Chicago rising / Mean streets / Glub, glub

Chicago rising. As the pandemic recedes, the city’s iconic tourist attraction, Navy Pier, reopens today …
 … boat tours and water taxis are setting sail again …
 … and street festivals and conventions are cleared for takeoff …
State Street will close on Sundays beginning in July to accommodate outdoor performances …
Pediatricians tell NPR what’s safe for unvaccinated children.
The Conversation: Four ways India’s COVID crisis threatens to derail the world economy.

Scorecards! Get your scorecards! Please update your roster of Chicago aldermen and ex-aldermen in trouble with the law:
Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson—grandson of one Chicago mayor and nephew of another—faces criminal charges in connection with hinky loans he received from a failed Bridgeport bank …
 … an indictment that Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown suggests signals “the end of the line for the Daleys in Chicago politics.”
Ex-Ald. Ricardo Muñoz has been indicted, accused of spending $38,000 from a City Council caucus bank account on himself.
Speaking of has-been politicians: Ex-Gov. Bruce Rauner is threatening to run again.

‘There ain’t no road just like it / Anywhere I found.’ Lyrics to Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah’s Lake Shore Drive may need an update now that a plan to rename the drive’s outer lanes for Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is headed to the full Chicago City Council …
 … over Mayor Lightfoot’s objections …
A couple of law profs explore the pros and cons of designating the Chicago lakefront a national park.

Mean streets.
Police report a 27-year-old woman driving through the Albany Park neighborhood was shot in the nose early Friday.
A shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway left one person injured Thursday.
Not so mean: A good Samaritan Uber driver who rushed a drive-by shooting victim and his brother to a hospital—totaling his car’s interior with bloodstains—has passed his reward money to the victim.

‘Truly painful to watch.’ The chief of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability says a review of hours of video, hundreds of documents and interviews with dozens of people confirms that cops committed almost 100 acts of misconduct during a botched 2019 raid in which they handcuffed a social worker naked in her home.
Trib columnist Eric Zorn calls for quicker release of video documenting police shootings that result in death: “Sixty days? How about 60 hours?
Georgia State University faculty members see hope in the way some U.S. cities have managed police reform.

Amazon’s Chicago deal. The Trib reports Amazon has settled complaints it retaliated against workers protesting pandemic safety shortcomings at a facility the company’s now closed.
An Amazon van was stolen yesterday as the driver made a delivery in Old Town—after leaving the key inside the van.
Target’s looking to fill 2,000 jobs at a new distribution center in Little Village.
Escalating a contract fight, Roku has yanked YouTube TV from its channel store—but hasn’t cut off those already using it.

Glub, glub. A new study finds the speed of Earth’s glacial melt has doubled over the last two decades.
A new National Climate Assessment concludes that “extreme precipitation”—heavier downpours—has been on the rise in nearly every region of the mainland U.S. since the start of the 20th century.

Happy May Day. City Cast Chicago recaps the day’s Chicago roots.
And it’s not too late to honor Lee Elia Day …
 … commemorating the Cubs manager’s infamous 1983 rejoinder to critical fans …
 … which inspired this classic Lin Brehmer satire on WXRT.

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