Welcoming a second baby into the home often means preparing a young, firstborn child who has become accustomed to having Mom and Dad’s full attention. While there’s no right way to handle the transition, many parents say they rely on other parents, Web sites and community resources.

Abraham Lincoln, a popular dinner guest in the homes of Springfield residents, knew that charming the lady of the house would help ensure continued invitations.  That’s why history records him complimenting many of his dinner hostesses on their cakes, claiming each one to be the “best cake I have ever eaten.”
 

Frank Garren is a tough guy. The 6-foot, 4-inch former Army sergeant was awarded a Purple Heart after surviving a roadside bomb while deployed in Iraq in 2004. He knows about combat and quick reactions. An angry squirrel is another matter, said Garren, who reported just such a run-in recently in Washington Park.

A former employee of Rock Valley Federal Credit Union is charged with stealing more than $1 million from her employer over 15 years by falsely stating credit card balances.

More than $1.3 million in economic stimulus money due to residents of Peoria, Tazewell and Fulton counties has yet to be claimed, and the deadline is Wednesday. According the IRS,  Illinois ranks seventh in the nation, with more than 153,000 people yet to file, leaving close to $46 million unclaimed.

State Briefs 10/13/08

The world has one request of U.S. farmers in 2009: Keep it coming. Corn, soybeans and other crops are needed for food but also for fuel, clothing, pharmaceuticals and dozens of other uses.

 Del Nejmanowski loved animals. Through the years, he had doves, a hawk, a monkey — even a black bear — all of which he kept at home in Carlinville, opinions of neighbors notwithstanding. Eventually, he settled on macaw parrots. The big kind. Nejmanowski died Aug. 27 at 83. But his two parrots, all that remain of a flock that once numbered eight, are still at large.

A group of residents who oppose Robert Young’s 3,600-animal hog farm could be forced to pay more than $250,000 in legal fees and other damages. Tom Immel of Springfield, Young’s attorney, said he expects to file a petition within a week in Sangamon County Circuit Court seeking to recoup legal fees and other expenses. 

In less than three minutes, the bedroom was engulfed in flames. Firefighters in full gear soaked the blaze with a fire hose, but the 1,100-degree heat was enough to keep them from encroaching too closely on the flames' territory. Soon, the walls, the mattress and the nightstand were nothing but black skeletons, and the rest of the 8-by-8-foot space was burnt to ashes.

The New York-based parent company of Kable News Co. will move the vast majority of the work done in Mount Morris to Florida by 2010.

Kathy Downing believed her husband, the late four-star Gen. Wayne A. Downing, was in Valhalla - the great hall where dead heroes go in Norse mythology - looking down smiling and laughing on Friday.

A state disciplinary panel is recommending that former Marshall County State’s Attorney Donald Knuckey be suspended from practicing law for at least a year because alcohol addiction has rendered him unfit.

Republican Steve Sauerberg wants Illinois voters to send him to Washington to change things from the inside out, using the bully pulpit to get better solutions for the nation’s major economic and health-care problems.

News from around the state as reported by GateHouse newspapers.