• Iowa state Representative David Millage (R-Bettendorf) has announced he will run for Iowa Attorney General. Millage, 48, has been a lawyer for 23 years and a legislator in the Iowa House for 11 years. He currently serves as chairperson of the House Appropriations Committee. Millage has criticized incumbent Tom Miller, a Democrat, for his role in the antitrust case against software giant Microsoft and the awarding of attorney's fees in litigation against tobacco companies.
• Recent travels on the Internet have revealed an interesting site about unsolicited e-mail at (http://www.spamcon.org). The site includes more than 7,000 media stories about spam, help in cracking down on spammers, and even help for direct marketers wanting to do e-mail marketing the right way. An online newsletter, disposable e-mail addresses, and discussion boards are also available.
• Rock Island school administrators are teaming up with area businesses to cut down on truancy. Administrators are offering schedules and fliers to any interested store in an effort to prevent students from hanging out at businesses instead of going to school. Truancy officers say the fewer options students have during school hours the better. If you're interested in joining this program, call the Rock Island County Regional Office at (309)764-3607. Right now, only approximately 12 businesses are involved with this program, but truancy officers are hoping that as word spreads, more will get involved.
• St. Mary's Parish in Rock Island will begin having a sung Latin Mass - commonly known as a "High Mass" - every Sunday at 11 a.m. St. Mary's also has a Latin Mass without music - commonly known as a "Low Mass" - every Sunday at 8 a.m. The parish continues to have Mass in English on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9:30 a.m. St. Mary's is the only diocesan parish in Illinois to have a traditional Latin Mass on a daily basis, offered at 5:30 p.m. Mondays and 7 a.m. Tuesday through Friday.
• Richard Stahl has been installed as the first Quad City Poet Laureate and will serve in the position from 2001 to 2003. The Quad City Poet Laureate position is an official title certified by resolutions passed by the cities of Bettendorf, Davenport, Moline, and Rock Island and administered by Quad City Arts. Stahl was chosen after an extensive nomination and rigorous selection process. As Poet Laureate, Stahl will hold a reading in each of the six counties represented by Quad City Arts.
• Isabel Bloom, L.L.C., has announced that on-line bids for the final "Grasshopper" sculptures in the limited-edition series have pushed the endowment for the new Isabel Bloom Art Education Fund past its initial $150,000 goal. The endowment, created to honor the memory of popular sculptor and company founder Isabel Bloom, was established to help support art education in schools in Scott and Rock Island counties. All 1,500 statues were sold. The on-line bids for the final 20 "Grasshopper" sculptures commemorating Isabel Bloom generated $4,045. That created a total donation of $152,045 for the new Isabel Bloom Art Education Fund.
• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is in the news again. It seems that employees at an IRS processing center run by Mellon Bank hid thousands of tax returns or put them with papers to be shredded because they couldn't keep up with the workload. At least 40,000 federal tax returns and payments totaling $810 million were lost or destroyed at the Pittsburgh center that was responsible for handling documents sent in by taxpayers in New England and parts of New York state. The IRS has set up a special unit to handle the cases and has advised taxpayers suspecting they might be affected to stop payment on uncashed checks and send a new return and check to the IRS.
• A report from the Census Bureau reveals that Iowa has one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation, with just 9.5 percent of the state's residents living in poverty in 1998. This ranks Iowa 44th among the states and the District of Columbia. The report also shows Iowa ranks 41st in the nation for percentage of children living in poverty, with 13.8 percent. This translates to about 101,000 children.
• Illinois Democrats will now have an edge in determining the state's new legislative map. When a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to come up with a map of new legislative boundaries, Secretary of State Jesse White put his hand into a replica of Abraham Lincoln's hat to choose the name of the new, tie-breaking member from a list of Republicans and Democrats. The name drawn was that of Illinois Supreme Court Justice Michael Bilandic, giving Democrats the power to draw the map to the party's advantage.
• This past Labor Day weekend, people from the community contributed 196 pints of blood to help patients in need during the Labor of Love blood drive. This number is a 58-pint increase over the first Labor of Love blood drive, held during the 2000 Labor Day weekend. If you are interested in being a blood donor, point your web browser to (http://www.bloodcenter.org) or call (563)359-5401.