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SPRINGFIELD - At a time of intense division in the nation, First Lady MK Pritzker announced that she is donating an iconic bust of President Lincoln to his presidential library in Springfield to inspire unity among Illinoisans and Americans. Acclaimed sculptor Leonard Volk created the commanding depiction for the 1860 presidential campaign. It proved incredibly popular and helped establish Lincoln’s image among voters eager to know more about the presidential candidate. The bust being donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum once belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and was displayed in their Springfield home. “President Lincoln’s vision for national unity amid poisonous and violent division rings true today more than any other time in my lifetime,” said First Lady MK Pritzker. “This iconic bust of President Lincoln is valuable for more than just the history it represents; it is valuable for the future that it inspires. I hope that

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ST. LOUIS — Winter weather has increased the number of home fires. The American Red Cross of Missouri and Arkansas is recruiting new volunteers to help respond to these local emergencies by supporting people in their time of greatest need. Nationally, the Red Cross has already responded to more than 1,900 home fires since 2022 began, providing assistance to more than 6,500 people. In the Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas Region, trained Red Cross Disaster Action Team (DAT) volunteers have responded to more than 2,100 home fires so far this fiscal year (July 1, 2021 to Feb. 15, 2022), and have helped nearly 7,000 people impacted by a fire in their home. Just since January 1st, in the Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas Region, there have been more than 600 fires and more than 1,900 people assisted by Red Cross. LOCAL DISASTER RESPONSE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED When a home fire occurs, Red Cross Disaster Action Team (DAT) volunteers are needed to respond to the fire to ensure the

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MAPLEWOOD, MO – Saint Louis Closet Co. donated $3,176.00 to the Center for Animal Rescue and Enrichment of St. Louis (CARE STL) through their monthly giveback effort Closets for a Cause. Funds raised for the nonprofit will go toward their CARE Emergency Medical Fund, which pays for specialty veterinary care or diagnostics for rescue animals. This amount is a direct result of a percentage of gross sales made throughout January 2022. Saint Louis Closet Co. has currently donated $74,899.09 to multiple local nonprofits. CARE STL operates as an open administration no-kill shelter, where they never turn away an animal in need. Each year, they have approximately 3,000 adoptions and provide about 500 families that cannot afford pet care with vaccines, microchips, and wellness exams at little to no cost. The nonprofit is located in St. Louis City and has a foster program and adoption services to connect animals with people in the community. Each month, a new charity is selected, and

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EDWARDSVILLE - On February 8, Edwardsville attorney James Craney entered his appearance on behalf of Madison County Circuit Judges Sholar and Threlkeld in the lawsuit pitting the voters of Madison County against various state bodies. The suit alleges that the Judicial Circuits Districting Act of 2022 is unconstitutional in its application and unfairly prejudices Madison County voters and judicial candidates. Judges Sholar and Threlkeld have intervened in the suit as plaintiffs. Speaker of the House Chris Welch and Senate President Dan Harmon has also intervened as defendants in this rare contest pitting the Illinois judiciary against the legislature. Welch and Harmon are represented by long-time Madigan attorney, Michael Kasper. When asked about the intervention, Craney stated “I don’t usually comment on pending cases, but in this instance I’ll make an exception, to call attention to the cynical, Chicago-machine style attempt to prevent these judges to run for the

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EDWARDSVILLE - As a math teacher and technology coach at Liberty Middle School, Michelle Seymour has the best of both worlds. “I love math, but educational technology and how it can help kids learn is what I'm extremely passionate about.” It’s Seymour's 20 th year of teaching and her second in District 7. She began her teaching career in Springfield, Ill., and during that time, she met her husband who was in the Air Force. His position took them all over the country and as a result, she has taught everything from first grade to eighth grade at schools in California, Virgina, Ohio and Illinois. But no matter where she was or what she taught, technology played a vital part. From having two mobile computer labs that she would bring into her classrooms to working at a technology magnet school and even teaching at an all-virtual K-12 public school in Ohio several years before COVID-19 introduced the rest of us to virtual learning, she’s been able to incorporate

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PEORIA - For thousands of people, recovery after a COVID-19 infection comes with a laundry list of issues, some neurological. These cognitive cases run the spectrum from mild difficulties focusing on tasks to major memory problems or even rare cases of COVID-induced psychosis. Researchers are finding that COVID-related cognitive symptoms can not only impact people of all ages, but can also linger for months. The most common post-COVID neurological complaint is brain fog. Dr. Deepak Nair is an OSF HealthCare vascular and critical care neurologist. He says brain fog, despite its seemingly flippant name, can severely impact someone’s day-to-day life. “Brain fog is such a funny, silly term for something that I think can be profound and really disabling for people,” he remarked. “Brain fog itself is a constellation of different symptoms. When we use the term brain fog that can be everything from just mild fatigue and just not feeling like you're running on all

