Blues, retro music, farm animals and a Chicago tradition usher in the weekend. Here are 10 things to do in and around Chicago.

The city’s current mayor touts a smaller budget deficit — as another candidate to unseat her joins the race. Spotlight Politics on that and more. The impact of cataclysmic rainfall. And stalled plans for a giant marina at Navy Pier.

Chicago residents aren’t used to having a lot of options when an incumbent mayor is running for re-election, but so far eight candidates have declared they’re running.

Some counties in south central Illinois have seen some of their highest July and August rain totals on record. Recently, Effingham recorded between 10 to 11 inches of rain in a single day.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot unveiled a property tax bump as the budget process gets underway. Our politics team weighs in on that story and more.

In 2016, Navy Pier officials asked City Council to approve an update to the pier’s planned development, authorizing, among other things, the construction of a transient marina on its north side, where boats could dock for the day. The project is now the subject of a lawsuit. 

With high gas prices and carjackings a growing job risk, gig workers from companies like Lyft, Uber and DoorDash are demanding more from their employers.

Chicago’s financial picture has been buoyed by the city’s red-hot real estate market and nearly $2 billion in federal aid designed to help the city withstand the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year’s C2E2 took place in the summer, less than eight months after its 2021 iteration, as organizers gradually revert to the event’s original spring calendar, which was disrupted due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The U.N. health agency said there were more than 14,000 COVID-19 deaths in the last week and nearly 7 million new infections. The number of new deaths rose by 19% in the Middle East, while dropping by more than 70% in Africa, 15% in Europe and 10% in the Americas.

The trio allegedly falsified documents and lied about the number of employees at multiple companies in order to defraud the government out of millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief aid they instead used to cover personal expenses and purchase luxury vehicles.

As vociferous as Donald Trump has been in defending himself in written statements and on the rally stage, legal experts said answering questions in a deposition was risky because anything he said could potentially be used against him in a parallel criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.

Consumer prices jumped 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, the government said Wednesday, down from a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June.

The latest on the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound. A local Taiwanese official on the island’s conflict with China, contention brewing in the airline industry, and why pharmacy deserts exist across the city.

A recent wave of airline delays and cancellations has affected much of the country, including Chicago. After experiencing unprecedented airline delays and cancellations this summer, the recent wave is another indication of a rocky pandemic recovery for airlines.