A new five-story residential hall at the University of Missouri is scheduled to open in 2015.

The new dorm will help the university keep up with record-setting freshman classes.

Construction of the 92,000-square-foot building is scheduled to begin in September 2013. Current designs call for single and double rooms as well as study areas and common spaces.

Freshmen have to live on campus and are given higher priority for housing. The Columbia campus has experienced record numbers of freshmen for several years.

Residential Life director Frankie Minor says depending on enrollment, the new housing could allow upper-level students to live on campus.

Authorities say a man who drove the wrong way for 11 miles on a southwest Missouri interstate told troopers he was just trying to get home.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says only two minor accidents occurred while the 78-year-old man drove the wrong way on Interstate 44 Tuesday evening in Webster County before troopers finally got him to stop.

The man told officers he made a wrong turn onto the freeway and kept going so he could get home.

Several officers followed on the correct side of the interstate as drivers pulled over to avoid the car.

The station says when he was pulled over west of Marshfield, the man did not offer any better explanation of why he didn’t stop, pull over or turn around.

The Kansas Senate’s new budget committee chairman filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and listed nearly $885,000 in unsecured debts in a federal court filing.

But other incoming Senate leaders defended Andover Republican Ty Masterson after his selection Tuesday as Ways and Means Committee chairman. They said colleagues respect him.

Masterson says he’s working with creditors to pay off debts that were discharged this year.

A GOP leadership panel picked Masterson. He and other incoming Senate leaders will begin their jobs when legislators convene their 2013 session in mid-January.

Masterson said he understands that some might question his appointment with the bankruptcy in his background. But he said it gives him a personal perspective on the tough economic times many people are facing.

A Kansas City man convicted in a cocaine trafficking operation has been sentenced as a career offender to life in prison without parole.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says the sentence imposed Monday on 31-year-old Theodore Wiggins was mandatory because of his prior felony convictions for drug offenses.

 

Prosecutors said two of those convictions involved carjackings, including one in which he shot at pursuing officers.

Wiggins was found guilty in June of participating in a drug-trafficking conspiracy and selling cocaine to an undercover officer.

Prosecutors say the conspiracy involved distribution of large amounts of powder and crack cocaine in the metro area. Twenty-four people have pleaded guilty to charges related to the operation, including a Raytown man who bought cocaine by the kilogram from suppliers in Kansas City, Kan.

A proposal being considered by Missouri lawmakers would base 10 percent of funding for public colleges and universities on whether they meet performance goals.

The plan outlined Monday for a joint House and Senate Education Committee is part of an attempt to develop a funding formula for higher education institutions.

Under the new proposal, the state would fund 35 percent of an institution’s operating costs.

Of that amount, 90 would be automatic and the remaining 10 percent would depend on whether they meet specific performance goals such as retaining students.

Budgets for Missouri colleges and universities currently are based on their historic funding levels, although there is the potential for a small percentage of additional dollars to be distributed based on performance criteria.

The University of Missouri will have three graduates in the U.S. Senate for at least the next six years.

Martin Heinrich, a 1995 graduate, will represent New Mexico after being sworn in Jan. 3. He will join Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who graduated from Missouri in 1979, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who graduated in 1975. All three are Democrats.

That’s the largest number of U.S. senators from one state-supported school.

All three lawmakers say their experiences at the university helped shape their attitudes as public officials.

And McCaskill said she wants to bring her two new colleagues to Columbia for a basketball game or Homecoming next fall.

The company that manages a southwest Missouri apartment building where five people died in a Thanksgiving Day fire had disabled the manual fire alarms in the building about 10 years ago.

Rick Schroeder, president of Bell Management, of Joplin, which oversees Blue Ridge Apartments in Wheaton, said the five manual fire alarms pulls in the building haven’t operated for 10 years.

 

Officials have said that the apartments each had working smoke detectors when the five people were killed in the early morning blaze. Four adults and an 8-year-old boy died in the fire.

Schroeder says the tenants were told the manual alarms didn’t work.  They were disabled because people kept pulling them in the middle of the night.

Kansas 1st District Congressman Tim Huelskamp has written House Speaker John Boehner seeking reinstatement to committees he was removed from last week.

Huelskamp, R-Kan., was among four GOP lawmakers that Boehner removed from important House political assignments after they bucked party leaders on key votes. The four congressmen voted against the agreement in the summer of 2011 to raise the government’s debt ceiling.

Huelskamp lost his seat on the House Budget and Agriculture Committees.

Huelskamp says in a release that he sent a letter Friday to Boehner requesting that he be re-seated on the two committees. He says his office has been “overwhelmed” with calls and emails from supporters.

A Boehner spokesman said Tuesday the party’s steering committee made the decision to pull the committee assignment “based on a range of factors.”

The wife of a man convicted of killing a rural Kansas woman has been removed from a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the victim’s children.

An Atchison County judge on Thursday removed Rebecca Hollister from the lawsuit filed by the children of 58-year-old Patricia Kimmi of rural Horton.

Hollister’s husband, Roger, is serving life in prison for Kimmi’s November 2009 death.

 

Kimmi’s children allege in their lawsuit that their estranged father, Eugene Kimmi, and the Hollisters conspired to cause Patricia Kimmi’s death.

The judge ruled the plaintiffs had presented no evidence to prove Rebecca Hollister was involved in Patricia Kimmi’s death. He said Rebecca Hollister might have lied to investigators after the crime but that was not part of the lawsuit.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $10,000 fine for a man accused of operating a pirate radio station in Manhattan.

Glen Rubash has 30 days to appeal Wednesday’s action from the agency’s enforcement bureau. The 59-year-old Junction City man didn’t immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The station was operating under the 88.3 frequency on the FM dial.

The station was rebroadcasting from the conservative Republic Broadcasting Network.

The FCC wrote that the 88.3 signal was traced in September to an FM transmitting antenna mounted on a pole next to a Manhattan home. The FCC wrote that agents determined that the signal was strong enough that a license was required. But no license had been granted.