Last Wednesday, July 9, voters from in the Champaign-Urbana area made their way to 15th Congressional District Rep. Tim Johnson's office to present their community collected scrapbook petitions. These creative petitions express concern about the threat global warming poses to Illinois' environment and way-of-life in the form of hand-written letters, post cards, photographs and video testimonials. Those who participated in the petitioning asked Rep. Johnson to work towards real solutions against global warming in Congress.

Lindsay Bever spent last winter trying to heat her apartment in Champaign with her oven. Her heat stopped working. She had complained to her landlord, who Bever said, did nothing about it.

Four years prior to Bever’s experience with her landlord, the Illinois General Assembly had passed the Residential Tenants’ Right to Repair Act, which was meant to give tenants a way to sidestep inept landlords.

However, tenants like Bever still have little recourse.

Last night at the Cunningham Town Board meeting, proponents of instant runoff voting, a controversial method of election where voters are able to rank their preference of candidates on the ballot, scored a small victory when the board deferred a move that could have quashed their efforts to have an advisory referendum placed on the November ballot.

During the last few years activists have used the Cunningham Town meeting, where citizens are able to place to place advisory referendum on the November ballot largely free of elected officials, to push issues ranging from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq to the impeachment of President Bush.

In downstate Illinois, a law aimed at protecting tenants from landlords who might retaliate against them for calling in a building inspector is almost never used.

Does this mean that landlord-tenant relations are just peachy in the land south of Chicago?

Downtown Champaign's oldest bar--as old as the end of Prohibition — is throwing itself a party, with bands, birthday presents and, of course, cheap beer.

Three dollars gets you in to see Dottie and the Rail (a ragtag country band fronted by a smoky-voiced singer whose beau, Foty Backey, is the 'Rail's owner) and The Golden Quality (a rock band with a Brass Rail bartender in the lineup).

Urbana City Council voted down an ordinance Monday night to make Urbana's Lincoln Hotel a historic landmark, a measure that would have secured the original 1923 structure built by local architect Joseph W. Royer.

Built in the Tudor-style, the downtown Urbana hotel has seen considerable ups and downs in its 85-year history along with a major addition constructed in a Bavarian-style aesthetic in the early 1980s by the Jumer's hotel brand.

On Sunday afternoon, a few dozen people gathered at Champaign’s West Side Park to send a clear message to Rep. Tim Johnson, the Republican congressman who represents Illinois’s 15th Congressional District. The message: It’s time to prioritize legislation that addresses the causes and effects of global warming.

Local and organic food has made a surge in the last few years with a growing number of American families putting local and organic grub on the dinner table. Tonight, the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force is coming for you. Not to hand out slaps on the wrist for your food infractions, but rather to get some feedback on how the public views Illinois’ food systems.

Champaign City Council took steps last night to connect the popular downtown district with Campustown by adopting the University District Plan — which was recently updated in 2007 — as council policy for the next ten years.

Along with adopting the plan, the council agreed to an intergovernmental agreement with the Champaign Park District to maintain a park along the Boneyard Creek corridor from First Street to Wright Street.

As development continues on a number of buildings in and around Campustown, the University of Illinois’s skyline begins to take new shape.

Among the construction projects slated for late-summer completion are the Urban Outfitters/office building at 507 E. Green Street and the Burnham310 residences on Springfield Avenue (both pictured).

In 2007, the Federal Bureau of Prisons made the decision to expunge all religious materials from prison libraries nationwide in an effort to prevent prisons from becoming potential “recruiting grounds” for terrorists. Amid public outcry and inmate lawsuits, the bureau was forced to reverse its initiative.

One-year prior, Pennsylvania was forced to justify, in court, its statewide ban on all news, magazines, and photographs to a sizable portion of the state’s inmate population.

If rusty chains, blown-out tubes or any other cycle malady has been keeping you from participating in this week's Bike to Work Week (May 12–16), and you feel like you don't have the tools or know-how for a DIY fix, The Bike Project of Urbana- Champaign can help (and before the big Bike to Work Day tomorrow, May 16).

After many separate discussions about enacting a ban on using cell phones while driving, the council has decided on an ordinance, but surprisingly, the new draft doesn't include talking on hand-held cell phones and hands-free units.

The ordinance put forth includes an amendment to prohibit sending text messages while driving a vehicle and an addition for bicyclists on the roadway to be susceptible to the same fines. Other elements of the ban include a hefty fine — maximum of $750 — if caught talking or texting on a cell phone while involved in an accident, and an educational program to teach the public about the new ordinance.