Stories by Marc Vitali

Joffrey Ballet’s U.S. premiere of “Atonement” tells the impassioned story of a lie that alters the course of love and history. Cathy Marston, the acclaimed British choreographer behind “Atonement,” is best known for narrative ballets.

Two bison calves were born at Midewin in recent weeks, coming as quite a surprise considering that female bison typically give birth between April and June.

The milestone comes over one year since an Illinois law went into effect requiring public schools to provide a plant-based lunch for students who have, or whose parents have, requested a plant-based lunch option in advance. The plant-based school lunches meet the same federal nutrition standards as non-plant based lunch options.

One additional juror was seated Thursday at the Dirksen Federal Building, where Madigan and his longtime confidant Michael McClain stand accused of racketeering, bribery and wire fraud.

The Chicago area’s transit agencies are facing a $730 million fiscal cliff in 2026 when federal COVID relief money runs out, money that’s filling the gap in operating budgets from still-sluggish ridership numbers. Some legislators and advocates back the idea of doing away with RTA, CTA, Metra and Pace in favor of a new regional mega-agency, the Metropolitan Mobility Authority.

The board’s monthly meeting, which had been scheduled for Oct. 24, is no longer set to be held and a makeup date has not yet been announced.

The South Side community experiences a large amount of flooding made greater than its counterparts on the North Side because of a lack of preventative infrastructure, which can cause significant damage to homes and businesses.

The battle over Chicago Public Schools — CEO Pedro Martinez joins us to respond to critics. And a City Council meeting sees alderpeople fired up over CPS and ShotSpotter.

Northeastern Illinois University has certainly seen its fair share of turmoil in recent years, including a narrowly averted strike and the departure of the former university president following a vote of no-confidence by faculty. Now, Katrina Bell-Jordan is officially taking the reins of leadership at NEIU .

Despite its breezy title, “Becky Nurse of Salem” is a full-blown tempest of irony and righteous anger. It ponders the witch as both a powerful being and an object of scorn. Here, witches can be genuine or kooky – sometimes all in the same witch.

A new 311 noise complaint category specifically aimed at catching private haulers flouting the law is live – and the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation can use those complaints to demand data from companies to prove whether they made unlawful pickups.

No current or former members of the Chicago Board of Education attended Wednesday's marathon session of the City Council’s Education Committee, even after some City Council members threatened to hit them with subpoenas to require them to appear.

Eleven jurors were picked through the first three days of the selection process last week, but so far no new members have been chosen through two days of questioning this week.

“A generation-long persistence in structurally imbalanced budgets, coupled with high pension and debt burdens, mean the city will face enormous budget shortfalls in the coming years,” wrote Joseph Ferguson, the head of the nonpartisan budget watchdog group and the city’s former inspector general.

The school district on Wednesday released its 20th-day enrollment figures — which serve as the office CPS tally for the academic year — showing there are currently 325,305 students enrolled.

The planting of a non-native milkweed and the practice of captive-rearing monarch caterpillars have been identified as two possible sources of monarchs failure to survive their fall migration.  

Authorities are searching for an exotic, wild caracal cat on the loose in suburban Hoffman Estates, with officials warning residents to give the animal wide berth if they come across it.

FlixBus, the company that owns Greyhound, said in statement Tuesday that it’s “finalizing a month-to-month lease extension” and that its “operations will continue without disruption.”

The Chicago International Film Festival kicks off Wednesday and will commemorate its 60th anniversary. But at the time of its founding, director and founder Michael Kutza, couldn’t have imagined what it would become.

Our Spotlight Politics team on Donald Trump's Chicago visit. And a push to merge public transit agencies.  

Roughly 252,000 ballots have been cast Tuesday, Gabe Sterling of the Georgia secretary of state’s office said on X. “Spectacular turnout. We are running out of adjectives for this.” The previous first day record was 136,000 in 2020.

The Harris-Walz plan includes a focus on improving rural health care, such as plans to recruit 10,000 new health care professionals in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and new grant programs, as well as economic and agricultural policy priorities. 

Most mainstream economists say Trump’s policy proposals wouldn’t vanquish inflation. They’d make it worse. They warn that his plans to impose huge tariffs on imported goods, deport millions of migrant workers and demand a voice in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies would likely send prices surging.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was pressed on his communication with the Russian president during a wide-ranging — and sometimes contentious — interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago.

The Illinois Senate’s Transportation Committee has been meeting since July to grapple with the thorny issue of funding for the Chicago area’s transit system and whether to replace the CTA, Metra, Pace and Regional Transportation Authority with a single agency that will oversee bus, train and paratransit services. The proposal also calls for $1.5 billion in new funding. 

Each Wednesday, WTTW News presents must-see shows from indie rock to jazz, country, hip-hop and more.