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PEORIA — A 90-year-old woman who crashed her car into the exterior of a nail salon Tuesday told police she meant to hit the brake but hit the gas pedal instead.The woman drove her Ford Escape into the Tanglewood Shopping Plaza around 11:50 a.m. Tuesday. She struck a steel beam of Platinum Nails, 7018 N. University St. Hue Nguyen, owner and employee, was leaning against that same beam when the car hit but suffered only scratches from falling glass.Kim [...]

PEORIA — Two men face decades behind bars if convicted of carjacking a nurse as she left work at a Downtown hospital and also robbing an elderly man.Darrell D. Evans, 19, of 2001 N. North St. and Niguel U. Griffin, 21, of 1313 W. John Gwynn Ave. were indicted by a Peoria County grand jury Tuesday on charges of aggravated vehicular hijacking, aggravated battery and unlawful vehicular invasion in connection with the Oct. 15 carjacking at UnityPoint Health-Methodist. [...]

PEORIA — A Peoria man pleaded guilty Tuesday to holding up a gas station in May.Jamarcus Hollingsworth, 20, of 2701 W. Hayes St. pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery of the Clark gas station, 3907 N. Sheridan Road, on May 24. As part of the plea, a more serious charge of armed robbery was dismissed.In return, prosecutors agreed to a 25-year cap on any prison term when he is sentenced later this year.Prosecutors say that just before 9:45 a.m. [...]

Retired Professor Emeritus Richard Sanders spoke Tuesday at the future site of his most recent namesake on Eureka College's campus.Sanders Hall — a four-story, 17,270-square-foot addition scheduled for completion in August 2014 — will join the atrium inside Ivy Hall, endowed scholarship for first-generation college students and an artist-in-residence program as a Eureka College project partially funded by the former European history professor.As [...]

PEORIA — Southside Bank says it has received thousands of phone calls about a text-message scam that claims "deactivation" of accounts.In a news release Tuesday, Peoria police said the majority of recipients of these false text messages were not Southside Bank customers, and so far no financial losses have been reported to the department.The bank "is automatically shutting down card numbers when they are used and appear to be in fraudulent use," [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The underdog of government health care programs is emerging as the rare early success story of President Barack Obama's technologically challenged health overhaul.Often dismissed, Medicaid has signed up 444,000 people in 10 states in the six weeks since open enrollment began, according to Avalere Health, a market analysis firm that compiled data from those states. Twenty-five states are expanding their Medicaid [...]

The vial, encased in a gold Book of the Gospels, will be on display for public and private veneration at 7:15 p.m. Monday at St. Mary's Cathedral.

Do you have a question for the newest member of the Peoria City Council? At-large Councilwoman Beth Jensen has agreed to participate in a Journal Star live Web chat on November 13. The chat is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

MORTON — Mere hours after a snow-related car accident claimed a life on Interstate 39 at El Paso, Peoria area transportation groups announced the snow plan for the upcoming winter season.Representatives from the Peoria County Highway Department, the city of Peoria and the Illinois Department of Transportation held a joint press conference Tuesday morning at the IDOT facility in Morton with the glinting white snow still on the ground. Officials used the forum to [...]

The nation's first new guidelines in a decade for preventing heart attacks and strokes call for twice as many Americans — one-third of all adults — to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.The guidelines, issued Tuesday by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, are a big change. They use a new formula for estimating someone's risk that includes many factors besides cholesterol, the main [...]