Features

FBI: Breakfast Program Threatened Nation

Hungry people start walking toward Ward Chapel AME Church before dawn on Saturday mornings. They walk to receive a hearty breakfast. They walk for the acceptance and respect they receive at the church. For some, it’s their only meal of…

Water: The New Oil

BY TERRY BIBO Central Illinois may well be the Saudi Arabia of water. “There’s extreme value in the water,” says Bryan Stubbs, executive director of the Cleveland Water Alliance. “It is the new oil.” It is safe to say most…

Bogus Science Destroys Families

BY ELAINE HOPKINS PEORIA, IL – Quietly behind closed doors, the drama over what is commonly known as ‘shaken baby syndrome’ plays out in courtrooms across Illinois and the nation. Medical science cannot prove this diagnosis, now known as ‘abusive…

Hunger, Gleaning and Clarence

SPRINGFIELD – The ancient Biblical practice of gleaning fields after harvest to collect remnants of food for the hungry is spreading from fields to markets, and a newly enhanced federal tax benefit is incentivizing the practice for farmers. In the…

‘Slinkenwolf’

  Beyond a grassy ridge from a tree-covered bandshell, carnival rides twinkle and sparkle in the humid evening, calliope music tinkling softly. It could be almost any year in the last century. The louder music exploding from six Marshall amps…

Legacy of Heidelberg Trial: Loss, Death Threats, Questions

UPDATE: Judge Albert Purham orders appointment of special prosecutor to review Cleve Heidelberg case from 1970. Steve Heidelberg remembers nothing from the 1970 murder trial of his father Cleve Heidelberg, but he now sees some of the legacy that trial…

Arab-Israeli conflict can’t pierce this friendship

  Stereotypes with deep historical roots damage democracies that thrive on diversity and understanding, so when a friendship evolves between a Muslim Imam and a Jewish Rabbi, the potential is powerful. But that was not the predetermined purpose of this…

Abandoned coal mines dot greater Peoria

This spring Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan demanded that Peabody Energy prove it has the funds necessary to reclaim coal mines if it shuts down, rekindling public concern over abandoned mines and the responsibility for cleaning them up. In her…

Fighting a health crisis with real (verified) food

  LINCOLN – When two-thirds of the residents of Logan County are overweight or obese, it’s apparent a health crisis tsunami is crashing into the local hospital. Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital CEO Dolan Dalpoas clearly saw conventional treatments were not…

“The Great Agnostic” removed for restoration

A crew from Otto Baum hoists the statue of Robert Ingersoll from its base at Glen Oak Park and loads it in a van for shipment to Philadelphia were it will be cleaned and restored. Peorian Ken Hofbauer learned about…