Stories by Heather Cherone

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on the city’s watchdog to complete his probe into what happened before — and after — former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was discovered asleep in his running car after a night of drinking.

Michael Grice has used a wheelchair since he was a young man. He lives on his own in an apartment and gets help from assistants daily. This makes social distancing difficult, but his biggest concern right now is for people living in group settings.

Defending his office’s COVID-19 testing and isolation procedures, the Cook County sheriff said Wednesday he took action to prevent the spread of the virus earlier than any other sheriff in the country.

Watch the April 15, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

“We have just been crushed” by the coronavirus, said Metra CFO Tom Farmer. The agency has seen ridership drop as much as 97% during the pandemic.

When the governor issued a stay-at-home order last month, cases of COVID-19 were more than doubling every three days in Chicago. Had that rate held steady, approximately 64,500 Chicagoans would have been sickened by now, according to new data.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot presided over the city’s first virtual meeting Wednesday morning from her office on the 5th floor of City Hall, with 48 aldermen connected via Zoom.

The United States is WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million and $500 million annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.

Portions of a Chicago expressway left icy by a wintry blast that brought overnight snowfall led to a pileup involving of dozens of vehicles early Wednesday, sending 14 people to hospitals, officials said.

Could this year get any worse? Well yeah, it could. It once snowed in June, according to the National Weather Service.

The City Council will write a new chapter in the history books Wednesday by meeting virtually to keep from spreading the coronavirus. The meeting will follow an “abbreviated agenda” and is designed “primarily to adopt rules addressing meetings by videoconference.”

A drug that has the potential to heal, or even prevent, the coronavirus is in high demand. And that’s a problem for patients with autoimmune diseases who know the drug works for them. 

The West Side neighborhood of Austin has become a hot spot for COVID-19 cases. According to the city, it falls into a zip code that has recorded a COVID-19 case rate of between 431-720 people per 100,000. 

The city had declared 2020 as Chicago’s “year of music.” Now with live music all but shut down, we’ve been talking with artists who were set to share their sounds before the coronavirus outbreak – including Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers.

This week, Chicago Public Schools families are learning a new lesson: how remote learning works. We check in on the district’s remote learning plan with LaTanya McDade, CPS chief education officer.

Dealing with loved ones dying in normal times can be difficult enough. But during this global health crisis, a host of new challenges arise as physical distancing forces families apart during final bedside moments.

Like other predominantly African American neighborhoods in Chicago, Austin has seen a disproportionately high number of COVID-19 cases. We speak with state Rep. La Shawn Ford, whose district includes much of the neighborhood and several western suburbs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented many of us with challenging decisions, from managing our groceries to caring for vulnerable family members. Linda Smith made a choice many of us would find hard to imagine.

Sheriff Tom Dart’s office said it has begun complying with a court order mandating additional protective measures inside the Cook County Jail, but it estimates its supply of surgical masks for detainees and employees will run out in “six to seven more days.”

Hilco Redevelopment Partners issues an apology and outlined corrective actions following a demolition that left the Little Village neighborhood covered by a plume of dust over the weekend.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker says the state of Illinois is making strides in its fight against the novel coronavirus, pointing Tuesday to key metrics that show “a deceleration of virus transmission.”

Social distancing and the statewide stay-at-home order has changed the way reporters gather and share the news. We check in with Michael Romain, editor of the Austin Weekly News, as part of our series COVID-19 Across Chicago.

Watch the April 14, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

A coronavirus outbreak at a Heartland Alliance facility on Chicago’s South Side may be the largest outbreak of the virus in any shelter for immigrant youth in the country. At least 19 children and two staff have tested positive.

The moon will align with Mars, Saturn and Jupiter in the pre-dawn hours this week.

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden for president in a video message Tuesday that delivered a full-throated condemnation of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.