Stories by Heather Cherone

As Chicago emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told WTTW News on Monday that city officials must be “bold and transformative” to address not only the immediate damage caused by the pandemic but also the city’s longstanding woes. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to close a projected $733 million budget gap in 2022 relies on $385 million in federal relief funds and nearly $299 million in savings and efficiencies, but the plan contains “no new tax or significant fee increases” for Chicago residents, she said.

More than 6,000 Haitians and other migrants have been removed from an encampment at a Texas border town, U.S. officials said Monday as they defended a strong response that included immediately expelling migrants to their impoverished Caribbean country.

Geico customers in Illinois will be paying more for car insurance. Crain’s Chicago Business reporter Danny Ecker has details on that story and more.

When it returns next month, the free architecture festival will once again offer in-person, behind-the-scenes access to buildings normally off-limits to the public. Here’s an early look at some of the new sites taking part in the 2021 event.

A 27-year-old tow truck driver who was was attempting to provide service in the 100 block of West 57th Street was among those fatally shot over the weekend. According to police, there were 45 separate shooting incidents between 6 p.m. Friday and 11:59 p.m. Sunday.

The United States and Mexico restarted high-level economic talks Sept. 9 after a four-year pause as top advisers to presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed eagerness to make headway on issues important to both nations such as infrastructure, trade and migration.

Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time. 

Prosecutors at the R. Kelly sex trafficking trial ended their case Monday after calling dozens of witnesses over the past month who detailed the government’s sweeping allegations against the singer in lurid detail.

Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon — a key step toward beginning vaccinations for youngsters.

Should you need any additional proof of the adage that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” the recent one-night-only performance by the Joffrey Ballet at the Ravinia Festival provided all the evidence required.

Mayor Lightfoot joins us as she proposes her new budget to City Council — we’ll look at the numbers and get reaction from aldermen. The COVID-19 vaccine for kids. And U.S.-Mexico trade talks restart.

Black Caucus Chair Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward) said the City Council should act quickly and loosen the rules because the legal sale of cannabis is “raining hundred-dollar bills” and those hurt by the war on drugs should be able to take advantage of the gold rush.

The U.S. is flying Haitians camped in a Texas border town back to their homeland and blocking others from crossing the border from Mexico in a massive show of force that signals the beginning of what could be one of America’s swiftest, large-scale expulsions of migrants or refugees in decades.

A fresh floral arrangement is a quick way to brighten up a room, but those buds and blossoms likely came from farms hundreds or even thousands of miles away. A local organization is on a mission to change that.

At an early age he identified himself as “The Greatest” and backed up his words inside and out of the boxing ring. Filmmaker Ken Burns joins “Black Voices” to discuss the sweeping new four-part documentary “Muhammad Ali.”

Solving what may be dozens of cases of missing or killed Black women in Chicago. The epic life of Muhammad Ali with two men who knew him well — in different ways. And helping young people bloom.

Black women and girls in the U.S. are disproportionately at risk for abuse, exploitation and homicide. In the Chicago area, an alarming number of Black women and girls have gone missing. Can a new initiative help find them?

Come fall, Sears will shut the doors on its last department store in Illinois, the state in which its first retail store opened in 1925. The Sears department store in the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg will close on Nov. 14.

Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. 

A new report says Illinois’ child welfare agency is failing to serve Spanish-speaking children and families in their language. ProPublica Illinois reporter Melissa Sanchez has details.

Just a few weeks after a Texas law took effect that bans most abortions in that state, Mexico’s Supreme Court has decided that women should not be criminalized for having an abortion. Both decisions have reignited protests over reproductive rights.

The new abortion law in Mexico. Is Illinois’ child welfare agency serving Spanish-speaking children? And celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, starting with Mexican Independence Day.

The U.S. plans to speed up its efforts to expel Haitian migrants on flights to their Caribbean homeland, officials said Saturday as agents poured into a Texas border city where thousands of Haitians have gathered after suddenly crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.

In a city still on edge after the Jan. 6 insurrection, law enforcement bore down in large numbers on the Capitol on Saturday over concerns that a rally in support of the jailed rioters would turn violent. It didn’t.

Prosecutors inched closer on Friday to concluding their case at the R. Kelly sex-trafficking trial, calling two final witnesses to try to further cement allegations he groomed young victims for unwanted sex in episodes dating to the 1990s.