As the 2021 baseball regular season winds down, the Cubs and White Sox are headed in different directions. Chicago’s Spanish-language baseball announcers slide in to talk about the teams’ prospects in the postseason and next year.

The pandemic has shut down the Mexican Independence Day Parade for a second year, but Fiesta Boricua is going ahead with its plans. We talk with the event organizers about their decisions.

An ardent U.S. ally, Kosovo, has agreed to take in Afghanistan evacuees who fail to clear initial rounds of screening and host them for up to a year, a U.S. official said Saturday.

Power out, high voltage lines on the ground, weeks until electricity is restored in some places: The dismal state of power in Hurricane Ida’s wake is a distressingly familiar scenario for Entergy Corp., Louisiana’s largest electrical utility.

Traditionally, the process of getting an opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court takes months and those rulings are often narrowly tailored. Emergency orders, especially during the court’s summer break, revolve around specific issues, like individual death penalty cases.

The third week of the R. Kelly sex-trafficking trial in New York City saw more accusers — including for the first time, a man — coming forward with array of disturbing allegations and a former assistant providing a glimpse into how he lorded over his inner circle.

New political district maps are spurring lawsuits. Springfield gets down to the wire on an energy bill. Hiccups for Chicago Public Schools students’ first week back. And a tumultuous end to the 20-year Afghanistan War.

Dig those images of flowers, birds and trees out of the iCloud and enter them in the forest preserve district’s annual photo contest. Winning images will be featured in the district’s 2022 calendar. 

All pre-K through 12th grade teachers and staff, higher education employees and students, and health care workers in settings such as hospitals and nursing homes now have until Sept. 19 to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose.

At least 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted into the United States following the fall of Kabul as part of an “enduring commitment” to help people who aided the American war effort and others who are particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule, the secretary of homeland security said Friday.

With close to 100,000 birds expected to pass over Chicago this weekend, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and its partners have issued a “lights out” alert for the city, encouraging building owners and residents to turn off as many lights as possible between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The August job growth the government reported Friday fell far short of the sizable gains of roughly 1 million in each of the previous two months. The hiring jumps in June and July had followed widespread vaccinations that allowed the economy to fully reopen from pandemic restrictions. 

As customary, there will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days — their faith’s most important period. There also will be deep disappointment, as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the persisting COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of new COVID-19 infections has been steadily increasing for weeks and on Friday neared 6,000 for the first time in a 24-hour period since January, according to state health officials.

As beach season winds down in Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium is hosting a series of weekend cleanups to clear the shoreline of a summer’s worth of litter and debris.