Smoke detectors woke up five people from a sound sleep when flames broke out in a Springfield apartment building. The fire happened in the 800 block of south Campbell Avenue. Five residents and a baby safely escaped. Authorities believe the fire started in one of the lower apartments. No one was hurt. The cause is under investigation.

Furniture maker Leggett and Platt will lay off 40 workers from its corporate offices in Carthage. A letter from the company's president described the current economic conditions as some of the most challenging in decades. But he went on to say the company is well positioned to weather the economic downturn. The Carthage plant still employs 24-hundred workers.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government says the economy took a tumble in the summer that was worse than first thought as American consumers throttled back their spending by the most in 28 years. It was further proof the country is almost certainly in the throes of a painful recession. The Commerce Department's updated reading on the economy's performance showed gross domestic product shrank at a 0.5 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter. That was deeper than the 0.3 percent rate of decline first reported.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fed announces purchases of up to $600 billion in mortgage-backed assets to deal with financial crisis.

A one percent sales tax increase to fund the retirement of Springfield police and firefighters will go before voters in February. The city says the tax would raise 40-million dollars a year. Right now, the fund is more than 180-million dollars short.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - A southwest Missouri man is sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to exposing himself to two undercover investigators in an Internet chat room. Forty-five-year-old Robert Schone of Flemington was sentenced in Boone County Circuit Court Monday for two counts of attempted sexual misconduct involving a child. Schone was arrested after a sting by the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force. Posing as 13- and 14-year-old girls from Mid-Missouri, the detectives made contact with Schone in an Internet chat room where he exposed himself to each of them through a webcam. Schone was convicted in 1988 for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in St. Charles County. But he was not required to register as a sex offender because his conviction was before 1995, when the registration law took effect.

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