Sales of existing homes in the Southland plunged last month and were down throughout the Chicago area.

Nationally, sales dipped 0.2 percent in July, with the decrease blamed on “temporary mortgage disruptions.”

For the entire Chicago area, there were 9,725 existing single-family homes, townhomes and condominiums sold in July, down from 11,173 in July 2006, the Illinois Association of Realtors reported.

Patrice Brown and Taniya Ross are best friends and classmates at Fenger High School. Brown is on life support while Ross is recovering from her wounds.

Investigators say the almost inseparable pair were walking to Ross’ home for a sleepover around 11 Friday night when they stopped to talk to another neighborhood teen. Relatives say two young men walked past the group, then turned around and started shooting.

Detroit surfer Joe Bidawid completed his roughly 60-mile trek paddling on a surfboard across Lake Michigan Sunday afternoon.

Bidawid, 41, made the journey to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Hes raised more than $14,000, according to his Web site, www.lakemichigancrossing.com.

It took Bidawid nearly 18 hours to complete the crossing. He left at 9 p.m. Saturday from St. Joseph and arrived in Chicago at 2:40 p.m. Sunday.

Family members of 16-year-old Kaylor Spells gathered in the front yard of their Lockport Township home Monday, mourning the death of the young girl found Sunday morning in a park a mile from the home.

Spells was found by a jogger Sunday morning near a dam in Dellwood Park, about 30 miles southwest of Chicago, according to Lockport police.

She did it anyway. Stukel Towers, the university’s third new dorm in six years, opened last week, welcoming 750 students — and their overflowing carloads of clothing, lamps, bulletin boards, posters and pictures. If it weren’t for the Dan Ryan Expressway noise and the Sears Tower views, the scene of awkward introductions among roommates and tearful goodbyes with parents would have fit right in at the university’s bucolic Urbana-Champaign campus.

“I guess it could turn into more of a typical university,” said Rob Soltys, a senior who lives with his mother near Midway Airport. “I think we’re going to see more of the Abercrombie & Fitch, Polo-wearing suburbanites. ”

“Twenty years ago, it wouldn’t have even been safe to live here,” said her roommate, Crystal Rueck, 18, of Lockport.

Until 1988, UIC was strictly a commuter school for undergraduates, with housing only on the west side of campus for medical school students.

The neighborhood’s changes have been remarkable, she said. “My mother went here, and she remembers when Maxwell Street was still Maxwell Street. You could buy socks and listen to blues,” she said. “It’s completely changed.”

There are only 20 days to go before the CTA partially shuts down on Sept. 16 if the state fails to approve additional subsidies to erase a $110 million budget deficit.

The CTA plans to slash 39 bus routes, raise fares by as much as $1 per ride and lay off almost 700 employees. The agency’s doomsday budget plan would trigger worsening traffic gridlock felt not only by mass-transit riders, but also by drivers sharing more congested roads.

The outcry over huge new homes squeezed onto small lots has not let up. Residents are angry because expensive new homes raise property taxes. Neighbors resent the shadow they cast over their older, modest bungalows and ramblers. Preservationists say they destroy the historical character of neighborhoods.

“If communities are thinking teardowns are in their future, now is a golden time to go in and try to deal with that,” before prices go through the roof again and “people get greedy,” says Lane Kendig, president of Kendig Keast Collaborative, a planning consulting firm based in Chicago.

“Everybody jumped on the bandwagon because real estate was going up,” says Vince Bernardi, president of Rob-Lynn Construction in Lombard, Ill., outside of Chicago. Bernardi has done numerous teardowns in Elmhurst, another Chicago suburb, where he estimates an average 200 homes a year are knocked down and replaced “with as much as we can get on the lot.”

The pace has slowed, he says. He bought an old house for $355,000 two years ago and replaced it with a large home. It’s been on the market 18 months.

“The house is sitting there at $1.2 million,” Bernardi says. “There are no buyers.”

The storm swept through the Chicago area Thursday, packing winds over 70 mph.

The National Weather Service confirms that a tornado struck Winfield just after 3 p.m. on Thursday. The tornado was about 500 yards wide and was on the ground for about a mile and a half. The main damage is uprooted trees. The tornado is rated an EF-1. That’s the smallest on the scale used to measure tornadoes.

Saturday, a boat was needed to get down some streets in Des Plaines. But, Sunday, conditions were dry. Fortunately, the flood was not as bad as some residents expected.

Many in the Des Plaines neighborhood said the flood in 1986 and the one in 2003 were a lot worse than this week’s flooding.

If you are looking for a job that pays well and offers nice salary increases without the expectation of competence, consider being a governor or lawmaker in Illinois.

