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Saturday, July 4, 2009

Numerous code violations found at defunct hotel

CHAMPAIGN – A city inspection of Gateway Studios, the shuttered hotel at 1505 N. Neil St., found 401 property maintenance and fire code violations.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Water in north Champaign neighborhood fine

CHAMPAIGN — Illinois American Water officials have confirmed that water for residents of a north Champaign neighborhood affected by a broken line Wednesday is safe to drink.

Caution: Beware of swine flu in Champaign County

CHAMPAIGN – County health officials are taking steps to inform the public about ways to prevent getting H1NI, also known as the swine flu, after the first confirmed case in Champaign County.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Champaign County has first confirmed case of swine flu

CHAMPAIGN — Champaign County has its first confirmed case of H1N1, also known as swine flu.

Water restored to north Champaign neighborhood

CHAMPAIGN — Water has been restored to a dozen customers in north Champaign affected by a water main break Wednesday afternoon near the site of a gas plant that’s being cleaned up.

But those people are being supplied bottled water until tests on the water are completed Thursday evening or Friday morning.

Danville library has summer programs for all age groups

DANVILLE — The Danville Public Library has several programs on tap this summer for people of all ages.

Crafts, teen activities and a new program to assist in learning a new language are all available. Some are open to the public and others restricted to patrons.

Danville youth football organization tackling diabetes

DANVILLE – Members of the Danville Giants Youth Football Organization are learning life lessons while learning a sport.

"We want the kids to look beyond themselves," said Lester Potts, president of the organization's board. "They need to know it's important to give back to the community and that pleasure comes from giving to others."

State gives $289,400 for cooling-assistance program

DANVILLE – The East Central Illinois Community Action Agency has received $289,400 for its Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program from the state.

The money is used to provide cooling assistance to eligible households in Ford, Iroquois and Vermilion counties.

Social-service agencies begin cuts after budget fails

CHAMPAIGN – Staff layoffs and program cuts have already begun at some human service agencies after the state Legislature failed to approve a budget providing them with level funding for the fiscal year that began Wednesday.

State funding for some social service programs was eliminated, while others received less severe cuts that still will require layoffs.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Carle again earns a Level I trauma center designation

CHAMPAIGN – Carle Foundation Hospital has been redesignated a Level I trauma center by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The hospital has held that designation since 1988. It is the only Level I trauma center in Region 6, a 21-county area in East Central Illinois.

Mississippi's still fattest, but Alabama closing in

WASHINGTON (AP) – Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.

It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. Obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn't decline anywhere, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Tilton plans Celebration of Community to benefit pantry

TILTON – Danville Foodstock will partner with several Tilton businesses to host a Celebration of Community to benefit the Danville Area Food Pantry.

The event is set from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and will feature music, food and fun for people of all ages at Tilton Plaza, across from the Georgetown Road Big R Store.

Poker run scheduled to help Danville food pantry

DANVILLE – The Danville Firefighters Local 429 and the Friendly Tavern will sponsor a poker run July 11 to raise money for the Danville Area Food Pantry.

Registration begins at 10 a.m. at the Friendly Tavern, 216 E. South St., with the ride beginning at noon. Participants will visit four sites and then return to the Friendly for the fifth card in the hand. The rider with the best hand will win $500. Riders may pre-register at the Friendly from July 6 through 10. Entry fee is $15 with additional card hands available for $5 each.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

FDA panel to vote on painkiller restrictions

ADELPHI, Md. (AP) – Government experts are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether Nyquil and other combination cold medications should be pulled from the market to help curb deadly overdoses.

As the second day of the Food and Drug Administration's meeting began, the agency is asking more than 35 experts to discuss and vote on ways to prevent overdose with acetaminophen – the pain-relieving, fever-reducing ingredient in Tylenol and dozens of other prescription and over-the-counter medications.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Study finds widening generation gap in U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) – From cell phones and texting to religion and manners, younger and older Americans see the world differently, creating the largest generation gap since the tumultuous years of the 1960s and the culture clashes over Vietnam, civil rights and women's liberation.

A new study released Monday by the Pew Research Center found Americans of different ages increasingly at odds over a range of social and technological issues. It also highlights a widening age divide after last November's election, when 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio.

