Articles

After nine years as an assistant coach following his playing days at Missouri, Justin Towe is ready to start his first season as head coach of the Rock Bridge baseball team. Rock Bridge’s nine seniors are a big reason the Bruins are ranked No. 3 in a preseason poll by MOsports.com. Towe said the seniors are an important part of that ranking, and an even more important part of keeping it.

MELBOURNE, Australia — The red line lapped at Michael Phelps’ feet, as if pushing him to another world record.

EeTisha Riddle will not be spending her spring break on the beach or on the mountains skiing. Instead, she will head to Cleveland for this weekend’s WNBA Pre-Draft Camp.

Karla DeSpain knows what it’s like to be busy. For the past six years, her schedule has included two terms on the Columbia School Board and working part time in her husband’s dermatology practice. Her younger daughter, Ryanne, just turned 14 and plays two sports, and 16-year-old Caitlin will soon get her driver’s license.

The chore list pinned to the wall next to the front door at Reality House said it was Bob Phillippe’s week to pick up trash. So, on a rainy Friday morning, the 51-year-old Columbia man shuffled around the common area of a double-wide trailer collecting candy wrappers and empty plastic soda bottles. The door to the trailer stood open, and Phillippe placed a few pieces of paper in a small trash can and walked outside to smoke a menthol cigarette.

ASHLAND — In 1999, Ashland got its first library. It was a 30-year-old retired bookmobile that stayed open 20 hours a week in the parking lot of Ashland Baptist Church. In 2000, the makeshift facility got an upgrade when 150 volunteers and staff helped transfer books into the new Southern Boone County Library, a rented office building on Broadway.

A former employee of the Vertical Group, a Columbia financial services company, pleaded guilty in an U.S. District Court on Wednesday to conspiracy to commit money laundering, Bradley J. Schlozman, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said in a news release.

It’s been more than two years, but the vote on the Wal-Mart store on West Broadway continues to remain a divisive issue.

Wednesday night’s mayoral candidate forum got off to a late start, but no one seemed to mind. It was almost 6:30 p.m. and children were still filing in and out of the Downtown Optimist Club, grabbing handfuls of blue corn chips before returning to their basketball game outside.

Last year, the United States installed 8 percent of the world’s solar-electric technology, the executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association said Wednesday. By contrast, Germany, which receives about the same amount of sunlight as Alaska, installed 55 percent.

Allegations that MU football player Aaron O’Neal knew he was going to die and that no one was going to help him are among the statements that must be stricken from his parents’ wrongful death lawsuit, a 13th District Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday.