St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 26

B8 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH METRO THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2002 TODAY'S 24-HOUR FORECAST BY KMOV'S KENT EKRHARDT LET THE SUN SHINE! Sunny skies, seasonal temperatures and moderate humidity will make for a spectacular Thursday. Another cool night tonight followed by more sunshine Friday. The next chance for rain looks to be Sunday. FOUR-DAY FORECAST 'IrlliMi 5T COOL 74 MILD 79 WARM 69 NICE TODAX LOOK HIGH 80 WIND NE 5-10 L59H84 WARMER L63H85 PARTLY SUNNY 68 85 CHANCE OF RAIN L65H85 CHANCE OF RAIN I tsT to jib I tj gjMUttM Rocktord ,5 TODAY'S BISTATE FORECAST MISSOURI Today: Cloudy early, then skies will begin to clear this afternoon.

Momtt 874 fChicl 517J .1 48M WEDNESDAY'S STATISTICS Weather OW: i-sunny, pc-partty cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-stiowers, t-ttiunderstorms, r-rain, sf-sno flurries, sn-snow, i-ict. MISSOURI LaHi Branson 6876 1 Cape Girardeau 7086 Columbia 6068 Jefferson City 6369 Paorii Kirksvilla "52771- Joseph 5" Springfisld 5075 ,5682 Tonight: Mainly clear and starlit. Lows in the 50s. Friday: Less humid with plenty of sunshine. Highs in the 80s.

NATIONAL FORECAST -10s EETTKj 30s '40s 50s 60s TTOT? 80s 90s I 1 Stow am noon positions of Malta systems and OftcipitAon temperature banils arc highs tor tha day. 'Seattle 1 i fl 111 Quebec Portland Great Falls yX Bdlirrzs i Af i i 'V" 9vf)U Rapid City (J) Milwaukee rjetroit Ne TorK -Jjf Cheyenne 'Des Moines PMaoelphia 'Reno Cleveland Salt Lake City Omaha Pittsburgh -m San Francisco Denver -f bnsajCl Wsshington 0 sS QpZ 4V km III 1 nashvile. if Phoenix Albuquerque Charleston Joplin Columbia S381 Decatur 5174 St. Louit St. Cl) Kansas City 5577 ft 5880 Jetterson City 5380.

578R llmnn ft Ml Vernon 5377 ft5475 v. Lake of 3br ft r' Carbondali Roll" 5870 tiie ozar 5381 5678 6077 pc 5873 5273 6181 pc 6569 LoHi 5879 5265 sh 5173 5477 5964 sh 5372 sh 6170 5277 Kansas City Kirksville Rolla St Joseph Springfield ILLINOIS Carbondale Chicago Decatur Mt. Vernon Peoria Quincy Springfield ILLINOIS Today: Partly sunny with a pleasant afternoon; less humid. Tonight: Clear, less humid and very breezy. Lows in the 50s.

ft 1 ftSprinfiald ft 5480 Joplin 081 5680 ftWest Plains Branson -W8H, Friday: Plenty of sunshine across the state. Highs near 70 to close to 80 in the south. 1 1 us XSi Dallas 1 mrt I -i 4S 1New0rlW-X Orlando IZZl IP-iJ RAIN T-STORMS SNOW ICE toml, KeyWest HIGHSLOWS For the 24 hours previous to 6 p.m. LOWER 48 Palm Springs, Calif. 111 Big Piney, Wyo.

29 ALASKA Tanana 73 Barrow 30 HAWAII Lahaina 88 Mauna Log 42 CHICAGO Today-. Mostly sunny. 4872. Friday: Some sun. 5480.

Saturday: Some sun; warm. 6080. LAKE OF THE OZARKS Today: Mostly sunny. 5381. Friday: Sunny and warm.

5481. Saturday: Sun and clouds. 5985. KANSAS CITY Today: Mostly sunny. 5782.

Friday: Sunny. 5882. Saturday: Some sun; humid. 6383. BRANSON Today: Sunny and warm.

5782. Friday: Plenty of sun. 5685. Saturday: Sunny and humid. 6087.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. Today: Sunny and nice. 5075. Friday: Sunny and warm. 5381.

Saturday: Partly sunny. 6086. Cold Warm Stationary FalTbanks High Low 00 Anchorages PRESSURE FRONTS Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-tfiundersforms, r-rain sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice. WEDNESDAY'S LOCAL STATISTICS As of 6 p.m. at Lambert Field HIGH coo LOW HIGH 40 6067 sh 4772 pc 700 Normal 64 Normal 0 41 ma m- Year ago 87 AREA SKIES Sunrise: 5:37 a.m.