We might not begrudge Gov. Rod Blagojevich increasing his pay to $171,000 — a nearly 12 percent increase — or lawmakers having their base pay climb to $65,353 from $57,619 — if these pay hikes were, in any comprehensible way, deserved. Perhaps a just reward for extraordinary work to put the state in a stronger position.

Charges are pending Saturday for two Chicago men in connection to a carjacking in northwest suburban Elgin.

The men — approximately 18 and 23 years of age — were arrested Saturday by Elgin police after an alleged carjacking and foot chase, an Elgin Police Department release said. Their identities were not immediately available.

A 17-year-old girl was critically hurt and an 18-year-old was shot in the arm while walking in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood late Friday.

Officials with the Chicago Public Schools say Patrice Brown, 17, and Taniya Ross, 18, were best friends and classmates at Fenger High School.

Police say the girls were walking near 101st and State Street at about 11 p.m. when two men started shooting.

On Friday, Pace, the suburban bus agency, started eliminating or reducing the frequency of buses on 23 routes amid a dismal economic climate that includes a $50 million gap in its 2007 budget.

It doesn’t bode well for the state of public transportation when a bus company in the suburbs of the nation’s third largest metropolitan area has to make such severe cuts.

CHICAGO, Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ — Following a series of destructive thunderstorms that downed power lines and severely damaged electrical equipment, ComEd crews have restored service to more than 370,000 customers and are continuing work to restore an additional 222,000 customers who remain without power. Despite a massive restoration effort, damage to ComEd’s system is so severe that many of our customers are likely to be out of service for multiple days.

ComEd continues to assess the damage from the recent storms, which have been among the most powerful in the last few years. Broken poles, downed or snapped wires, and trees that uprooted and fell on equipment are among the challenges that crews are facing. Before power can be restored, crews must clear trees from wires, replace poles and transformers, and string miles of new wire. Downed trees, flooding, and traffic problems also are impeding crews’ access to electrical equipment.

Tow Truck Driver Sought In Hit… August 6, 2007 An overnight hit-and-run crash…

Alleged Assault Caught On Tape Optician Faces Charges A Toronto television reporter …

(CBS) CHICAGO The whole Chicagoland area is in cleanup mode following Thursday’s severe weather that left streets either filled with fallen trees or rising water.

Neighborhood after neighborhood, it’s the same story. Trees and power lines are down and yards and basements are flooded.

ComEd is reporting 185,000 customers in the area are without power as of Friday evening, including 108,000 in the northern suburbs, 31,000 in the southern suburbs, 2,500 in the western suburbs and 45,500 in the city.

At Montrose Harbor, where boats used to be tied and lined up in neat rows, they are now scattered all over the place. Fortunately not many people were on the lake Thursday, but those who were won’t soon forget the storm.

In the Wrigleyville neighborhood, residents are coping with downed trees.

The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation says about 3,300 trees were damaged or destroyed and more than 200 traffic lights are still out.

It seems like every year there’s a storm stirring up the water before the race. But every year, offiicals say it’s safe by race day.

I’ve put in a call to the race director to see if there’s any concern over sewage levels in the water. I’ll post his answer when I get it.

Well, he did it. Blagojevich finally pulled the trigger. 23 days after it was passed by the legislature, Rod Blagojevich approved much of Illinois’ new budget. In a news release he said that he has removed $463 million in spending on “special pet projects and other spending that we simply can’t afford.” The cuts now go back to the General Assembly for consideration, where a fight is expected with Speaker of the House Mike Madigan. Senate President Emil Jones has vowed to stand with Blagojevich and block a veto override: what the governor didn’t veto becomes law, and what he cut gets voted on, straight up or down. Our man in Springfield, Rich Miller, has a nearly line-by-line breakdown of some of the cuts, including health and human services.

Speaking of budget woes, Mayor Daley is urging the state to pass a 0.25 percent sales tax increase for the Chicago area. “The deal is there, and no one is going to blame anyone for increasing the sales tax…. We are not going to blame the governor. We are not going to blame the General Assembly. … This is good for the metropolitan area. It is good for the collar counties, the suburban area. It’s good for the city. It’s good for employers and employees,” Daley told the Chicago Tribune. Blagojevich has called for legislators to work with him to pass a multibillion-dollar construction program that would fund infrastructure projects around the state, including regional transit. The budget bill signed yesterday does not include new transit funding. Without it, regional transit authorities (including Metra and PACE) are predicting drastic service cuts and steep fare increases.

