With events rapidly unfolding on TV and across social media, child development experts urge parents to check in with children of all ages but not to worry if those conversations are brief.

It’s been a more turbulent flight than expected. Biden is scheduled to deliver his first State of the Union speech on Tuesday night at a moment when he has struggled to deliver on many of his original promises and as he is being forced to confront new crises.

Lies about election fraud, the focus of last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, have been an afterthought for the opening days of this year’s four-day affair. 

As senators review Jackson’s record in the coming days and weeks, some Republicans may drop hints about whether they are willing to vote for Jackson, who would replace liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. 

Local fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The mayor’s controversial gang ordinance fails. City and state set for mask removal as a mask melee in Springfield gets personal.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced late Friday students and staff will no longer be required to wear masks in Illinois schools as of Monday, after the Illinois Supreme Court declined to take up his request to overturn an appellate court decision that prompted school districts across Illinois to drop their requirement that students and teachers wear face coverings to stop the spread of COVID-19.

With disinformation rife and social media amplifying military claims and counter-claims, determining exactly what is happening is difficult.

President Joe Biden will nominate federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the White House said, making her the first Black woman selected to serve on a court that once declared her race unworthy of citizenship and endorsed segregation.

The chief of the NATO alliance said the “brutal act of war” shattered peace in Europe, joining a chorus of world leaders who decried the attack. 

The Chicago City Council voted 31-14 to confirm Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s pick to lead the agency charged with probing misconduct by members of the Chicago Police Department after months of controversy.

For some Chicago areas residents, what’s happening in Ukraine is personal. They’ve got relatives suddenly living in a war zone. They’re trying to draw Americans’ attention to the Russian invasion — including with a rally Thursday afternoon in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village.

The U.S. sanctions and penalties announced so far appear to spare Putin himself from sanctions. They also forgo an option long-cited as one of the toughest possible, by holding off from banning Russia from the SWIFT financial system that moves money around the world. Biden cited concerns by European allies.

Whoever Lightfoot picks and is confirmed by the Chicago City Council will potentially get a leg up if they choose to run for a full term in February 2023 to represent what is likely to be a very different 11th Ward.

Chicago would permanently ban investments in oil and gas companies under a measure introduced Wednesday by Treasurer Melissa Conyears Ervin and backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism have been important tools for Putin in his bid to legitimize Russia’s moves in Ukraine, but historians see their use as disinformation and a cynical ploy to further the Russian leader’s aims.

A lottery will determine which Chicagoans suffering from the economic catastrophe unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic will get $500 per month for a year as part of an effort to study whether a universal basic income could reduce poverty in the city.