Interim health director big cost while Ford-Iroquois searches for replacement

The Ford-Iroquois Public Health Department will be looking for an interim administrator now that former administrator Doug Corbett has signed a buyout agreement, health-board member Rod Copas said Tuesday.

Copas, who also is Iroquois County Board chairman, said: "The interim administrators we are looking at are $5,000 a week. They are very specialized. ... They come in and work a whole lot to try to fix all the issues and that's all they do.

"Then they make recommendations to the public health board. They could be here anywhere from three months to six months."

He said the consensus at Monday's health-board meeting was that a different firm will be hired to conduct a search for Corbett's replacement.

The health department also is nearly out of the home healthcare business, Copas said.

"We lost $411,000 on home health in 2012," he said. "It will all be over with the second week in October.

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Grant Park students see consequences of texting while driving

A demonstration was held at Grant Park High School Thursday to show the students the negative effects of texting while driving and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

The students teamed with the Grant Park Police Department and the Grant Park Fire District to put on the mock demonstration. It began with a scenario where a car full of intoxicated teenagers collided with a car containing a teacher and three students driving home from a field trip.

Other students looked on as paramedics pulled their friends from the wreckage. The teacher and one student were pronounced dead at the scene.

The next part of the demonstration involved the scene at the emergency room, where a set of parents found out their son was paralyzed from the waist down, and another student was pronounced dead after suffering a heart attack.

Dr. Joseph Danna told these grieving parents: "I'm sure the driver would like to say 'I'm sorry' but those words are very empty in the context of what's happening.

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The Ashes showcased cricket at its best but game still ripe for corruption while fixers continue to swarm around T20

These are the words of Paul Condon, the former head of the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, when he stepped down from his post in 2011. Corruption in cricket will flourish again, he said, unless…

By repeating these words two years on, I don't want to be a spoil-sport. Quite the opposite: I don't want our sport to be spoiled by match-fixing and spot-fixing.

Yet the Ashes series ended on such a high note that we can all too easily drift into the assumption that cricket worldwide, and in every format, is in fine and uncorrupted health.

Thanks primarily to Michael Clarke, every player contributed to making the last day of the fifth Test as entertaining as it could have been. Some lamented the decision to go off for bad light with four overs left, but that was the time to stop: it was much darker at the Oval than the television screen suggested.

Both umpires, in my opinion, had an almost perfect game. After a summer in which DRS played far too large a part, Aleem Dar of Pakistan and Kumar Dharmasena of Sri Lanka showed how Test umpiring should be done.

And it would have been most unjust if Australia, having made all the running, had lost. It is a sophisticated sport that does not reduce everything to winning and losing but allows for the shade of gray that is a draw.

But as Lord Condon warned us, we should not assume that cricket everywhere is alright.

A Test batsman has pleaded guilty to spot-fixing. Not a fringe player either, but one who has played 61 Tests and scored six Test hundreds, more than anybody else for Bangladesh: Mohammed Ashraful.

Mohammed Ashraful has pleaded guilty to spot fixing

The owner of Ashraful's T20 franchise, Dhaka Gladiators, has been charged with various offences along with eight other players, including Darren Stevens of Kent.

A pretty capable cricket XI can now be assembled of those charged with corruption, as the three Indian players who have been charged include the Test bowler Sree Sreesanth.

"Cricket will always be the global sport most vulnerable to corruption because of the nature of the game - every single ball generates multiple betting opportunities - and the consequential heavy volume of betting," as Lord Condon stated in the Sunday Telegraph two years ago.

"The fixers do not have to fix the outcome of the whole match to arrange a betting coup. The cricketers involved use the twisted logic that they can deliver the fixed event for the betting coup and still go on to win the match."

And while Ashes cricket clings to an old tradition of different values, franchise-owned T20 leagues proliferate around the world. Some players are contracted to a number of teams and cannot feel deep loyalty to all of them.

Lord Condon went on: "In the frenzy of commercialisation cricketers are immersed in a heady atmosphere of monopoly money bidding for franchises, teams and players. An 'anything goes' party atmosphere, with more and more agents, celebrities and even previous fixers re-emerging at matches can seduce cricketers into a flawed and toxic justification for their occasional spot-fixing."

Have the ICC and every national board "shown leadership and determination to keep malpractice to an absolute minimum"?

Some have, some have not. And to judge by the number of "previous fixers" swarming around these T20 leagues, some as coaches and commentators, I for one do not assume that underneath the surface professional cricket worldwide is in a healthy and uncorrupted state.

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