CHAMPAIGN – The Champaign office of The News-Gazette will be closed on Saturdays, beginning this weekend.

The office was open for years on Saturdays, mostly to accept payments from carriers. But changes in the paper's billing practices mean the carriers no longer have to come in on the weekends.

CHAMPAIGN – City officials from Champaign and Urbana are planning their next move after two hours of unrestrained bashing against Illinois Power.

A Wednesday night hearing on IP's service and reliability – following a 30-minute power outage that affected thousands of customers in Champaign that afternoon – drew a roomful of unhappy institutional and commercial customers, homebuilders, contractors, developers and elected and appointed officials. Everybody had an outrage to share. And all appeared eager to enlist the city's muscle to correct the situation.

CHAMPAIGN – Two finalists – men with completely different styles – talked to parents Wednesday night about expectations and action plans for the new Edison Middle School principal.

The finalists are Stephen Lucas, a University of Illinois faculty member who's an academic expert on middle school education with past experience in the classroom and administration, and Richard Patton, a Champaign native who most recently taught special education in rural Alaska where challenges include finding programs and activities to engage the native peoples there.

Three community technology centers based in Champaign-Urbana received training grants from the state Wednesday.

"Having a well-trained and diverse workforce is a key element in attracting new and expanding businesses to Illinois, which then creates job opportunities for the people in this state, said Gov. Rod Blagojevich.