Pressure to remove the category increased this spring after a Boston medical student was charged with killing a masseuse who authorities say he met through Craigslist.

Two months ago, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart filed a lawsuit alleging that Craigslist allowed the solicitation of prostitution and had created the “largest source of prostitution in America.”

Craigslist attorney Eric Brandfonbrener, appearing in federal court for a hearing on the lawsuit, acknowledged the Web site is eliminating the “erotic services” category. He told U.S. District Judge John Grady that Craigslist is undergoing changes he expects will satisfy the lawsuit’s concerns.

“My expectation is that it will be moot,” Brandfonbrener told the judge.

Dart attorney Daniel Gallagher said he remained skeptical.

“They’ve made promises to attorneys general in the past,” Gallagher said, noting that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had brokered an agreement with the site in November to crack down on prostitution ads after being contacted about several complaints over photographs depicting nudity.

“I’m not going to take their word for it. We want to see action,” Gallagher said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the attorneys general of Connecticut and Missouri met with Craigslist officials last week seeking an end to ads they contended were advertisements for illegal sexual activities.

Madigan’s office said Wednesday such existing ads on the Craigslist Web site will expire in seven days.

“We’re very encouraged that Craigslist is doing the right thing in eliminating its online red light district with prostitution and pornography in plain sight. We’ll be watching and investigating critically to make sure this measure is more than just a name change,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

“This is a good next step but by no means is it the ultimate or complete solution,” he said.

Blumenthal had brokered an agreement with Craigslist in November to crack down on prostitution ads.

A Cook County prosecutor said at a hearing Wednesday that William Balfour came to the family’s home the morning of the Oct. 24 killings and confronted Julia Hudson — his estranged wife and Jennifer Hudson’s older sister.

The prosecutor says Balfour and Julia Hudson left together but Balfour returned to the home, and the bodies of Hudson’s mother and brother were found there later that day.

Prosecutors say Balfour that day admitted to the shootings and asked for an alibi.

The body of Julia Hudson’s 7-year-old son was found in an SUV three days later.

A defense attorney says Balfour insists he’s innocent.

A judge denied bail Wednesday.

William Balfour

CHICAGO – Jennifer Hudson’s estranged brother-in-law has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of three family members.

Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton says prosecutors handed down formal charges against William Balfour on Tuesday in the deaths of Hudson’s mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew.

Balfour had been in custody on a parole violation since the bodies of Hudson’s mother, Darnell Hudson Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were discovered in their home Oct. 24.

Seven-year-old Julian King’s body was found in a sport utility vehicle three days later.

All three had been shot to death.

Police took Balfour into custody the same day the adults’ bodies were found. After 48 hours he was taken to prison on a parole violation. Police arrested him on a warrant in the deaths Monday.

Travelers make their way through Logan Airport in Boston on Wednesday.

CHICAGO – Travelers breezed through airport terminals Wednesday and drivers cruised open roads, the effects of a sour economy blamed for keeping people closer to home at the start of the annual Thanksgiving rush.

Even though gas prices fell and airlines offered last-minute deals, many Americans appeared to be skipping trips this year. San Francisco resident Sharon McKellar called the Miami airport “shockingly quiet” after flying in overnight to visit family.

At Boston’s Logan International Airport, Alicia Kelly, 47, traveling with her husband and two children to Miami to spend the holidays with her family, said it was the lightest Thanksgiving travel she’s ever seen. “We have waited in no lines so far,” she said.

Security lines moved along briskly at under 10 minutes at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport. At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, travelers found parking spots in the front row of the lot and no wait for check-in and security. The Delta terminal was nearly empty.

“This is crazy. There’s no one here. It’s quieter than on most weekdays,” said Ryan Sullivan, who was flying to New York with his wife and two kids.

Nationally, the Automobile Association of America says 41 million Americans were expected to travel over 50 miles for the holiday, down about 1.5 percent or 600,000 people from last Thanksgiving. Flying is expected to be down more sharply, about 7 percent, than about 1 percent for driving.

“The economy is in such bad shape. … They’re still really hesitant to take that trip,” said Beth Mosher, spokeswoman for AAA Chicago.

