ST. LOUIS

City welcomes tour of Olympic torch

A century since becoming the first American city to stage the modern-era Olympic Games, St. Louis welcomed back the Olympic flame Thursday.

“The eyes of the world are on St. Louis today,” Mayor Francis Slay told hundreds who gathered at the towering Gateway Arch on the flame’s second leg of a four-city U.S. tour.

Moments later, a flamekeeper fired up a torch held by actor-comedian Joe Torry, a St. Louis native, who trotted off to start the flame’s 34-mile tour of the city.

St. Louis’ time with the flame, which is bound for Athens in time for the August games, came a day after its arrival in America. The flame had a celebrity-studded journey through Los Angeles on Wednesday and will visit Atlanta today and New York on Saturday.

BALTIMORE

Murderer executed after final appeal rejected

A triple murderer was put to death by injection Thursday after a week of appeals in which his lawyers claimed the execution method was potentially painful and therefore unconstitutionally cruel.

Lower courts had agreed to stay Steven Oken’s execution to determine whether a barbiturate used in the execution might not keep the inmate from feeling pain, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision Wednesday.

On Thursday Oken’s lawyers argued that executioners might have to cut deeply into his flesh to administer the lethal drugs, but lower courts and the Supreme Court quickly rejected that appeal.

Oken was executed at 9:18 p.m. Thursday, a Maryland prison spokeswoman said.