News

A female referee will officiate Southeast Missouri State University’s non-conference football game with the University of Kansas in September. Catherine "Cat" Conti will be the first woman to referee a game with a Big 12 Conference team.

The Big 12’s commissioner calls Conti “a darn good official” and she’ll have a chance to show her skills on September 6 in Lawrence, Kansas.

Southeast athletic director Mark Alnutt said Conti earned the opportunity to referee the game.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster was in Cape Girardeau today to talk about Amendment 1 - the “right-to-farm” amendment - at the Kirchdoerfer dairy farm as part of a two-day farm tour.

Koster is concerned about rural Missouri agriculture’s future and supports Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment that aims at protecting farmers’ ability to raise crops and livestock.

A program that will bring leadership skills and a two-way flow of communication between Cape Girardeau neighborhoods and City Hall will launch later this year.

The Neighborhood Development Initiative will start with two pilot neighborhoods. One neighborhood is between Highway 74 and Hackberry Street, and Beaudean Lane and Ranney Street. The other is between Big Bend Road and Water Street, and East Cape Rock Drive and Second Street.

Jackson city officials announced today that FEMA has approved additional funding for the new Jackson Community Center.

The project will overall cost $5 million and the City revealed in a press release that the amount of the grant award is now of $3,361,685, instead of the initial $2,400,000.  

Jackson’s Mayor Barbara Lohr said the cost of the Tornado Safe Room portion of the new community center turned out to be higher than anticipated in the original grant application.

The “who” part of the Farm Bill is pretty clear.

With trillions dollars of government spending up for grabs, lobbyists from all ends of the spectrum – representing environmental interests, biotech companies, food companies, farmers – flocked to Capitol Hill to find their piece of the Farm Bill pie.

From major financial institutions (Wells Fargo & Company) to Taco Bell (Yum! Brands) to Midwest farmers (the National Corn Growers Association), outside groups spent big bucks to shape national food and agriculture policy.