Even though airlines offered last-minute fares in an attempt to get more people in the air, it may take until after the first of the year to know if it worked, said Graeme Wallace, chief technical officer for farecompare.com, a consumer airline ticket research Web site.

“With the economy tanking, they’re thinking, ‘Do I want to spend $400 for a 1,200 mile trip?”‘ Wallace said.

Still, some were undeterred. Carpenter Michael Layman, 59, left Tampa, Fla., early Tuesday to drive about 1,200 miles home to Clinton Township, Mich., for Thanksgiving with his wife, their two children and four grandchildren. He moved to Florida three years ago because of better work opportunities than he could find in Michigan.

“I’m looking forward to being with my family. I wouldn’t miss Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Layman said after he stopped to sleep for a few hours in the back of his minivan at an Interstate 75 rest area about 30 miles north of Cincinnati.

He said he was pleased when gas prices began falling several weeks ago. Layman said he had been paying about $70 dollars to fill up and now pays less than half of that. “That felt pretty good,” he said.

Weather across most of the country was forecast to be clear, making it easier for those who did decide to travel. But there were some problems, especially heavy rain that swept southern California. In San Diego, flooding forced the closure of northbound lanes of Interstate 5 for several hours Wednesday morning after at least two vehicles hydroplaned in a few feet of water and crashed.

The Northeast had clouds and precipitation. Some heavy rain and snow showers were expected across upper New England while parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York could see up to a half of a foot of lake-effect snow.

Even though Marvin and Kathy Boyd had money to buy air tickets, a last-minute delay proved costly. The couple, en route from Denver to Augusta, Ga., missed getting their bags checked in by two minutes at Denver International Airport. Now they have to get another flight. They were waiting for Kathy Boyd’s mother to deposit money in her bank account to pay for the switch.

“We have to pay the money to change and we don’t have the money,” said Kathy Boyd, 54.

Cutbacks didn’t deter Donita Hill of Estero, Fla., who was traveling with her husband, Bob to spend Thanksgiving with their son, a resident at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. The couple waited Wednesday to take a train to Worcester, Mass.

“I think sometimes when money is tight, you re-evaluate what’s really important to you, and you realize that it’s really family and friends,” said Donita Hill.

“Maybe you cut back on the (holiday) gifts a little bit, or maybe you don’t have as extravagant a Thanksgiving as you used to,” she said. “Maybe you don’t have a free-range bird as you’ve had in the past; maybe you go to a Butterball.”

Mildred Hayag (left) and her daughter-in-law, Mila, are seen in a classroom at the New Horizons Learning Center in Rockford, Ill., as the children sleep. The nation's economic woes are making it tough for day care centers as layoffs and reduced hours have forced many parents to abandon day care so they can pay bills.

ROCKFORD, Ill. – The nation’s economic troubles play out one family at a time at the New Horizons Learning Center in this struggling city two hours northwest of Chicago.

Some parents have been laid off and must pull their children out of the day care center until they can find a job. Others’ employment hours have been cut, so they reduce their kids’ attendance to a few days a week.

Financial strains prompt one mother to pay with a postdated check. Another chooses to work in the middle of the night — after putting her kids to bed — because of the extra dollar per hour that shift brings. And the stress shows on the faces of the children who can’t understand why their friends, without explanation, stop coming.

“They act out more, cry a lot more,” said Diane Kesterton, director of New Horizons, where a 38-child enrollment has been halved to 19 in just three months. “They don’t know what’s happening, they’re confused.”

Parents nationwide are telling day care providers they must scale back or abandon their services. Instead, they keep kids at home with grandparents or upend their work-life balance because gas and food prices have become prohibitive and average child care costs outpace rent and mortgage payments — even for those drawing salaries.

“I was paying more in day care than I was making in work,” Meredith Hartigan, a Rockford single mother of two, said in explaining her decision to pull her 4-year-old daughter out of day care in August and switch to working nights and weekends.

Hartigan said her $38,000 office-job salary couldn’t cover her bills and $6,900 in annual day care costs.

To make matters worse, Hartigan’s ex-husband’s salary as a roofer is set to plummet as it does every winter — and she’s increasingly concerned his business won’t pick up next spring as it has in years past.

