Winds topping 45 mph left around 3,700 NIPSCO customers without power on Friday evening, with the majority being in Portage. Late Saturday night, there were still around 1,000 customers without power. At the time of writing, just 260 customers remain without power.

The Region’s homegrown grocery chain has joined the AI craze with their own AI concierge, Ernie, aimed at helping customers find products and savings. Strack’s says that users can send Ernie pictures of recipes or dishes to identify ingredients the store carries and build out a shopping list for customers. AI agent Ernie is available through the Strack & Van Til app.

Schererville announced this past week that the southbound lanes of Cline Avenue, as well as the left and right turn lanes from U.S.30 onto Cline and the turn lane from Cline to U.S. 30 westbound, will be closed for a month to add new lanes and a center median.

Doral Renewables has almost finished construction on the 1.3 GW Mammoth Solar Farm in Winamac, which will make it one of the largest solar farms in the United States. Future plans for the site include using the site as a grazing ground for sheep or cattle, or raising specialty crops on the site as well. It will be bringing energy at a time where energy demands are ever-increasing.

Joining the growing list of NWI cities backing USW Local 7-1, East Chicago has passed a symbolic resolution calling for BP to end the workers lockout at the BP Whiting Refinery and compensate them for lost wages over the course of the more than 6 month lockout.

Our news summaries are aggregated through local Facebook posts, as well as articles from local publications like the NWITimes, Chicago Tribune, GreatNewsLife and more. Our summaries are not a substitute for reading the full article. Seek out the whole picture on their websites.

On Oct. 19, 1897, railroad sleeping-car inventor George Mortimer Pullman died in Chicago at 66, three years after the bitter 1894 Pullman Strike. His name later became part of Northwest Indiana industry: the Indiana Historical Society notes Pullman-Standard — formed from Pullman's car company and Standard Steel Car — ran major railcar plants in both Hammond (built 1906) and Michigan City, where Pullman had acquired the Haskell & Barker car works in 1922 and built freight cars for decades.

$2,795,000 — Lakeview estate perched atop a natural sand dune in Dune Acres, 5bd/4.5ba, 8,792 sqft. Panoramic, unobstructed Lake Michigan views stretch beyond walls of glass in a one-of-a-kind architectural retreat along the Indiana Dunes shoreline — elevated coastal living minutes from Chesterton. Listed Active on @properties.

$974,000 — Gated waterfront estate in Valparaiso's private Liberty Lakes community, 5bd/4.5ba, 5,174 sqft on 1.42 acres. Lake and mature-forest views from every window, custom craftsmanship and crystal lighting throughout, plus an apple and pear orchard — a rare private-lake retreat in Porter County, recently reduced $11K.