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Man guilty in Craigslist rape trial RECIPE CO NTEST
Oliver faces charges in seven more cases, due back in court March 31 By CHELSEA McDOUGALL cmcdougall@shawmedia.com
Charles R. Oliver
WOODSTOCK – Steve Block was the fake name Charles Oliver used when he sought prostitutes on Craigslist. Steve Block, Oliver told police, was the name of a playground bul-
ly from his childhood. “Was [Oliver’s] bedroom the playground?” Assistant State’s Attorney Kate Lenhard asked. “And who’s the bully now?” After deliberating for three hours, jurors on Friday found that Oliver raped women by threatening them so they would perform
certain sexual acts. The 12-person jury – four women and eight men – returned a guilty verdict, convicting Oliver of criminal sexual assault and unlawful restraint. It was the end of a weeklong trial that included sexually explicit video footage of Oliver and the
woman engaged in sex acts. But it’s not over yet. In all, Oliver is charged in eight cases with raping women. Each will be tried separately, with the next trial set for March 31.
See TRIAL, page A7
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D-156 board, union reach tentative deal
THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF DESK JOBS
Both sides plan to further consider proposal Monday By EMILY K. COLEMAN and JIM DALLKE ecoleman@shawmedia.com and jdallke@shawmedia.com
Kyle Grillot – kgrillot@shawmedia.com
A recent study showed the average office worker spends 9.3 hours a day sitting compared to 7.7 hours sleeping. The Harvard Business Review recently called sitting “the new smoking.” As many as 63 percent of all office workers will suffer from neck pain alone this year, with women particularly at risk.
DON’T JUST SIT THERE SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE CAN CAUSE RANGE OF ISSUES By SHAWN SHINNEMAN sshinneman@shawmedia.com Dr. David Davidson wants to know his patients’ professions. It’s one of the questions he’s always asking, and one of the most telling. How much does a patient’s job force them to sit for hours on end? Or, when dealing with the unemployed, how sedentary is this person in his or her day-to-day life? “It gives us a sense of their overall cardiovascular health,” said Davidson, a cardiologist with Centegra
Physician Care. In a society increasingly overtaken by computer and desk-based jobs, something seemingly harmless is causing a laundry list of conditions. It’s not smoking. Not drinking. Not drugs. Sitting. Just sitting. The modern human sits and sits and sits. The average office worker sits 9.3 hours a day, according to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. They sleep only 7.7 hours a day, the study found. It’s troubling, area physicians of
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various backgrounds say, for several reasons. For Davidson’s patients, the inactivity shows itself in heart complications, often brought on by obesity. Conditions like heart disease and diabetes can find roots in a sedentary lifestyle. Dr. Gregory Brebach, an orthopedic surgeon at Lake Cook Orthopedics in Barrington, said deconditioning of the back and neck can lead to other injuries.
See LIFESTYLE, page A7
LAKE IN THE HILLS
POLICE CHIEF EYES APRIL RETIREMENT With the impending retirement of Director of Police and Public Safety James Wales, Lake in the Hills plans to start interviewing internal candidates for his replacement. Village President Paul Mulcahy said the village aims to have a sworn officer in the position. Interviews are scheduled to begin next week. For more, see page B1.
H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
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CRYSTAL LAKE: Prairie Ridge students create menu item for Duke’s Alehouse and Kitchen. Business, E1 Vol. 29, Issue 60
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McHENRY – The District 156 school board and teachers union agreed on a tentative contract late Thursday night, according to both sides. The contract will be presented Monday to the full membership of the McHenry Community High School Teachers Association, and the school board also will take a look at the proposal at its Monday meeting. If both sides approve the agreement, it will end a nine-month negotiating process that took the district to the brink of a strike – the closest the district has come to a strike in at least 12 to 15 years. “We’ve reached a tentative agreement,” Superintendent Mike Roberts said in a message late Thursday night. “None of us will be making any comments until everything’s ratified, run by the Board of Education as a whole.” Neither Roberts nor union spokesman Brian Weidner would discuss the details of the contract, but Weidner said he has spoken with a member of the union’s negotiating team
who felt “very positive about the details in it” and is “very confident the association would be moving forward in accepting the contract.” The impasse has largely centered on whether teachers should contribute more to the family insurance plans, both sides have said. Teachers shouldn’t have to take a step backward in terms of contributions because the district’s finances are improving, Weidner has said. This is a stance union officials say they feel particularly strong about because teachers gave significant concessions during the last round of negotiations when the district’s finances were much more precarious. The school board, on the other hand, is trying to run the district as a business and the raises the teachers received in the past are “unsustainable,” board member Tim Byers, who heads the district’s negotiating team, has said. Byers wasn’t available for comment Friday morning. The district is offering 3.3 percent as a benchmark for salary increases for teachers as they move along in seniority – a number Byers
See DEAL, page A7