Child care providers have similar fears as centers that have had waiting lists for as long as anyone can remember now find themselves scrambling for children. Many are for the first time offering part-time services or changing hours to accommodate the growing number of parents working off shifts, or struggling to make ends meet.

“It is not about people making choices to drive a second car,” said Diane Stout, executive director of Circles of Learning, also in Rockford. “For many low income people it is making a choice for food.”

Diana Ochoa, a 27-year-old who lives with her sons, 4 and 6, at her parents’ house in Rockford, said — even after a sharp decline in gasoline prices — she can only afford to fill her tank enough to bring her youngest boy, Kenneth, to New Horizons three days a week.

And when she can’t afford child care, Ochoa stays awake through the day to care for her youngest son at least until her parents come home from work.

It’s not just low-wage earners feeling the pinch. Day care costs average between $3,380 to $10,787 a year for just one preschooler, according to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

Even before this year’s economic perils, the cost had climbed 5.2 percent between 2006 and 2007, said Linda Smith, the association’s executive director. And in every state in the country, the monthly child care bill for two children is higher than median rent payments and as high or higher than a mortgage.

While 2005 U.S. Census Bureau data, the most recent available, indicated 2.65 million preschoolers attended day care, Smith’s association says current national enrollment — or unenrollment — figures are not available.

But there are distressing signals.

In June, well before Wall Street’s tumultuous fall, research firm IBISWorld Inc. predicted day care revenues would climb by just 1 percent in 2008 — just more than a third as much as in each of the previous two years.

In San Gabriel, Calif., Total Child Center owner Doreen Sonnadara said although no children dropped out, her enrollment fell from 51 at the beginning of last school year to 15 at the start of this one because younger children have all but stopped taking their older siblings’ spots.

In the Rockford area, where manufacturing jobs have disappeared by the thousands in recent years and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.8 percent in September, day care providers are worried next year could be even bleaker.

“Even in the last couple weeks it feels like (economic troubles) are moving up in the next income level,” said Toni Brown, who owns Stepping Stones Child’s Center in nearby Roscoe. “First, the people living day-to-day who were immediately hit. Now it’s hitting people who thought they were safe for a while.”

General Motors Corp. this month announced plans to shut down its plant just across the state line in Janesville, Wis., putting 1,200 people out of work — and Brown is bracing for the repercussions.

“We have one family, the mom is a GM employee, and they have two children with us,” she said.

“We just had two (children) in the last week, we were told they are now staying home with grandma until ‘things get better,”‘ she added. “It’s not getting better.”

When not having child care isn’t an option, some fear financially strapped parents will put their kids in facilities or homes that are little more than waiting rooms.

“We are driving people into an unregulated system,” said Peggy Liuzzi, executive director of Child Care Solutions, a resource and referral agency in Syracuse, N.Y.

Smith agreed, saying she expects even people who now qualify for aid from the state to not even bother applying.

“If you know there are 207,000 people on the waiting list in California, you probably aren’t even going to get on the waiting list,” she said. “Why fill out all the paperwork?”

And that means more children could be put in possibly dangerous situations as parents turn to cheaper, unlicensed care.

An example, said Liuzzi, was the woman in New York who, unable to find anyone to care for her 4-year-old daughter while she went to work in a shoe store, simply left the girl outside in a car with a sandwich and water, checking on her every hour.

The woman’s decision, which came to light when someone spotted the child and called authorities, underscores the desperate situations facing a growing number of parents.

“People need to work,” Liuzzi said. “They can’t let their jobs go and they will make choices they will regret.”

———

On the web

National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies: www.naccra.org

“We will no longer be a party to something that’s so unjust,” a visibly angry Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said at a news conference.

“We have to be sure that when we are doing this — and we are destroying some people’s lives — we better be darned sure we’re talking about the right people,” Dart said.

Dart said he believes he’s the first sheriff in a major metropolitan area to stop participating in foreclosure evictions, and the publisher of a national foreclosure database said he’s probably right.

“I haven’t heard of any other sheriff unilaterally deciding to stop foreclosures,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of the Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, Inc. He said the sheriff in Philadelphia helped push a moratorium on foreclosure sales, but that involved owner-occupied homes and not renters.

