Good morning, Chicago.
Twenty-five years after American Airlines Flight 191 crashed in an open field near O’Hare International Airport, a daughter of two of the dead brought rose petals to the land where the plane went down.
For more than two decades, Kim Borchers Jockl hadn’t known where, precisely, the plane had crashed. Her parents, Bill and Corrinne Borchers, were two of the 273 people who died in the disaster on May 25, 1979.
For years, Jockl remembered, she hadn’t really wanted to look, even though she often drove nearby. “It was like a bad story,” she said.
Today, the site is slated to become part of the new Interstate 490 tollway, a new chapter that brings its own emotional disquiet for some family members of crash victims. But in the early 2000s it was just a field.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Talia Soglin.
Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including: how anti-violence workers and police are digging in for summer, why Chicago bike lane construction is sparking pushback and when paleontology meets Pokémon at the Field Museum.
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Treasurer’s study finds sprawling and ‘murky’ tax impacts from Illinois megaprojects plan to benefit Bears
Negotiated payments the Chicago Bears would make to local governments have been at the center of public debate over what state lawmakers should do to assist the team in building a suburban stadium, but a new analysis from the Cook County treasurer’s office finds those discussions have overshadowed the broader impacts of a so-called megaprojects proposal under consideration in Springfield.
- Mayor Brandon Johnson to tout opposition to wars during Vatican trip, says Pope wants to keep Bears in Chicago
- Gov. JB Pritzker still hopeful of a deal to keep Chicago Bears in Illinois as Arlington Heights talks continue
As ‘teen trends’ flare and fizzle in high-profile areas, anti-violence workers and police dig in for summer
Many Chicagoans, from Mayor Brandon Johnson and police Superintendent Larry Snelling on down, are pondering the best way to respond to the “teen trends,” which have become increasingly common since the COVID-19 pandemic and often take place in some of the city’s wealthiest, most visible neighborhoods.
Though the congregating teens are the marquee issue as another summer arrives in Chicago, they’re only the tip of the iceberg as the city looks to sustain steep drops in crime through familiar, proactive offerings like summer job programs and organized recreational activities and shifting focus onto newly prominent types of criminal activity, like a spike in motor vehicle thefts.
Veterans gather downtown to protest Iran war and Trump administration actions
While many veterans marched in hometown parades yesterday, others gathered downtown to hold a different kind of march — to protest the war in Iran and other actions by the administration of President Donald Trump.
- At Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, volunteers provide military honors for burials and build a veteran community
- Tinley Park honors 100-year-old World War II veteran at Memorial Day ceremony
With the unofficial beginning of summer, Chicago’s beaches fill up
With temperatures in the 80s, the parking lots at South Side beaches were filling up during the breakfast rush, while the smell of charcoal wafted in the breeze.
New Chicago police chief sold guns from investigations, authorities say
In charges filed Sunday, New Chicago Police Chief Earl D. Mayo is accused of stealing guns confiscated in town police investigations and selling them to a Hobart pawn shop as well as possessing anabolic steroids.
Mayo, 45, of Merrillville, faces seven felonies including two theft counts, two official misconduct counts, one attempted obstruction of justice count and two counts of unlawful possession of anabolic steroids.
Chicago bike lane construction sparks pushback and fuels political fights
Cars whiz past, a few bikes too, as concrete bumpers and painted lines slowly grow at the edge of the busy street. But as reliably as time passes, the two groups show up to the sidewalk, stand there a few feet apart and yell.
The protesters and counter-protesters who have demonstrated every week since early December share a belief that an effort to overhaul a bustling 2-mile stretch of Archer Avenue in Brighton Park with pedestrian-friendly features will have massive consequences. And the small, relentless Southwest Side fight is over more than just that construction project. It’s the latest front in a citywide political divide over the future of transportation and safety.
One month before opening day, work is finishing up at new Hollywood Casino Aurora
The $360 million project has been under construction since 2023. The new casino, hotel and related restaurants are planned to open on June 24, replacing the longtime riverboat Hollywood Casino in downtown Aurora.
Amid Illinois high school co-op controversy, an underdog girls lacrosse team plays on
Among the state’s largest high schools, the future of co-op sports teams is in doubt. An Illinois High School Association rule change, set to take effect next academic year, will bar co-ops from schools with a combined enrollment of more than 3,500 from competing for state championships.
The new rule is meant to stop the formation of so-called super teams, and to promote fairness.
When paleontology meets Pokémon, at the Field Museum
Five years ago, Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science unveiled an exhibition called the Pokémon Fossil Museum. When staff members from the Field Museum traveled to Japan and got a look at it, they started brainstorming ways to bring a similar exhibition to Chicago, where it opened last week. It is the first of its kind in the U.S.
In the Pokémon universe — of games, trading cards and more — fossil Pokémon are prehistoric characters that can be revived. In the museum exhibition, they remain as fossils, in order to be compared to the fossils of the Field Museum’s real-world dinosaurs.
Stephen Colbert returns to the airwaves, appearing on community access television in Michigan
From the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York to … community access TV in Michigan?
One night after Stephen Colbert recorded his final episode of “The Late Show” on CBS, he made a surprise appearance hosting the “Only in Monroe” community access show broadcast in southeast Michigan along the shores of Lake Erie.
