The Blackhawks added another depth forward Tuesday in 22-year-old Jakub Pour. | AP Photos
Pour, 22, joins Dominik Kubalik, Pius Suter, Matej Chalupa and numerous other European free agents to sign with the Hawks in recent years.
European free agents keep pouring into the Blackhawks organization.
Jakub Pour, a 22-year-old Czech forward, became the Hawks’ latest import when he signed a two-year entry-level contract Tuesday. The contract carries a modest $842,500 cap hit.
Pour had played his entire career until now in the Czech Republic with the HC Plzen organization, where he was teammates and friends with Dominik Kubalik.
Pour tallied 16 points (including 12 goals) in 48 games this past season in Plzen, production not quite comparable to Kubalik — who averaged nearly a point per game his last three seasons there — but good enough to receive NHL interest.
“Ever since Dominik Kubalík started playing for the Blackhawks, I have been following the club in great detail,” Pour said in a statement. “In Chicago, I will do my best to fulfill my dream of playing in the NHL. I believe it will be sooner than later, but I will be patient. Whether the chance comes after a month or in the second year of the contract, I have to be prepared.”
Pour will likely start next season with Rockford in the AHL before working his way up the depth chart. Matej Chalupa, another young Czech forward who signed with the Hawks last summer in similar circumstances, spent all of 2021 in Rockford and recorded seven points in 27 games.
For the Hawks, the signing represents the continued strengthening of their pipeline from the European pro leagues, from which they’ve pulled many undrafted, relatively unknown players across the Atlantic in recent years.
The list of success stories includes Kubalik, Pius Suter, Artemi Panarin, David Kampf, Dominik Kahun, Michal Kempny and Erik Gustafsson, among others, and the Hawks have already dipped into it twice — for Pour and Swedish goalie Arvid Soderblom — again so far this offseason.
A woman — identifying herself as a family member of one of the women who was killed — receives a hug from a supporter outside the crime scene tape at 63rd & Morgan, Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021. Four people were shot and killed inside a home in the 6200 block of South Morgan, in an incident that left four others wounded. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Today’s update is a 5-minute read that will brief you on the day’s biggest stories.
Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
This afternoon will be mostly sunny with a high near 78 degrees. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 56. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 78.
Three women and a man were shot and killed, and four other people were seriously wounded, when an argument broke out inside a home in Englewood on the South Side early today, according to Chicago police.
The four were pronounced dead shortly before 6 a.m. at the scene, a two-story house with a gray stone front in the 6200 block of South Morgan Street.
Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern initially said all four were women, but he was corrected by Police Supt. David Brown at a news conference.
A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.
The first was around 2 a.m., when Brown said the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address. Brown did not say if police responded to the alert.
The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the eight victims. Police found shell casings inside the house and a large-capacity “drum magazine.”
There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims likely lived at the address, but Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter.
Let’s face it, most official portraits are traditional and, well, a little staid. While their subjects are usually respectfully and skillfully depicted, these often easy-to-forget paintings offer little in the way of visual pizzazz.
But the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery buck convention in almost every way, and crowds have flooded this arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., since the works were unveiled in 2018.
In part because of the unprecedented appeal of these works, the Portrait Gallery decided to tour them to five major museums across the United States, starting June 18 at the Art Institute of Chicago. (The exhibit will run through Aug. 15.)
AP (file photo)Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama stand on stage together as their official portraits are unveiled at a ceremony at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
“These portraits have gotten a very different reception than any other presidential portraits in our history,” said Taína Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture and Latino art and history at the National Portrait Gallery. “I think that is because the artists that the Obamas chose are very much part of the contemporary art world and not the formal tradition of state portraiture.”
The portraits will be shown in the first-floor Abbott Galleries in the Art Institute’s Modern Wing, and museum officials expect a big turnout. Perhaps more important, he said, they hope these works draw many first-time visitors.
Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Reply to this email (please include your first name and where you live) and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Yesterday, we asked you: How did you enjoy the first weekend in Chicago without pandemic restrictions in over a year? Here’s what some of you said…
“Loved it! My wife and I were in town from San Diego for a wedding and got to do a lot of fun things all across the city. Botanical gardens, Sox game, Navy Pier, the Windy and then the wedding and my cousins birthday party. Threw in some Portillo’s, Al’s beef and Giordanos and it was a great weekend all the way around!” — Dan Giles
“Loved watching my Cubbies with everyone around rooting them on.” — Alisa Dube
“I saw the Cubs snag another W with 39,000 other Cubs fans and saw five of my closest friends at a restaurant in Logan Square. I have witnessed a lot of loss felt a lot of emotions over the past year. Moments like these spent this weekend made me exceptionally grateful.” — Melissa McGlynn
“Did what I always do, chilled in my backyard.” — Dre Jackson
“Pretty much the same, just stayed further away from people who weren’t wearing masks.” — Sarah Villegas
“Will still wear mask. There are those who don’t care, I do.” —Krystyna Szczur
Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
Chicago police officials investigate inside a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan, where eight people were shot, four fatally, during an argument inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.
One by one, the family of Denice Mathis walked up to the police tape on the block in Englewood and reached out to each other. Some sobbed, others cursed.
