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The head of Missouri’s Higher Education Department has a good-news prediction for the state’s colleges and universities: a downplay in funding cuts from legislators. By Kirk Wayman in Maryville.

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The city of Columbia is spending $45,000 to conduct an outside review of its police department. This comes after a year in which the department has seen a host of issues, including the firing of officer Rob Sanders, as well as dueling local groups focusing on Chief Ken Burton.

This week: Missouri could gain over two hundred thousand jobs by the 2025, and the Department of Labor proposed new regulations on kids working on the farm who are under 16.

Missouri has one of the highest smoking rates in the nation -- at 21 percent, it's double the rate in states like Utah and California. But some segments of the population smoke even more. In this week's Health & Wealth update, I talk with MU researchers who have found that the smoking rate among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Missourians is much higher than in the population at large.

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• MO lawmakers have to do more with less
• How do MO colleges match up against our international counterparts?

The U.S. fuel industry rang in the new year with a little less help from the government after the previously entrenched Volumetric Ethanol Excise Credit expired on Dec. 31, 2011.

Missouri lawmakers return to Jefferson City today for the start of this year’s legislative session.  The year 2011 was marked by House and Senate Republicans fighting with each other over tax credits and redistricting, while still managing to take pot shots at Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s handling of the state budget.  Marshall Griffin takes a look at how the 2012 session may play out.

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