Adam Allington

The St. Louis restaurant company Panera says its experiment to open several "pay-what-you-want nonprofit restaurants" has been a huge success.

Customers at these special facilities order like normal, but the cashiers simply suggest payment amounts - what customers actually put into the donation box is up to them.

Panera founder and chairman Ronald Shaich says nearly 80 percent of customers pay the full prices or more.

The second annual Tour de Grove bike race got under way this afternoon.

Some 15 professional teams from around the country will be competing for a total purse of around $35,000.

Mike Weiss is the owner of the Big Shark Bicycle Company and is one of the event organizers.

Unlike the Tour of Missouri, Weiss says the Tour de Grove features an urban loop track, with more chances to watch the race unfold.

The Missouri State Treasurer is making low-interest loans available to over 40 counties trying to rebound from a string of weather-related disasters.

State Treasurer Clint Zweifel, who was in the St. Louis region Tuesday, says the loans will help homeowners and businesses qualify for loans in less than 24 hours.

Zweifel also says the new program will cut red tape and help qualified borrowers receive low-interest assistance loans in less than 24 hours.

As we told you this morning in our news round-up, Republican attorney Ed Martin of St. Louis has dropped his campaign for U.S. Senate to enter a race for Congress instead.

In early polling, Martin trailed other likely GOP Senate contenders including Congressman Todd Akin and former-treasurer Sarah Steelman.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is continuing to blow holes into agricultural levees to relieve rising floodwater on the town of Cairo, Ill. (See video footage of today's second blast below).

However, sparing Cairo came at the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars of Missouri crops.

Ed Marshall farms about 8,000 acres in Mississippi County in southeast Missouri.  At this time of year he normally looks out on miles of corn and wheat, but right now, his view is different.