In the News
In the age of increasing government digital services, Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) is zeroing in on the question of digital identity – how do you know that someone is who they say they are online.
Foster is the lead sponsor of the Improving Digital Identity Act, introduced in 2020 and again in 2021. Earlier this summer, it got a Senate companion from Sens. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo) and advanced out of a House committee.
Carlos Avila is the owner of Day and Night Childcare in Aurora and is concerned about attracting good teachers to work at his facility and being able to pay them adequately.
"I want to see Latinos grow and see my community grow and see how we can get better as a business and what we can do in the community," Avila said while waiting for a meeting to begin Thursday in Aurora centering on Hispanic-owned small businesses in the city. "The pressure to have qualified teachers is getting tough and the kids deserve well-paid teachers."
During a ceremony Tuesday celebrating the life of his father, Brian Dolan summed everything up succinctly.
Standing in front of the Dolan extended family, Brian wore a red East Aurora High School Tomcats shirt, and extended forward a blue hat proclaiming the ship Dan Dolan Sr. served on while in the Navy.
The sweeping spending bill passed by Congress this month includes nearly $370 billion for energy and climate reform, making it the largest federal clean energy investment in the nation's history. Local environmental advocates and representatives say Illinois is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it.
Fox Valley United Way kicked off its 100th anniversary celebration with an open house and ribbon cutting on Friday, Aug. 5, at the office in downtown Aurora.
They wish to thank the many board members, staff, volunteers and supporters that joined the celebration. Special thanks for Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, Aurora Alderman Shweta Baid, Edward Bugg, Carl Franco and Ron Woerman, and U.S. Representatives Bill Foster and Lauren Underwood for attending.
President Joe Biden has been signing a fair number of bills passed by Congress at White House ceremonies lately. And at recent signing ceremonies and other White House events, there has been at least one Illinois politician among the invited guests.
In fact, there probably haven't been this many Illinoisans on the White House grounds since Barack Obama was in office.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have asked major cryptocurrency and digital asset industry players to provide data on their diversity and inclusion practices.
Specifically, the lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), chair of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, sent the request to the nation's 20 largest crypto, Web3, and digital assets companies, as well as prominent venture capital firms with investments in crypto.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and local congressmen visited Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont Monday to mark the completion of a new facility that will allow a closer look at clean energy sources such as electric vehicle batteries and nuclear energy materials.
"I'm so honored to be here and honored to be here representing an administration that very much believes in science," Granholm said during her visit.
US lawmakers have warned that fake research papers risk compromising trust in the entire scientific system, as artificial intelligence (AI) makes it ever easier for so-called paper mills to fool journals into accepting made up articles.
Some estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of fake papers could exist in the human genomics literature alone. Paper mills have also managed to impersonate guest journal editors to wave through hundreds of their own fraudulent articles.
Building a robot that can throw Frisbees into a bin is one thing, but that was not what impressed U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm the most.
"You are looking outside just building the robot," Granholm said to the high school-age students, part of a robot-building team at the APS Academy in downtown Aurora.
The students had just told her that in addition to their robot, they were designing an app to help people find places to recycle batteries. It even included incentives to get people to recycle alkaline batteries, and get lifetime lithium batteries instead.