Category Archives: Illinois

Nearly 130,000 children exposed to lead-tainted drinking water in Chicago

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Study says the 19% of kids using unfiltered tap water have about twice as much lead in their blood as they would otherwise

About 129,000 Chicago children under the age of six are exposed to poisonous lead in their household drinking water because of lead pipes, according to a study published on Monday.

The study used artificial intelligence to analyse 38,000 home water tests conducted for the city of Chicago, along with neighborhood demographics, state blood samples and numerous other factors.

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Trump appeals Illinois judge’s ruling removing him from primary ballot

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Judge Tracie Porter had ordered Trump’s removal from presidential ballot for his role in the US Capitol attack

Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.

Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.

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Trump to appeal ruling barring him from Illinois primary ballot over January 6 role

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Judge Tracie Porter sides with voters who sought disqualification but delays ruling from taking effect in light of expected appeal

An Illinois state judge on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the Illinois Republican presidential primary ballot because of his role in the attack at the US Capitol on January 6, but she delayed her ruling from taking effect in light of an expected appeal by the former US president.

The Cook county circuit judge Tracie Porter sided with Illinois voters who argued that the former president should be disqualified from the state’s March 19 primary ballot and its 5 November general election ballot for violating the anti-insurrection clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment.

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Chicago police search for suspect in fatal shootings of eight people

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Authorities are not aware of a motive for the killings, but warn that Romeo Nance, 23, should be considered armed and dangerous

A man shot and killed eight people at three locations since Sunday in the Chicago suburbs and remains loose, authorities said Monday.

Police in Will county and the city of Joliet said they did not know of a motive for the killings, but said the man knew the victims. The FBI’s fugitive task force was assisting local police in the search for the suspect, the Joliet police chief, William Evans, said.

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US woman donates kidney to man – whose wife donates to donor’s brother

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Tale of generosity between Tony and Tracey Gonzalez from Illinois and Joely Sanders and Frank Pompa from Arizona goes viral

When Tony Gonzalez of Illinois required an organ donor to be freed from the dialysis machine keeping him alive despite his failing kidney, an Arizona woman named Joely Sanders stepped up.

Sanders’s brother, Frank Pompa, also required a new kidney after one of his had failed – and, of all people, it was Gonzalez’s wife, Tracey, who provided the crucial organ donation to free him from his dialysis machine in October.

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US woman jailed for 26 years over mother’s suitcase murder in Bali

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Heather Mack, 28, pleaded guilty to helping boyfriend kill Sheila Wiese-Mack in 2014 to gain access to $1.5m trust fund

An American woman who pleaded guilty to helping kill her own mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury vacation in Bali has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Judge Matthew Kennelly gave Mack credit for the approximately two years she spent in custody in Chicago awaiting trial since her return to the US in 2021. Mack’s attorney Michael Leonard said her formal sentence will be about 23 years total.

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Donald Trump did not sign Illinois pledge not to overthrow government

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Former president sidestepped signing state’s loyalty oath, which opponents Nikki Haley and Chris Christie also have not signed

Joe Biden’s 2024 election campaign has lambasted former president and most likely Republican opponent Donald Trump for failing to sign a loyalty oath in the state of Illinois, in which candidates pledge against advocating for an overthrow of the government.

The Biden campaign was responding to an investigation by Illinois news outlets WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that Trump sidestepped signing the McCarthy era voluntary pledge that is part of the midwestern state’s package of ballot-access paperwork submitted by 2024 electoral candidates last week.

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New gun safety laws take effect around US after over 650 mass shootings in 2023

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California, Illinois and Colorado among states implementing ‘red flag’ laws after US ends 2023 with more mass shootings than days

New gun safety laws are taking effect in several states around the US on 1 January after the country ended 2023 with more mass shootings than days.

States including California, Illinois and Colorado are starting the year by implementing extreme risk protection orders, more commonly referred to as “red flag” laws, as a means to prevent further gun violence. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 655 mass shootings in the US in 2023.

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Richard Hunt, sculptor whose public works explored civil rights, dies aged 88

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The prolific Chicago artist created more than 160 commissioned public art pieces across the US that drew praise from presidents

Richard Hunt, a prolific Chicago artist who was the first Black sculptor to receive a solo retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (Moma) and whose public works drew praise from presidents, has died at age 88.

Hunt “passed away peacefully” Saturday at his home, according to a statement posted on his website. No cause of death was given.

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McDonald’s to take on Starbucks with retro-style stores called CosMc’s

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New restaurants – serving more complex, customisable drinks – will be trialled in the US

McDonald’s is launching a new kind of restaurant, CosMc’s, a retro-style store with treats and customisable drinks including “s’mores cold brew”, “churro frappes” and “turmeric latte” that could rival chains such as Starbucks.

The fast food company said it would open its first pilot site in a Chicago suburb near its headquarters this month, as part of efforts to “solve the 3pm slump”, when it gets fewer customers between the lunch and dinner rush.

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Jussie Smollett conviction over staged attack upheld by Illinois court

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Empire actor loses bid to overturn conviction after he was found to have lied to police about 2019 hate crime attack he orchestrated

An appeals court upheld the disorderly conduct convictions on Friday of the actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and then lying about it to Chicago police.

