The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 4 million Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.

President Biden touts his American Families Plan in McHenry County. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on the crime surge. Should the Tokyo Olympics go forward? And fairy houses in Chicago parks.

More than 100 people were shot over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, one of the city’s deadliest in years. Some officials are blaming the courts for the recent violence. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. respond.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of its natural areas, the Chicago Park District, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy of Illinois, has installed 20 fairy houses in parks across the city. Here’s where to find them.

Chicago owes $32.9 billion to its four employee pension funds representing police officers, firefighters, municipal employees and laborers, according to the 2020 Certified Annual Financial Report — an increase of nearly 3.5% from 2019. 

When theaters across the city shut down last year, a local multimedia company took the performing arts from stage to screen. With the help of some celebrated collaborators, they kept audiences in touch with artists. 

Surging COVID-19 cases in Tokyo have hit a two-month high that almost guarantees the Japanese government will declare a new state of emergency to start next week and continue for the duration of the Tokyo Olympics.

President Joe Biden pitched his proposed investments in families and education at an Illinois community college on Wednesday, telling residents of the swing district that what’s good for families is also good for the economy.

A Chicago police officer and two federal agents are expected to survive after they were shot early Wednesday while driving in a vehicle onto the I-57 highway. A person of interest is being questioned in connection with the shooting, officials said.

Emergency workers gave up Wednesday on any hope of finding survivors in a collapsed Florida condo building, telling sobbing families that there was “no chance of life” in the rubble as crews shifted their efforts to recovering more remains.

State employees who work in direct care facilities and have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine are eligible to receive cash bonuses and prizes like airline vouchers and tickets to Cubs and Bears games, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday.

ComEd treated some hard-working members of its team to the ride of their lives as a way to educate the public about the utility company’s use of goats to manage overgrown vegetation around hard-to-reach power lines.

Country crooners, art festivals, yards of yarn and sudsy 5K races usher in the weekend. Here are 10 things to do in and around Chicago.

The delta variant, a more transmissible and possibly more dangerous strain of coronavirus, now makes up more than half of all new COVID-19 infections in the U.S., according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Biden economy faces the unusual challenge of possibly being too strong for its own good. There is the paradox of the fastest growth in generations at more than 6% yet also persistent delays for anyone trying to buy furniture, autos and a wide mix of other goods.