NCAA questions new Mizzou basketball coach

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - The University of Missouri’s new basketball coach is being questioned in an NCAA investigation. The questions are related to Frank Haith’s time as head coach at the University of Miami.

Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith has issued a statement, saying he is cooperating with an NCAA investigation. But he also says the statements made about him in a Yahoo Sports investigative report are not an accurate portrayal of his character.

A former University of Miami booster is serving 20 years in prison for his role in a 930 million dollar Ponzi scheme, and he is talking.

In the Yahoo sports story, Nevin Shapiro alleges he gave thousands of dollars to University of Miami athletes in violation of NCAA rules. And he’s naming names, implicating 72 athletes and 10 coaches. One of them is Frank Haith.

Shapiro says he paid Miami basketball recruit DeQuan Jones $10,000 and that Haith was aware of the payment.

Haith says the NCAA told him not to comment on the matter further at this time. The University of Missouri used that same line, and also pledged to cooperate with the investigation.

Haith was the head coach at Miami for 7 years before taking the Missouri job this April.

Ryan Famuliner, KBIA

Read More

Nixon promises more funding for public education

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - Governor Jay Nixon promised Missouri educators Tuesday he would devote his efforts toward developing quality public schooling. Speaking at a conference for public school teachers and administrators in Columbia, the Governor says he will “reign in tax credit programs” and put more funding into public education.

“If you continue on a 408 percent increase of credits and leave everything else flat and these tax credits get going even more, we’ll just have the same problem bigger in years to come. This is the time,” Nixon said.

Nixon says he wants to use additional funding to move Missouri into the top 10 states in the U.S. for public schooling. In particular, he stressed the need for the Missouri General Assembly to pass an education funding reform package in 2012.

Ryan Famuliner, KBIA

Read More

U.S. Postal Service looks at closing 167 Missouri offices

The U.S. Postal Service released a list Tuesday of nearly 3,700 post offices across the nation that will be studied to determine whether they should be closed. 167 Missouri offices are on the chopping block. Most are offices in small towns.

Spokeswoman for the postal service's St. Louis District Valerie Welsch says the move aims to help the Postal Service grow and adapt to the changing times.

"The postal service wants to be everywhere so our customers can be anywhere," Welsch said. "With technology today customers have a variety of choices and the postal services wants to be there, be one of those choices, so we can continue to provide service to Americans."

Welsch says the study will, among other things, examine revenues and impact to communities. She says the communities that lose their post offices will likely have the option of getting a “village post office,” at a grocery store or other business, where stamps could be sold and mail could be dropped off.

In the meantime, postmasters at some of the local offices on the list, whose jobs may be at stake, directed all comments to Welsch.

Southeast Missouri post offices under examination are Blodgett, Brownwood, Daisy, Dutchtown, Gipsy, Old Appleton, Perkins, Sturdivant, Vanduser and Whitewater.

Ryan Famuliner, KBIA and Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Read More

USDA grants $14M to Mizzou, Texas A&M for cattle research

COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - The U-S Department of Agriculture is giving 14 million dollars in grants to the University of Missouri and Texas A&M in hopes to find the most efficient ways to breed cattle.

Farmers aren’t getting the most out of the feed they’re shoveling into their troughs. That’s the basic hypothesis behind the grant. It will pay the University of Missouri to map the genes of cattle and examine bacteria and microbes in the animals’ stomachs.

Director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, says this will help identify the all-star cattle. “We’re gonna get a view of what the diversity of all the animal population is and through that they’re going to be able to select those breeds that are higher-use efficiency. By doing that, we will produce more with less,” Beachy said.

Dr. Jerry Taylor in the College of Agriculture is heading the project at MU. He believes that within 5 years this research will lead to technologies that can increase feed efficiency at farms across the U.S.

“Animal agriculture has less funding available to it than, for example, if you’re a human disease researcher and have access to NIH funding. So when you do get a grant like this, these grants don’t come along every day. You have to make the money go as far as you possibly can,” Dr. Taylor said.

Taylor says his work will overlap with the research that will be done at Texas A&M, which will focus on studying Bovine Respiratory Disease. Researchers say the disease costs farmers in the U.S. almost $700 million a year

Ryan Famuliner, KBIA.

Read More