‘Humanity is on thin ice.’ A new report from a UN scientific panel foresees a worst-case climate scenario if rich countries don’t swear off coal, oil and gas by 2040 …
■ … a call for, in the secretary-general’s words, “action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.”
■ Earlier targets set that date at 2050.
■ The New York Times: “Every fraction of a degree of additional warming is expected to increase the severity of dangers that people around the world face, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and deadly heat waves.”
■ Read the report here …
■ … or, if you prefer a slideshow version, here you go.
‘A momentous week.’ Public Notice explains what to expect if Donald Trump is indicted for hush payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels …
■ … a scenario that CNN’s Stephen Collinson says “would have huge political and national implications.”
■ Popular Information: “Why Stormy Daniels matters.”
■ Journalist Marcy Wheeler: “Trump once again got journalists to willingly serve as his incitement mules.”
■ Poynter’s Al Tompkins: “How to cover a former president who says he is about to be arrested.”
Game on. Early voting begins today for Chicago’s—and Illinois’—April municipal elections.
■ Don’t vote in ignorance. Check the Chicago Public Square voter guide.
■ The white candidate, Paul Vallas, has landed endorsements from a flock of Black pastors and a cluster of white Northwest Side city council members.
■ Columnist Laura Washington on the mayoral candidates’ public safety pledges: “These men haven’t even been elected yet they are already dodging and ducking, slipping and sliding.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “Our two mayoral candidates talk about how they’re going to finance their pie-in-the-sky, cop-on-every-corner dreams of urban perfection by digging into the sofa cushions and holding bake sales and cutting corruption.”
■ Weekend shootings across Chicago claimed at least four lives.
Suisse cheese. Mismanaged and scandal-scarred Credit Suisse is the latest major bank to crumble …
■ … and its share prices plummeted after UBS agreed to buy it out.
■ Couldn’t happen to a nicer bank (February link).
Art Institute’s gains ill-gotten? Casting doubt on the museum’s commitment to keeping its galleries free of looted antiquities, ProPublica and Crain’s Chicago Business report that even though Nepal wants a sacred necklace returned, the Institute still keeps it on display …
■ … and that’s not its only problematic holding …
■ … which makes this a good time to revisit John Oliver’s October report on stolen antiquities.
Spring to be sprung. It arrives at 4:24 this afternoon, Central time …
■ … which means it’s time for Chicagohenge (2011 photo: Samer on Flickr) …
■ … not to mention Chicago’s highway construction season, which will be notably worse than usual on the Kennedy.
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Not following Square on Facebook? Here’s a taste of what you missed over the weekend:
■ Columnist Rex Huppke: “If Donald Trump is indicted … police officials say they will keep MAGA protesters away from Manhattan by posting pronouns throughout the city.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump’s false and dystopian portrait of the nation takes to its logical conclusion the narrative Republicans have pushed since the 1980s.”
■ The Intercept on the Iraq war’s architects: “The men and women who launched this catastrophic, criminal war have paid no price over the past two decades. On the contrary, they’ve been showered with promotions and cash.”
■ Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has COVID.
■ The New York Times: Wyoming becomes first state to outlaw the use of pills for abortion.
■ The New York Times: Wyoming becomes first state to outlaw the use of pills for abortion.
■ Air Mail’s profile of The Lever’s founder, Northwestern University grad David Sirota.
Coming April 5 to the Museum of Contemporary Art, On Stage: Frictions presents performances by three artists—Will Rawls, Shamel Pitts | TRIBE, and Barak adé Soleil—who explore blackness through bodily movement, the frictions that exist in a society shaped by race, and the transformative power of productive resistance. Save 20% on tickets to all three performances in the series. Learn more.