Good morning, Chicago.
In a major vaccine milestone, U.S. health officials on Tuesday gave final approval for Pfizer’s kid-sized COVID-19 shot for children 5-11. Parents, here’s what to know.
In less encouraging news, just weeks after suggesting the state’s mask mandate might be lifted before the holidays, Gov. J.B. Pritzker offered a sober assessment Tuesday about the pandemic in Illinois. While the numbers of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are well below their peaks during the recent surge, they remain far above where they were early this summer, and the trends have stopped dropping.
And California and Mississippi are back on Chicago’s travel advisory, with public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady warning: “This is no time for complacency.”
— Paul Day, audience editor
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Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial began Tuesday with dueling portraits of a shooter whose case has come to embody the country’s deep political divide.
The prosecution painted Rittenhouse as a “chaos tourist” who arrived in Kenosha amid protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake to impose his own sense of justice. The defense, in response, portrayed him as a selfless, if naive, teenager who was forced to stop people from taking his gun and using it against him.
7 takeaways from the first day of testimony in Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial
The FBI directed Heather Mack to return to Chicago and not Los Angeles as she’d originally planned following her release from prison in Bali for helping to murder her mother at a resort in 2014, her lawyer told the Tribune late Tuesday.
Mack was scheduled to land at O’Hare International Airport at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday on a flight from South Korea, where she likely will be detained by authorities, California-based attorney Brian Claypool said. Whether she’ll face criminal charges or simply questioning about her mother’s death remained to be seen, Claypool said.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski on Tuesday addressed comments he made in a text exchange with Mayor Lori Lightfoot appearing to blame the parents of two Chicago children fatally shot earlier this year, saying his comments lacked “compassion and empathy.”
Kempczinski sent the messages, which angered community groups after they were recently made public, after meeting with Lightfoot at McDonald’s Chicago headquarters in April. In the texts, he said the parents of children shot in two separate shootings “failed those kids.”
After years of delays, O’Hare’s ‘people mover’ to reopen Wednesday on a limited schedule
After years of construction delays, the “people mover” at O’Hare International Airport will reopen Wednesday on a limited schedule, just in time for holiday travelers.
The automated train, officially called the Airport Transit System, will operate between 10:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. to start. The Chicago Department of Aviation expects to return the train to full, 24/7 operation in early 2022, the agency said Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, Chicago’s illustrious Steppenwolf Theatre Company dedicated its new Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center, a $54 million bet on the Lincoln Park theater’s post-pandemic future. With many of the theater’s famed ensemble members in town for the occasion, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and first lady Amy Eshleman, a member of the Steppenwolf board of trustees, spoke eloquently and warmly of Steppenwolf’s storied place in Chicago’s creative community.
