Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “highly anticipated” album, “Night Castle,” hit stores Oct. 27. And when an album is “highly anticipated,” that usually means that fans, reporters and the executives of your record company have been asking about it for a very long time. Trans-Siberian Orchestra performs in Peoria on Nov. 7. While a full-scale production of “Night Castle” is not yet being performed, the Peoria show will include songs from the new album.

Discovery of the H1N1 virus at a commercial hog farm in Indiana, the first such case of its kind in the United States, should not come as a surprise, the top veterinarian for the state of Illinois said Wednesday.

“The Laramie Project” is part play and part oral history; it seeks to understand the town whose name became synonymous with a crime -- the death of Matthew Shepard, the college student who in 1998 was kidnapped, beaten and left to die tied to a fence in freezing temperatures outside Laramie, Wyo. He was attacked because he was gay, and died five days later.

A.R. Gurney’s play “Sylvia,” which hits the stage this weekend and next at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, is about a love triangle involving Greg and Kate, who are married, and Sylvia — a dog, whose role in performed by a human. Greg, who found Sylvia in the park, wants to keep her around. Kate, who is looking forward to the couple’s empty-nest years, does not want the dog around, especially when she starts getting in the way of Greg’s job and their marriage.

U.S servicemen and women who suffer facial injuries in combat may be eligible for free reconstructive medical care through a national group of plastic surgeons. About 170 doctors with the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery are participating in the new Faces of Honor program, which was launched in October. The program complements the academy's Face to Face program, which began in 1992 and provides free medical care to victims of domestic violence and children overseas who suffer facial deformities.

A dramatic drop-off in the construction of new houses in the state is the reason behind a new tax credit proposal for Illinois. As president of the Home Builders Association of Illinois, Terry Ruhland, the owner of Plum Creek Builders in Chillicothe, said it's time for Illinois to provide its own tax credit to homebuyers in the state.

A new Web site will allow future generations to see and hear the history of Illinois agriculture by those who lived it. The Illinois State Museum on Tuesday launched its “Audio-Video Barn” Web site, which features 300 hours of interviews with more than 130 people involved with agriculture in Illinois over the past 129 years.

The global financial crisis may have pushed many Americans to start saving this year, but Carl George saw the need to promote the value of the piggy bank five years ago. The senior executive partner and former CEO of national accounting firm Clifton Gunderson, George said the American Institute of CPAs first launched a financial literacy campaign in 2004.

Eight years after Jane, Burpee Museum’s prized juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, was found in 2001 in Montana, researchers are still making discoveries about her. Jane’s fossils show she sustained a serious bite that punctured the dinosaur’s left upper jaw and snout in four places.  While the bite mark in itself is something you might expect from a carnivore, researcher Joe Peterson said the discovery is significant because it gives some insight into the behavior of a juvenile T. rex.

They are never in the leading role. They're rarely ranked as supporting actors. No, for all their versatility, ornamental gourds are almost always the extras of the fall decorating season. From Halloween to Thanksgiving, they fill in, accent and adorn porch decorations and tabletop centerpieces, pumpkin displays and fall cornucopias.

Continued delays have made this one of the slowest and latest harvests in state history. To date, only 19 percent of the Illinois corn crop has been harvested, according to Monday's crop report from the Illinois Department of Agriculture. That's the slowest since 1967, when only 10 percent of the harvest was complete on Nov. 1.

Sheila Kitzman, a compounding pharmacist at North Park Pharmacy, makes medicine for children all the time. Her experience is coming in handy during the current shortage of the children’s version of Tamiflu, a first-line treatment for the H1N1 flu virus spreading across the country. Using the powder in capsules for adult doses, she can whip up a liquid children’s version of the antiviral medicine in 15 to 20 minutes.

Bill and Penny Murphy were just fine with suburban living in their suburban home. They had lived there 22 years, raised their kids there. Then they happened to drive down Sheridan Road in Peoria. Penny Murphy had sworn she'd never live on Sheridan Road, too much traffic. But on that fateful trip, she noticed, as she puts it, the cute house was for sale.

In terms of geography, yodeling calls to mind the Swiss Alps or the West Texas plains — although it might sound pretty cool echoing around the recesses of the Grand Canyon. Randy Erwin is finding out. Erwin, of Springfield, is a professional yodeler and singer whose talents have taken him across the globe and onto the silver screen. And last week, it took him to the Grand Canyon, where he has been selected as Artist-in-Residence (AiR) for a three-week period on the national park’s South Rim.

The state of Illinois has spent $375,000 the last two years on improvements to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Hotel and Conference Center in Springfield, including new furnishings and replacement of mattresses that, in some cases, had been in use since the property opened in 1985.