Members of the Cook County Democratic Party meet Friday to choose an interim replacement for the late county clerk Karen Yarbrough, who died earlier this month. Seventeen interested applicants sent their credentials to the party by the Wednesday deadline, including several county board members, a sitting state senator and the current clerk of Evanston. Yarbrough’s passing came too late for Democratic voters to choose from a slate of candidates — as they did for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s replacement on the Cook County Board in the March primary. Instead, the party will choose both an interim cler ..read more

Is there ever a more optimistic day about a team’s future than when its brightest new star is introduced to fans? Here’s what some of the Bears’ first-round draft picks from the past six decades have said when they started their careers in Chicago. Mike Ditka (Dec. 27, 1960) Pick: No. 5 Bears rookie Mike Ditka, former All-American at Pitt, holds down one of the end posts for the Bears, 1961. (Chicago Tribune archive) After winning a coin toss to draft ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Bears selected Pittsburgh’s All-American end Mike Ditka with their top pick. Ranking the 100 best Bears p ..read more

Hundreds of Northwestern students joined nationwide protests against Israel’s war in Gaza on Thursday, prompting school administrations to abruptly change campus policies and ban tents or other temporary structures in previously public spaces. University President Michael Schill informed students of the policy change just after 9 a.m. in an email. “The goal of this addendum is to balance the right to peacefully demonstrate with our goal to protect our community, to avoid disruptions to instruction and to ensure University operations can continue unabated,” Schill said in the email. Students in ..read more

DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines will limit hiring and stop flying to four airports as it copes with weak financial results and delays in getting new planes from Boeing. Both Southwest and American Airlines reported first-quarter losses Thursday. Demand for travel remains strong, including among business flyers, but airlines are dealing with higher labor costs, and delays in getting new aircraft from Boeing are limiting their ability to add more flights. Southwest said it lost $231 million. CEO Robert Jordan said the airline was reacting quickly “to address our financial underperformance,” inc ..read more

An Orland Park man was ordered detained Wednesday after being charged in connection with a shooting Sunday in Oak Forest that left one man dead and others wounded, according to authorities. Omar Zegar, 37, is charged with one count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, according to Oak Forest police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He is next due to be in court May 17. Court filings show Zegar was armed with a rifle and fired more than 20 times in the direction of several people outside a home in the 5500 block of Babette Court. He was later stopped by police and taken into cus ..read more

In the early 1970s, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the connection between an attempted burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and President Richard M. Nixon’s administration. Their work was aided by “Deep Throat,” their anonymous source nicknamed after a popular pornographic film but later revealed to be W. Mark Felt, Sr. But, did you know, the Chicago Tribune also played a key role in the demise of Nixon’s presidency? Fifty years ago this week, a small team of Tribune employees flew to Washington, D.C., and back in order to beat every o ..read more

Former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke has resigned his membership at the Union League Club, the stately downtown institution that both reflected Burke’s old-school proclivities and served as the setting for an alleged shakedown in the corruption investigation that ended his 54-year political career. Burke, who joined the Union League Club on West Jackson Boulevard in the mid-1970s and was one of its most high-profile members, officially had his resignation accepted by the club’s admissions committee on Tuesday, according to a member who requested anonymity. Jeffrey Gray, the club’s director of ..read more

Chipotle says its employees can choose chicken once again. Last week, the chain asked its U.S. and Canadian employees to temporarily select another protein for their work meals to preserve the company’s supply of chicken. The directive applied to both corporate staff and restaurant employees. Newport Beach, California-based Chipotle has more than 114,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada. But Laurie Schalow, the Mexican chain’s chief corporate affairs and food safety officer, said Thursday that the directive has been rescinded and employees can return to ordering chicken with their meals. “We are ..read more

Dexter Reed was shot 13 times by Chicago police officers during a fatal March traffic stop that left one of the officers shot in the wrist, authorities found. The Cook County medical examiner’s office released Reed’s autopsy and toxicological reports Thursday, five weeks after he was fatally shot in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability said four officers fired a total of 96 shots during the 41 seconds of gunfire. The medical examiner’s office found Reed, 26, was shot in his chest, shoulder, back, legs and buttocks. A toxicological examination found THC ..read more

A little delirious and a lot of serious, witty, stylish fun, “Challengers” plays a beautiful game of Canadian doubles with its three main characters, on and off the court. It’s a purely enjoyable romantic drama, and the one thing people seem to agree on is its deft sidestepping of easy labels. Is it a screwball dramedy, as one writer put it? A sports movie dripping with competitive juices? Or simply that extremely rare thing in 2024 movies: an R-rated picture, written by a terrific first-time screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, not a sequel, not a Marvel, not much like anything we’ve seen lately i ..read more