The woman and her boyfriend were on their way to the Chicago Transit Authority Red Line subway at State Street and Jackson Boulevard on a Saturday night. They were waiting for the elevator at ground level to go down to the platform.

Carrie Austin, chair of the City Council’s Contracting Oversight and Equity Committee, is one of three current members of the Chicago City Council who have been charged with federal crimes.

On Friday, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced that all county employees must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October.

The closing on Magnificent Mile will leave another empty storefront on the storied shopping strip, which has suffered the loss of Macy’s, Gap, Express and Uniqlo this year. The street’s vacancy rate has jumped to 26 percent, up from 15 percent in 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

David Greising, of the Better Government Association: “It is perhaps a bit too tidy to assume the lessons from vaccines can directly be applied to fighting violent crime. The virus is full of surprises, but let’s not forget it is a biological phenomenon, and the challenge is different when trying to stop people from shooting each other. A vaccine lacks knowledge and will. It does not hold grudges or follow a gang leader’s orders. It has no access to handguns.”

Supt. David Brown said, so far this year, Chicago Police have arrested 895 people in connection to carjackings, including 215 arrests for vehicular hijacking charges, 251 arrests for possession of a stolen vehicle charges, and 429 arrests for criminal trespass to a vehicle charges. The superintendent said the 215 vehicular hijacking arrests are a 79% increase over 2020.

“We’ve made some progress. We have. We think we’re close to an agreement on safety committees, which are the committees in each individual school that allow people to enforce building conditions to keep us safe in our schools,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said. “But there are a number of broader issues that have to be addressed by the mayor. Local schools cannot address a citywide metric, for example.”

According to city data, nearly 62% of white Chicagoans are fully vaccinated, compared to about 38% of Black Chicagoans. The hope is that these policies will motivate those who are hesitant to get the vaccine to roll up their sleeves, but some worry it will have the unintended consequence of shutting residents out of services and employment.

Critics who earlier this month slammed Amazon — and the Park District — for putting for-profit lockers on public parkland were again fired up after learning how much revenue the lockers will generate for the Park District.

“What we are proposing, asking, demanding are the same mitigations that have been there already,” said CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates. “We did not experience widespread outbreaks last winter and spring.”

Residents say the area was once the business hub for the West Side; Walgreens, Goldblatt’s and Madigan’s, as well as plenty of fast-food restaurants, used to line the streets. “Right now Madison is an open market for drugs. Prostitution, drug abuse, gang activity,” said Michael Rembert, owner of Madison Pulaski Mall and a lifelong Garfield Park resident. “Man, it’s out of control.”

Tiger Woods was to have reimagined the 18-hole Jackson Park course and the nine-hole South Shore course, connecting them with an underpass at South Shore Drive to draw PGA events and elite players. The concept was pushed in tandem with Obama’s project; Obama even called Woods to get him on board.

The civil rights lawsuit argues that Lightfoot purposefully discriminated against reporter Thomas Catenacci “because of his race by stating that she would only grant interview requests from ‘journalists of color….’”

What was really eye-catching in census numbers are gains on South Side neighborhoods along or close to the lakefront. All the way from the Loop down to Woodlawn, their population grew a lot, in some cases more than 10 percent. Who are these people? According to Chicago demographer Ed Zotti, who first tipped me several years ago that interesting things were starting to happen on the South Shore, it’s mostly affluent, middle-class Black people with college degrees, many of them working in the same kind of high-end service jobs downtown that power North Side neighborhoods.

“Managing any of the crises aggravating Chicago will require leadership, prudence, energy, and strength of will. Lamentably, Ms. Lightfoot possesses no such qualities, and her weak leadership is creating one of the greatest catastrophes Chicago has ever seen.”