Illinois Public Media News

The family of missing Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang has increased the amount of reward money for information about her location to $50,000.

On the 21st: After reading a story on the back of a Clif Bar wrapper about an adventurous guy and his guy friends, Kerry Gross decided the world needed to hear more stories about inspriring women. We checked in with her during her coast-to-coast biking adventure ahead of her visit to Illinois. Plus — reports of elder abuse have increased in Illinois. We also take a listen to Steve Leaf and the Ex-Pats new album. 

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently released guidelines on how law enforcement should reform their policies on sexual assault cases. It follows enactment of the state Sexual Assault Incident Procedure Act, which is meant to improve law enforcement's response to these incidents through required specialized training and policies. 

Researchers with the University of Illinois’ crop research project, Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency -- or RIPE for short -- invited the media and the public to a field day Thursday. Don Ort is the associate director of the RIPE project and a crop science professor at the U of I. He gave Illinois Public Media’s Brian Moline an overview of the project.

University of Illinois trustees were told at their meeting in Chicago that the new state budget has funding for the new fiscal year and the fiscal year just concluded, but not enough to make up for all the losses that the university suffered during the two-year-long budget stalemate