Evanston Mayor sends letter to NU president in response to Saturday student protest
By Bennett Baker Medill Reports Evanston Mayor Stephen Hagerty penned an open letter Sunday to Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro in response to student protests downtown on Saturday night. In the statement, Hagerty alleges increased protestor aggression and asks the university to foot the overtime bill for the city’s law enforcement officers. The mayor also […]
A presidential election and a new Supreme Court justice: What’s at stake for reproductive health
By Shivani Majmudar Medill Reports After last week’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the nation’s highest court, reproductive health advocates across the country say they fear a serious threat to equitable health care access. Barrett was confirmed exactly one month after President Trump nominated her to fill late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat, one […]
Chicago housing activists help tenants prepare for winter amid the pandemic
By Courtney Kueppers Medill Reports Yvonne Williams went to Hyde Park for a Saturday afternoon lunch, but she left with much more. The 48-year-old mother of four is out of work and said her landlord is threatening to evict her from her South Shore apartment, despite the statewide eviction moratorium that’s been in place since […]
Meet the climate activists across Chicago holding harmful companies accountable
By Natalie Eilbert Medill Reports In South Deering on Chicago’s South Side, the foul odors emanating from nearby facilities are so pungent that people waiting at the bus stop at 100th Street and Torrence have nearly passed out. Landfills, recycling centers and facilities have cranked, hauled, emitted and dumped in residential areas for generations, but […]
Lawmakers rethink the ADU ordinance as advocates cast doubts on its ability to generate affordable housing
By Yilun Cheng Medill Reports Proponents of Chicago’s proposed accessory dwelling units (ADU) ordinance –– highly anticipated legislation introduced earlier this year to reverse the longtime ban on an entire category of housing –– are struggling to move it forward as critics grow skeptical of its promise to deliver affordable housing. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, with […]
Chilean desert communities fight corporations for water mined for lithium
By Caroline Catherman Medill Reports Chile’s seemingly barren Salar de Atacama hides a thriving ecosystem in shallow salt lakes that teem with microorganisms, green grasses, and flamingos, among the diverse lifeforms. The Lickan Antay and other indigenous communities who live along the desert cannot and will not separate their identity from the land they live […]
Englewood’s GoodKids MadCity ‘Love March’ takes to the streets to spread message of love and hope
By Allison Schatz Medill Reports A crowd of close to 100 community activists and residents marched down Ashland near 67th Street, while cars honked in support, during GoodKids MadCity’s “Love March.” Held on October 17, organizers say the march was meant to share a message of hope and to push back against the narrative that […]
Trump-touted antibody cocktail holds therapeutic promise for COVID-19 patients, as clinical trials continue
By Natalie Eilbert Medill Reports When President Donald Trump stood before Americans and called his bout with COVID-19 this fall a “blessing in disguise,” he touted Regeneron as the new pharmaceutical “cure” the world has been desperate for. His doctors at Walter Reed Hospital expedited the experimental antibody treatment he received and combined the antibody […]
Resilient Hockettes bounce back during COVID-19
by Emily Little Medill Reports Synchronized skating is all about adjustments. It’s making tiny changes in response to the rhythm of other skaters so that all the choreography works together. This year, teams are making these adjustments on a much larger scale — a pandemic scale. When COVID-19 closed ice rinks in March, the Hockettes […]
Even most scientists don’t know that this famous climate theory is flawed, researchers say
By Caroline Catherman Medill Reports New research has found a big flaw in one of the most widely accepted theories about earth’s climate, Milutin Milankovitch’s century-old theory of ice ages. This evidence, which echoes past findings, means that some long-term climate predictions could be more inaccurate than scientists realize, the researchers said. But they worry […]