FDA weighs options to reduce painkiller overdoses

WASHINGTON (AP) – Tylenol, Excedrin, NyQuil. These household brands and others have come to symbolize safe, convenient relief from the aches and pains of everyday life.

But this week the Food and Drug Administration is focusing on a seldom-discussed side effect of the medications: severe liver damage. Since the drugs first became widely available in the 1950s, the FDA has tried to minimize the risks of acetaminophen – the pain-relieving, fever-reducing ingredient in Tylenol and dozens of other prescription and over-the-counter medications.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Relay For Life participants give, gain a little inspiration

CHAMPAIGN – Some were walking sprightly, others kind of dragging. Some were pushed in wheelchairs, others pulled in wagons. But the approximately 200 people who walked the survivors lap at the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life on Saturday evening were all smiling.

"We're survivors," yelled Angela Page, 45, of St. Joseph, pumping her fist in the air. She and her husband Jim Page, 54, pulled their 4-year-old son Will in a wagon around the track at Centennial High School in Champaign.

Local hospitals developing new procedures for strokes

SPRINGFIELD – Doctors know how important it is for someone who's suffered a stroke to get speedy treatment.

Now Illinois hospitals that are prepared to offer the best and fastest care to stroke patients are being joined in a new network of primary stroke centers, and other hospitals throughout the state are being encouraged to join them.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Home health care workers picket lawmaker

DANVILLE – A small group of home health care workers picketed outside state Rep. Bill Black's Danville office Thursday morning to protest possible budget cuts of 50 percent or more in Illinois human services.

But the Danville Republican wasn't there. An aide said that he was on a long-planned vacation with his wife and that he was scheduled to return home before the Legislature comes back to Springfield next Monday.

'Bridge budget' proposed to spare service agency cuts

Illinois Senate Republicans want to enact a month-to-month "bridge budget" that would spare human service agencies from drastic budget cuts but would fund all state operations at the same level as a year ago.

A spokeswoman for Senate President John Cullerton said he welcomes the suggestion and would support it but only if he knew that it would eventually lead to Republican support for an income tax increase.

Public health leaders join outcry over state budget

CHAMPAIGN – Public health administrators from East Central Illinois have joined the chorus of tax-supported agencies crying foul over the prospect of huge budget cuts.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Kim Laboratories relocating to Rantoul Business Center

CHAMPAIGN – Kim Laboratories will move from EnterpriseWorks to the Rantoul Business Center at the end of this month, Chief Executive Officer Myung Kim said.

The biotechnology company, which employs eight, is leaving the business incubator center in the University of Illinois Research Park after six years.

Rantoul's summer school may be cooler starting in 2011

RANTOUL – Students attending summer school at Rantoul City Schools will no longer have to sit through classes in sweltering non-air-conditioned classrooms beginning in 2011.

Heat and a lack of air conditioning led the school to send students attending summer school at Broadmeadow Elementary School home early on Wednesday. But Superintendent Bill Trankina said early dismissals due to heat could become a thing of the past the summer after next.

Firefighters learn 'grain tube' technique for bin rescues

URBANA – As a trained rescue specialist, Dave Newcomb doesn't like the odds of getting someone trapped in a grain bin out alive.

"Two out of five are successful recoveries," said the veteran Urbana fire lieutenant. "First you have to expose the person, then decide if it's a rescue or a recovery."

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Public invited to see Illinois American Water's new plant

CHAMPAIGN – Local residents can get an inside look today at Illinois American Water's new $51 million water treatment plant.

The plant, which went online in December, will be open for free half-hour public tours today from 4 to 7 p.m.

Vermilion officials to plan strategy for flu pandemic

DANVILLE – With temperatures climbing into the 90s this week, the fall flu season seems a long way off, but health department officials are gathering today with community leaders to give them the latest information on the influenza pandemic to help prepare for a possible resurgence in the fall and winter.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Villa Grove employees to pay for health insurance increase

VILLA GROVE – City employees will be assuming the entire 10.9 percent increase in their health insurance premiums this year.

After several meetings and a lot of discussion the city council voted 4-2 Monday to pass the increase in premiums on to the employees.

