(AP) Gov. Jay Nixon says he’ll propose “substantially” higher funding for Missouri’s public colleges and universities next year while also boosting resources for financial aid and scholarships.

But in a speech Monday to higher education officials, the governor did not provide specific amounts of what he plans to recommend in the state budget proposal he will present in January.

He also proposed an initiative to train more mental health professionals in the state.

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is keeping up her fight to ensure Missouri’s farmers and ranchers are not burdened by unnecessary and costly rules from the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urging her colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee to eliminate a redundant EPA regulation that would force thousands of Missouri farmers and ranchers to apply for permits in order to use already-approved pesticides on their own land.

Both the U.S. House and Senate have passed bills addressing agricultural policy, and a “conference committee” has been appointed to merge those two versions. McCaskill’s bipartisan letter is addressed to Agriculture Committee heads Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), and urges them to include a provision eliminating this burdensome provision.

“If you can cut through red tape in a way that makes life easier for farmers and ranchers-all while ensuring folks are not being adversely affected-that should be a no-brainer,” McCaskill said. “This duplicative regulation hasn’t made sense since it was instituted, and I’m going to continuing pushing until it’s eliminated.”

Currently, all pesticides must undergo more than 100 different tests, as well as registration by the EPA before being certified as having no “adverse effects on the environment.” In 2009, a federal court issued a decision requiring individuals who were working in or near water to acquire yet another permit in order to continue operations.

“We urge you to include a provision in the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act that specifies that these duplicative permits are not required,” McCaskill’s bipartisan letter reads.

McCaskill has previously supported a similar measure as an amendment to the Farm Bill that passed the Senate last year, but the amendment was not included in the final bill. Without this bill, the EPA has estimated that an additional 365,000 pesticide users, including farmers, ranchers, cities, counties, and forest managers, will be required to obtain permits.

McCaskill’s advocacy on the Farm Bill was honored last year at the Golden Triangle Award Ceremony for the National Farmers Union, where she accepted the group’s highest legislative honor awarded to sitting members of Congress in recognition of her leadership working on behalf of Missouri’s rural communities.

Police in central Missouri say a dispute over splitting $200 in bingo winnings left one woman with a face full of stitches and another facing assault charges.

The argument broke out Sunday night as three people were driving home after playing bingo in Moberly.

Ashland police Chief Lyn Woolford says the driver _ a 51-year-old Jefferson City woman _ pulled over on U.S. 63 and assaulted a backseat passenger with scissors. That passenger needed 32 stitches in her cheek.

Woolford says the other passenger tried to help the backseat passenger and was also assaulted.

The chief says the driver left the passengers beside the highway and drove away. She was arrested in Jefferson City and was jailed Monday in Boone County.

A state senator wants the Missouri Board of Education to give temporary, provisional accreditation to the Kansas City School District.

Republican Ryan Silvey, of Kansas City, said Monday the temporary label would give legislators time to consider changing a state law requiring unaccredited districts to pay for students’ transfers to other schools.

On Monday, the board heard a progress report from consultants hired to recommend ways the state could help improve the Kansas City district. A draft report is expected by January.

 (AP) — A University of Missouri medical researcher is working to use the cancer-fighting compounds found in grape skins and red wine in tumor-killing radiation treatments.

Surgical oncologist Michael Nicholl says a recent study shows that resveratrol can make certain melanoma cells more susceptible to radiation. Previous research found similar hope in the treatment of prostate cancer.

The assistant professor of surgery at the School of Medicine cautioned that scientists have still not found an effective way to deliver the grape ingredient in sufficient amounts to destroy melanoma tumors.

His study was published in the Journal of Surgical Research, a publication of the Association for Academic Surgery.

Lawmakers from both parties agree that Missouri’s state hospital for the most severely ill and dangerous mental health patients is in dire need of repair, but it remains unclear just how to come up with the more than $200 million to replace the crumbling Fulton State Hospital.

The facility is Missouri’s only maximum security psychiatric hospital.  Some of the buildings on the 95-acre site are completely abandoned. Others are in such bad shape they raise safety concerns for patients and staff.
Stairways in the brick buildings are eroding. A fire tower has to be regularly caulked to keep it from toppling. Patients lack privacy because of the outdated design. The 30-building hospital has one kitchen.

Republican state Sen. David Pearce of Warrensburg heads an interim Senate committee reviewing state building repair needs. He says many of the state’s more than 6,000 buildings need fixing but dollars are scarce.
“It’s a daunting task,” Pearce said.

