Stories by Heather Cherone

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $12.76 billion spending plan for 2021 fails to craft a “compassionate, bold” solution to the long-standing inequities that plague Chicago, according to the City Council’s Progressive Caucus.

Airline layoffs, travel bans, quarantine orders – it’s been a calamitous year for the travel and tourism industry. Chicago’s independent travel agencies, scattered in storefronts across the city’s neighborhoods, have been anything but immune.

The trail, which took nearly 60 years to complete, was one of 30 designated a National Recreation Trail by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a grave warning on Thursday as Illinois officials reported 6,363 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, telling residents that the pandemic has entered the most dangerous phase since the spring.

Tony La Russa, the Hall of Famer who won a World Series with the Oakland Athletics and two more with the St. Louis Cardinals, is returning to manage the Chicago White Sox 34 years after they fired him.

Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer on Thursday ordered a suspension of criminal jury trials at the Dirksen Federal Building effective immediately.

Watch the Oct. 29, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Nine of the state’s 11 regions have triggered the state’s fail-safe metrics designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, with the addition of much of West-Central Illinois, including Springfield and Quincy, on Thursday.

Restrictions ordered by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to stop the spread of COVID-19 take effect at midnight Friday. Mayor Lightfoot altered her plan to align with the restrictions laid out by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

From eating mosquitoes to restoring rainforests to making tequila (sort of), bats are amazing. The creature gets its due during International Bat Week, running through Oct. 31.

Applications for unemployment aid fell 40,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said. They fell in 30 states, including big drops in California, Florida and Texas. But claims rose significantly in Arizona, Illinois and Michigan.

There is little that’s normal about the 2020 election, including the fact that this is the first election cycle in which detainees can cast ballots at Cook County Jail. 

The Neo-Futurists go virtual with “45 Plays for America’s First Ladies,” a 100-minute world premiere collage created by the company of writer-directors that was established in Chicago in 1988.

Surging COVID-19 infection rates triggered new restrictions that will take effect Friday in Chicago. What that means for the small business owners who can no longer serve diners and drinkers indoors.

For more than a year, documentary filmmaker Steve James and his collaborators fanned out across Chicago at a pivotal moment. James tells us about the resulting five-part series that premieres this week on NatGeo and Hulu.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to eliminate library fines in order to coax patrons back to the Chicago Public Library has paid off in spades, aldermen heard Wednesday.

A pandemic rollback battle plays out between Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot as Election Day draws near. Our politics team takes on those stories and more in this week’s roundtable. 

With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google received a hectoring from Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms.

A second Wall Street ratings agency sounded the alarm over Chicago’s budget on Wednesday as aldermen continued weighing Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $12.76 billion spending plan for 2021.

Opponents of the Obama Presidential Center care more about trees and traffic than they do about people impacted by decades of systemic disinvestment, proponents of the project said in an open letter.

A jury found the defendant guilty in March on each of the six charges he faced: two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree murder of a peace officer and two counts of armed violence.

By the end of the week, Chicago and the surrounding suburbs will be operating under tightened rules designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, including a suspension of indoor services at bars and restaurants.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she spoke with Gov. J.B. Pritzker for about an hour on Wednesday, a day after the serious split between the officials leading the effort to stem the pandemic spilled into public view.

Doulas are trained to provide support to pregnant women during labor and delivery. But the arrival of COVID-19 has changed that hands-on relationship to one that relies on virtual connections.

Sade Owens faces a single felony charge for falsely reporting the kidnapping of her son Jaylen Mojica, which sparked an extensive manhunt Monday that involved Chicago officers from across the city, police helicopters and K-9 units.

Watch the Oct. 28, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”