• Today’s print edition includes a special section dealing with A Day in the Life in the Kankakee River Valley.
• Coverage of Sunday’s Bourbonnais Friendship Festival Grand Parade as well as a wrap up from the weekend events.

• Trips to the emergency room have been shortened at Provena St. Mary’s Hospital since a more efficient system was adopted one year ago. Hospital officials recognized patients were waiting longer for beds — a nationwide problem — and implemented hospital-wide initiatives to shorten ER visits. Provena is among a number of medical centers fine-tuning their operations to deal with the added pressure.

•  The walls are freshly painted, and the acrid smell of smoke is long gone from the brightly lit hallways. But ask any tenant living here at the five-story Midtown Towers in downtown Kankakee, and they all still vividly remember the fire. Now, with their Kankakee Housing Authority units repaired and their lives restored, many tenants here are not only grateful to those who helped them that night and during the hard weeks afterward —  they’re also eager to learn how to prevent another fire. While Kankakee firefighters have hosted many Civilian Fire Academy programs in the past, a revised edition of the program places special emphasis on guarding against kitchen fires, a cause of many blazes.

• Frank Schmitt, deputy chief of the Grundy County Sheriff’’s Department and a 35-year veteran of the force, is preparing to retire this week.