This Friday, the city of Champaign will honor Austin Cloyd with her own street.

The 18-year-old was a high school student in Champaign prior to moving to Virginia. The freshman was victim of the Virginia Tech shootings that took place on April 16.

The ceremony will be held at the corner of Church and State streets on Friday. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Eastern Illinois Foodbank expands backpack program to King School

Fewer stomachs are expected to go hungry this school year because of the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.

The foodbank announced in a press release this week that it would be expanding its backpack program to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Urbana. The program, which already operates at Garden Hills Elementary in Champaign, provides backpacks filled with nutritious, kid-friendly food to elementary students who may not be getting enough food over the weekends, when subsidized breakfast and lunch programs are not available.

The expansion, expected to help an additional 50 children, is set to start in mid-September, and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank is accepting donations through August. It costs approximately $100 per student, per year to run the backpack program.

For more information, or to make a donation, go to www.eifoodbank.org, or call (217) 328-3663.

Vermilion County Health Department to host mock vaccination exercise

In order to test its emergency planning systems, the Vermilion County Health Department will be conducting a drive-thru mass immunization exercise on Saturday, Aug. 18.

Volunteer participants will be asked to drive through the Vermilion County fairgrounds, get in line, fill out forms and drive through the clinic to receive a ‘pretend’ immunization. Each time a vehicle drives through, a participant will get entered into a drawing for prizes including two $100 gift cards.

The mock mass vaccination will be held Saturday, Aug. 18, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Vermilion County Fairgrounds.

For more information, or to volunteer, call 217-431-2662 or go to www.vchd.org.

Governors order bridge inspections

ST. LOUIS – Governors around the nation scrambled Thursday to conduct bridge inspections, ordering engineers to review the safety of thousands of structures a day after a span over the Mississippi collapsed in Minneapolis.

States such as Missouri and Massachusetts had already identified bridges similar to the one that collapsed in Minnesota. Missouri, for instance, has 11 so-called truss bridges and planned to examine them first.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine said officials planned to evaluate all 6,400 of the state’s bridges.

Court rules against Katrina victims

NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Katrina victims whose homes and businesses were destroyed when floodwaters breached levees in the 2005 storm cannot recover money from their insurance companies for the damages, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The case could affect thousands of rebuilding residents and business owners in Louisiana. Robert Hartwig, chief economist at the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute in New York, said in June that a ruling against the industry could have cost insurers $1 billion.

“This event was excluded from coverage under the plaintiffs’ insurance policies, and under Louisiana law, we are bound to enforce the unambiguous terms of their insurance contracts as written,” Judge Carolyn King wrote.

As a result, the panel found those who filed the suit “are not entitled to recover under their policies,” she said.

More than a dozen insurers, including Allstate and Travelers, were defendants.

Local briefs compiled by Jenette Sturges. National briefs from The Associated Press.