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SPRINGFIELD - Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White is reminding customers with license plate stickers expiring at the end of the month that they can renew online at ilsos.gov, print their receipt, and keep that receipt in their vehicle to comply with Illinois law. “This is a consumer-friendly initiative that encourages online transactions with my office,” said White. “Many customers visit our Driver Services facilities to buy their stickers the week before they are set to expire. I am reminding the public that they can make the same transaction online, and use their receipt as proof of up-to-date registration and compliance.” Motorists are allowed to drive without an up-to-date vehicle renewal sticker on their license plate as long as they have the receipt from the Secretary of State showing that they bought the sticker before expiration. The receipt is valid for up to 30 days from the expiration of the previous registration sticker’s date. Last year,

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In April 2020, tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo made the news when they came down with COVID-19 . In the months following these surprising diagnoses, researchers and veterinarians found SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in nearly a dozen other species , both in captivity and in the wild. How are so many animals catching the coronavirus? And what does this mean for human and animal health? We are veterinary researchers who investigate animal diseases, including zoonotic diseases that can infect both humans and animals. It is important, for both human and animal health, to know what species are susceptible to infection by the coronavirus. Our labs and others across the world have tested domestic, captive and wild animals for the virus, in addition to conducting experiments to determine which species are susceptible. The list of infected animals so far includes more than a dozen species. But in reality, infections may be much more widespread, as very few species

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Online school during the COVID-19 pandemic was hard on many teens, but new research I co-authored has found a potential silver lining: Students were bullied less during remote instruction than while attending classes in person. We learned this by surveying 388 ninth-graders at U.S. high schools. We asked them to answer questions three times over the 2020-2021 school year, at about three-month intervals: in November 2020 and February and May 2021. During that period, many students switched between online-only, in-person-only and hybrid schooling, as the severity of the pandemic shifted and state and local guidelines adjusted. We asked the students to tell us which of those environments they were learning in, how frequently they were the target of bullying, and whether they were feeling depressed or anxious, or having physical symptoms of stress, like headaches and nausea. What we found was that bullied teens reported heightened anxiety when they were attending in-person school,

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O'FALLON – Since February is American Heart Month, it’s the perfect time to refresh your memory on the warning signs of a heart attack. Prairie Cardiovascular and HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital encourage everyone to take a moment to learn what you should do if you or a loved one experiences heart attack symptoms. Heart attacks aren't always the swift and intense events that are portrayed on TV. As a result, some people may delay calling 911 because they don't realize that what they're feeling is a heart attack. “Most heart attacks involve discomfort (felt in the center of the chest) that lasts more than a few minutes or comes and goes,” says Arti Singh, MD, a cardiologist with Prairie Cardiovascular. Many people describe it as pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain. Other discomfort not generally perceived as ‘pain’ may: Feel like indigestion Not be in a specific spot Be felt in the chest, the inner arm (especially the left arm), the jaw

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ALTON - There are two ways that your emotions can derail your career track. One way is to let your emotions run amuck in your work life. The other way is to try to suppress them all. Emotions are a natural part of the human existence, even when we are at work. But many careers have been shipwrecked by unbridled emotions. How can you prevent this from happening to you? Below are 12 tips. Learn appropriate ways to express what you feel — In all areas of your life, even when you’re at work, you are a human being and you will have emotional reactions to certain things from time to time. This is normal. You may have received misguided advice in the past that there is no place for emotions in your work life. But we don’t have the ability to simply flip a switch and turn our emotions off. What we can do is learn how to better process and express them. Research has shown that we are more innovative and productive when we work in an environment where it is safe to express

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ST. LOUIS – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) St. Louis District will commence celebrating their 150th Anniversary at the National Great Rivers Museum in Alton, from 11:30 a.m. until noon Tuesday. Lt. Col. Jason Sears, Deputy Commander, USACE St. Louis District and Michael R. Morrow, Mayor of Grafton, will sign a proclamation in appreciation of the District’s history, partnerships and contributions to the region. On February 19th, 1872, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established a new district in Saint Louis, the Gateway to the West, and few could have foreseen this auspicious occasion of their 150th Anniversary would usher in a successful long-lasting partnership between the states of Missouri, Illinois and the U.S. Army Corps in Saint Louis. “We will celebrate a history of innovation with our partners, without which we could not deliver the vital engineering solutions that contribute to the growth and prosperity of the regions we are so proud to service

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EDWARDSVILLE - On February 8, Edwardsville attorney James Craney entered his appearance on behalf of Madison County Circuit Judges Sholar and Threlkeld in the lawsuit pitting the voters of Madison County against various state bodies. The suit alleges that the Judicial Circuits Districting Act of 2022 is unconstitutional in its application and unfairly prejudices Madison County voters and judicial candidates. Judges Sholar and Threlkeld have intervened in the suit as plaintiffs. Speaker of the House Chris Welch and Senate President Dan Harmon has also intervened as defendants in this rare contest pitting the Illinois judiciary against the legislature. Welch and Harmon are represented by long-time Madigan attorney, Michael Kasper. When asked about the intervention, Craney stated “I don’t usually comment on pending cases, but in this instance I’ll make an exception, to call attention to the cynical, Chicago-machine style attempt to prevent these judges to run for

