11. That’s (at least) how many tornadoes blitzed Chicago’s western suburbs Wednesday.
■ Video captured thousands of air travelers crowding together for shelter during the storms.
■ The Sun-Times offers tips for dealing with damage—and preparing for the next time …
■ … which could be today.
■ The Nib’s Niccolo Pizarro welcomes you to “the new normal”: Climate disasters daily.
‘Do your damn job or give it up.’ Count a Chicago City Council member among those outraged at new data unearthed by Block Club Chicago showing the CTA’s top executives rarely use city trains or buses.
■ A man was critically wounded last night while leaving a Southwest Side station along the CTA’s Orange Line.
140. That’s how many U.S. mass-shooting deaths a joint Associated Press/USA Today database counts in the first six months of the year—another new record.
■ Those shopping Chicago’s Daley Plaza farmer’s market yesterday witnessed a “die-in,” protesting violence in Chicago.
■ An Evergreen Park Mariano’s store was the scene yesterday morning of the shooting and killing of an employee in what police describe as a “domestic situation.”
■ Police report a shooting and robbery at a liquor store located at a busy Bucktown intersection.
3. That’s the number of finalists to which a civilian commission has narrowed its search for a new Chicago police superintendent …
■ … putting the ball in Mayor Johnson’s court.
Wildcatalyst. Add Northwestern University’s baseball coach to those ousted in a growing scandal over athletic programs behaving badly.
■ A long and prestigious list of Northwestern faculty members are demanding that an investigation of Northwestern’s football program “be made public to the fullest extent permitted by law, contingent on the consent of the victims.”
■ The Sun-Times’ Jeff Agrest says two Northwestern trustees have a conflict: “How can a member of the media sit on a board, watch a major story unfold and not feel the need to report it?”
■ Northwestern football recruits are rethinking their options.
■ At least three have “decommitted.”
Also, it tastes awful. One sector of the World Health Organization has officially labeled artificial sweetener aspartame a “possible carcinogen” …
■ … but another says it’s safe in limited amounts.
‘What are we supposed to do now? Read?’ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke demands Hollywood settle writers’ and actors’ strikes immediately, so he doesn’t have to “face the grim terrors of the world around us.”
■ With a walkout by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists*, Hollywood’s essentially closed.
■ CNN’s Oliver Darcy calls it the industry’s “ugliest labor dispute … in more than half a century.”
■ Here are some of the movies and TV shows whose production the strike will cripple …
■ … and here’s what’s unaffected.
■ MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown: “The SAG-AFTRA strike is important for all American workers.”
What’s Square worth to you? Readers—including Robert Alan Innocenzi, Susan Gzesh, John Jaramillo, Sara Burrows, Ira Pilchen, Jordan Wilkerson, Deb Humiston, Evan McKenzie, Jeanne Mcinerney, Gregg Runburg, Mike Fainman, Jayson Hansen, Jeffery Angevine, Maureen Stratton, Jeannie Affelder, Len Jaster, Keelin Wyman, Gil Herman, Randall Kulat, Doug Freedman, Ian Morrison, Jane Hirt, John Metz, Jill Brickman, Christopher Comes, Amy Dixon-Kolar, Ann Fisher, Patricia Skaja, Robert S. Gold, Edward Witt, Mary Gannon Pittman, Sharon Halperin, Jeanette Mancusi, Paul Kungl, Terry Locke, Kathy Wyman and Doug Waco, Peggy Fogelman, Robert Toon, Brent Brotine, Michael Romain, Sherry Nordstrom, H E Williams, Ken Shiner, Gil Arias, Barbara Cimaglio and Marcie Dosemagen—are voluntarily pitching in an average of $6.85 a month.
iPhone urgency. ZDNET explains how and why to update your iGadgets now to avert real-life security threats.
AP + AI. The AP’s cut a deal to license its content to the company behind artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT …
■ … which is now under FTC investigation for publishing false information.
‘A pioneering jazz journalist.’ Neil Tesser, a jazz journalist himself, notes the passing of Harriet Choice, who filed “stories galore about the greatest names of jazz’s first 50 years, from Louis Armstrong to Gene Ammons to Duke Ellington.”
■ A veteran of The New York Times’ now-disbanded sports department says she “lived with the feeling that the journalism bluebloods at the top barely tolerated us, believed sports frivolous, forgot about us entirely most days.”
8. That’s how many questions await you in this week’s news quiz, devised by The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel.
■ Can you beat your Chicago Public Square columnist’s score—7 out of 8 correct?
■ But you can help keep Square coming by contributing whatever you’d like—as little as $1, one-time (lovely!) or recurring (lovelier!) here.
Department of corrections. Citing additional information provided after its original publication, The TRiiBE has retracted a story linked from Square’s May 10 edition, “Why is the state’s attorney’s office hiding ShotSpotter evidence?”
* For which your Square columnist was once a shop steward.