SALINA, Kansas — Ebony Murell and a few interns meticulously sort 99 kinds of silphium. It’s a wild relative to a sunflower. And the biologists at The Land Institute — an outfit devoted to finding out how science can make farming more planet-friendly — want to unravel the plant’s secrets for tolerating bugs and diseases.

“We don’t know what all of these traits mean in terms of plant defenses,” Murell said. “Any or all of them could matter.”

Illinois has reduced its bill backlog to just under $4 billion — a far cry from the nearly $17 billion high seen just after the state’s two-year budget impasse presided over by former Gov. Bruce Rauner.

But the state’s top financial officer, Comptroller Susana Mendoza, said now is not the time to become complacent.

In the months before the state-run veterans’ home in LaSalle saw a massive COVID-19 outbreak that eventually killed more than a quarter of the facility’s residents, leaders at the state agency that oversees the home obscured its inner workings from Gov. JB Pritzker’s office, a top Pritzker staffer told lawmakers on Thursday.

It’s been a year since COVID-19 descended on U.S. meatpacking plants. In that time, nearly 60,000 workers have gotten sick, and more than 300 have died. That’s led to pushes at the state and federal levels to institute stronger protections for workers in U.S. facilities. While advocates are still navigating efforts to protect workers now, some are already thinking about preventing future outbreaks.

A new tourism campaign aims to help rebuild Illinois' economy as more of the state's population becomes vaccinated. Advocacy groups say tourism recovery will help Illinois stay competitive nationally and globally after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The multistate "Time for Me to Drive" campaign is set to launch later this week, as Morning Consult reports 69% of Americans polled say they are comfortable taking a road trip.

A rare coronavirus mutation can affect COVID-19 testing reliability, new research from Washington University has found.

Identified in a handful of St. Louis patients last year, the mutation may make it harder for certain commercial tests to detect an infection. But researchers emphasize that the vast majority of COVID-19 tests target multiple regions of the coronavirus genome, increasing the chances of spotting the virus if it’s present.