News Chicago Business, Info & Events

At first blush, a pension bill adopted by the General Assembly in 2007 seemed to have a laudable goal: extending retirement benefits to local police force employees’ widows after they remarried. But buried within the legislation was something considerably less altruistic: a provision that enabled a member of one of …

BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter March 30, 2012 2:38AM Talks on a dramatic overhaul of the way Chicago public school teachers are evaluated ended Thursday with district officials forging forward without teacher union approval on a plan that would tie the ratings of thousands of teachers in part to student …

VIDEO: Emanuel outlines his $7.2 billion “Building a New Chicago” program

By JOHN SCHWARTZ Published: March 29, 2012 Chicago is embarking on a $7 billion plan to transform the city’s infrastructure from the skies above to the pipes underground. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former President Bill Clinton announced this month that part of a new plan to overhaul the city’s infrastructure …

By Rosemary Sobo, Liam Ford and Lolly Bowean Tribune reporters 12:22 p.m. CDT, March 27, 2012 Neighbors are calling on prosecutors to drop charges against an 80-year-old owner of a local tavern who allegedly shot a burglar in his Englewood home on the South Side. “If a man can’t defend …

By Gary Lucido, today at 8:59 am It was all but certain that today’s release of the January Case Shiller home price index for Chicago was going to show continued declines and hit a new record low. And now that we have the numbers we can see just how bad …

CHICAGO (CBS) — The average price of gas continues to jump ever closer to $5 per gallon, with prices up 18 cents per gallon in the last week. As WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports, AAA says gas prices have never been higher in Chicago in all of history. Prices were …

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com March 21, 2012 7:54PM Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is buying 8,513 more face shields for Chicago Police officers at a cost of $757,657 — and demanding delivery in time for the May 20-21 NATO summit — to give every officer on the street …

Police held Williams and Ponce for about 10 minutes. The officer who handcuffed them is recorded on camera warning members of the media that their First Amendment rights could be terminated. “Your First Amendment rights can be terminated if you’re creating a scene or whatever,” the officer said. When asked …

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/17/2012 14:56 -0400 George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early. In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report on the NSA’s Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in …

Only days after clearing Congress, US President Barack Obama signed his name to H.R. 347 on Thursday, officially making it a federal offense to cause a disturbance at certain political events — essentially criminalizing protest in the States. RT broke the news last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted …