Chicago Ridge police have released a man they questioned in connection with a hit-and-run crash that killed a pedestrian.

Toni Preckwinkle, the Democratic nominee for Cook County Board president, says she’s been told by insiders that the county budget deficit has ballooned to at least $250 milion, perhaps as high as $500 million.

Jewelry from two entire lines being sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores nationwide, including bracelets and necklaces branded by Miley Cyrus, contains high levels of the toxic metal cadmium, according to an Associated Press investigation.

An anonymous tip by someone who saw a cable TV show about Cook County fugitives led to the arrest of a woman wanted for robbing an elderly woman on Chicago's Southwest Side.

The mother of a 5-year-old boy who was killed in a May 10 car accident in Steger said Tuesday that she told the Chicago Heights police officer who arrested her that her boyfriend had been drinking and should not be allowed to drive her son home.

An analysis finds 23 percent of Illinois residents under age 65 have a diagnosed medical problem that could result in a denial of insurance without health reform.

Police are seeking two masked men who damaged an automated teller machine while apparently trying to steal cash from it at a McDonald's restaurant on the Chicago Skyway early Wednesday.

University of Illinois trustees this week will consider an almost 10 percent increase in tuition and a contract that would pay the school's new president more than $600,000 a year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman moved quickly today to advance Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan down a so-far smooth road to confirmation, setting hearings for June 28.

Emergency crews are responding to a fire in a commercial-industrial building in Bridgeview.

Bail was set at $3 million Wednesday for a Richton Park teenager accused of killing a Park Forest man in a case of mistaken identity.