Smollett, who appeared in the TV show Empire, challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois appellate court.

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Illinois governor ‘deeply concerned’ by Trump rhetoric reminiscent of Nazi era

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JB Pritzker, who’s of Jewish descent, says Trump ‘is dangerous for our democracy’ and ‘dangerous for specific minority groups in US

Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, his plans for a second presidency if he wins next year’s election, and his description of political enemies as “vermin” reflect the language of 1930s Germany and the Nazis’ rise to power there, a senior Democrat warned on Sunday.

JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor of Jewish descent who helped drive the construction of the state’s Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Chicago, added his voice to a wave of condemnation over the former president’s remarks.

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Chicago religious leaders urge peace after killing of six-year-old Muslim boy

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Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders shook hands, talked and prayed together after killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume

Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders shook hands, talked and prayed together as they gathered in Chicago to urge unity across divides and denounce hate, while the region continued to reel from the savage killing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy in an alleged hate crime.

Imams and rabbis had already attended the funeral earlier in the week of Wadea Al-Fayoume, who had only recently celebrated his sixth birthday with his family in Plainfield, on the outskirts of Chicago, when the landlord, shouting Islamophobic curses, stabbed the boy and his mother last weekend.

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Illinois community lays to rest ‘kind’ Palestinian boy killed in hate crime

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As family and friends attended the six-year-old’s funeral, elected officials, including Joe Biden, condemned the brutal attack

Crowds of mourners in a Palestinian Chicago suburb paid respects on Monday to a six-year-old Muslim boy killed in an alleged anti-Islamic hate crime, hours after authorities revealed new details about the evidence used to charge the family’s landlord with stabbing the child and his mother.

Wadea Al-Fayoume, who had recently had a birthday, died on Saturday after being stabbed dozens of times in a brutal attack that drew condemnation from local elected officials to the White House. Authorities said the family’s landlord, Joseph Czuba, was upset over the Israel-Hamas war and attacked them after the boy’s mother proposed they “pray for peace”.

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Revealed: how a little-known pollution rule keeps the air dirty for millions of Americans

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Major investigation shows local governments are increasingly exploiting a loophole in the Clean Air Act, leaving more than 21 million Americans with air that’s dirtier than they realize

A legal loophole has allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans.

Regulators have exploited a little-known provision in the Clean Air Act called the “exceptional events rule” to forgive pollution caused by “natural” or “uncontrollable” events – including wildfires – on records used by the EPA for regulatory decisions, a new investigation from The California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian reveals.

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Landlord kills six-year-old Muslim boy and stabs mother in Illinois hate crime

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Joseph Czuba, 71, charged with murder after stabbing tenants over a dozen times, was reportedly fueled by Israel-Hamas war

A 71-year-old man in Plainfield, Illinois, has been charged with murder and a hate crime after stabbing a child and his mother because they were Muslims.

“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the Will county sheriff’s office said.

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Chicago’s plan to hire controversial firm to house migrants alarms critics

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GardaWorld has been investigated for safety violations and is also the same company that bussed migrants in from Texas

The mayor of Chicago is at loggerheads with fellow progressives and his own Democratic state governor over the city’s choice of a vexed company to erect controversial tents for asylum seekers during the bitter midwest winter – as wider tensions rise on the left at the local and national level over migration policy chaos.

While the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, are divided over how to house thousands of migrant families currently sleeping inside and outside Chicago police stations, the two are united in fury at lack of emergency funding coming from Joe Biden’s White House.

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At least 1,000 birds died from colliding with one Chicago building in one day

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McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, is largely covered with glass, making it a lethal obstacle for birds

At least 1,000 birds died from colliding into a single building in Chicago on Thursday, 5 October, as they migrated south to their wintering grounds. Volunteers are still recovering bird carcasses within 1.5 miles of McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, which is largely covered with glass.

“It’s the tip of an iceberg but it’s it’s a huge, huge amount of birds we found both dead and injured,” said Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, adding that this was the highest number of bird strikes that the group recorded from the grounds of one building in a single day.

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Five people killed after truck carrying toxic substance overturns in Illinois

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Two children among confirmed dead as authorities evacuate area and work to contain anhydrous ammonia leaking from tanker

Five people, including two children, are confirmed to have died after a semitruck carrying a toxic substance overturned in Illinois, releasing a cloud of ammonia that prompted the evacuation of area residents, authorities said on Saturday.

Kim Rhodes, the Effingham county coroner, confirmed to the station WCIA that the fatalities were a result of Friday night’s accident in Teutopolis, Illinois.

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Three-year-old asylum seeker dies after being bussed from Texas to Chicago

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From Venezuela, the child died at a local Illinois hospital on Thursday evening after showing signs of illness

A three-year-old girl from Venezuela being transported to Chicago from Texas by bus with other migrants died at a local Illinois hospital after showing signs of illness, the Texas department of emergency management said on Friday.

“Once the child presented with health concerns, the bus pulled over and security personnel on board called 9-1-1 for emergency attention,” the TDEM said in a written statement.

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