News

The U.S. Senate approved a new comprehensive farm bill Monday, its plan for everything from food and nutrition assistance to disaster aid for livestock producers to crop insurance for farmers. But before you go popping champagne corks and celebrating the creation of five-years of agricultural policy, know this: The U.S. House has yet to weigh in.

  The Missouri Department of Agriculture has announced an expansion of a quarantine area on pine products to Adair and Clark counties. The quarantine prohibits the distribution of pine products as an attempt to reduce the spread of the Pine Shoot Beetles.  

Columbia residents identified improvements to public safety, roads and storm water infrastructure as key priorities in a survey conducted by the city council. The council met Friday and Saturday in its annual planning retreat to discuss future payment options.

The Missouri Highway Patrol is warning boaters that if they’re not responsible on the water, they might be making waves in the criminal justice system.  

  The talk around STEM employment (jobs in the fields of science, technology, math and engineering) has largely circled around jobs that require a great deal of education.

Park rangers are looking for vandals who caused thousands of dollars in damage to an old mill in Mark Twain National Forest in southeast Missouri.

District ranger Tim Bond says Falling Spring Mill in Oregon County was damaged last month when vandals ripped boards off the structure and threw them into a pond.

Bond says the historic mill has been damaged in the past, but never as badly as in the mid-May incident. There is damage on every side of the building and its bulletin board was destroyed.

  Missouri has received a federal grant to test a new type of road treatment intended to keep cars from slipping off highways when it rains or snows.

The Missouri Department of Transportation says it will apply the "high friction surface treatment" to a pair of curves on U.S. 54 and Missouri 179 in Jefferson City.

If the agency has enough money, it may also apply the treatment at two sites on Interstate 44 near Rolla.

  Five colleagues of a former Boone County medical examiner are challenging his findings as a Kirksville man seeks a new trial in a woman's 1997 death.

Former medical examiner Jay Dix, who died in 2002, ruled that Wendy Wagnon died from suffocation. That led to the conviction of Jessie McKim and James Peavler in 1999.

The Missouri House is creating a committee to study itself.

House Speaker Tim Jones says he has formed a new committee to examine the operations of the House of Representatives and recommend potential changes to the way it conducts business.

The panel will have a long name. It’s called the Interim House Committee on Legislative Institutional Infrastructure and Process. It will be led by Rep. Dwight Scharnhorst, a Republican from St. Louis County.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is deciding whether to sign recently passed legislation that would bolster gun rights.

The legislature approved measures that would tackle federal gun laws, allow certain trained school personnel to carry a concealed weapon and change the process for issuing concealed gun permits.

Nixon has until mid-July to sign the bills, veto them or allow them to take effect without his signature.