* Seatbelt use hasn’t quite clicked survey shows

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed that state’s primary seat belt law in 2003. Since then, seat belt use has jumped by 14 percent. The most recent statewide survey of safety belt use, released in July, showed 90 percent of Illinois drivers and front-seat passengers now wear seat belts.

* Blago cuts in half grants to QC Arts program

* Police cruisers in Northern Illinois going high tech; more here

* State can help fight global warming, says expert panel

* U.S. Courts back state ban on horse-slaughtering for human food

* SIU plagiarism charge could bolster Poshard defense

* SIU report on plagiarism says it can be unintended, insignificant

The panel’s chairman on Friday called the 17-page report’s release coincidental and unrelated to the unfolding flap over whether Glenn Poshard plagiarized parts of his 1974 master’s thesis and 1984 doctoral dissertation at the university’s flagship Carbondale campus.

“The guts of the report were really done much earlier” than when Poshard’s troubles first surfaced late last month, said Lain Adkins, director of the University Press at the Carbondale school.

The panel of employees at the university’s Carbondale and Edwardsville campuses was created in the wake of claims that Walter Wendler, then chancellor at the Carbondale school, lifted sections from a strategic plan for a Texas school where he worked, then used them in SIU’s long-range plan.

* Editorial: Seek a balance of nurturing, testing