A suburban Chicago gun shop is raffling a semi-automatic weapon to benefit victims of the nightclub shooting in Orlando.

Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, raised its unsolicited offer for Tribune Publishing to $15 (€13.25) per share from $12.25, valuing the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times at about $475m.

A six-year-old boy has accidentally shot and killed his three-year-old brother while playing “cops and robbers” with a gun their father told investigators he obtained illegally from a gang member.

THE interior of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is a compelling backdrop for its visual-art programme. The exhibition ‘Folly: Art After Architecture’, which features artists’ impressions of some of the most iconic buildings in modernist architecture, maximises this setting.

A video of student Natasha McShane will form the dramatic centrepiece of the trial of the man accused of beating her with a baseball bat as she walked home from a night out in Chicago.

Journalists at the Boston Globe had a tough week. Their colleagues at the Chicago Tribune decided to send them pizza.

An elderly Irishwoman is finally a legal resident of the US, nearly 90 years after she arrived on a boat from Ireland.

Faced with US election results coming after printing deadlines, Belgian newspapers found novel ways round the problem.

Prince embraces the "freedom" he's enjoying late in his career.

Cillian Murphy wants to star in "smaller films".

Moments after finding her mother's body, the sister of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson sobs as she pleads for help in a disturbing recording of her emergency call released to the news media.

Universities in the US have purchased x-rated domain names to prevent pornography practitioners from using them.

HARPER LEE, the tight-lipped author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has issued a statement through her sister’s law firm saying that she had nothing to do with a forthcoming book written about her by a former Chicago Tribune reporter.

FORMER White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel hoped to win more than half the vote yesterday in the Chicago mayoral race to avoid a run-off election.

BRIAN Cowen’s interview on Tuesday’s Morning Ireland lasted little over nine minutes, but it had enormous reverberations, even though he essentially said nothing. He just fobbed off all the hard questions.

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s lawyers have asked a US federal judge to issue a subpoena for President Barack Obama to testify as a witness at his corruption trial.

AN “over-exaggerated” yawn landed a man in jail after a US judge sentenced him to six months in prison for criminal contempt.

Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is pregnant with her first child, according to a longtime friend.

The trouble with the web — apart from it being home to all sorts of bigotry, hatred and aggression — is that you have to pan through a lot of tedious material to find the interesting nuggets. Anyone can blog, true enough, but the flipside of being free is being free to be boring. Who cares what anyone else had for breakfast?

An indictment is expected as early as today, charging ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich with presiding over a state government awash in political corruption.

The state impeachment trial of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich will take place today – without the politician.

Five people were shot as spectators left a crowded high school basketball game in what police said may have been a gang-related attack.

ILLINOIS Governor Rod Blagojevich met with a renowned Chicago criminal lawyer over the weekend as he weighed his legal options on how to fight a scandal that has left his career in tatters and disrupted president-elect Barack Obama’s White House transition.

The governor of Illinois “put a for-sale sign on the naming of a United States senator” to fill the vacant seat left by president-elect Barack Obama, US authorities said today.

Millions of Americans held parties across the US last night, including at the gates of the White House, as they celebrated their new leader who will bring in a different era of politics and transform race relations in the country.

Hundreds of mourners attended a private funeral service for Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson’s murdered mother, brother and nephew at a Chicago South Side church.

The older sister of Jennifer Hudson made a plea at a Chicago church for the return of her missing seven-year-old son, a day after the siblings’ mother and brother were found shot dead at the family home.

US authorities investigating the shooting deaths of Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother are still searching for the missing seven-year-old nephew of the Oscar-winning actress.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is blaming gender bias for the controversy over $150,000 (€117,589) worth of designer clothes, hairstyling and accessories the Republican Party provided for her and her family.

John McCain failed to stop his Democratic rival Barack Obama’s momentum in a debate which offered only an occasional direct confrontation between the two men, according to a post-debate poll by CNN.

A gunman opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University today, injuring at least 17 people before he killed himself.

“Multiple” victims were found today at a clothing store in a strip mall of a Chicago suburb, but there was no sign of the shooter, authorities said.

Five people were shot today at a women’s clothing store south of Chicago, authorities said.

Transformers star Shia LaBeouf has been arrested in Chicago, Illinois for trespassing in a discount store.

The gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre was a sullen loner known as “the question mark kid”, who alarmed professors and classmates with his twisted, violence-drenched creative writing.

The US President ordered flags flown at half mast today in honour of those killed in America’s deadliest shooting spree.

The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people, including himself, dead was identified today as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counselling service.

Wall Street managed a moderate advance today as a spate of takeover deals gave investors enough confidence to buy into the market despite a report showing that US manufacturing is more sluggish than expected.

A two-year-old boy and his mother contracted a rare and life-threatening infection from his soldier father’s smallpox vaccination, according to a published report.

Senior aides to the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff said today that US Marine General Peter Pace will not apologise for calling homosexuality immoral, an opinion that gay advocacy groups deplored.

Wall Street rose for a second straight session today after the government’s latest gross domestic product reading showed the economy was in better shape than expected, easing concerns that growth was moderating too sharply. The Dow Jones industrials rose 90 points.

Stray gunfire pierced a window and killed a 10-year-old girl during her birthday party in Chicago, the second time in as many weeks that a child has been shot to death in their South Side neighbourhood.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry has launched an investigation into claims that a police death squad has been operating in Iraq, a top official said today.

AMERICAN troops backed by helicopters and war planes have launched a major offensive against insurgents in a remote desert area near the Syrian border.