Illinois

CHICAGO (AP) — Lori Lightfoot told aldermen and other city powerbrokers assembled at her inauguration Monday as Chicago’s first black woman mayor that she meant what she said on the campaign trail about top-to-bottom reforms in the nation’s third largest city.

“For years, they’ve said Chicago ain’t ready for reform,” said Lightfoot, speaking minutes after her swearing-in at the Wintrust Arena. “Well, get ready, because reform is here.”

CHICAGO (AP) — A spokeswoman for the family a 19-year-old who was killed and whose baby was cut from her womb says what they’re going through is “a nightmare, a horror film.”

Julie Contreras is a spokeswoman for relatives of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, whose body was found in a garbage can this week. She spoke Friday before a court hearing for three people charged in the killing.

Contreras said the family wanted to see justice for Ochoa-Lopez, and for the defendants to be held without bail.

CHICAGO (AP) — Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan referenced “Satanic Jews” in a speech denying allegations of anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia after Facebook banned him from the social media platform.

During the speech Thursday at a Roman Catholic church on Chicago’s South Side, Farrakhan asserted people shouldn’t be angry with him if “I stand on God’s word,” also saying that he knows “the truth,” and “separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews.”

CHICAGO, May 8 (Xinhua): Death rates due to heart failure are increasing, and this increase is most prominent among younger adults under 65, considered premature death, said a study from Northwestern Medicine.

The study used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research data, which includes the underlying and contributing cause of death from all death certificates for 47.728 million individuals in the United States from 1999 to 2017.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Rain swamping the nation’s midsection forced people from their homes in Kansas, stranded dozens of Texas children at school overnight and strained levees along the surging Mississippi River in Illinois, Missouri and elsewhere Wednesday prompting yet more flash flood concerns.

The flooding began in earnest in March, causing billions of dollars of damage to farmland, homes and businesses across the Midwest. Rivers in many communities have been above flood stage for more than six weeks following waves of heavy rain.

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Saturday he’s reached an agreement with key lawmakers on a plan to legalize recreational marijuana in the state starting next year.

The legislation would allow adults 21 and older to legally buy cannabis for recreational use from licensed dispensaries. Illinois residents could possess up to about an ounce (30 grams) of marijuana, while non-residents could possess about half an ounce (15 grams).

The measure also would automatically expunge some marijuana convictions.

CHICAGO (AP) — A multiday sentencing hearing began Monday in Chicago and focused on whether FBI agents manipulated a mentally fragile teenager to participate in a terrorist plot or whether he had long before shown an eagerness to kill.

Prosecutors called an FBI agent to the witness stand to tell Adel Daoud’s sentencing judge that Daoud posted social media comments inquiring about attacking non-Muslims more than a year before undercover agents ever engaged him as part of a sting.

CHICAGO, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Two families filed lawsuits against Boeing in Chicago on Monday over the 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people, the same day when Boeing held its shareholders meeting at the James Simpson Theatre in the Field Museum of Natural History in downtown Chicago.

CHICAGO, April 5 (Xinhua) -- It will take decades to fully dismantle the Three Mile Island unit 1 nuclear reactor (TMI-1) after its planned shutdown in September 2019, its owner and operator Exelon Generation said on Friday.

The Chicago-headquartered energy company has filed a federally required post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, detailing plans for TMI-1 after it ceases operation later this year.

CHICAGO, April 5 (Xinhua) -- A study posted on the website of the Northwestern University (NU) on Friday found that poverty leaves a mark on nearly 10 percent of the genes in human genome.

In the study, NU researchers found evidence that poverty can become embedded across wide swaths of the genome. They discovered that lower socioeconomic status is associated with levels of DNA methylation (DNAm), a key epigenetic mark that has the potential to shape gene expression, at more than 2,500 sites and across more than 1,500 genes.