Local

Exhaust hangs thick below the lights in the arena at the Boone County Fairgrounds as two John Deere tractors groom the arena’s dirt track.

Roger McKinney, Jr., 33, paces the sidelines of the 200-foot track, weaving between the hundreds of people that are waiting for the next competitor. Some wear earplugs, but most don’t.

Though often at odds, Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, and Republican legislative leaders agree on the need to boost the University of Missouri system’s life sciences. But the governor and the lawmakers have offered up two different plans for spending millions of dollars to meet the goal and have yet to coordinate their efforts.

Holden’s Jobs Now program and a bond proposal promoted by Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder and House Speaker Catherine Hanaway both target expansion of life sciences to create new jobs in the state. Kinder and Hanaway back a UM proposal to issue $190.4 million in bonds to build and renovate life sciences facilities. The plan would cost the state’s revenue fund $11.6 million a year for debt service beginning in 2008.

JEFFERSON CITY — Dotting the Missouri landscape are the ingredients for human suffering: lead, arsenic and dioxin.

Just ask the residents of North Kansas City.

After nearly 30 years of dancing and teaching in New York and around the world, Columbia native Alan Lynes is back, ready to tackle his newest assignment: renovating the Missouri Theatre.

With work scheduled to begin in 2005, Lynes’ main focus for the next year is raising the $8 million to $10 million needed to remodel the 1920s-era theater.

The Hallsville couple arrested nearly two weeks ago after a horse died on their farm will be charged today with felony animal abuse, said Boone County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Connie Sullivan

Brandi and Thomas Phillips were arrested Dec. 22 after the Central Missouri Humane Society received an anonymous tip that two horses owned by the couple were severely malnourished. One of the horses died shortly after the arrival of humane society workers and deputies from the Boone County Sheriff’s Department.

A driver’s attention is often grabbed by a personalized license plate.

Whether laugh-out-loud funny, mind-numbingly dumb, or bewildering and baffling, each personalized plate is unique. But having one sure isn’t.

Scott Schulte deftly weaves through the rocky terrain, sweeping past leafless branches and pausing occasionally to observe the nature that surrounds him.

He halts, listening carefully. Birds call in the cold morning air. Two deer scamper in the distance. “They must be over there,” Schulte says, pointing in the direction the deer came from.

Inside a locked glass case at the Walters-Boone County Historical Society Museum are a handwritten manuscript and two copies of “River-Horse: Across America by Boat,” author William Least Heat-Moon’s nautical account of how he retraced the 19th-century expedition by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

The case and the items in it, including two Ed Richardson watercolor studies used for the book’s cover,are the centerpieces of an exhibit called “The Missouri River: Exploration into Discovery.” The exhibit, which opened in mid-November, is part of an effort to generate interest in a pavilion being constructed on the north side of the historical society’s facilities on Ponderosa Street.

Melody Troesser’s two children know Saturday morning is reserved for Mama’s studying.

KANSAS CITY — Health departments in Missouri and Kansas continue to record confirmed cases of the flu, though many hospital emergency rooms say the pace has slowed.

Horse-drawn carriages roamed the streets and music could be heard from the sidewalks as Columbians walked among 12 downdown venues at First Night 2004.

At the Missouri United Methodist Church, children danced while fiddlers played. One youngster ran frantically back to his parents worried that there were no other partners he could take to dance with him. Meanwhile, the other children promenaded round and round.

She lets 2-year-old daughter Isadora roam the house without wearing a diaper because that’s what Isadora likes to do.

She studied women’s studies at the University of Manchester in England.

New housing developments and commercial activity popped up all over Columbia in 2003, forcing city officials to come up with ways to keep up with the city’s rapid growth. The same challenges face the city as it moves into 2004, said City Manager Ray Beck.

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Some Missouri Tigers football fans spent Tuesday night in a field outside Independence Stadium. Barb Dillon and her friends have spent three nights there — in an RV.

Dillon, her husband, Harry, and three others arrived Sunday night from Portland, Mo., and took up temporary residence in an RV park set aside for fans in town for tonight’s Independence Bowl game against Arkansas.

The MU School of Medicine typically receives $100 million less in research grants than more prominent public medical schools, largely because it does not have the necessary laboratory space.

But a state bond issue proposed Monday could lead to a massive revamping of the medical research program, including the addition of a 411,000-square-foot Health Sciences Research Center, said Associate Dean for Research Bill Folk.

Three people were injured Tuesday morning when a vehicle traveling north on U.S. 63 collided with a COLT train at a railroad crossing just north of the Route B overpass.

Emergency crews arrived at 11:43 a.m. and evacuated three people from the vehicle. Kathryn Toal, 53, and Shannon Toal, 19, both of Clarence, suffered moderate injuries, according to the Columbia Fire Department. The driver, Robert C. Toal, 73, also of Clarence, suffered minor injuries. All three were transported to the trauma center at University Hospital.

A resident of Reality House, an alternative sentencing facility, died Monday from extensive coronary artery disease, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department said.

“The death appears natural, but toxicology is still going to be done,” said Boone County Sgt. Tom Reddin.

James Roger Davis II, the Columbia man convicted of sodomizing his 15-year-old daughter, was given the maximum penalty of two concurrent seven-year prison terms Tuesday.

Boone County Circuit Judge Gene Hamilton sentenced Davis, who had waived his right to be sentenced by the jury that found him guilty on two counts of second-degree statutory sodomy Oct. 9.

Boone County Commissioners approved a $41.7 million budget for fiscal year 2004 Tuesday, an increase of about $200,000 over the previous year. Costs related to coming county elections, employee health care and inmate health care account for the increase. Southern District Commissioner Karen M. Miller said the change in this year’s budget was the smallest she had seen in her 10 years in office.

— Gillian O’Brien

Missouri’s legislative leaders and MU officials hope that a $190.4 million bond plan will create jobs in Missouri and strengthen scientific research.

The bond proposal, outlined on Monday by MU chancellor Richard Wallace, is for the construction and renovation of six health sciences and engineering facilities at all four University of Missouri System campuses. For every dollar the state invests in life sciences projects, the university expects to raise $5 in federal and private funds. Wallace said that over the span of 10 years, the initiative could generate about $1 billion.