WASHINGTON – As gas prices soar, Republicans are blaming the White House, President Barack Obama is lashing back at the GOP for a shortsighted “drill, baby, drill” policy, and others are calling for tapping oil from the “strategic reserve.”

Dear Rachel of Cardholder Services,

Since the Beacon’s last story, frustrated recipients of your calls have been contacting the Beacon about your nonstop phone assault. We’ve heard stories of people losing hundreds of dollars to your scams.

This morning at 4:26 St. Louis time, the pope placed a red hat on Timothy Michael Dolan making him a cardinal. Dolan bowed his head so the pope could place the biretta on the Maplewood native’s head. A huge smile broke over the German pontiff’s face.

WASHINGTON – Responding to local concerns about potentially costly delays, lawmakers in Washington want action by the Army Corps of Engineers to speed the approval of the $160 million project to bolster Metro East levees.

For white-collar St. Louisans struggling to recover after losing jobs to the Great Recession, here’s another sign the economy is moving on, with or without them: evaporating financial support for two local programs tailored to their needs.

Missouri candidate filing for this fall's elections will still get underway as scheduled, beginning next Tuesday. Legislators failed this week to act to change the filing period, sought because of legal fights over new boundary lines for many offices.

Remember before everyone had pictures on their phones, and they’d whip out a bunch of snapshots of their new baby? Photographer Jamie Kreher’s “Equivalents,” opening Friday at Good Citizen Gallery, is kind of like that but on a much bigger scale.

When released in November, “The Descendants,” was a natural for best picture. Then, in December, came “The Artist,” an unheralded, silent French film shot in black and white, and all bets were off.  Critic Harper Barnes handicaps his Oscar picks.

The retrospective of British artist John Stezaker’s work at the Kemper Art Museum is nothing short of marvelous.His small scale works subvert the original intentions of the images he has manipulated.

A Yale University researcher is calling for a national campaign to prevent child abuse. He calls the rates of pediatric hospitalizations for abuse and neglect "alarming".

The American Lung Association is fighting plans by the administration to reduce funding for asthma programs. St. Louis has a high rate of asthma. The cost of treatment increases when children with asthma land in costly emergency rooms.

Gov. Jay Nixon's effort to implement the Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment Act, MOSIRA, hit a snag with a judge's decision that the bill is unconstitutional. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster will appeal the lower-court ruling.

The buses were still crowded even a week after New Year’s, so the seven hours to Tegucigalpa stretched into eight -- assuming anyone had room to stretch!

The Catholic Church says government cannot force religious-affiliated institutions to provide anything that would facilitate what the religious institution sees as sinful. But the high court has upheld generally applicable laws that affect religious beliefs.

The current contraceptive-religious-freedom debate is a stew created by mixing First Amendment rights, privacy rights, birth control options and beliefs with a dash of peyote.