Officials taking it slow against illegal tent city

CHAMPAIGN – A tent city that houses about eight homeless people in the backyard of the Catholic Worker House is illegal under the city's zoning ordinance, and is drawing fire from some neighboring residents, who say the residents are often drunk and make noise late into the night.

But the city is taking a nonconfrontational approach toward the month-old compound, which supporters call a "tent community" that they say is causing few problems and provides an affordable, dignified solution to homelessness.

Health departments worried about possible cuts

SPRINGFIELD – Local public health departments are worried they're going to be hit with drastic cuts in their state funding right when they'll need money most – to battle a dangerous H1N1 flu pandemic.

The Illinois Association of Public Health Administrators, which represents 80 downstate public health departments, alerted its members Monday that $17 million in local health protection funding appears to be cut from the proposed 2010 state budget.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Vermilion County group builds 200th wheelchair ramp

DANVILLE – On Father's Day, you would expect sons to be taking their dads out to lunch or sitting down to dinner together at home.

Instead, three sets of fathers and sons and one mother and son associated with the Vermilion County Handicapped Association spent most of Sunday building a wheelchair ramp.

"It's becoming a tradition," said Greg "Flea" Heath, who was among the father-and-son teams.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Don't let the heat get you down

CHAMPAIGN – Friday was not Jason Griffin's lucky day.

With temperatures pushing above 90 and humidity crushing like an unwelcome hug during the afternoon, Griffin and his fellow crew at Feutz Contractors prepared to lay concrete for sidewalk ramps ... right across the street from the Sholem Aquatic Center in Champaign.

Germ Buster camp gives kids weapons against flu

CHAMPAIGN – To fight off a flu pandemic that may get a lot nastier in the fall, it's going to take an army of kids who know how to put a germ in its place.

Kids like Eunice Patton, 7, of Urbana, who already knows exactly what she's going to say to people when she spots them about to spread yucky germs on their hands to their mouths:

Friday, June 19, 2009

Annoying but safer mosquito will predominate this summer

With all this rain, it's hunting season for hungry mosquitoes. While you may be multiply bitten, these biters aren't the disease-carrying kind.

University of Illinois Extension entomologist Phil Nixon said almost-daily rains have created a bumper crop of Aedes vexans, the inland floodwater mosquito.

Urge Dad to get health screening

CHAMPAIGN – Stumped about what to get that special guy in your life for Father's Day?

Here's an idea for a gift that might keep Dad around longer, even if he's too stubborn to admit it:

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Feds restrict Carle Cancer Center's clinical trials

URBANA – The Carle Cancer Center has been barred from enrolling new patients in clinical trials, at least temporarily, until several patient protection issues raised in a federal investigation have been resolved.

Activities, memorials planned for Danville's Relay for Life

DANVILLE – The Relay for Life event will see plenty of walking – and lots of entertainment, too.

The event supporting local cancer programs and cancer research begins with an opening ceremony at 4 p.m. Saturday, followed by the crowning of Little Miss and Little Mister Relay for Life and a silent auction fundraiser.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Pill takes aim specifically at canine cancer

URBANA – The only hope for dogs suffering from a common form of canine cancer used to be a pricey cancer drug for people.

But Fido finally has a cancer drug to call his own.

Just approved by the FDA this month, a canine cancer therapy named Palladia is being distributed to veterinary cancer specialists first and will be available soon through the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Cancer survivor teaching therapeutic writing technique

URBANA – When Nia Klein was fighting breast cancer, she found medicine could only cure her body. It took her own written words to heal the rest of her.

In jagged, dark letters, she unleashed her fury, writing about red, angry scars and skin charred by radiation.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Crisis Nursery predicts it will have to serve fewer kids

URBANA – Crisis Nursery of Champaign County might have to serve 150 fewer children over the next year after a one-two punch from funding sources.

Executive Director Stephanie Record learned Friday that the organization, 1309 W. Hill St., U, will see a more than 10 percent cut in state funding. The Legislature has lined out the item for all six crisis nurseries in Illinois.

Operating room robots make surgery less painful

URBANA – Kelly Applegate spent just one night in the hospital after having a hysterectomy last month. By the following evening, she was feeling strong enough to stand up in the shower.

"I've never had any major surgery before," says Applegate, 37, of Champaign. "Outside of having a frame of reference, I'd say it was relatively easy."

