Stories by Patty Wetli

There are quirky details to be found in bark, twigs and buds that can turn a walk in the woods or around the block into a game of “name that tree.”

The government’s top infectious disease expert said Friday he hopes to see children being vaccinated starting in the next few months. It’s a needed step to securing widespread immunity to the coronavirus.

“I am optimistic that we will be able to increase capacity soon, but it would be irresponsible and dangerous to rush our reopening and undo the incredible progress we have made as a city,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement.

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. 

Portions of Big Marsh Park were once heaped high with waste from the area’s now defunct steel mills. The soil has since been remediated, and now the Chicago Park District is working to find out if native plants can grow and thrive there.  

Watch the Jan. 28, 2021 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Thursday's report from the government estimated that the nation's gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — slowed sharply in the October-December quarter from a record 33.4% surge in the July-September quarter.

Is your Spidey sense tingling? The Museum of Science and Industry has announced it will reopen the first week in March with a new exhibit to greet guests: "Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes."

Last week’s claims dropped by 67,000, from 914,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Before the virus hit the United States hard last March, weekly applications for jobless aid had never topped 700,000.

A possible teachers strike over safety issues looms as city and state COVID-19 mitigations are being rolled back. Our politics team of Amanda Vinicky and Heather Cherone weighs in on that story and more in this week’s roundtable.

Is it time to return to in-person learning? Two parents of Chicago Public Schools students share their views as negotiations over a school reopening plan continue between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Artists are calling on the Biden administration to provide economic relief to the arts sector through a proposal called the DAWN Act — that stands for Defend Arts Workers Now — that was co-organized by Chicago playwright Matthew Lee-Erlbach.