TV Sunset: 8:24 p.m. Moonrise: 3:17 a.m. New First Qtr. Full LastQtr. Moonset: 4:16 p.m.

June 10 June 17 June 24 July 2 Can you still see dim, reddish Mars? It is close to the horizon after sunset to the lower right of Jupiter and Venus. RIVER AND LAKE STAGES Information: 636-441-8467 Year ago 60' pc 6688 pc 7088 1 5891 pc 6180 pc 5676 pc 6492 pc 48 Record (1948) 98 Record (1993) 6684 7188 5589 5578 5474 6589 6178 Albuquerque Anchorage Atlanta Atlantic City Baltimore Billings Birmingham Bismarck Boise 6683 pc 6085 6182 6178 pc 6578 sh 6183 7088 6888 sh 7396 pc 7495 pc 6984 sh 6384 7688 7888 1 4766 5474 5682 pc 6081 1 7188 7188 6980 sh 6284 7390 7489 sh 5982 5174 5172 Thu. LoHi 5989 pc 4860 sh 6984 7078 7280 5276 pc 7084 1 5483 pc 5078 6266 5666 5771 pc 6890 pc 6872 6990 1 4983 6174 5768 sh 4884 Fri. LoHi 6188 1 4764 6884 sh 6070 sh 6076 sh 4670 pc 6687 sh 4662 sh 4876 5462 pc 4970 pc 4773 pc 6986 5981 6781 sh 5282 pc 5679 5273 5284 pc PRECIPITATION AIR QUALITY Wednesday (To 6 p.m.)0.58" Humidity (at 6 p.m.) 75 Month (toy) 1.14" Wind (at 6 p.m.) N6 Month (normal) 0.65" Pollen count: Year (total) 20.86" mixed trees 33 Year (normal) 16.47" mold 29000 Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Portland, Maine Portland, Ore. Rapid City Reno Richmond, Va.

Sacramento Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco Seattle Tampa Tucson Washington, D.C. West Palm Beach Wichita Little Rock Los Angeles Louisville Macon McAllen, Texas Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minneapolis Mobile Nashville New Orleans New York City Norfolk, Va. Oklahoma City Omaha Orlando Palm Springs Pensacola 7080 5875 sh 78106 82106 6369 5477 pc 6068 sh 4970 pc 4970 pc 4868 pc 5378 pc 5162 sh 5692 5584 7291 1 6375 sh 6495 6086 5988 pc 6287 pc 6988 pc 6991 6373 pc 6370 5866 5268 pc 4864 pc 4662 sh 7589 7591 sh 70103 72100 7380 sh 6277 sh 7688 7588 1 5782 6088 Concord, N.H. Dallas Daytona Beach Denver Des Moines Detroit El Paso Evansville Fairbanks Fargo Ft Myers Great Falls Green Bay Hartford Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Key West Las Vegas Stage Chg Wed. 24hr.

Flood Stage MISSOURI RIVER 5163 sh 7289 3965 pc 5476 1 5373 7488 7290 pc 5786 7189 4668 4570 6474 7589 6990 5574 7987 77106 8.1 11.8 11.4 13.7 6774 7391 1 6081 5783 7290 5674 6870 sh 6486 6284 7290 1 none none Buffalo Burlington, Vt Charleston, S.C. Charleston, VV.Va. Charlotte Cheyenne Cincinnati Cleveland Colorado Spgs. Flood Stage Chg Stage Wed. 24hr.

OHIO RIVER Cairo 40 33.2 MERAMEC RIVER Sullivan 15 4.9 none Valley Park 16 0.0 none Arnold 24 17.2 BOURBEUSE RIVER Union 15 2.0 none 17 32 23 21 20 25 St. Joseph Kansas City Jefferson City Hermann Washington St. Charles V'r ft. Alton) 10.6 none 17.7 none pc 5480 7788 78102 1 St Charles 6119(110) 77109 771 05 7386 7288 sh MISSISSIPPI RIVER GLOBAL FORECAST Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, (-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, I-ice. UV INDEX: 8 Chesterfield a 1 6376(107) Thu.

