Faster lines and less-invasive security screenings are on the horizon for passengers traveling through O'Hare International Airport. The TSA announced Monday it will phase out the controversial "X-ray" body scanners from O'Hare and four other major airports in favor of millimeter wave Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines that render a generic human body outline. the TSA estimates O'Hare will have up to 14 of the new scanners up and running by Thanksgiving. A mix of the backscatter and AIT machines will be used until all of the old machines have been replaced.
For one Aurora resident, his hundreds-strong bird hoarding obsession started with a single rescued parakeet. Over the past seven years, Dave Skeberdis had been buying and rescuing birds, going through more than a hundred pounds of birdfeed each week to nourish them. City officials discovered the flurry of birds — along with garbage and bird feces — after a painting contractor working outside Skeberdis' home noticed several dead birds and called officials. Skeberdis said he comes from a family of hoarders and admitted his "obsession" had gotten out of hand.
Lake County animal investigators say that a man recently charged with murder in Phoenix nearly starved his dog to death four years ago in Island Lake. “This case was in the top five of our most serious cases in the history of AEAR,” Sandy Wisniewski of Libertyville-based Animal Education and Rescue (AEAR) said. She said it points to connection between animal cruelty and other violent crimes.
The Lake County coroner identified the Highland Park man who died in a house fire last month as Giacomo Ruggirello, who has owned the Trattoria Giacomo Restaurant in Highwood since 1998. Lake County Coroner Artis Yancey said the cause of death has not been released yet, as he's still waiting on reports from the State Fire Marshal’s Office.
Within hours after Radcliffe Haughton shot and killed three women and wounded four more in a Brookfield, WI, beauty salon before taking his own life, criminologists and federal agents were looking at the case as it fits into a rising tide of workplace slayings — and as a possible copycat killing. Larry Barton, the leading adviser to the FBI on workplace crimes, said he and the federal crime agency are looking into whether Haughton might have been “inspired” by a shooting Thursday that killed three women in a beauty salon in Casselberry, FL, a suburb of Orlando.