime victims. They have created the country’s first dog-fighting DNA database, which they say will help criminal investigators piece together an abused animal’s history by establishing ties among breeders, owners, pit operators and the animals themselves.

Called the Canine Codis, or Combined DNA Index System, the database is similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s digital archive containing the DNA profiles of criminal offenders. Scientists say that by swabbing the inner cheek of a dog, they will be able to determine whether the animal comes from one of several known dog-fighting bloodlines.

“People are not generally going to the pound and buying pit bulls to fight — these dogs are from established bloodlines,” said Tim Rickey, senior director of field investigations and response for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “And if a suspected dog fighter’s animal matches one of those bloodlines, that would be a key piece of evidence.”

The database, a joint effort by the A.S.P.C.A., the Louisiana S.P.C.A., the Humane Society of Missouri and researchers at the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, was developed during an investigation last July that resulted in 26 arrests and the seizure of more than 400 dogs. The investigation, which stretched across seven states, from Iowa to Texas, resulted in the largest dog-fighting raid in United States history, the authorities said.

Read the rest of the story in The New York Times.

Sally Ryan for The New York Times

By MALCOLM GAY

NEOGA, Ill. — Signs on the wall at the old Pioneer School here seem not to have not changed much since the ’80s. A multiplication table hangs on one wall, a copy of the Constitution on another.

But near the entrance to the cafeteria, where generations from this central Illinois farming community took their school lunches, one sign reveals just how dramatically the yellow brick building’s role has shifted: “Our dancers are entertainers not prostitutes so don’t ask!!!”

The building, sold by the school district in 2002, recently reopened as a strip club, shocking Cumberland County residents — many of whom walked its halls as youngsters and discovered its new use one week before it opened.

Some who want it shut down protest regularly. Praying for its patrons to see the error of their ways, they illuminate a small cross and display a sign that reads: “Does your family know where you are? Jesus does.”

“We don’t want this kind of filth in our county,” said Bill Moran, 70, who lives across the road. “What you get out of a place like this is rape, venereal diseases and a lot of divorces.”