A fresh round of thunderstorms battered parts of the central United States for a fifth day yesterday as the region battled deadly floods that drove hundreds from their homes. A wave of storms hit the Chicago area just before the evening rush hour, stranding children in schools, toppling dozens of trees, snarling rush hour train commutes and knocking flower boxes and barbecue grills off downtown high-rise balconies, according to various media reports.

O’Hare International Airport was closed for a time after its control tower was evacuated for 13 minutes when tornado warnings were issued for the area. The local commuter rail agency said 4 000 home-bound travelers were stranded for a time after winds downed a power line on tracks in one busy corridor. No deaths were reported, but damage was widespread.

Jet stream winds, powerful by summer standards, threaten to supercharge new rounds of thunderstorms Friday and Friday night, drenching sections of the Chicago area with additional flood-provoking rains. Rainfall Thursday, including 5.12″ at south suburban Crete, 4.91″ at the University of Illinois research farm in DeKalb county and 4.10″ at Mt. Prospect, swelled August, 2007 rainfalls to a foot or more in parts of the area–amounts which dwarf the full month average of 4.62″. The waves of storms pushed Chicago’s official monthly rainfall to 9.17″ making it the second wettest August 1-23 period in 137 years of records. Ominously, rainfall projections suggest as much as 2-4″ additional rainfall may not be out of the question over at least sections of the region through Friday night, amounts which would exacerbate already significant flooding on major rivers such as the Fox and Des Plaines. Storms break over the weekend but could be back late Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.

Home sales (including single-family and condominiums) in the Chicago area in the second quarter totaled 29,061, down 19 percent from 35,889 sales in the same period last year, according to statistics from the Illinois Association of Realtors.

The median home sale price in the Chicago area increased 2.6 percent, $256,400 in the second quarter of 2007 compared with $250,000 in the same period one year ago.

BP made the right decision Thursday to scrap its plan to increase the amount of pollution it dumps daily into Lake Michigan at its Whiting, Ind., refinery. But forgive us if we aren’t sold. In Chicago, we’ve learned to be skeptical of promises from powerful entities. We need to be convinced that the oil giant — which made $22.3 billion last year — will do what it says. The company’s “trust us” stance simply isn’t good enough.

We are, however, willing to give the company a chance to prove itself. In light of Thursday’s announcement, we are suspending — not rescinding — the boycott against BP we called for on this page a week ago. If BP wants to convince us it is not going to use the pollution levels allowed by its new permit that was issued in June, it is going to have do more than issue unbinding promises. The new permit from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management allows BP to pour 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge particles into the lake beginning in 2011.

About 310,000 customers in northern Illinois were without power Thursday night, including 62,000 in Chicago, said ComEd spokesman Tom Stevens, who added that it could take days to restore power for some customers north of the city.

People who ventured out to survey the storm’s aftermath dodged felled trees, downed power lines and other debris knocked about by high winds.

Police in west suburban West Chicago are responding to reports of a warehouse collapse, possibly with people trapped inside.

A West Chicago police dispatcher confirmed police were responding to an emergency, but had no details as of 3:25 p.m. The West Chicago Fire Department did not return messages seeking information.

University Village near the University of Illinois at Chicago looks like a suburban downtown on steroids, a massive brick complex of housing, restaurants and retail. And while all the ubiquitous suburban chains are there Jamba Juice, Foot Locker, Cold Stone Creamery there also is an independent bookstore, a small wine store and a unique boutique.

When environmentally-minded developers in the 1970s planned the future of Chicago and its suburbs, they often cited the need to recycle and conserve.

Sound and vital thinking, but in the 1990s planners saw beyond mere conservation, to designing whole neighborhoods — even suburbs — to be more walkable, more compact and less dependent on automobiles driving to faraway places.
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In about eight years, should expected federal funding come through, the Metra STAR Line is set for construction in Schaumburg adjacent to Woodfield Gardens/12 Oaks and the new Schaumburg Convention Center.

The 55-mile STAR Line, connecting O’Hare International Airport, the northwest suburbs and south to Joliet in Will County will be the first commuter rail line in northeast Illinois designed solely for suburb-to-suburb commuting.

Chicago’s foie gras ban is one year old, but in spite of the law, restaurants are still serving it.

Some get around the ban by “giving it away for free” (with an $18 salad). Other restaurants don’t have it on the menu, but will serve it if you ask (a local French chef calls them “duck-easies” — like speak-easies).

Bank of America Corp. said it’s too early to discuss possible job cuts in Michigan as a result of its acquisition of LaSalle Bank Corp. even as a new study released today predicted massive job losses in Chicago.