Friday, June 12, 2009

Champaign County Nursing Home experiences dip in census

URBANA – The slumping economy hit the Champaign County Nursing Home, which was already pinched financially with a slump in patient census.

Michael A. Scavotto, a consultant hired by the county to manage the nursing home, told members of the nursing home board of directors Thursday night that the facility census dropped from 195 in March to 183 by early June.

Human services groups: Budget cuts irresponsible

CHAMPAIGN – Julia Guth knows all too well the demands of the so-called "Sandwich Generation" – adults who are simultaneously caring for aging parents and their own children.

For nine years, the Urbana woman managed her father's finances and health care as he progressively declined with Alzheimer's disease. She even resigned from her career to care for him.

Frustration turning many to supplements, alternative medicines

URBANA – For Serena Hassel, the resolve to take charge of her own health began in a doctor's office a decade ago.

What drove her to the doctor: Severe menstrual cramps, nausea, headaches and irritability.

Agency shuts door on new clients as budget cuts loom

DANVILLE – When Dean March's parents died within a year of each other, his life started spinning out of control. March, who suffered from depression and schizophrenia, turned to drugs to numb his pain and symptoms of his mental illness.

Groups will use funds to build ramps for disabled

Faith in Action in Danville and Faith in Action South have each received $2,500 grants for building wheelchair ramps from the Ward Dads Chapter #61.

The money is for the purchase of materials to build ramps for disabled senior citizens in Danville and southern Vermilion County.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Inspectors find many faults at closed Gateway Studios

CHAMPAIGN – City inspectors found mold in a number of rooms at the former Gateway Studios during an inspection of the now-closed hotel Wednesday. The inspection will continue today.

Clearer directives on health services sought in Mahomet

MAHOMET – Mahomet-Seymour staff want a clear directive on what medical services they might have to provide to their students.

The teachers' union filed a grievance against the school district last month, seeking to bargain over the issue, and last week it filed a request for arbitration. This morning, the union plans to hold a press conference at the Illinois Education Association office in Champaign to talk about the issue.

First-annual CASA Barbecue Fundraiser set June 27

CHAMPAIGN – The Matzner Chiropractic practice in southwest Champaign is hosting a fundraiser to benefit the Champaign County Court-Appointed Special Advocates program.

The first annual CASA Barbecue Fundraiser will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 27, at Matzner Chiropractic, 1712 S. Duncan Road, C. The event will feature food, a dunk tank, a bounce house; face painting, a silent auction, family photos and wellness screenings.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Carle Clinic discounting prices on employee screenings

URBANA – Carle Clinic is offering local businesses a little recession relief.

The clinic's occupational-medicine department has begun reducing the prices of employee physicals and drug screenings, and plans to keep the discounts in effect through Dec. 31.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Ameren, residents hold dueling open houses about cleanup

CHAMPAIGN – M.D. Pelmore of Champaign fears his frequent headaches and congestion are a result of contamination from a nearby former manufactured-gas plant site.

"I've lived in this neighborhood for 29 years, and, when it rains, I get a strange, terrible smell that comes out of the ground," said Pelmore, 72. "Other people in the neighborhood are getting the same headaches and congestion I've been experiencing."

Health district offering free food for kids this summer

CHAMPAIGN – Hey kids: There's going to be free food all summer long at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.

Staff and volunteers will serve free breakfasts, lunches and afternoon snacks to all kids and teens dropping by, as long as they're age 18 or younger.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Ameren, critics hold dueling events in Champaign

CHAMPAIGN – M.D. Pelmore of Champaign fears his frequent headaches and congestion are a result of contamination from a nearby former manufactured gas plant site.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Piatt County reports first swine flu case

MONTICELLO – Public health officials have received word of the first confirmed case of swine flu in Piatt County.

David Remmert, administrator of the DeWitt-Piatt Bi-County Health Department, said the Illinois Department of Public Health confirmed the positive results Thursday. The patient was hospitalized and has been released, he said.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Confirmed swine flu case in Piatt County; patient recovering

MONTICELLO — Public health officials have received word of the first confirmed case of swine flu in Piatt County.

David Remmert, administrator of the DeWitt-Piatt Bi-County Health Department, said the Illinois Department of Public Health confirmed the positive results Thursday.