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Tiny plastic bags used to sell small quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana and other drugs would be banned in Chicago, under a crackdown advanced Tuesday by a City Council committee. Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) persuaded the Health Committee to ban possession of "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height or width," after picking up 15 of the bags on a recent Sunday afternoon stroll through a West Side park.

Colorado: HIGHLANDS RANCH – The issue of being transgender usually pops up with students in high school. However, a 2nd grade biological boy wants to dress as a girl and be addressed with a girl's name. < snip > Pearson says children as young as 5 years old are realizing their true gender identity and her group wants to help parents who may be resisting the acceptance of this.

Upset that his 7-year-old son wouldn't wear a Green Bay Packers jersey during the team's playoff victory Saturday, a man restrained the boy for an hour with tape and taped the jersey onto him. < snip > Kowald, contacted later Wednesday by the Portage Daily Register, said the incident happened in a joking manner as his son challenged him by saying he wouldn't root for the Packers. When he tied the boy up, the youngster was laughing as his wife took pictures.

San Francisco police today began their review of the cell phones and car belonging to the survivors of a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, officials said. < snip > A San Francisco Superior Court judge granted a search warrant allowing police to examine the cell phones and car on Tuesday. For police and city officials to get the warrant, they needed to show probable cause of felony wrongdoing, a city official said.

Soon after their 17-year-old friend was mauled to death by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo, the two brothers who survived the attack made a quick pact not to cooperate with the police as they rode in an ambulance to the hospital, sources told The Chronicle. "Don't tell them what we did," paramedics heard 23-year-old Kulbir Dhaliwal tell his brother, Paul, 19. Sources also say that the younger brother was intoxicated at the time of the incident, having used marijuana and consumed enough liquor to have a blood-alcohol level above the .08 limit for adult drivers. The older brother...

The two brothers injured in the Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo have refused to let police examine photos on their cell phones that authorities believe were taken the day they were mauled and their friend was killed. < snip > "We also understand that police officers requested permission from your clients to examine any images and other contents of the cell phone. Your clients refused to cooperate with this request; consequently, no one has yet examined this potentially critical evidence."

Jennifer Miller, who was at the zoo with her husband and two children that ill-fated Christmas afternoon, said she saw four young men at the big-cat grottos - and three of them were teasing the lions a short time before the tiger's bloody rampage that killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. < snip > When a friend told Miller about the attacks - first reported to 911 dispatchers at 5:07 p.m. - she called police the day after Christmas to tell them what she had seen. She called back Wednesday because she was wondering why news accounts mentioned only three young...

SAN FRANCISCO - The deadly tiger escape at the San Francisco Zoo could prove to be a costly blow to an institution that has come under fire repeatedly in just the past few years over the deaths of two elephants and the mauling of a zookeeper.

The 23 month old granddaughter of State Senator (D) Dave Hansen has died after being hit by a car outside the home of the senator on Coppens Road in Green Bay. Hansen's office has confirmed the death of Ellie Zaidel, releasing a statement that reads in part, " Senator Hansen was leaving to attend a meeting at approximately 8:40, when his granddaughter unbeknownst to either him or her grandmother, ran out of the house and behind his car and was struck as he was backing out of the driveway."

A fee nursing homes have to pay for each bed in their facility would increase under action taken today by the Legislature's budget-writing committee. The tax would increase on January first from $75 to $127. Some of the money raised would be returned to the facilities to pay for eligible low-income patients. Most of the costs for the fee are paid by private nursing home residents. Governor Jim Doyle proposed a nursing home bed tax increase two years ago, but the Republican-controlled Legislature rejected it. Joint Finance Committee co-chair Representative Kitty Rhoades objected to tapping some of the money raised...

The state's hospitals would be subject to a new state tax of up to one percent of revenues under a proposal that won support from the Legislature's budget-writing committee today. Governor Jim Doyle pitched the $418 million hospital tax as a way to access $700 million in federal funds for hospitals to use over the next two years to treat additional Medicaid patients. But Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee are skeptical, saying there's no guarantee the money won't be tapped for other things. But they couldn't get the one Democratic vote needed to keep the tax out of the...

A tax increase on smokers is moving a step closer to reality. The Legislature's budget-writing committee agrees to increase the tax from $.77 per pack to $2.02. The hike would start September first. If approved, the increase would make Wisconsin's tax the fourth highest in the country behind New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington.

A Gillett man was sentenced for defrauding the Department of Veteran Affairs of $355,000. < snip > for collecting Veteran Affairs benefits from 1994 to 2004, < snip > Roberts fabricated his role in attempting to rescue an airman who was killed and his relationship with that airman, the release said. Roberts was discharged in 1971 and claimed the airman’s death caused the disorder. < snip > The VA began to make monthly payments to Roberts and provided education benefits for his children

In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1, former Republican presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is looking for sympathetic jurors. < snip > "What is your political party preference? Democrat, Republican, Independent or other?" Libby's attorneys wrote on their list of proposed jury questions. < snip > Defense attorneys are even more pointed in their proposed questions. Among those on their list: • "Based on what you know at this time, do you believe that the administration misled the American people to justify going to war?" • "Have you been following any of the recent political scandals...

A man jailed in the death of another squirrel hunter in northern Wisconsin was shot once in each hand before the two wrestled in the woods and he stabbed the victim with a knife he carried to cut the tails off his quarry, the suspect's fiancee told The Associated Press Tuesday. < snip > "There was a verbal confrontation first," James said in a telephone interview from her home in Marinette. "Jim told me that he had stabbed the guy. That is all I know." < snip > Vang's body was found Saturday partially concealed in the Peshtigo Harbor Wildlife...

AP) MADISON Voting at a Madison school was halted briefly Tuesday due to a bomb threat. < snip > Voting stopped at the school about 11:40 a.m., when police did their initial search, Elections Board executive director Kevin Kennedy said. After about 20 minutes, city elections officials asked for and received permission to continue voting outside, at a safe distance from the building, he said. "People are marking their ballots, they are being put in a secured ballot box, so when they get back in, and there's electricity, they can put ballots in the tabulator," Kennedy reported early Tuesday afternoon.

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft Reports On Disappearance Of More Than $500 Million To Equip Iraqi Army (CBS) More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators. Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country.

The Teresa Halbach murder has a state senator hoping to expand a proposal to reinstate Wisconsin's death penalty. < snip> Lasee says the Halbach case is so gruesome that he now wants to amend the referendum to apply to any vicious murder with DNA evidence. American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Peter Kellogg opposes the move, saying it would lead to a continued broadening of cases in which the death penalty could apply. Wisconsin lawmakers repealed capital punishment in 1853. It's one of 14 states without the death penalty.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. Army sergeant died of wounds suffered in Iraq, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. The death - along with two others announced Tuesday - brought to 2,000 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the start of the Iraq conflict in 2003. < snip > The grim milestone was reached at a time of growing disenchantment over the war among the American public toward a conflict that was launched to punish Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for his alleged weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found. < snip > "I ask that when you...

1. Chvala to plead guilty tomorrow 2. Doyle campaign spending under scrutiny Former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala reportedly will plead guilty to political corruption as part of a deal reached with prosecutors that will be announced tomorrow. It is not yet known which of the criminal charges Chvala faces are involved in the impending plea agreement. He was charged in October 2002 with 20 felonies, including extortion, illegal campaign contributions and criminal misconduct in public office. < snip > Not only has Governor Jim Doyle's fundraising practices led the U.S. Attorney's office, FBI, state Justice Department and the Dane...