* Officer Bailey Funeral Today

* Mourners pay tribute to cop

The funeral home, at 7838 S. Cottage Grove, was a couple of blocks from Bailey’s home, where he — in uniform and fresh off guard duty at Mayor Daley’s home — was gunned down while tending to his new car, the target of carjackers at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.

And it’s the same venue in May that was the site of the wake for Police Officer Thomas Wortham IV, killed during the attempted theft of his motorcycle outside his parents’ South Side home. “How sick is it to say that we’re here again for the exact same thing?” said Wortham’s sister, Sandra. “This is ridiculous. If anybody feels safe in this city, they’re just not connected to what’s going on.”

Bailey, the third Chicago officer shot to death in two months, was weeks from retirement.

* Michael Bailey remembered as a calm, caring colleague

* Wake Held for Slain Officer, Reward Rises to $70k

* 25 men charged for drug, weapons crimes

* FBI, Chicago Police Team Up for Weapons Investigation

* Local home sales up for 12 straight months

In the nine-county Chicago region, sales of single-family homes and condominiums rose more than 27% to 9,085, compared to 7,140 homes sold in June 2009, according to a news release Thursday from the Illinois Assn. of Realtors.

In the city of Chicago, sales similarly jumped 27.5% to 2,526, compared to 1,981 homes sold in June 2009, the 10th consecutive month of higher year-over-year sales for the city.

* Chicago neighborhoods foundering in wave of foreclosures

Why? Because Belmont Cragin and many other neighborhoods north and northwest of the Loop suffered the untimely misfortune of tumbling headlong into the abyss of foreclosure too late in the crisis, after most of the funding had been committed to the early subprime loan fatalities of 2006 and 2007. In the last two years, foreclosure filings in Belmont Cragin exceeded 1,600, tripling the combined number of filings reported in the neighborhood in 2006 and 2007.

* Redevelopment begins to stir in northwest suburbs

* Community Contacts helps low income residents save energy, income

* 400 CPS teachers to get the ax this week

But according to Alicia Winckler, the district’s chief human capital officer, a second round of layoffs affecting staff at about 400 schools that return after Labor Day is expected to claim 1,000 classroom teachers and “a few hundred” school clerks and assistants. Those staffers will get notices in two to three weeks.

Once projected as high as 2,700 teachers, Huberman recently said layoffs could exceed 1,200. Winckler on Wednesday said layoffs of teachers and support personnel “could exceed 1,500.” But counting staff already canned, it appears closer to 2,000.

* 600 being laid off at Chicago Public Schools

* Sun-Times: If teachers freeze pay, reverse some layoffs

* Tribune: $100,000 teachers?

* Union to protest today at Hyatt hotels

* Daley has little to say about 2nd conviction for Sanchez

“You know him because every storm, he was out there. During the summer and during the winter, he was out there. That’s the Al Sanchez I know. He worked very hard. He’s very proud that he’s Hispanic. That’s my Al Sanchez,” the mayor said.

* Alleged torture victim sues Daley, Burge

Exactly 24 years ago Thursday, Michael Tillman says, he was beaten, burned, smothered and threatened with death in a police interview room as Calumet Area detectives working for then-Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge tried to coerce him to confess to the rape and murder of a South Side woman.

Tillman’s eyes welled with tears as he sat with his daughter and sister while his attorneys announced the filing of a federal lawsuit against Burge, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and other Chicago police detectives alleging that they conspired to cover up the torture and abuse of Tillman and others.

“As they speak, I’m reliving this in my mind, all that happened to me, all that was done to me, to my daughter,” Tillman said. “I missed my daughter. She wasn’t able to walk at that time, and she needed me there.”

Tillman was freed from prison in January after spending more than 23 years in prison for the 1986 rape and murder of Betty Howard after special prosecutors declined to retry him, saying there was little evidence he committed the crime and ample evidence that his confession was coerced.

* Man sues over alleged abuse by Chicago police

* West Nile showing up in area mosquitoes

* Conditions ripe for West Nile comeback

* Cook County Sees Spike In Rabid Bat Encounters

* Suspicious envelope at federal courthouse deemed safe

* Mayor urges council to approve third Wal-Mart

“If Mayor Daley does it, [you’d say], ‘The boss does it. He just like rams it down.’. . .Your headline would say, ‘Look at Mayor Daley. He doesn’t care about the people. He doesn’t listen to anybody.’ I know what you’re gonna do. I’m a ping-pong ball every day for you,” [Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke] said.

* Daley Wants City Council to Sign Off on 3rd Wal-Mart

* [Chicago] Park District trying to get out of long-term $10-a-year lease

* Ethics complaint against Palatine mayor dismissed

Kostka, who served on the village council from 1997 to 2005, requested the commission assemble after seeing an advertisement by Schwantz’s employer in a recent Palatine Area Chamber of Commerce publication. Von Sydow’s Moving & Storage Inc. invited anyone with moving needs to call Schwantz, dubbing him both the sales manager and mayor of Palatine.

* Southtown Star: Tinley Park wise to proceed slowly on tax break bid

* New Hoffman Estates police station puts a focus on green

* [Du Page] Water Commission vacancies filling up

Under the commission’s structure, the DuPage County Board chairman selects six of the Lake Michigan water agency’s commissioners and its chairman, while municipal mayors and village presidents, divided by County Board districts, choose the other six commissioners. Suess was selected Monday by the mayors of Wheaton and village presidents of Glen Ellyn and Glendale Heights.

The commission’s board has one other vacancy. Longtime Commissioner Liz Chaplin, a county appointee who lives near Downers Grove, resigned last month as her term expired.

* Downers Grove police officer charged with misconduct

Officer Randall J. Caudill Jr., 34, is charged with four counts of official misconduct. Caudill, an 8.5-year police officer assigned to the patrol division, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

* Downers Grove police officer charged with felony misconduct

* Kane debate: Coroner or medical examiner

* Kane finance panel: Stop overspending

The judiciary, circuit clerk, state’s attorney and sheriff departments were highlighted Thursday as the departments with the most overspending concerns.

* Kendall denies refund to developer

* Carpenters’ strike stalls major projects throughout Q-C

* Aide to New U of I President Defends $195K Salary

* Manufacturing helps stabilize Macon County employment picture

* Zorn: Fate of a dotcom daily paper remains a work in progress

The decision of Advance Publications Inc., Ann Arbor News’ parent company, to close the struggling paper and replace it with the leaner, bloggier AnnArbor.com looked like a sharp turn on a rocky road to an all-digital future for print news.

Twelve months later, though, it looks more like a small fork. Through the newspaper business remains in transition, the funeral knells have quieted and struggling publications are riding the improving economy out of bankruptcy and into the black.

* Kate Sullivan to join WBBM-Channel 2

* Glenn Beck Calls Brian Urlacher a “Neo Nazi”

* ADDED: Worthy Causes: St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince, Haiti