Local Headlines

CHICAGO (AP) — A judge has ordered Google to turn over a year’s worth of Jussie Smollett’s emails, private messages, photographs and other information to a special prosecutor who is investigating why the state’s attorney’s office abruptly dropped the case against the ...Read more

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan said Wednesday that he was unaware of an apparently unreported rape in central Illinois that is referenced in a 2012 email written to the governor’s office by a close friend and powerful lobbyist. The Chicago Democrat, who is ...Read more

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago authorities say a young boy walking with an adult outside a Lincoln Park nature museum was bitten by a coyote. Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt says the attack on the 5-year-old occurred outside the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum on Wednesday. The boy was bitten ...Read more

OTTAWA – An Ottawa woman is in custody after an investigation into heroin sales. According to the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Narcotics Team, on Tuesday , 31-year-old Heather M. Vela of Ottawa was charged with unlawful delivery of purported heroin after Vela allegedly delivered heroin to ...Read more

MORRISON, IL (AP) – A Whiteside County teenager has pleaded guilty to shooting to death her mother because of the mother’s opposition to the daughter’s lesbian relation. With her guilty plea in Whiteside County Circuit Court on Wednesday to second-degree murder, 17-year-old Anna ...Read more

OTTAWA – State Representative Lance Yednock is hosting a Utility Bill Clinic in Ottawa to assist residents in saving money. The Citizens’ Utility Board and a Homeowner Education Class with Habitat for Humanity in Ottawa will be on the seminar board this Thursday at Trinity Lutheran Church ...Read more

OTTAWA – By spring time, Ottawa residents will see around a five dollar increase in their water and sewer bills. At Tuesday night’s council meeting, Commissioner Thomas Ganiere announced that due to a million dollar deficit, the city will be increasing their rates come April 1st. On ...Read more

MARSEILLES – The city of Marseilles has been awarded a boat access grant. According to Austin Taylor of North Central Illinois Council of Governments, Marseilles will be receiving $200,000 for a long-awaited boat launch. Earlier this week Governor J.B. Pritzker announced Marseilles was one ...Read more

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) – A 13-year prison sentence has been handed a man accused of producing counterfeit anti-anxiety pills at his home. Federal prosecutors alleged Stephan Caamano produced 4.3 million pills in his Champaign home and distributed them through the U.S. mail. The 24-year-old ...Read more

CINCINNATI (AP) — A plea agreement has been reached in the case of a 24-year-old man authorities say claimed to be a missing child. A prosecutor’s federal court filing Monday in the Brian Michael Rini case didn’t make any details public. Rini is scheduled to appear in U.S. district ...Read more