Dart said that from now on, banks will have to present his office with a court affidavit that proves the home’s occupant is either the owner or has been properly notified of the foreclosure proceedings.

Illinois law requires that renters be notified that their residence is in foreclosure and they will be evicted in 120 days, but Dart indicated that the law has been routinely ignored.

He talked about tenants who dutifully pay their rent, then leave one morning for work only to have authorities evict them and put their belongings on the curb while they are gone.

By the time they get home, “The meager possessions they have are gone,” he said. “This is happening too often.”

In many cases, he said, tenants aren’t even aware that their homes have fallen into foreclosure.

This week, an attorney asked that Dart be held in contempt when his deputies did not evict tenants after determining they were not the owners and did not know about their landlord’s financial problems.

A judge denied the attorney’s request, Dart’s office said, and Dart said that after talking to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, he is confident he is on solid legal ground.

“My job as sheriff is to follow court orders, absolutely,” he said. “But I’m also in charge of making sure justice is being done here and it is clear that justice is not being done here.”

The state’s attorney’s office said it would not comment on conversations with Dart because his office is a client.

Foreclosures have skyrocketed around the country in recent months and Dart said the number of foreclosure evictions in Cook County could more than double from the 2006 tally of 1,771. This year the county is on pace to see 4,500 such evictions, he said.

Dart warned that because the eviction process on foreclosures can take more than a year, the number is sure to climb even higher.

“From all the numbers we have seen, we know (they) are going to be exploding,” he said.

Sharga said there are more than 1 million U.S. homes in foreclosure — with about a third of that number occupied by someone other than the owner.

“That number will continue to get bigger,” he said.

Dart said he believes banks are not doing basic research to determine that the people being evicted are, in fact, the homeowners.

He said that in a third of the 400 to 500 foreclosure evictions his deputies had been carrying out every month, the residents are not those whose names are on the eviction papers.

Nor, he said, are banks notifying tenants that the homes they’re renting are in foreclosure. He added that when banks do learn the correct names of those living on foreclosed-upon property, their names often are simply added to eviction papers.

“They just go out and get an order the next day and throw these people’s names on there,” Dart said. “Whether they (tenants) have been notified, God only knows.”

Evictions for nonpayment of rent will continue, Dart said, explaining that those cases already have gone to court, his office is confident the people being evicted are who the landlord says they are, and there is no question the tenants are aware of what is going on.

Dart said it’s only fair for banks to give occupants of a foreclosed property adequate notice before forcing them out.

“You are talking about a lot of people in rental situations living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “To think they are sitting on a pool of money for an up-front deposit, security deposit, is foolishness.”

Dick Anthony Heller stands outside the Supreme Court on Thursday amid supporters after the court reversed the gun-ownership decision in Heller's case. The ruling, which ended a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., has spurred legal action against gun laws in other cities.

CHICAGO – As news spread of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the handgun ban in Washington, D.C., one thing was clear in Chicago: The city’s own ban now faces a challenge as serious as any in its 26-year history.

From a visibly angry Mayor Richard Daley to a federal lawsuit filed within hours that challenges Chicago’s ban as unconstitutional, there was no mistaking that the high court’s opinion Thursday puts the city’s law squarely in the middle of a long legal fight.

While swift, the lawsuit wasn’t a surprise given that Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissenting opinion, noted “Chicago has a law very similar to the District’s.”

“In the sense the Supreme Court has found this is an individual right to bear arms, we recognize (the ruling) is a significant threat,” said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city’s law department. “It gives people an opening to challenge the ordinance in a way it hasn’t been challenged in many years.”

Hoyle said the high court’s ruling that Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense does not invalidate Chicago’s law, and attorneys are confident they can successfully fight any challenge to the 1982 ordinance that makes it illegal to possess or sell handguns in the city.

“We have very strong legal arguments to make at every level of the courts,” she said, pointing out that the law establishes reasonable restrictions for densely populated urban areas.

Still, Hoyle fully expects legal challenges.

In fact, even as Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, was saying his organization may give Chicago and other Illinois municipalities time to change their laws, his group and others were filing a lawsuit against the city and Daley.

