News

This week’s guest on Emphasis is Jonathan Ahl, General Manager of Tri States Public Radio. He talks about programming changes that will begin July 1.

“We spent a lot of time listening to a lot of shows,” said Ahl, adding there are two reasons for the changes: NPR’s decision to end Talk of the Nation (it airs for the final time on June 28), and listener feedback.

The Keokuk City Council has rejected proposed contracts for the city's entire union workforce.

Lee County has reaffirmed its financial commitment to Keokuk Area Hospital.

Illinois lawmakers will be back in Springfield on June 19 after Governor Pat Quinn announced a special session of the state legislature Thursday.

Macomb aldermen decided against reviewing whether Steve Wailand is eligible to serve as the city’s new second ward alderman.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has disaster survivor assistance crews available in Macomb and Mason County this week to help flood victims register for federal assistance.

A Western Illinois University Ag professor has spent the last several years researching new crops for use as biofuels. Soon he will taking that expertise overseas.

Mark Kenney and his family lived through the farm crisis of the 1980s, when the bottom dropped out of the U.S. economy and collapsing global food markets forced many farmers out of business.

In the last year progressives such as Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Tea Party-endorsed U.S. Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky have blasted the Federal Reserve, the United States’ central banking system. If Tea Party and progressive types are truly independent and populist, they should support the new bill by Massachusetts’ Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would ensure that college students get equal treatment under the law for borrowing and make the Federal Reserve contribute to society, not just the rich and powerful.

The Illinois Pollution Control Board found that the coal mine near Industry violated its water pollution permit more than 600 times.

Tri States Public Radio's series, Delayed Action: The Industry Mine, examines the violations, why it took the state so long to take legal action, and why despite all the violations  the state renewed the mine’s permit.