Daily Digest for Feb. 9, 2008:

Home-school prom planned in April

BLOOMINGTON - Crossroads Area Home School Association is hosting its first home-school formal prom for Central Illinois home-schooled students ages 14 to 19.

The event will be from 8 to 11 p.m. April 26 at the Normal Community Activity Center, 1110 Douglas St. Tickets are on sale through March 29 and range in price from $25 to $35, depending on when they're purchased. No tickets will be available at the door. Space is limited.

Home school students may purchase on guest ticket. Guests do not have to be home-schooled but they must be at least 14 but younger than 21.

Registration details are at www.cahsa.info/formal.html.

Equipment problem blamed for outage

BLOOMINGTON - A failed lightning arrestor was to blame for an overnight power outage that lasted about two hours.

Ameren Corp. spokeswoman Natalie Hemmer said the equipment failure caused four lines to fail. The lines serve about 6,300 customers in Bloomington.

The outage was repaired by 1:21 a.m.

MathCounts event set for Feb. 16

NORMAL - Mathletes from 10 area schools will converge on Kingsley Junior High School to test their skills at the regional MathCounts competition on Feb. 16.

Students from the Twin Cities, Heyworth, Lexington, Downs, and Fairbury areas compete individually and as teams in written and fast-paced oral matches. Subjects include algebra, probability, statistics and geometry.

4-Hers make plans for electric camp

BLOOMINGTON - Four-H Technology Academy is the new name for the popular Electricity School program hosted by McLean County 4-H.

The program is for people aged 8 and older who want to learn about electricity, robotics and computers, solar and wind power.

The camp will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 8 at the Workforce Development Center at the north end of the Heartland Community College campus, Normal.

Cost is $8 for 4-H members and $10 for non-members. Pre-registration is required. Forms and workshop details are available at the Extension Office, 402 N. Hershey Road, or at www.mcleanextension.org. Deadline is Feb. 15.

Call (309) 663-8306.

SETTING IT RIGHT

Local

Flood aid - Edward Buikema, regional administrator for Federal Emergency Management Agency Region 5 in Chicago, would handle any of appeal of the denial of federal disaster aid for last month's flooding at Pontiac and Watseka. His office also handled the original assessment. A story in Friday's Pantagraph was unclear on who at FEMA would process the appeal.