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Skilling: Midwest's crops helping boost humidities
[4 hrs][Chicago, IL]
The country's most humid air sits over a large swath of the Midwest on Friday—air that is more humid over sections of the Heartland than the perennially muggy Gulf Coast. That's not an accident. The Midwest is home to much of this country's most productive cropland and crops send moisture airborne through a process known as transpiration—the evaporation of water from the leaves of plants. Strolling by a mature cornfield, you'll feel a surge of moisture. Dew points, the preferred measure of moisture among meteorologists, are expected to reach the 70s later Friday in Chicago and could surge to near 80 degrees in sections of Missouri and Iowa—a level most often associated with tropical rain forests.

Red Line to be rerouted from Fullerton to Chinatown
[5 hrs][Fullerton, CA]
CTA Red Line trains running between the Fullerton and Cermak-Chinatown stations will rerouted in both directions on Sunday and Monday and on the northbound tracks through July 31.

Report crucial to train plan expected Friday
[5 hrs][Chicago, IL]
Scores of communities in the Chicago area on Friday could learn the potential environmental impact of a controversial plan to reroute freight traffic around the city and through outlying suburbs.

Girls as good at math as boys, study finds
[5 hrs][Chicago, IL]
Experts urge teachers to treat kids the same

Desiree Epps-Davis, 14, says she struggles every day to convince some teachers at her Chicago public school that she is just as good at math as the boys in her class.

Aldermen ask for background checks of permit expediters
[5 hrs][Chicago, IL]
Officials say move would curb corruption

Aldermen took a stab Thursday at curtailing the decades-old practice of cash changing hands for Chicago building permits by recommending that middlemen in the process obtain licenses requiring a criminal-background check.

3 shot dead in Austin area
[5 hrs][Austin, TX]
One man was sitting in a car near a corner where drugs are sold every day. Another man may have quarreled with an acquaintance before someone pulled a gun. And yet another man was with friends in a parked car when a group walked up beside them on the sidewalk.

Cancer closes case on vicious mob thug
[5 hrs][Chicago, IL]
'Ruthless' enforcer dies awaiting trial

In the Chicago Outfit's long, sordid history, few mobsters talked tougher than Frank "the German" Schweihs, and even fewer carried out their threats with his cruel enthusiasm.

Study sees racial bias in traffic-stop searches
[5 hrs]
Civil rights groups called Thursday for ending the state police practice of searching vehicles during routine traffic stops, citing new statistics that show black and Hispanic motorists are searched more often even though drugs or other illegal items turn up more frequently among white drivers.

Obama cheered in Berlin
[6 hrs][Berlin]
Obama calls for U.S., Europe to work together

To a crowd estimated at 200, 000, Barack Obama said, "On both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny." | Photos

Second Cubs bidder ID'd
[13 hrs][Lincolnwood, IL]
Another bidder is known to have made the cut to the second round of the Tribune Co. auction to sell the Cubs and Wrigley Field: the family of Joe Ricketts, founder of the online brokerage Ameritrade.