October 2, 2009

At the Roots N’ Blues N’ BBQ Festival last Saturday afternoon, three bands were playing, thousands of people were streaming downtown and hundreds of volunteers, staff and security workers were managing the crowd when the weather forecast proved correct — it started to rain. Then it started to pour.
Nicole Thieret, who was managing the festival for Thumper Entertainment for the first time, stayed calm while troubleshooting over her walkie-talkie and cell phone. “We had rain for about an hour, and it kind of cleared the streets out, but everyone came right back out.” The musicians, they kept on playing.

Every weekday morning, commercial radio station hosts David Lile and Tom Bradley compete with the public station KBIA for a share of the news-talk listeners in the Columbia market. Lile, who’s been hosting KFRU’s “Morning News” program from 6 to 9 a.m. for a dozen years, has helped the AM station keep the top spot

What a difference a year has made in the life of Columbia Regional Airport.

As Kevin Pentico gathered his luggage at Columbia Regional Airport, he had just one complaint about his Delta flight from Memphis on the 34-seat turboprop plane.
“It’s so loud,” Pentico said. “Instead of peanuts, they should pass out earplugs.”

The health care reform bills competing for votes in Congress are attempts to counteract the swiftly rising costs and rapidly growing ranks of uninsured Americans that threaten the nation’s medical system, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health. During a symposium on global health at Westminster College, Ryan Barker, the foundation’s health policy analyst, outlined