Chicago hit two firms — including global snack food giant Mondelez International — with $935,000 in back pay and fines for running afoul of the city’s sick leave law, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed Thursday to step up efforts to protect workers.

As the massive four-day music festival gets underway in Grant Park, event organizers announced the launch of a fund that will support arts education over the next five years for more than 100,000 students within Chicago Public Schools.

The big reveal will take place at a beachside ceremony with representatives from the Chicago Piping Plovers Team and members of its name-selection committee. Find out how you can tune in virtually.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation Thursday that creates new resources and incentives to finance affordable housing across the state and helps low-income residents access assistance for heat and other utilities.

The Biden administration announced Thursday it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month.

An American finished atop the podium in the women’s Olympic gymnastics all-around, just like always. Sunisa Lee became the fifth straight American woman to claim the Olympic title on Thursday while defending champion Simone Biles watched from the stands.

Are you eligible for a lead water line replacement? COVID-19 rates tread risky territory. New laws boost Illinois’ LGBTQ rights. Frida Kahlo’s untold stories in a new exhibit, and more.

For transgender and gender non-conforming people, the process of changing your name and getting documents to reflect those changes can be a burden. How two new laws in Illinois aim to ease that process.

We check out a new show at the Chicago Cultural Center that makes the case that the comic strip was born and raised in Chicago. Our tour guides? Artist Chris Ware and cultural historian Tim Samuelson.

Lead service lines connect approximately 400,000 Chicago homes with water mains buried under city streets, and can leach a brain-damaging chemical into drinking water. 

Consider wearing a mask indoors, even if you’re fully vaccinated. That’s the newest recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and some experts say they expect mask mandates, not just recommendations, to return in Chicago and elsewhere.

By pulling on her white sweatsuit in the middle of Tuesday night’s Olympic gymnastics meet, and by doing it with a gold medal hanging in the balance, Simone Biles might very well have redefined the mental health discussion that’s been coursing through sports for the past year.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol held its first hearing on Tuesday with harrowing testimony from four officers who shared their stories of being attacked by the rioters.

Speaking Wednesday at his first Board of Education meeting since he was appointed as interim Chicago Public Schools CEO, Jose Torres said the district’s “true north” goal before reopening schools must be to make sure at-risk students are prepared to return to CPS.

The number of new COVID-19 infections has been steadily increasing over the past few weeks and on Wednesday surpassed 2,000 for the first time in a single day since early May, according to Illinois Department of Public Health data.