“We have indicated there is going to be cost reductions as part of the process and jobs are going to be part of that,” said Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Di Rita. “It would be premature to make speculation about job cuts.”

The study predicts LaSalle’s sale to Bank of America would result in the loss of 10,500 Chicago jobs over two years.

Health officials in Chicago, Illinois, USA, have started a vigorous mosquito eradication campaign following recent rains that brought a surge in the mosquito population, and signs that West Nile Virus (WNV) carrying species are also on the rise, reports the Chicago Tribune.

Trucks spraying mosquito killing insecticide are now making their way around the city’s most likely mosquito infested areas.

The Chicago History Museum is making some history of its own as it offers its first exhibit on a Chicago suburb, picking Schaumburg for the honor. That’s Schaumburg as in Woodfield Mall, IKEA and “autoburb.”

After 150 years of marking such big-city milestones as the Great Fire, Al Capone and the first “L” train, the museum has gone suburban, officials say.

“We finally broke out of the city limits because Chicago extends — it’s not just the city,” said Olivia Mahoney, the museum’s chief curator. “It has a lot of connections outward, and Schaumburg is a quintessential post-World War II American suburb.”

Chicago workers should have more reason to be pleased with their paychecks than their counterparts across the country next year.

The pay of employees in Chicago is expected to rise 3.9 percent in 2008, which means for the second year in a row the increase will beat the national average, according to Hewitt Associates annual survey. The projected rise mirrors this year’s increase, the Lincolnshire-based human resources outsourcing and consulting company said.

CHICAGO, IL Fourteen years after the grisly Browns Chicken massacre, which claimed the lives of two Filipino teenagers and five other victims, justice was served on Juan Luna.

Luna and Degorski killed the two owners and five employees, execution style. Aside from shooting the victims, they also reportedly used a knife from the restaurant to slice the owner’s throats and stab the victims. They also used a mop to clean up the crime scene and poke the victims to make sure they were really dead.

Two of the victims were Filipino teenagers Michael Castro, 16 and Rico Solis, 17, part-time cashiers and schoolmates of the killers. According to investigators both were singled out for particularly brutal treatment. Castro, a sprightly young guy and an honor student was shot seven times in the head, face and chest and stabbed in the abdomen. Solis, who was born in the Philippines, was also shot a number of times.

Nine people have been arrested in a three-month investigation into an open-air drug market in the Gold Coast, Chicago police said Tuesday. Police are looking for three more people.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Hemlock, focused on the area around Division and Clark Streets. It began after citizens complained to police of drug dealing in the neighborhood, said Police Lt. Peter Piazza.

One man was killed and another critically wounded when a gunman fired into their van parked on a Far South Side street overnight, Chicago police said.

Police said they have little information so far about the circumstances of the shooting. Just before 2 a.m., responding officers found two men wounded inside the van in the 10400 block of South Corliss Avenue, said Calumet Area Sgt. John Doherty.

While kindergarten remains in session under the dome of the State Capitol Building in Springfield, the deterioration of mass transit continues in the Chicago area.

On Friday, Pace, the suburban bus agency, started eliminating or reducing the frequency of buses on 23 routes amid a dismal economic climate that includes a $50 million gap in its 2007 budget. First to be eliminated was the Route 835 South Suburban Chicago Express. At one point, Pace ran 22 inbound and outbound buses on Route 835 between Orland Park and downtown Chicago, stopping in several southwest suburbs each way. Last year, the route was reduced to eight daily trips each weekday and only went as far south as Worth.

Bad weather grounded the annual Chicago Air and Water Show Sunday. Organizers called off the action a few hours early because of the clouds and steady rain.

Families who traveled to the city for the show were disappointed and surprised because this show normally goes on rain or shine.

But crowds of people packed up beach chairs and broke down barricades at North Avenue Beach Sunday afternoon after pilots concerns over weather ultimately shut down the Chicago Air and Water Show.

LOS ANGELES - An illegal Mexican immigrant who sought refuge inside a Chicago church for a year was arrested in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon after taking her campaign on the road.

Elvira Arellano was arrested about 4:15 p.m. Chicago time by law enforcement officials after leaving Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in downtown Los Angeles, said Emma Lozano, an adviser who was there during the arrest.

A study by immigration’s leading economist, Harvard’s George Borjas, calculates that immigration has reduced the wages of blacks and lowered the black employment rate in America. Blacks themselves see the link between their employment struggles and immigration. A Pew Research Center poll found that 58 percent of blacks in Chicago believe that illegal immigrants take jobs and housing from U.S. citizens.

