CHICAGO (Reuters) – Corn and soybeans in the U.S. Midwest baked in an unrelenting heat wave on Monday with fears rising of big crop losses that will boost food and fuel prices and cut exports and aid from the world’s top shipper of the key crops.

The condition of the nation’s corn and soybeans as of Sunday deteriorated even more than grain traders had feared, and the U.S. Agriculture Department cuts its weekly corn crop condition rating by the biggest amount in nearly a decade.

CHICAGO, July 16 (Reuters) – Corn and soybeans in the U.S.
Midwest baked in an unrelenting heat wave on Monday with fears
rising of big crop losses that will boost food and fuel prices
and cut exports and aid from the world’s top shipper of the key
crops.

The condition of the nation’s corn and soybeans as of Sunday
deteriorated even more than grain traders had feared, and the
U.S. Agriculture Department cuts its weekly corn crop condition
rating by the biggest amount in nearly a decade.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A program teaching basic social skills to troubled youths in Chicago produced a significant drop in violence in a city where crime has been spiking, researchers said on Friday.

The program – Becoming a Man-Sports Edition – was tested on more than 800 boys aged 12 to 17 who had arrest records and were performing poorly in school.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is receiving intensive treatment for a “mood disorder” and is expected to make a full recovery, his doctor said on Wednesday, responding to mounting political pressure for more information on his condition.

Jackson, 47, has been on a month-long leave of absence from his job. Until Wednesday, the nature of the illness had not been disclosed.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.’s month-long leave of absence from his job due to undisclosed health problems has prompted pleas from colleagues for the 47-year-old Democrat to reveal what his illness is.

Jackson’s father, civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., told a Chicago television station on Wednesday that it would be inappropriate to provide more information about his son’s condition. He would only say that he was regaining strength and “going through a tremendous challenge.”

CHICAGO, July 9 (Reuters) – U.S. corn and soybean crops, the
world’s largest, are in the worst condition since the last major
drought in America’s breadbasket in 1988, the government said on
Monday, pushing up grain prices and raising the prospect of
global food-price inflation.

Corn and soybean prices soared at the Chicago Board of
Trade, based on forecasts that thirsty crops will get no relief
for at least another week, although a record-shattering heatwave
abated over the weekend in the eastern half of the country.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Four decades after the United States suffered its first basketball defeat in Olympic competition to the then Soviet Union in a game between Cold War adversaries, some members of the U.S. team said they remain bitter.

In an era when American professionals could not participate in the Olympics, the U.S. team of mostly college players had rallied in 1972 to lead 50-49 as time ran out.

CHICAGO, July 4 (Reuters) – Four decades after the United
States suffered its first basketball defeat in Olympic
competition to the then Soviet Union in a game between Cold War
adversaries, some members of the U.S. team said they remain
bitter.

In an era when American professionals could not participate
in the Olympics, the U.S. team of mostly college players had
rallied in 1972 to lead 50-49 as time ran out.

BATAVIA, Illinois (Reuters) – Physicists at a U.S. laboratory said on Monday they have come tantalizingly close to proving the existence of the elusive subatomic Higgs boson – often called the “God particle” because it may bring mass and order to the universe.

The announcement by the Fermi National Accelerator Lab outside Chicago came two days before physicists at CERN, the European particle accelerator near Geneva, are set to unveil their own findings in the Higgs hunt. CERN houses the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

BATAVIA, Illinois (Reuters) – Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Lab said Monday that they have come tantalizingly close to proving the existence of the elusive subatomic Higgs boson – dubbed the “God particle” because it brings mass and order to the universe.

But the debris from trillions of collisions between beams of protons and anti-protons over 10 years at Fermilab’s now-shuttered Tevatron accelerator outside Chicago still fell short of the scientific threshold proving the discovery. The same collision debris hinting at the existence of the Higgs could also come from other subatomic particles.