A commission charged with reviewing Chicago’s more than 500 public monuments as part of a “a racial healing and historical reckoning project” has identified 40 that are problematic for a variety of reasons, the group’s co-chair announced Friday.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that reversing the spike in carjacking “was top of mind,” as it has continued through the first weeks of 2021, with 166 carjackings through Jan. 22, according to Chicago Police Department data. 

Johnson & Johnson said Friday that in the U.S. and seven other countries, the single-shot vaccine was 66% effective overall at preventing moderate to severe illness, and much more protective — 85% — against the most serious symptoms.

The snow is likely to hit late Saturday afternoon and intensify rapidly, with accumulations of more than six inches possible, according to the National Weather Service.

The Northwest Side community of Jefferson Park is known as the gateway to Chicago, in part because it’s a transit hub. The area’s thought of by some as typical “bungalow belt” Chicago. It’s predominantly middle class, but recently there’s been an uptick in homelessness. 

In a seven-hour live interview marathon Sunday, dancers from across the country will reflect on Chicago’s impact over the course of their dance careers.

Thousands of pre-kindergarten and special education cluster program students within Chicago Public Schools are once again being told to stay home Friday as the school district and Chicago Teachers Union have yet to reach a deal on a school reopening plan.

As of Thursday night, a deal to get teachers back in school remained elusive. “We would have expected by now to make a lot more progress,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

The struggling video game retailer’s stock has been making stupefying moves this month, wild enough to raise concerns from professional investors on Wall Street to the hallways of regulators and the White House in Washington. 

GameStop stock has rocketed from below $20 earlier this month to close around $350 Wednesday as a volunteer army of investors on social media challenged big institutions who had placed market bets that the stock would fall.

Democrats in Congress and the White House rejected a Republican pitch to split President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue plan into smaller chunks on Thursday, with lawmakers appearing primed to muscle the sweeping economic and virus aid forward without GOP help.

President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered government health insurance markets to reopen for a special sign-up window, offering uninsured Americans a haven as the spread of COVID-19 remains dangerously high and vaccines aren’t yet widely available.

The update announced Wednesday comes as Officer Rusten Sheskey, who shot Jacob Blake seven times on Aug. 23 in Kenosha, remains on administrative leave while a police review board examines the case.

The Department of Homeland Security did not cite any specific plots, but pointed to “a heightened threat environment across the United States” that it believes “will persist” for weeks after Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. 

The mutated version of the virus, first identified in South Africa, was found in two cases in South Carolina. Public health officials said it’s almost certain that there are more infections that have not been identified yet.