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A driver was hospitalized Thursday after a large sinkhole opened up in the middle of the street and swallowed three cars on Chicago's South Side, police said. The injured man was driving when the road buckled and caved in at 9600 South Houston Avenue near the Chicago Skyway, Chicago Police Department spokesman Mike Sullivan told NBCChicago.com.

Middle America was overwhelmed by weather Thursday, with snow in the north, tornadoes in the Plains, and torrential rains that caused floods and transportation woes - and a sinkhole in Chicago.

Roger Ebert was rarely at a loss for words, even when cancer robbed him of his voice. And neither were fans and admirers who gathered at Holy Name Cathedral this morning in rainy Chicago to pay their respects to the prodigious film critic, 70, who died on Thursday after losing his life to the disease he once conquered.

Medical examiners in Chicago have confirmed that cyanide poisoning killed a man just as he was about to collect on a $1 million instant lottery ticket. Additional tests on the blood of the man, Urooj Khan, confirmed the earlier finding, Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina told reporters Friday. He said that coronary artery disease was a contributing factor.

Imagine you're awaiting trial in Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in the jury pool. Alas, Emanuel was dismissed from jury duty on Tuesday but the mayor showed up as required. The voluble Democrat and former White House chief of staff was dismissed from his civic duty after a few hours.

Cities increasingly are building protected lanes for bicyclists, finding that they bring economic as well as environmental benefits to communities. Last year, cities built 40 of the so-called green lanes, according to the Bikes Belong Foundation's Green Lane Project, an organization working with six cities — Austin; Chicago; Memphis; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and Washington — to add them.

As of Wednesday, Chicago has a new weather record: 320 consecutive days without at least an inch of snowfall.

With no signs of trauma and nothing to raise suspicions, the sudden death of a Chicago man a day after he collected a large pile of lottery winnings was initially ruled a result of natural causes....

... spike in murders and shootings — much of it gang-related — shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch.

The fatal shooting of a 40-year-old man Thursday night on the West Side appears to have pushed Chicago's 2012 homicide toll to 500, the first time the city has had that many killings in four years.