“By banning handguns, defendants currently maintain and actively enforce a set of laws, customs, practices, and policies under color of state law which deprives individuals … of their right to keep and bear arms,” reads the lawsuit filed by the ISRA, the Second Amendment Foundation and four individuals.

The National Rifle Association planned to file a similar complaint against San Francisco, which bars people from carrying handguns on county property, including in parks, schools and community centers.

The quick action is welcome news to gun enthusiasts, who say such laws have chipped away at their rights.

“The justices just ruled today to uphold the Constitution,” said Deb Gales, who owns Deb’s Gun Range in Hammond, Ind., just across the state line from Chicago. “We all know that these anti-gun laws have been passed to the detriment of law-abiding citizens.”

But all the talk about greater freedoms for gun owners doesn’t begin to explain what the ruling means in Chicago, which has seen a recent spate of gun violence.

Nine people were killed in 36 shootings during one weekend this spring. The next week, five people were found shot to death inside a South Side home.

Chicago Public Schools officials say 27 students have been killed by gunfire since September.

Pamela Bosley lost her 18-year-old son two years ago, when a bullet struck him as he helped a fellow student unload instruments outside a South Side Church.

“If you didn’t have the guns, we’d still have our children,” she said.

Annette Nance-Holt, whose 16-year-old son was killed on a city bus last spring when someone sprayed bullets inside it, was livid with the court’s decision.

“I’m still trying to figure out who we are more in love with, our children or our guns,” she said. “It’s crazy. I’m safer being a deer knowing people are hunting you.”

Daley was also troubled by the ruling.

He predicted more violence and higher taxes to pay for extra police if his city’s gun restrictions are lost.

“It’s a very frightening decision,” said the mayor, who routinely speaks out against guns, as he did after the fatal mass shootings at Northern Illinois University and a suburban women’s clothing store. “We believe every mayor will be outraged by this.”

District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents of the nation’s capital to register their handguns. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Fenty said.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the ruling “just flies in the face of reality. You just wish the Supreme Court could spend a week in public housing and then come out with this decision. It’s very easy and comfortable to stand there with security guards and metal detectors and make these decisions.”

Back in Chicago, Nance-Holt agreed.

“They live in safe neighborhoods,” she said. “They don’t have this. Until it’s their family member, they’re going to keep voting that way.”

———

REACTIONS TO RULING

• In San Francisco, which has some of the toughest handgun regulations in the U.S., Mayor Gavin Newsom said the ruling “just flies in the face of reality. You just wish the Supreme Court could spend a week in public housing and then come out with this decision.”

• Chicago’s ban on private handgun ownership most closely mirrors the Washington law. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said the court’s ruling was “a very frightening decision” and predicted greater violence if his city’s law was overturned.

The Associated Press

CHICAGO – Special prosecutors investigating allegations that police tortured black suspects in the 1970s and ’80s said Wednesday they found evidence of abuse, but any crimes are now too old to prosecute.

“It is our judgment that the evidence in those cases would be sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Robert D. Boyle and Edward J. Egan wrote in a long-awaited report.

Their four-year investigation focused on allegations that detectives under the command of Lt. Jon Burge beat suspects, used electric shock on them, played mock Russian roulette and started to smother at least one man to elicit confessions.

No one has ever been charged, but Burge was fired after a police board found he had abused a suspect in custody. His attorney has said Burge never tortured anyone.

Boyle and Egan’s report said they found three cases with enough evidence to seek an indictment, including the suspect whose abuse allegations led to Burge’s firing. That suspect, who was convicted of killing two police officers in 1982, claimed Burge and two detectives beat and tortured him with electric shocks.

The special prosecutors also said they believe there was abuse in other cases that they reviewed but that the evidence wasn’t as strong.

“Regrettably, we have concluded that the statute of limitations would bar any prosecution of any offenses our investigation has disclosed,” the prosecutors said. The statute of limitations on the allegations is three years.

Several people who claimed to have been abused or tortured by Chicago detectives have filed civil lawsuits, and the report could bolster their legal claims.

The allegations also have drawn attention from human rights groups.

In May, a United Nations anti-torture panel said the Chicago investigation needs to go farther than it has. They said the United States should ensure that law enforcement officials who mistreat suspects are punished.