Missouri officials acknowledged Monday that they reported inflated numbers of food stamp recipients to the federal government, calling into question millions of dollars of bonuses paid to the state for running one of the nation’s top-flight programs, according to the Kansas City Star. Food stamp use is up across the country, including in New Mexico, where 70,000 more New Mexicans are using the program than a year ago.

California voters could decide whether to legalize marijuana in November after supporters announced Monday that they have more than enough signatures to ensure that it qualifies for the ballot, reports the Los Angeles Times.

In the energy world, Exxon Mobil Corp.’s purchase of a Texas natural gas producer for $29 billion — what one analyst called a ‘game changer’ — could reshape the U.S. energy landscape, setting the stage for the fuel to challenge coal in the nation’s electrical grid and helping to alleviate American dependence on foreign oil, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Obama administration will announce today that it plans to make it easier for local, state and federal authorities to share clues that could thwart potential terrorist attacks, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune is reporting President Barack Obama has directed the federal government to buy the near-empty state prison in rural Thomson, Ill., to house federal inmates and up to 100 detainees from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

I don’t want to contribute to building up hopes, but Editor & Publisher plans to publish its January 2010 issue, due to overwhelming reader and advertiser demand, the magazine reports. The news was unexpected and caused some to hold out hope that the media industry mag will somehow miraculously survive despite last week’s announcement that Nielsen would shut down E&P.

On the tech front, watch out, Bit.ly. Google, the giant of the Internet, announced a move into the realm of the small Monday: URL shorteners, which condense long Web addresses into very short ones, reports the New York Times. Google is rolling out Goo.gl to compete with Bit.ly, which is extremely popular on micro-blogging services like Twitter.