flew jmmm EUROPE 473(0 08) 11 Low Medium High Very High AIR FORECAST Paris Prague Rome Stockholm Vienna Warsaw 5166 sh 5968 5772 sh 5175 5968 5475 Hannibal 16 11.4 none Louisiana 15 11.3 Dam 24 25 19.8 Dam 25 26 22.7 0.1 Grafton 18 15.9 M.Price, Pool 419 413.6 none M.Price, Tail. 21 14.8 St. Louis 30 19.5 Chester 27 22.2 Cape Girardeau32 27.9 New Madrid 34 24.4 ILLINOIS RIVER Morris 13 7.4 0.6 Peoria 18 17.1 Beardstown 14 19.2 Meredosia 32 18.2 CANADA Calgary 3554 pc Montreal 5570 pc Toronto 5470 pc Vancouver 382 pc LATIN AMERICA Buenos Aires 4157 pc Rio de Janeiro 6683 Santiago 3950 MEXICO HOUR-BY-HOUR (Fahrenheit) Stage Chg Wed. 24hr. LAKE STAGES Kentucky Pool 359.4 none Wappapetlo Pool 382.4 Clearwater Pod 560.0 Lake Ozark 659.1 none Truman Lake 719.7 Bull Shoals 687.5 none Table Rock 922.2 none ftxnme de Terre 851.0 LakeShelbwille 614.3 Rend Lake 409.3 Mark Twain Lake 624.0 CarlyteLake 455.1 AFRICAMIDEAST LoHi ASIAPACIFIC Beijing 7598 pc Hong Kong 7786 New Delhi 85115 Sydney 5272 Taipei 7386 Tokyo 6477 CARIBBEAN Barbados 7787 pc Kingston 7787 pc Nassau 7488 San Juan 7884 sh 5766 6684 pc 6372 5862 6172 5363 5673 sh 5557 6379 pc 5462 4164 sh 4566 pc 5473 Amsterdam Athens Berlin Brussels Budapest Dublin Frankfurt Geneva Istanbul London Madrid Moscow Oslo Cape Town Good Moderate Unhealthy Unhealthy sensitive groups American Lung Association 314-645-5505 National Weather Service 636-441-8467 2002 AccuWeather, Inc.

TUESDAY 2 a.m. 73 7 p.m. 86 3 a.m. 73 8 p.m. 84 4 a.m.

73 9 p.m. 82 5 a.m. 70 10 p.m. 81 6 a.m. 69 11p.m.

80 7 a.m. 66 WEDNESDAY 8 a.m. 65 Midnight 78 9 a.m. 63 1 a.m. 72 10 a.m.

63 11 a.m. 64 Noon 66 1 p.m. 64 2 p.m. 64 3 p.m. 64 4 p.m.

64 5 p.m. 64 6 p.m. 65 4355 pc 6092 4879 4063 pc 77113 5376 pc 84109 Cairo Jerusalem Johannesburg Mecca Nairobi Riyadh 7590 sh 7488 sh 5577 sh Acapulco Cancun Mexico City Botanical garden teams up with city schools BY HOLLY K. HACKER ence and math in all grades. ucation and interpretation.

f)f the Tnci.Ticnntrh 1 i 1 AAMHns4- Unn nn.niA Of the Post-Dispatch ucation and interpretation. The compact has secured some money from groups including the The 11 schools are: Wilkinson 1 Early Childhood Center; Adams, Kennard, Mason, Meramec, Mul-lanphy, Sherman and Wyman elementary; Fanning and Humboldt middle; and Gateway High School. They all serve children who live near the garden but represent a mixture of demographics and academic performance. For instance, fewer than 10 percent of Mason and Meramec pupils met state science and math standards last year, compared with more than 70 percent of Kennard students. The program will cost about $600,000 a year, said Luther Williams, the garden's director of ed Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation but is still seeking grants.

Peggy Lewis, principal of Wyman Elementary, believes the new venture will give students a more integrated, in-depth education. "I think in the past, science in elementary school has been read a chapter in a book, look at the pretty pictures and move on," Lewis said. Reporter Holly Hacker: E-mail: Phone: 314-209-0982 Casual Casual Casual SYMS has it all. For the best and largest selection of sport coats and blazers in your size of any off-price store, see SYMS right now. All brandnames and designers.

Names You Must Know. You'll find styles such as 2 and 3 button double-breasted, wool and wool blends, as well as silk and silk blends in sizes from 36 to 54. Educators in St. Louis Public Schools have a theory: Working with botanists, environmentalists and other experts at the Missouri Botanical Garden will help students excel in science and math. The school district plans to test that theory this fall at 11 schools.

