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Serving DeKalb County since 1879
Friday, December 13, 2013
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New program rewards recycling DeKalb residents can earn coupons, discounts through diverting more waste By DEBBIE BEHRENDS dbehrends@shawmedia.com DeKALB – A program set to launch in February will reward DeKalb residents for recycling. The Recyclebank program kicked off with a presentation to the DeKalb City Council and will be announced in a mailing to res-
idents in January, said Kimberly Newman, Recyclebank’s senior account manager. The mailer will provide a personal identification number that residents can use to register online. “The program is very simple,” Newman said. “Once a resident registers for the program, they can start earning points.”
U.S. drone strike kills at least 13 in Yemen By AHMED AL–HAJ
Points are good for a variety of coupons and discounts from national and local retailers. Points are earned by recycling and completing activities on the Recyclebank website, Newman said. She said the amount of recycled material is weighed, and every member on the route earns points.
It is another step toward trying to reduce the amount of trash that ends up in landfills. The DeKalb County Board also has created a Zero Waste Task Force aimed at reducing the amount of trash that ends up in landfills – data from the DeKalb County Health Department shows that each person in DeKalb County
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contributes 4.4 pounds of solid waste to landfills each day. Based in New York, Recyclebank was established in 2004 and is partially owned by Waste Management, the city’s waste hauler. The program has more than 4 million members and is available
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See RECYCLING, page A8
County’s history
‘ACRES OF CHANGE’ DOCUMENTS
The Associated Press SANAA, Yemen – Missiles fired by a U.S. drone slammed into a convoy of vehicles traveling to a wedding party in central Yemen on Thursday, killing at least 13 people, Yemeni security officials said. The officials said the attack took place in the city of Radda, the capital of Bayda province, and left charred bodies and burnt cars on the road. The city, a stronghold of al-Qaida militants, witnessed deadly clashes early last year between armed tribesmen backed by the military and al-Qaida gunmen in an attempt to drive them out of the city. There were no immediate details on who was killed in the strike, and there were conflicting reports about whether there were militants traveling with the wedding convoy. A military official said initial information indicated the drone mistook the wedding party for an al-Qaida convoy. He said tribesmen known to the villagers were among the dead. One of the three security officials, however, said al-Qaida militants were suspected to have been traveling with the wedding convoy. The CIA declined to comment on the reported drone strike. While the U.S. acknowledges its drone program in Yemen, it does not usually talk about individual strikes. If further investigations determine that the victims were all civilians, the attack could fuel an outburst of anger against the United States and the government in Sanaa among a Yemeni public already opposed to the U.S. drone strikes. Civilian deaths have bred resentments on a local level, sometimes undermining U.S. efforts to turn the public against the militants. The backlash in Yemen is still not as large as in Pakistan, where there is heavy pressure on the government to force limits on strikes – but public calls for a halt to strikes are starting to emerge. In October, two U.N. human rights investigators called for more transparency from the United States and other countries about their drone programs, saying their secrecy is the biggest obstacle to determining the civilian toll of such strikes. The missile attacks in Yemen are part of a joint U.S.-Yemeni
Photos by Rob Winner – rwinner@shawmedia.com
The co-authors of “Acres of Change,” including Terry Martin (right), Sherrie Martin (center) and Sue Breese (left), react as they leaf through the book for the first time Thursday after it was delivered to Blackhawk Moving and Storage in Sycamore.
Book tracks past 50 years in DeKalb County By FELIX SARVER fsarver@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – Sue Breese was the first person to hold in her hands the culmination of a threeyear effort to capture the past 50 years of DeKalb County history. Standing next to a full pallet inside the cold warehouse of Blackhawk Moving and Storage in Sycamore, Breese opened one of the boxes stacked on top to see a hardbound copy of “Acres of Change.” Breese, a DeKalb County historian, is one of the book’s co-authors and she was soon joined by two more, Sherrie and Terry Martin. Terry Martin flipped through the book and marveled at what he and more than 20 others had created. “This is just terrific,” he said. Three more co-authors – in-
ABOVE: The “Acres of Change” book, which chronicles the history of DeKalb County, was delivered Thursday to Blackhawk Moving and Storage in Sycamore. RIGHT: Sue Breese, co-author of the agriculture chapter in the “Acres of Change” book, was one of the first people to preview a copy of the book.
cluding Marcia Wilson – arrived to check out “Acres of Change,” a history of the county from 1963 to 2012. The 304-page book is the sequel to “From Oxen to Jets,” which covered the county’s history from 1835 to 1963. Inside, readers can learn how several aspects of the county have changed, such as agriculture, religion and education. For many of the contributors, deciding what to include in the book was the hardest part. “So much has happened in the last 50 years that we had to determine what to put in and what to leave out,” said Averil Schreiber, who co-wrote the chapter about townships and municipalities. Clark Neher faced the same problem when writing the arts and entertainment chapter. He said
See BOOK, page A8
See YEMEN, page A8
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