Police continue to look for a man Sunday after a shooting on the West Side Friday night left a 21-year-old man dead.
Juan Ramos, of 6001 W. Gunnison St., was outside with a friend at 4201 W. Kinzie St. about 11 p.m. Friday, police News Affairs Officer Marcel Bright said.

In addition to the deaths in Tennessee and Alabama, nine have been confirmed in Missouri, four each in Arkansas and Georgia, three in Illinois, two in South Carolina and one in Mississippi.

Last summer, a heat wave killed at least 50 people in the Midwest and East. California officially reported a death toll of 143, but authorities last month acknowledged the number may have been far higher. A 1995 heat wave in Chicago was blamed for 700 deaths.

Hip-hop star Common performed a personalised rap for Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman on the set of their upcoming movie Wanted.

The rapper - real name Lonnie Lynn Jr. - recently spent time with the acting duo shooting the new movie in Prague, but decided to pay them a visit when filming returned to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. (AP) - Movie lovers in a Chicago suburb have a new option at the library.

A service at the Naperville Public Library lets users check out videos through downloading them onto personal computers.

The autopsy results of a male fetus found in a Chicago Heights home Friday evening are being withheld pending a police investigation.

According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, the fetus was found at 220 Abbott in south suburban Chicago Heights and pronounced dead at 8:30 p.m. Friday.

Authorities are investigating the death of a 47-year-old suburban Chicago teacher who was killed by a train in Fox River Grove.

The McHenry County coroner says Thomas Bujnowski died yesterday. It was unclear if he was struck by a commuter train or a freight train.

As state tourism officials launched their new “Live Passionately” campaign Wednesday, a spokeswoman said they hoped a hand sign used in the marketing effort would “catch on and become a part of culture, especially here in Virginia.”

It turns out that the sign already has a following - among a gang called the Gangster Disciples that started on Chicago’s South Side and now has a presence in a number of U.S. cities.

Commuters who have used an express bus route between the Southwest Suburbs and Downtown Chicago will have to find a new way to get to work starting Friday, and football fans won’t be boarding Pace’s Bears Shuttle for the Aug. 25 game at Soldier Field, as service cuts ordered by the suburban bus agency start to kick in.

Route 835 South Suburban Express, which operates between the Worth, Chicago Ridge and Oak Lawn Metra stations and Downtown via the Stevenson Expressway (Interstate Highway 55), is the first of 23 poorly performing routes Pace axed because of a $50 million budget shortfall. Pace will start cutting the other 22 routes Sept. 29.

Even after a government report Thursday that said housing starts fell 6.1 percent in July from the previous month, to the slowest pace in more than 10 years, local developers said they are pressing ahead with projects, despite deepening concerns over difficulties in obtaining a mortgage.

“Traffic at sales centers remains good, we are signing purchase contracts, and people still are looking for a new home,” said Alan Lev, a partner in the Belgravia Group, which builds condos, apartments and townhouses in Chicago.

Responding to a groundswell of protests from politicians and the public, BP and Indiana regulators agreed Wednesday to reconsider a permit that allows the Midwest’s largest oil refinery to significantly increase the amount of toxic waste dumped into Lake Michigan.
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“There will be a day when water is more important than gasoline,” said David Ullrich, a former top EPA official who directs the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, an advocacy group formed by the region’s mayors. “Even if everything is legal here, the question is whether it’s the right thing to do.”

Gov. Rod Blagojevich this week signed a bill into law that will exempt West Chicago from paying a quarter-cent sales tax to the DuPage Water Commission and save the city more than $500,000 a year.

West Chicago has long been one of DuPage County’s few communities that do not buy Lake Michigan water, choosing instead to treat well water. However, the city’s businesses have remained subject to a quarter-cent sales tax that finances the Lake Michigan water agency, which distributes lake water to 25 DuPage towns and two private utilities.

Lawmakers approved a bill this year to make West Chicago an “excluded unit” from the water commission. This would allow West Chicago to join other towns that are at least partly inside DuPage’s boundaries but do not pay that sales tax, either because they buy Lake Michigan water from other sources or because they have other safe water sources. Those communities are Schaumburg, Burr Ridge, Hanover Park, Streamwood, Bolingbrook, Aurora and Bartlett.

When the company that owns Yorktown Center in Lombard decided to modernize the 40-year-old mall, improving dining options was a high priority.

Bob Long, president of Long/Pehrson Associations, and a group of staff traveled around Chicago and its suburbs visiting 200 restaurants, examining their menus and eating out to test for consistency. Eventually 14 new restaurants were selected, many of them with established locations in the city including Adobo Grill, Ra Sushi, Emelios Tapas and D.O.C. Wine Bar.