Your million-dollar shot. Illinois this afternoon will pick the first four winners in its weekly lottery for the COVID-19 vaccinated.
■ You don’t have to have entered to qualify, as long as you’re in the state’s vaccination records.
■ Three vaccinated youth each week will get $150,000 scholarships.
■ Don’t get scammed: Here’s how you’ll learn if you’ve won.
■ WBEZ details dramatic gaps in vaccination rates across Chicago’s suburbs.
■ The Daily Beast: “The Small Business Administration has given anti-vaccine conspiracists a million-dollar-plus shot in the arm by forgiving massive loans to top opponents of inoculations.”
■ Under a state of emergency in Japan, all fans will be banned from the Tokyo Olympics.
Chicago’s ‘Official Cycle of Unhelpful Responses to Violence.’ That’s where columnist Rex Huppke files Ald. Anthony Beale’s call for the National Guard to help regain control of the city’s streets.
■ WBEZ: If Chicago’s gun violence is, as the city’s top cop contends, the result of bail reform, he can’t prove it.
■ During his Illinois visit, President Biden promised Mayor Lightfoot a federal strike force to address the problems.
■ NPR: Biden, an old friend of law enforcement, has moved left as cops have moved right.
‘If someone offers you a better job you should be able to take it.’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki says Biden plans an executive order pushing an end to noncompete agreements.
■ U.S. job openings have hit a record as businesses struggle to hire more help. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
Unspared. Chicago’s fabled brothel-turned-bowling-alley-and-restaurant Southport Lanes won’t survive the pandemic after all …
■ … but you can bid in an auction for its iconic street sign and other memorabilia.
■ Taste of Chicago is back as a run of neighborhood festivals that began yesterday in Pullman …
■ … and that continue through the weekend—today in Austin.
■ State Street this weekend hosts the first of a series of Sunday block parties, with live music, art and pop-up shopping.
‘Something … nobody thought possible.’ A preliminary scientific analysis concludes that the Pacific Northwest’s record-breaking heatwave couldn’t have happened without human-driven climate change.
■ The Toronto Star: “Canada’s sea creatures are cooking to death in their shells.”
■ New research suggests humans’ average body size over the last million years has altered with the changing climate—larger in the cold, smaller in warmth.