Allegations of abuse and torture have plagued the police department in the third-largest U.S. city for decades and were a factor in former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s decision to institute a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000. Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty last year.

What a difference the last year has made. Chicagoans enjoyed unseasonably mild temperatures near 60 degrees Tuesday, a far different scene from a year ago when the city got socked with 24 inches of snow.

Jonathan Silber and his wife Zully Alvarado learned the hard way how to survive being trapped in a snow storm. They were among the hundreds of people stuck on Lake Shore Drive for hours.

Amtrak said the lead engine and at least two train cars derailed Wednesday in Leoni Township, 45 miles south of Lansing. The train was carrying 71 passengers and five crew members.

Sgt. Richard White of the Blackman-Leoni Public Safety Department said five to six people from the train were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. White said the truck driver also was taken to the hospital with what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries.

“A derailment like that, to only have that few injuries that appear to be minor at this time, we’re definitely very lucky,” White said.

Authorities were called out shortly before 8:30 a.m. The truck was carrying equipment for local oil production. White said the truck driver indicated the trailer got hung up on the tracks and he couldn’t move it.

The Jackson Citizen Patriot reported some passengers were asleep when the accident happened.

“All of the sudden you felt this huge impact, and you hear a lot of grinding, iron on iron,” Erik Swanson, a passenger from Pontiac, told the newspaper. “And then it went silent.”

The train began its trip in Pontiac, north of Detroit.

Amtrak said alternate transportation will be provided for passengers between Ann Arbor and Jackson.

The increase follows a rise in homicides over the last three months of 2011 — the result of what McCarthy called a bloody 17-day stretch from October to November. Homicides in the state were the only crime category up in the first month of 2012, with overall crime down by 20 percent.

University of Chicago professor Jens Ludwig cautioned against reading too much into the statistics over such a short period of time, but in an unrelated news conference on Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel cited Chicago’s recurrent gang problem as the source for concern over the homicide rate.

“Chicago has a problem unlike any other major city given the size of our gangs,” the mayor said. “Nobody can be content, but we are making progress in the right things that are necessary to bring a level of safety to our streets.”

According to a newly released study by the Violence Policy Center, Missouri, Michigan and Pennsylvania had the highest Black homicide victimization rate, or were the areas where Blacks were murdered at a higher rate than other states.

A public health commissioner says that incorporating HIV testing and treatment is a critical way to enhance overall infrastructure.

The charity, which announced last week it planned to stay open through March, announced Wednesday it didn’t have enough money to pay its staff and would close by the end of the week.

The Jane Adams Hull House Association is one Chicago’s oldest social service agencies, serving about 60,000 people at 43 sites, and is a direct descendent of the settlement house founded by Adams, who became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Stephen Saunders, chairman of the Hull House, said the charity is millions of dollars in debt and can’t afford to stay open.

“There was just no alternative,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “We have to close our doors or we would owe more people money.”

The Tribune said Hull House has been hurt by government funding cuts and an increased need for services. Revenue dropped from $40 million in 2001 to $23 million last June.

“We could not possibly raise enough money to sustain the organization,” Saunders said.

Thursday a Federal judge found the 73-year-old Rachel guilty for conspiring to rob an armored car at a suburban bank and to break into the home of late mob boss Angelo “The Hook” LaPietra.

It was past 3 a.m., but they wanted to warm up pizza — a leftover deep dish covered in ground beef, jalapeno and green peppers, 6-year-old Curnet Myles later told investigators.

Their mother, Alicia Myles, eight months pregnant, was fast asleep.

Myles’ daughter Destiny turned on the “eye” — that’s what the 3-year-old girl called the stove burner, according to the story Curnet told investigators. The flame set fire to a pizza box on the range. Then, Destiny tried to put it out with a house slipper. When that did not work, Destiny and Curnet put the burning pizza box in a nearby cabinet, the boy said.

The fire spread quickly at the three-story apartment in the 300 block of East 130th Street, filling the house with a thick, black cloud that set off the smoke detector and woke Myles.

“I woke up and threw up three globs of blood,” Myles told the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday afternoon, as she waited to be released from Roseland Community Hospital. “There was a fire in the kitchen. I tried to grab the children. I tried to grab my daughter, but she was mad at me. There’s no light fixture in my room and I couldn’t find them. I passed out three times.”

Myles regained consciousness and ran outside wearing only a short T-shirt. Curnet, who family members call “Poo-Poo,” followed wearing only thin pajamas and clutching his “Blues Clues” blanket.

Destiny and a toddler, Jeremiah, 18 months, who had just started to walk, were still inside.

From her bedroom window, Eucita Broughton saw smoke pouring from the adjacent building and Myles, her 25-year-old niece, out in the bitter cold. She called for her son, Leotis Broughton, 22, who rushed outside.

Myles was frantically screaming, “‘My kids are in there,’ ” Leotis Broughton said.