Gov. Rod Blagojevich has quietly approved a bill diverting $221 million from restricted state funds that lawmakers want to use to avert more than 300 layoffs and the closure of two dozen parks and historic sites.

Micromedical Technologies Inc. ships around the globe, but it is the credit market at home that has created the immediate uncertainty for sales and leasing of medical diagnostic equipment. “The only place we’ve seen it is in the United States, where the leasing companies are less willing to give credit to doctors,” said Rick Miles, co-owner of the Chatham-based company with his wife, Diane.
 

For hunters, a “deer drive” is a cooperative effort to force deer into the open. At Edward R. Madigan State Park just outside Lincoln, a deer drive is a much more relaxed affair.

Gardeners can look to fall plants to add punches of color to their homes’ landscape — whether in the ground or in containers.
 

Medical researchers hope a study of patients with multiple sclerosis will help them get closer to explaining what causes the disease that affects thousands of people in the region. The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford is soliciting MS patients from 13 northwest Illinois counties, trying to see if certain regions have more diagnosed cases of the disease.

Until five years ago, Jean Oppegard wasn’t a wood carver. Now she’s a champion. Her heron won Best in Show and People’s Choice at this year’s Sangamon Valley Woodcarvers show.

As the weather becomes more crisp, the time is ripe for picking fresh apples.

Frank and Stacy Bowman started raising grass-fed beef for their own use about five years ago. Soon, friends and family started asking for it. Today, their Sangamon Valley Cattle Co. in Pleasant Plains sells to the public, one of a small number of Midwestern farms where cattle graze in open pastures instead of eating the more traditional diet of corn or other grain fed in commercial feedlots.

Charlie Stratton of Springfield believes a “feat of human greatness” has been achieved by Jerry Jimenez for the Habanero Honey Spread he sells at the downtown farmers market.

When a Morton company that helps others find solutions came up against its own problem, where it could turn wasn't a simple matter.

Even as Christian County farmer Bryan Fesser went to work on his corn crop Monday, turmoil in financial markets a world away was driving down the price per bushel at local grain elevators.

Andy Woodrum of rural Athens was hospitalized for 10 days and had surgery at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield for a dislocated right hip and hip socket fracture after the dirt bike he was driving Sept. 20 went end over end on a private track near Cantrall. He now has eight pins and a metal plate in the hip socket, along with an 18-inch incision and 72 staples.

To play baseball in the major leagues, you have to be able to hit and run and catch and throw better than most people on the planet. But when you win a playoff series, a new skill set is required.

The three 18th Congressional District candidates expressed various degrees of discomfort with the federal financial-industry bailout as they squared off Monday in a debate that touched on a wide range of issues.

Bradley University religion professor Robert C. Fuller has spent a lifetime studying religious belief from psychological, sociological and historical points of view. But in a new book, “Spirituality in the Flesh: Bodily Sources of Religious Experience,” Fuller has turned his attention to another dimension, one that’s being debated with increasing controversy: the biological.