Author: Voxtrend News
August is the best time of the year to take a dip in Lake Michigan, when its waters hover in the balmy upper 60s. Experts say so, and Chicago’s crowded beaches offer proof. But an invisible hazard can quickly turn a sunny day out into a sick night in. In 2024, over 300 beaches across the Great Lakes closed to visitors or issued swim bans or advisories due to the presence of bacteria in the water — mostly E. coli, from nearby surface runoff or sewer system overflows, especially during heavy rain — according to state and federal data. Bacteria levels…
A family-owned antique shop in the heart of suburban La Grange Park aims to rebuild after a recycling truck ran into its storefront Thursday morning. A truck drove into Heart’s Desire, a small business at 1014 E. 31st St., about 8 a.m. Thursday, Village Manager Julia Cedillo said. The crash shattered windows, ceiling boards and decades-old heirlooms. The driver was taken to Loyola Medicine, though there were no reported injuries, Cedillo said. Village agencies are now securing and assessing the area around the shop. Contractors were seen moving broken tables and shoveling concrete and stone shards out of the storefront.…
CyrusOne is warning those who live near its data center in Aurora that it will be doing another round of emergency repairs on Friday, and that those repairs will again require the use of backup generators which have in the past significantly impacted nearby residents. During similar repairs in April, the use of backup generators for multiple days straight caused consistently loud noise in the surrounding area, which some residents previously called “unlivable” and “horrible.” CyrusOne has since put in place a temporary sound wall blocking the site’s generators, with a permanent sound wall currently under construction. Further repairs were…
City Hall will soon have a far-reaching decision on its hands: How to dispose of a huge, growing pot of taxpayer money collecting in a North Side special taxing district that has quickly outperformed expectations. The district has already taken in just under $400 million since 2017. It is on track to pay off a major facelift of four Chicago Transit Authority stations and the century-old infrastructure connecting them way ahead of schedule and estimated to bring in just shy of $100 million annually by 2031. The billion-dollar question is whether the CTA will keep receiving cash infusions from the…
I applaud President Donald Trump’s attempts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Watching Monday’s extraordinary meeting at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European leaders, I’m confident Russian President Vladimir Putin got the message: It’s time to make a deal before these nations bankrupt the Russian economy. My hope is a trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy takes place soon — not in Moscow but at Camp David. This would be a big step toward Oslo, where the Nobel Peace Prize typically is presented. — Denny Freidenrich, Laguna Beach, California Public relations…
Before he battled his way back to the White House, President Donald Trump was in court battling a slew of civil lawsuits and criminal charges that threatened to upend his finances and take away his freedom. Those cases have mostly abated since his return to office, albeit with some loose ends. On Thursday, Trump declared “total victory” after an appeals court threw out a massive financial penalty in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that he exaggerated his wealth and the value of marquee assets like Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. Other punishments affecting Trump’s business still apply, but they can be paused pending further…
No one can say we didn’t see this coming. Since the earliest days of the birther movement, Donald Trump has been diligently and incrementally chipping away at the American people’s constitutional right to free and fair elections. He has repeatedly sowed baseless mistrust about the legitimacy of leading candidates. He has called numerous elections rigged. In a recorded call, he pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn 2020’s presidential election results. When that didn’t work, he claimed, over and over, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In the lead-up to the most recent presidential election, he refused…
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday released transcripts of interviews its No. 2 official did with Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend as the Trump administration scrambles to present itself as transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a trove of records from the sex-trafficking case. The disclosure represents the latest Trump administration effort to repair self-inflicted political wounds after failing to deliver on expectations that its own officials had created through conspiracy theories and bold pronouncements that never came to pass. By making public two days worth of interviews, officials appear to be hoping to…
President Donald Trump said Friday that Chicago could receive similar treatment from the federal government as Washington, D.C., where nearly 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed to quell what the president’s administration has characterized as an influx in dangerous crime. Despite calling Chicago the nation’s “greatest city,” he criticized Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson’s leadership. “When we’re ready, we’ll go in and straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C.,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think Chicago will be our next,” he said. “And then we’ll help with New York.” Trump claimed people in Chicago are “screaming for…
After three bargaining sessions this week failed to produce a new contract, union officials announced Thursday night that Naperville School District 203 teachers will go on strike Tuesday. The Naperville Unit Education Association said in a news release that the school board’s most recent proposal represented a major step backward. “We have always said a strike is our last resort,” union President Ross Berkley said in a statement. “However, after months of bargaining, overwhelming community support and the board’s refusal to make meaningful progress, we have reached a point where we may have no other choice. As a result, we…