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SPRINGFIELD - Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s appeal of a downstate judge’s order that invalidated his statewide school mask mandate has been dismissed. The judge's ruling late Thursday was a huge blow to the governor’s COVID-19 mitigation strategy in schools. Pritzker’s appeal of the order that stopped his school mask mandate was rendered “moot” because of a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers earlier this week. There was an attempt by the Illinois Department of Public Health to reinstitute mask rules for classrooms. The Fourth District Appellate Court ruled that Illinois' indoor mask requirement in schools has expired and the appeal made by the Illinois attorney general of a temporary restraining order issued Feb. 4 barring schools from enforcing it was dismissed. The appellate court's decision noted that the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) "in no way restrains school districts from acting independently from the executive orders or the IDPH in creating

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EAST ST. LOUIS – The U.S Attorney's Office announced Friday that Demarko Hines, 50, of Cahokia Heights, Illinois, was sentenced today to five years federal prison for distributing crystal methamphetamine. Hines will also serve a four-year term of supervised release following his release from federal prison. On February 23, 2021, a federal grand jury indicted Hines and his brother, Laquan Hines, for a drug transaction that occurred in August of 2020. Demarko Hines pled guilty on September 18, 2021. Laquan Hines remains innocent until proven guilty. The investigation was conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney John Trippe.

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ALTON - Temps will fall low again Friday night with 18 degrees at the bottom point predicted. Travel for rush hour on Thursday was definitely impacted, but motorists seem to keep their distance from others and it was relatively accident-free. There was a serious crash earlier in the day at Illinois Route 3 and Route 109 and several other minor crashes on the roadways Thursday. Saturday, a high of 30 degrees is predicted, then a low of 22 degrees Saturday night. Sunday will see a high of 57 degrees, and a high of 61 degrees is predicted for Monday on Washington's Birthday or President's Day. The ice and snow on the roads Thursday is mostly melted as of Friday afternoon.

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GREENFIELD - Greenfield CUSD #10 has joined the growing number of Illinois school districts going mask-optional. This follows an Illinois appeals court dismissing Governor J.B. Pritzker’s appeal of a ruling allowing masks to be optional for several Illinois school districts. Superintendent of Greenfield CUSD #10 Kevin Bowman said masks have since been made optional for the district, which includes Greenfield High School and Greenfield Elementary School. This policy was in place for the district prior to Governor Pritzker’s Executive Order requiring all schools in Illinois to have mask mandates in place at the beginning of the year. For more updates on Greenfield CUSD #10, visit greenfieldschools.org or their Facebook page .

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GODFREY - In Godfrey, it’s important to highlight the passionately entrepreneurial and expansive businesses that call the area their home. Gorilla Express, located at 5507 Godfrey Rd, is a carwash that’s been dedicated to serving its customers with everything needed to get their vehicles looking new again. At Gorilla Express, it’s not just the exterior of the vehicle that the company is focused on. The establishment’s marketing manager Joe McKenzie made it clear that they’re always looking for ways to improve and one of their recent projects has been the addition of twelve new vacuums. This change is coming with a wave of customer-friendly implementations the company is interested in. Alongside the new vacuums, expanded lanes are another priority for the company and will be installed concurrently. Finally, at their Cottage Hills location, customers should expect to see an additional pay station established for their convenience. Potential members can join

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ALTON - Stutz Excavating is near the end of the demolition project of the old artist Art Towata Studio/Warehouse Building at Sixth and Piasa Street near Downtown Alton. Grading was done this week and the entire structure had been demolished over the past week and remnants hauled away. Towata, a renowned artist, died in 2019. This building once housed Towata’s works of art from ceramics and paintings. The building had been in disarray and because of the repair expense, it was torn down to make room for future development. Alton Mayor David Goins has been by the property since the demolition and said the area looks “nice” and should greatly enhance the property's “curb appeal."

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SPRINGFIELD - Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White announced that all offices and facilities will be closed on Monday, Feb. 21, in observance of Presidents’ Day. • Offices and Driver Services facilities operating on a Tuesday through Saturday schedule will be closed on Saturday, Feb. 19, and reopen for business on Tuesday, Feb. 22. • Offices and Driver Services facilities operating on a Monday through Friday schedule will be closed on Monday, Feb. 21, and reopen for business on Tuesday, Feb. 22. As a reminder, Secretary White has extended all driver’s license and ID card and learner’s permit expiration dates to March 31, 2022. This extension does not apply to commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) and CDL learner’s permits. In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has extended the federal REAL ID deadline to May 3, 2023. Individuals can visit the Secretary of State’s website at ilsos.gov for online services including checking

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