Earth Hour started as a simple “lights out” message to draw attention to climate change but has become a global call for environmental action.

Parties on Friday presented a stipulation to U.S. District Judge Robert Dow that will extend the current five-year window out to eight years and add in a new agreement that police search warrants will now fall under the purview of the consent decree.

As coronavirus infections rise in some parts of the world, experts are watching for a potential new COVID-19 surge in the U.S. — and wondering how long it will take to detect.

The United States is expanding efforts to help Ukrainian refugees. It has agreed to accept up to 100,000 people escaping from the war and to increase support for Eastern European nations that have taken in most of the people fleeing Russian forces. 

A new study led by the Field Museum shows that a number of bird species are laying their eggs nearly a month earlier than 100 years ago, likely due to climate change.

Millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief have come to Chicago. We hear from a recipient. How contact tracing efforts may change. And babies born to surrogates in Ukraine, we hear a Chicago couple’s story.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, city and county officials hired hundreds of contact tracers to help stop the spread of the coronavirus as the sheer number of cases overwhelmed local health departments. But as the coronavirus pandemic enters an endemic phase, contact tracing will become more targeted, according to officials.

In the last five years, Ukraine has emerged as the second-most popular destination for surrogacy, only behind the United States, in part because some nations outlawed surrogacy.

The Chicago Community Trust and the United Way of Metro Chicago have partnered with community leaders to invest $35-million in neighborhood businesses and pandemic resources as part of a COVID-19 relief and recovery effort.  

When COVID-19 shutdowns left a record number of people suddenly out of work, Illinois saw record applications for unemployment benefits. That increase drained the state fund that pays out those benefits, the Illinois Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.

At a virtual meeting of the task force working on the overhaul, members of the Redefine the Drive team outlined a study of how the different potential layouts would affect travel times for transit passengers and drivers under different weather conditions during morning and evening rush hour. 

If confirmed on Monday, Nicole Lee would become the first Chinese American to serve as an alderperson.

The American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary has afforded its highest rating, “well qualified,” to the Harvard-educated Jackson. A junior high school friend gushed over the “supernova” debate team champion. Skeptics, including Alabama’s attorney general, warned that her views on crime and policing are “outside the mainstream.”

Six months ago, Chicagoan Albert Khoury underwent a double lung transplant to treat stage 4 lung cancer. Today, he has no signs of cancer. The success of the surgery, a first for Northwestern Medicine, “provides new hope for lung cancer patients at Northwestern Medicine,” said surgeon Dr. Ankit Bharat.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) had urged the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn decisions by the Illinois State Board of Elections as well as lower courts that allowed politicians accused of political corruption to use funds contributed by supporters of their campaigns to defend themselves from accusations of wrongdoing while in office.