And if the experiment succeeds, the program eventually could spread to other city campuses. Officials from the city schools and the garden announced the initiative, called the Garden Education Compact, on Wednesday. It will bring teachers to the garden to learn better ways to teach sci Murderer How teen burgkrs became killers Continued from Bl Nationally Advertised -'C at $175. SYMS Price $99. At SYMS we have the I largest selection of dress pants in a variety of including made in Italy, 1 00 wool, a variety of blends, plain front and pleated in sizes from 30w to 48.

All off-priced giving you outstanding quality. Nationally Advertised at $100'. SYMS Price $59. what happened to Crook until the next day, when Moomey's girlfriend told him about a news report on a woman's murder and asked what he knew about it. Benjamin was arrested that afternoon.

He said he believes he should not have been charged with the murder. But Benjamin said he belongs in prison for everything else that happened that night. He turned 16 the day before he was certified by a judge to stand trial as an adult. "Any way a person would look at it, I participated in this," he said. "I wish now I never would have went on that burglary." Simmons is not the youngest inmate to have landed on Missouri's death row.

Antonio Richardson, 27, one of three men sentenced to die for murdering Robin Kerry, 19, and her sister, Julie Kerry, 20, in 1991, won an indefinite stay from the U.S. Supreme Court in March last year on the grounds that he had a low IQ and was 16 at the time of the murders. The Kerry sisters were beaten and raped before they were pushed off the old Chain of Rocks Bridge to drown in the Mississippi River. Simmons won a stay of execution last week from the Missouri Supreme Court, pending a ruling in a Virginia case in which the killer was alleged to be mentally retarded. The Missouri court did not explain its order, but it is presumed to hinge on the question of executing murderers whose thinking might not have been mature when they killed.

Simmons, 26, has declined recent requests for interviews. Reporter Tim Rowden: E-mail: Phone: 636-931-1017 He said it was Simmons who first suggested the crime. Benjamin said they went out walking, looking for a suitable house, and found an open window at neighbor Shirley Crook's trailer in Fenton. He said Simmons reached through the window to unlock the door. "It was supposed to just be a burglary," he said.

Benjamin said he was walking through the house, looking for valuables, when he heard a noise. He found Simmons in the bedroom, binding Crook, 46, with duct tape. "I said (to myself), 'OK, what are you doing I didn't have any plans for this. This is not what I want to do." Benjamin said he never voiced any of that to Simmons. He said Simmons grabbed car keys from Crook's purse and told him to open the side door of her van in the driveway.

Benjamin said he was waiting by the van when Simmons brought Crook out of the house with her eyes and mouth taped, and her hands bound behind her. He said Simmons put Crook in the van and told him to get in. They drove about an hour, stopping near a railroad trestle in Castlewood State Park. "He drove like he seemed to know where he was going," Benjamin suggested. At the trestle, Benjamin said, Simmons got out and tied Crook's hands and feet together.

Prosecutors would later say it would have taken both teens to bind Crook and carry her up on the trestle. But Benjamin said he didn't like what was happening and waited in the vaa "Chris was a very strong individual," he said. Benjamin said he didn't know As youngsters, Simmons and Benjamin played basketball together and raced their bicycles through the neighborhood of their trailer park near Fenton. Although they had never done so together, Benjamin said both were burglarizing houses by their early teens. Benjamin, the youngest of three children, said he committed his first break-in at age 13, while on suspension from school for smoking.

By 15, he was regularly sneaking out of his parents' house at night Often he would end up at the house of a neighbor, Brian Moo-mey, a former convict whose mobile home was a popular place for teens to gather and drink. Moomey would later testify against Simmons and Benjamin, saying that he had overheard them plot a burglary and murder. He said he heard Benjamin claim that nobody would believe he did it because he was a juvenile, and later heard him brag about a killing. Benjamin insisted' those conversations never took place; he said the first time he talked with Simmons about burglary was on the night of the murder. Benjamin said some friends had warned him not to hang out with Simmons, that Chris would get him into trouble.

"I wish I would have listened to them," he said. AN EDUCATED CONSUMER IS OUR BEST CUSTOMER mm ST. LOUIS 8750 Manchester Road just east of Brentwood Blvd. 314-962-2323 Store Hours: Mon-Fri 10 AM 9 PM Sat 10 AM 8 PM Sun 12 Noon 5:30 PM www.syms.com 0H 0 jWt 0ki 0k 0i A tfa ttt tit tift 1 iitfif tfti fi -VU i. iTaWaWji "tW Jl i A ilii "i.