State Sen. Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale is responsible for a new law that goes after physicians and health care workers who are convicted of sexual and violent crimes. The law will strip the licenses of physicians and health care workers convicted of sexual and violent crimes. “I’m the father of two young daughters. It made my blood boil when I realized that convicted sex offenders were still potentially working as pediatricians, or given positions of trust working with disabled individuals or the elderly,” Dillard explained

It's no easy feat, the business of finding someone a job. Doubly so in a bad economy. Yet North Shore staffing agencies are tackling that difficult task: Connect the too large pool of candidates with the too few job openings. Pam Clark of Birk Staffing in Des Plaines said she doesn’t see the job market bounding back as fast as in previous years. "When you think back to 9/11, the country took a hit financially and emotionally. People were devastated. But now the emotional devastation is financial. People are losing their homes,” Clark said.

Construction workers and research scientists may find work at Argonne, near Lemont. Argonne National Laboratory broke ground Tuesday on a research facility that lab officials said could bring more than 1,000 jobs to the area. The $34.5 million Advanced Protein Crystallization Facility will serve as a key research site for drugs that combat bacterial infections such as staph, tuberculosis, E. coli and anthrax. More than 800 temporary jobs will be associated with the building’s construction and officials expect the facility to maintain 550 research and support jobs.

Don’t expect any help from the federal government if your home flooded this summer. Though hundreds of homes throughout the northern suburbs flooded during a hard-hitting storm in the wee hours of July 23, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency has ruled the damage was not sufficient to seek federal disaster funds.

Residents of the western suburbs may have thought power outages were a thing of the past. Guess again. On Wednesday, 8,000 ComEd customers lost power in Glen Ellyn, Lombard and Wheaton. ComEd restored power to 6,200 of them within an hour.

Baseball fans, ever wonder what it was like in the Civil War? Dave Oberg, director of the Grayslake Heritage Center, brought the past to life recently through a historical re-enactment of an old-time base ball game at Grayslake Central Park. Fans also learned the lingo – a charming deadhead is not a socially skilled Grateful Dead follower, but is a female baseball fan.