Illinois | featured news

Even if Rick Santorum won the presidential preference vote in Tuesday's Illinois Republican primary -- and polls indicate that it's actually Mitt Romney who is the favorite -- he still could lose out in the delegate race.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney may be headed for an important victory in Illinois on Tuesday that would help him put more distance between himself and Rick Santorum, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney has yet another chance this week to prove he is the inevitable Republican candidate.

The Republican presidential contest next week gives the conservative a shot at seizing the momentum from front-runner Mitt Romney, who leads him there by just 4 points.After a pair of pivotal Southern tests, the Republican presidential race has become a battle between Mitt Romney's grind-it-out delegate arithmetic and Rick Santorum's popular momentum.

Relatives of tornado victims in southern Illinois are bracing for another storm system as they pick through the rubble of their loved ones' homes. Darrell Osman's mother was among six people killed by the tornado that leveled whole blocks in Harrisburg. He said Thursday that it is frustrating to hear more storms are predicted. Osman was searching for his mother's belongings and he fears possessions exposed by the first storm could be ruined by rain.

A powerful system that produced multiple reports of tornadoes early Wednesday laid waste to small towns in Illinois and Kansas while also roughing up the resort town of Branson, Mo.

Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is scheduled to be sentenced on his multiple corruption charges Dec. 6. The new date appeared on a federal court website Monday. In September, Judge James Zagel had indefinitely delayed an Oct. 6 sentencing date for Blagojevich — apparently because it would have conflicted with a related trial.

Ron Paul was declared the winner on Saturday of a weeklong Republican presidential straw poll in Democratic President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois.

A newborn girl was found abandoned in a shopping bag Sunday afternoon in an Illinois church parking lot.

A freight train loaded with ethanol crashed and exploded Friday, sending up bright orange flames and plumes of smoke that could be seen miles away and forcing the evacuation of a small town in northern Illinois.