Illinois Public Media News

For decades, public health advocates have pushed for limits on smoking. They've included warning labels on products to limits on where someone can light up, all of which have helped bring down smoking rates. But in Illinois, a push to raise the smoking age has repeatedly failed to become law. We took a look at this year's push, and what chance it has at becoming law.

In theory, closing off China’s soybean market due to the trade dispute with the U.S. on top of generally low prices for the commodity should affect all industry players, big to small. But if you’re a farmer who plants only soybeans on relatively few acres, you’re probably in trouble.

Prosecutors are building a case, partly on a bloody handprint and the responses of a cadaver-sniffing dog, that former University of Illinois physics student Brendt Christensen killed Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang in 2017 at his off-campus apartment.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Prairie Research Institute have found tiny strands of synthetic fabric, or microfibers, in Illinois groundwater systems. 

On The 21st: In the 1940s, the Montford Point Marines fought in World War II and were the first African-American marines. Today, some of those veterans live in Chicago, and for decades they’ve relied on a local veterans center that’s now at risk of closing. Plus, Chicagoan Brian Wallach was diagnosed with ALS more than a year ago, and he’s spending his time trying to raise 100 million dollars to help find a cure for future generations.