If the North Shore suburbs are so great, why did a national study note that their beaches are so bad? Find out where to swim over the holiday weekend. more ›

Cue up "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and call up the Wettest Bandits you know - the Winnetka home from the blockbuster 1990 film "Home Alone" is up for sale. more ›

Here's a story that seems lifted from a sitcom. A woman reacted to an accidental phone call from her husband and called Winnetka police, believing that he was being held hostage at the school district offices where he worked. Let's recap: Winnetka sent a SWAT team to a man's place of employment because the man's wife overreacted to a butt-dialing. more ›

In the case of a hit-and-run accident on Friday in Winnetka that left a 16-year-old girl critically injured, charges are expected today, officials said. The girl and the driver of the car, an 18-year-old girl from Wilmette, are both New Trier High School students, said Winnetka Deputy Police Chief, Patrick Kreis, to the Chicago Tribune. The accident occurred at 4 p.m. on Friday at the intersection of Greenbay Road and Winnetka Avenue, as the victim walked across Greenbay Road, said Kreis. more ›

• They should have never given him that brain: beware the Scarecrow Bandit.
• Bail has been set for the man who intentionally rammed an SUV in a case of mistaken identity/revenge.
• Confusion reigns for area car dealers over the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

75 marijuana plants were found in a Winnetka home on Wednesday when police executed a search warrant on a home in the 300 block of Hawthorn Lane. Police also found “further evidence of the production, use and distribution of [marijuana],” according to a Winnetka Police release. more ›

Mike Kelley's new show Swingtown was supposed to premiere last winter, but the writer's strike shut down production. Instead the hour-long drama debuted on CBS last Thursday, and Kelley actually sees the delay as a blessing in disguise. The show is set in the summer of 1976, and as he astutely points out, it parallels this summer in the sense that tides seem to be shifting. Politics are reorganizing, minds are changing, and our ideals are in a state of metamorphosis. For that reason, Swingtown, though set in the past, works well alongside today's pop culture. more ›

Senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor today. Doctors say his prognosis isn't good. [Boston Globe] more ›