Crystal Lake, McHenry County | featured news

HOUSTON – A massive explosion Friday leveled a warehouse in Houston, leaving at least two people dead, damaging nearby buildings and homes and rousing frightened residents from their sleep miles away, authorities said.

The explosion happened about 4:30 a.m. inside a building at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, which makes valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment in various industries, authorities said.

WASHINGTON – The warden in charge when Jeffrey Epstein ended his life in his jail cell is being moved to a leadership position at another federal correctional facility, putting him back in the field with inmates despite an ongoing investigation into the financier’s death, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

The federal Bureau of Prisons is planning to move Lamine N’Diaye to the role at FCI Fort Dix, a low-security prison in Burlington County, New Jersey, the people said.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon disclosed Friday that 34 U.S. service members suffered traumatic brain injury in Iran's missile strike this month on an Iraqi air base, and although half have returned to work, the casualty total belies President Donald Trump's initial claim that no Americans were harmed. He later characterized the injuries as “not very serious.”

Eight of the injured arrived in the United States on Friday from Germany, where they and nine others had been flown days after the Jan. 8 missile strike on Iraq's Ain al-Asad air base.

NEW YORK – “Do the Right Thing” actress Rosie Perez testified Friday that fellow screen star, Annabella Sciorra, told her in the mid-1990s that Harvey Weinstein had raped her, but that she couldn’t go to the police because “he’d destroy me.”

Taking the stand at the former Hollywood mogul’s rape trial, Perez said her friend had told at some point in 1993, her voice shaking on the phone, that something had happened to her: “I think it was rape.”

Perez said she asked whether Sciorra knew who had attacked

CHICAGO – Marijuana was stolen this week from a box placed at Chicago’s Midway International Airport for travelers who dispose of their marijuana before they board a plane, police said Friday.

The "marijuana amnesty boxes” were placed at Midway and O’Hare International Airport after it became legal this year to possess marijuana in Illinois.

Rick Garcia of Carpentersville had to pick up a 50-pound bag of salt last week in preparation for a 5-inch snowfall and 50 mph wind gusts that blanketed northeastern Illinois.

With his salt reserves depleted after the winter storm, Garcia visited a Lowe’s in Lake in the Hills on Friday afternoon to pick up another bag of salt and shovel in response to the estimated 6 inches of snow that was slated to fall through Saturday in McHenry County.

Having already bought food, Garcia said he will be ready to hunker down with hi

A pair of Indiana union representatives have pleaded guilty to beating a group of McHenry County-based ironworkers at a church in 2016.

Former Ironworkers Union Local 395 President and business agent Jeffrey Veach and his fellow business agent, Thomas Williamson Sr., accepted plea deals Wednesday in U.S.

A Chicago lawyer has seven days to disclose any information her clients might have about a dark money source that funded a series of contentious 2018 campaign flyers.

More than a year has passed since McHenry County Clerk and Recorder Joe Tirio filed a defamation lawsuit against the anonymous money source that calls itself the Illinois Integrity Fund.

Last month, Kane County Judge Kevin Busch ordered the Integrity Fund's attorney, Natalie Harris, to disclose further information about the anonymous group.

Parkland Middle School in McHenry has been named the No. 1 middle school in the nation for STEM, STEAM and innovative learning after placing first at the Future of Education Technology Conference, which took place Jan. 17 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. 

“It is truly humbling to be a part of something so special,” Superintendent of Schools Alan Hoffman said Wednesday.

A judge in February will hear oral arguments from a local Democrat seeking review of a sitting McHenry County judge’s petition for candidacy.

McHenry County Democratic Party Precinct Committeewoman Cindy Pilz filed her petition for judicial review Jan. 7.

The request came on the heels of the McHenry County Electoral Board of Commissioners’ Jan. 3 decision to overrule her previous objection to Judge Justin M. Hansen’s petition for candidacy.

Pilz filed her objection Dec.