Stories by Marissa Nelson

Protesters are urging the city to stop a metal-scrapping company from opening on the Southeast Side. What both sides have to say.

A Democratic senator is calling for federal investigations into possible price gouging of natural gas in the Midwest and other regions following severe winter storms that plunged Texas and other states into a deep freeze.

You’re fully vaccinated against the coronavirus — now what? Don’t expect to shed your mask and get back to normal activities right away. That’s going to be a disappointment, if not a shock, to many people. 

The improbable story began during the winter of 1973, when Karen Autenrieth lost her wedding band at her grandmother’s house in Chicago. It’s a memory she clearly recalls decades later.

First came the big chill, then the big dig, and now officials are warning Chicagoans to prepare for the big melt. With temperatures on the rise, the snow that’s accumulated over the past three weeks is about to turn into a river. 

A political era ends. A report slams the police response to summer unrest. Gov. Pritzker’s budget has no income tax hike but some pain for business. Vaccination rates lag in Black and Brown communities.

This week’s killer freeze in the U.S. was no surprise. Government and private meteorologists saw it coming, some nearly three weeks in advance. And yet catastrophe happened. At least 20 people have died and 4 million homes at some point lost power, heat or water.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired back Friday at critics who blasted her for using $281.5 million in COVID-19 federal relief funds to cover the cost of salaries and benefits for Chicago Police Department officers. “Criticism comes with the job of mayor but this one’s just dumb,” Lightfoot said.

An Army special forces sergeant pleaded not guilty Friday to murder and other charges in the killing of three people and wounding of three others during a mass shooting at an Illinois bowling alley.

More than 100 convictions tied to former Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and his team have been thrown out in recent years. “Today, we were able to bring some justice to nine people who were targeted and victimized by former Sergeant Watts,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a statement.

Since the COVID-19 vaccination effort began on Dec. 15 in Chicago, 18% of Chicagoans who got at least the first shot are Latino, while 19% are Black, according to data released Friday by the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Jolted by a sweeping hack that may have revealed government and corporate secrets to Russia, U.S. officials are scrambling to reinforce the nation’s cyber defenses.

The industrial community once marked by steel mills is now lined with other plants, and the proposed opening of a metal scrapping company has become a point of controversy on the Southeast Side and across the city.

Alden Global Capital seeks to buy Tribune Publishing in a $630 million deal, but the deal has newsroom journalists worried because of Alden’s history of deep cuts at other newsrooms. 

NASA’s Perseverance rover greeted its global audience on Twitter, beaming back to Earth the first image captured after touching down Thursday afternoon on Mars. 

A collective groan may or may not have been heard around Chicago when the city awoke to find it was snowing — again. Geoffrey Baer explains how this recent blast of snowy weather stacks up against Chicago’s most infamous winter storms.

Twenty-two more cases of a COVID-19 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom that is believed to be more transmissible have been discovered in Illinois in the past seven days, according to data released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Volunteering looks different during the pandemic, but organizations still need support. The Chicago Volunteer Expo is moving forward with its annual event, where people can learn about opportunities at scores of nonprofits, but has shifted to a virtual platform.

Humans are making Earth a broken and increasingly unlivable planet through climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. So the world must make dramatic changes to society, economics and daily life, a new United Nations report says.

Progressive aldermen and community groups slammed Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday for using $281.5 million in COVID-19 federal relief funds to cover the cost of salaries and benefits for Chicago Police Department officers.

Watch the Feb. 18, 2021 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Inspectors found 27 people in the Chinese restaurant on the day before Valentine’s Day not wearing masks or following social distancing rules, according to a statement from the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

Scientists widely agree that the U.S. simply doesn’t have enough of a handle on the variants to roll back public health measures and is at risk of fumbling yet another phase of the pandemic after letting the virus rage through the country over the last year.

Michael Madigan, who has represented the 22nd District on Chicago’s South Side since 1971 and steadily amassed political capital, is exiting the Illinois House at the end of February. The announcement comes a month after Madigan lost the reigns as speaker.

The Chicago Police Department was “under-prepared and ill-equipped, and thus critically disserved both its own front-line members and members of the public,” according to the inspector general’s report, the first in-depth examination of the police department’s response to the unrest. 

Before the virus erupted in the United States last March, weekly applications for unemployment benefits had never topped 700,000, even during the Great Recession of 2008-2009.