* Top Blagojevich budget adviser stepping down

* Senate OKs hearsay evidence

The state Senate unanimously voted Wednesday to give Will County prosecutors a powerful new tool to probe the murder of one of Drew Peterson’s wives and the disappearance of another.

The Senate OKd legislation to allow as evidence hearsay statements from murdered witnesses.

* Naperville home to public hearing on governor’s carpooling scheme

* CPS scores up, but kids aren’t ready for college

* CPS gives kids a voice in cutting dropout rate

* Adults-only housing makes sense for schools

* Illinoize: State & Local Governments Have Bailout Fever

* Lock out Great Lakes’ invaders: study

Waterways engineered more than a century ago to connect the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds should be altered to stop the exchange of invasive species that can cause irreversible damage, an environmental advocacy group says.

* Will there be newspapers to tell us what we need to know?

Problem is, those three theses proceed from the flawed assumption that readership (as differentiated from circulation) is down. But actually, thanks to the Internet, more people are reading these words now than could have ever read them 20 years ago. So the problem isn’t readership. It is, rather, finding a way to translate readership into revenue; newspapers were slow to understand the implications of the technology revolution. They have yet to figure out a business model for the Internet era that enables them to support themselves as they did back when print was king.

* Lake County Pro Second Amendment Resolution

* DuPage Co. board sets $12 mil for capital improvements

* Illinois Senate president contenders open to death penalty fund overhaul

* Stark County receives $25,000 state grant

* U.S. rep: ‘I hope this was not a case of racial profiling’

* Suburbs better at minding budgets