No more holding back on the expletives when visiting Park Ridge. Park Ridge residents will now be able to swear, legally, thanks to a local law being stripped from the books. The Park Ridge City Council decided this week to delete a law which made it a crime "to use profanity in any street, alley or public place of the City.”

The release of more than 40 suspected illegal immigrants jailed in Cook County on felonies has added fuel to a contentious debate over public safety and local authorities' defiance of a White House program that aims to pursue more criminal deportations. The program depends on police and sheriff's deputies to hold suspected illegal immigrants who get arrested beyond the time when they would otherwise be released. But commissioners in the county around Chicago recently adopted a new law that orders the sheriff to ignore all federal requests to detain immigrants after they complete their sentences or post bail.

Two passengers successfully escaped their Toyota Camry Tuesday afternoon before being hit by a Metra train at the 80th Avenue railroad tracks. Tinley Park emergency responders were called to the intersection, where a Metra passenger train hit the car while it was partially stopped on the tracks, Tinley Fire Chief Ken Dunn said. Officials said they were unsure why the vehicle had stopped there.

A federal lawsuit filed by a former Bolingbrook resident against the village and four of its police officers alleges the officers used excessive force in their false arrest of the plaintiff in September 2009. The suit alleges that Aaron Goodman, now 30 and a resident of River Grove, was living in his Bolingbrook apartment with his fiancé and young son on Sept. 26, 2009 when police entered the building and severely beat him in the hallway with their fists and batons and Tasered him twice.The beating was serious enough to cause Goodman serious bleeding from several wounds that required staples and stitches to close up, the suit says.

Local food pantries are benefiting from leftover crops as volunteers glean local farm fields. The gleaning project is an extension of Kuhl’s Ten Thousand Gardens, started by Roland Kuhl, pastor of the North suburban Mennonite Church in Libertyville. It is an initiative to help needy families eat and live healthier, and change their lifestyles from depending on processed foods.