A Rock Island County candidate forum will be held Thursday, January 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the Rock Island High School Little Theater. Candidates for Rock Island County sheriff, clerk, and treasurer are expected to attend, along with candidates for District 15 of the county board. Written questions will be taken from the audience. Candidates will have opening and closing statements and opportunities for rebuttal.

Part sleuths, part antiques experts, and part cultural historians, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz -- business partners in LeClaire, Iowa's Antique Archaeology -- are professional "pickers," trolling America's small towns to salvage rare collectibles and good junk from regular folks. American Pickers, a 10-part series from the History channel, follows the adventures of Mike and Frank through small towns and back roads for a glimpse at this little-known side of the antiques business. The series premieres on Monday, January 18, at 8 p.m. Central on the History channel. The debut will also be shown at the Capitol Theatre (330 West Third Street in Davenport), with doors opening at 7 p.m.

According to the National Center for State Courts, the salaries of state judges in Iowa and Illinois top the U.S. average. District judges in Iowa ranked 18th among states, appeal judges were 16th, and associate-high-court judges ranked 14th. Illinois appeal, district, and associate-high-court justices were all second in the nation. Iowa trial judges earned about $137,700 last year, and Illinois trial judges earned $189,949. The national average was about $135,000. For more information, visit NCSC.org.

After being swamped with opinions, and instead of making a decision this December, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy will hold a special one-day meeting in February to make a recommendation to the state legislature on whether to legalize medical marijuana. The delay is to give board members time to read 12,000 pages of written comments. The public meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17, in the auditorium of the Iowa State Historical Building, 600 East Locust Street in Des Moines. For more information, visit Iowa.gov/ibpe.

The deadline for nominations for the Athena Business Woman's Awards is January 18. The awards honor area business women who have achieved a significant level of success, are leaders and role models, and contribute to the community. For more information, visit ChamberLink.org/IQCCC/athenanominations.htm.

Fifteen area women pooled their funds to increase the impact of their giving, and awarded Hand-in-Hand - an organization that assists local families with special needs - a $1,000 grant. They call themselves the Women of Wisdom Giving Circle and focus on helping women and children in the Quad Cities area. The Women of Wisdom were established in June 2009 and will make grants approximately every four months to a charitable organization or program of their choice. Hand-in-Hand is the recipient of their first award. For more information about giving circles, visit CFGRB.org.

Illinois had the sixth-most carbon-dioxide emissions from coal power plants in 2007, according to a new study. Iowa ranked 23rd. The Baldwin Energy Complex coal-fired power plant in Baldwin is the dirtiest power plant in Illinois based on carbon-dioxide emissions, and it's the 30th-dirtiest plant in the country, according to a new analysis titled "America's Biggest Polluters: Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Power Plants in 2007." For a copy of the report, click here.

The Christian Care Board of Directors, facing an operating-budget deficit, has reduced personnel by close to 50 percent. The faith-based, not-for-profit organization in Rock Island has provided food and shelter to record numbers this year - 42,193 meals and 10,346 nights of lodging to those in need. The organization has two facilities, a domestic-violence shelter for abused women and children and a rescue mission for homeless men, at which it also hosts a community meal site. The organization does not receive any funding from the state or federal government. To find out more about Christian Care, visit ChristianCareQC.org.

The Palmer College of Chiropractic Board of Trustees has announced the unanimous selection of Dennis Marchiori as chancellor of the school. His appointment will take effect December 15. Marchiori will succeed William Wilke, a Quad Cities-area businessman and a member of the Palmer board since 1998. In December 2008, following the departure of Chancellor Larry Patten, the board asked Wilke to serve until a thorough search could be conducted. An investiture ceremony is being planned for early next year.

A citizen survey will be conducted starting this week in Rock Island. Residents may receive a phone call from PMR Personal Marketing Research asking questions about the community. Every two years Renaissance Rock Island conducts citizen phone surveys to learn more about community perceptions of the city, along with how to attract and retain residents, businesses, and visitors. Eight hundred Quad Cities-area residents will be surveyed, creating a margin of error of 3.5 percent at a 95-percent level of confidence.

The health departments of Scott and Rock Island counties along with Trinity Regional Health System and Genesis Health System are asking for the help of businesses and school districts to reduce traffic to doctor offices during flu season. In a memo sent last week to area chambers of commerce and school districts, the health-care organizations asked school districts and employers to temporarily relax their policies and not require a doctor's note prior to returning to school or work. Doctor offices are receiving large numbers of requests for signed forms for patients returning to work and returning to school. These requests bring people to offices for routine visits at a time when many clinics are already seeing larger volumes from those seeking treatment for flu-like symptoms. This not only increases exposure risk for patients but also strains the resources of already busy offices.

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