But Rep. Jeanie Riddle, a Republican whose district includes Fulton, said the hospital concerns must be addressed.
“This is an issue that Missouri cannot keep putting on the back burner,” Riddle said. “We have to do something about this.”
Pearce’s committee will file a report on the state’s capital improvement needs in December. The committee recently toured the Fulton hospital and other sites identified as priorities.
“I believe there’s a prevailing logic that the Fulton hospital is one of our most pressing needs,” Pearce said.

The hospital has 350 patients, which is close to capacity. Nearly all were sent there by courts, jails or prisons after being deemed mentally ill. The few others have behaviors that make treatment impossible at less secure facilities.
The Missouri Department of Mental Health has proposed a new 300-bed, high-security facility. An outdated estimate put the price tag at about $211 million, possibly higher now.

The House held hearings earlier this year on a $1.2 billion bonding proposal that would have included funding for the Fulton hospital. The plan ultimately was dropped after failing to gain momentum in the Senate, though lawmakers say they plan to come back to the proposal when they return to the Capitol in January.
Some conservative lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, oppose recent bonding proposals, seeing them as adding to the state’s debt. Any bond measure requires approval in the House and Senate, plus a statewide vote.
The Legislature allocated $13 million for the beginning design stages, but Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has withheld the money out of budget concerns. It could be released later in the fiscal year.
Private funding is possible, though it is not unclear where the money would come from.
Fulton State Hospital chief operating officer Marty Martin-Forman knows it will be years before any major changes happen at the facility. She knows that funding is tight.
“It’s a long way away,” Martin-Forman said.

USDA has announced $181 million in loan guarantees to build commercial-size refineries making advanced biofuels or to retrofit existing biorefineries to produce the cleaner-burning renewable fuels.

Since 2008, the Agriculture Department has provided $684 million through the Biorefinery Assistance Program to support projects in eight states. Applications for the latest round of funding are due by Jan. 30.
“This financing will expand the number of commercial biorefineries in operation in the United States that are producing advanced biofuels from non-food sources,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

USDA announced the funding at a time the federal mandate for biofuels is under challenge in Congress and in the bureaucracy. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it is considering whether to scale back the mandate, now dominated by corn-based ethanol.
Advanced biofuels, made from plant materials like wood and grasses and producing fewer greenhouse gases than current fuels, were expected to match corn ethanol by the end of this decade but have been far slower to develop than expected.
The Advanced Biofuels Association lists more than 200 plants, including biodiesel makers. Valero Inc. and Darling International are partners in a plant that opened in June to produce 137 million gallons a year of renewable diesel from animal fats and cooking oil.

(AP) — The head of Missouri’s public defender system says furloughs may be necessary if Gov. Jay Nixon does not release additional money for the system by January.

State Public Defender Cat Kelly sent notices last week to judges warning them that the system could face staff shortages. She said a hiring freeze would start Nov. 1 and furloughs could kick in two months later.

Nixon withheld $1.4 million from the public defender system when then budget year started July 1.

A spokeswoman for Nixon’s Office of Administration says the public defender system and many other agencies had 4 percent of their budgets restricted — slightly more than the standard 3 percent that’s kept in reserve.

After the legislation recently received unanimous support in the U.S. Senate, Claire McCaskill today urged her colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to take up her bipartisan bill that increases oversight over how the government conducts background investigations and awards security clearances.

McCaskill’s bill-cosponsored by Senator Jon Tester of Montana-improves oversight of the security clearance process by empowering the Office of Personnel Management to use resources from its Revolving Fund to audit and investigate contractors that conduct background checks.

“The ability to conduct a basic audit is a good first step toward reforming the security clearance process, and making sure that we can trust those with access to our country’s secrets and secure facilities,” said McCaskill, a former State Auditor and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial & Contracting Oversight. “We now need the U.S. House to take up this commonsense measure, and I’m confident that it can find bipartisan support in the House, as it did in the Senate.”

The bipartisan bill is a product of a recent joint Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing led by McCaskill and Tester that revealed that the contractor who conducted Snowden’s background check is under investigation. At the June hearing, witnesses testified that a lack of oversight and information sharing threatened the security of classified information.

McCaskill also sent a bipartisan letter to Government Accountability Office Comptroller General Gene Dodaro requesting that the watchdog examine the security clearance process and report how various federal agencies can streamline and improve clearance investigations.