Down the street, inside a two-story house with a gray stone front, lay Mathis and the bodies of two women and a man killed in a shooting that seriously wounded four other people early Tuesday.
Mathis, in her early 30s, was a mother of four boys and a girl, and had just taken her children to Six Flags over the weekend.
ProvidedVictim Denice Mathis
Another one of those killed was Shermetria Williams, 19 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter. She was set to graduate from Country Club Hills Trade & Tech Center on Tuesday.
A third woman who died in the attack lived in the home and was the mother of a 2-year-old girl who was there when the shots were fired, relatives said. She was not hit.
The fourth fatality was Blake Lee, who also lived in the home and did odds jobs in the neighborhood, relatives said. He had recently lost his mother and grandmother.
The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.
The attack prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to say Chicago has joined a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: Cities with mass shootings.”
As she repeatedly has done, she decried lack of federal action aimed at “eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children, to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again.”
Provided photoShermetria Williams
Chicago police released few details of how the eight people were shot, but said it occurred when an argument broke out inside the home.
Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 6 a.m., and four others were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition.
The 2-year-old girl found in the home was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation.
A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.
The first was around 2 a.m., when the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address, according to Police Superintendent David Brown. He did not say if police responded to the alert.
The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the victims. Police recovered shell casings inside the house and a large capacity “drum magazine.”
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-TimesA woman crying, “That’s my baby! That’s my baby!” is escorted by community activists, including Andrew Holmes (left), to a vehicle after she tried to cross police tape at West 63rd Street and South Morgan Street, Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021. Four people were shot and killed inside a home in the 6200 block of South Morgan, in an incident that left four others wounded.
There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims lived at the address, a barber who cut hair out of the house.
Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter, or what the argument was about.
Brown said the victims taken to hospitals had not yet been interviewed by detectives, and the investigation still was “very preliminary.”
“All we know about this residence is there’s been several calls there for disturbances,” Brown told reporters. “Overall, the block where this residence is located is fairly quiet, not much activity going on that requires a police response.”
As officers worked the scene into the late morning, a crowd of distraught relatives and neighbors gathered along the police tape blocking off Morgan Street.
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-TimesChicago police keep watch and crime scene tape hangs outside a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan, where eight people were shot, four fatally, inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021.
Mathis’ family said she was a devoted mother. “She was a good person — a free-spirited person,” said a cousin, Vickie Smith. “She loved her family.”
Mathis lived on the South Side, but the family didn’t know what brought her to the gathering on South Morgan.
A man who said he was Mathis’ brother said his sister had been to the house many times before. “She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.
Demetrius Williams said he was at home in Maywood, putting on a shirt and tie for his daughter’s graduation, when he heard she had been killed.
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-TimesA woman — identifying herself as a family member of one of the women who was killed — receives a hug from a supporter outside the crime scene tape at West 63rd Street and South Morgan Street, Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021.
“This is unbelievable — a massacre,” said Williams, struggling to compose his thoughts as officers took down the crime tape around the Englewood house. “Why? Why did this have to happen?”
Williams still held the ticket for his daughter’s graduation. Back home were red roses and balloons that said “Congratulations.”
“All she wanted to do was take care of her daughter and be successful in life,” the father said. “She meant the world to me. That was my baby girl.”
Also standing and waiting for answers outside the police tape was Raheem Hall, who grew up in Englewood and always had words of caution for his nephew Blake Lee.
“I told him just to be careful out here. Stay away from the wrong crowd,” Hall said.
ProvidedVictim Blake Lee
Blake lived in the house where the attack occurred. “He was a good guy,” said Hall, who now lives in Indiana. “He did no harm to no one. He was just trying to live his life as an ordinary guy.”
Blake had had a hard life, his uncle said, but he was also enjoying things recently, having traveled to Miami on vacation, his uncle said.
Similar scenes played out through the day at the hospitals where the wounded were taken.
A group of about 10 people waited outside the University of Chicago Hospital, where a woman in her mid-20s was taken after being shot on Morgan.
A 45-year-old man said his daughter remained in surgery as of 12:45 p.m. The man said his daughter worked at Lawrence’s Fish & Shrimp.
After he walked away, several women began to weep. One woman dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hands.
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-TimesA crew removes one of four bodies from a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan after they were all shot to death when an argument broke inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021. Four other people were wounded in the shooting.
One person wrapped her arms around another and rubbed their back to comfort them as they stood against a chain-linked fence and faced the emergency room entrance.
“She got shot in the head,” another person sobbed on the phone as they walked away.
Outside Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, relatives said the man who lived in the home, James Tolbert, was “alert and coherent.”
Tolbert operated a barbershop from his home after COVID-19 restrictions closed down the shop where he worked. The 2-year-old girl taken to Comer’s for observation is his daughter, according to Tolbert’s sister, Michelle Tolbert.
Waiting outside the emergency room entrance, Michelle Tolbert said she learned her brother had been shot from a Facebook post and feared the worst.
“There were a lot of people putting up ‘RIP’ posts, so I was worried,” she said.
Hospital staff would not let her up to her brother’s room, but said Tolbert no longer was in critical condition. “They told me he’s awake, he’s responsive.”
Michelle Tolbert said her brother had a jovial “barbershop” personality and had studied to be an EMT before going to barber college.
“He’s a good person,” she said. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”
The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week, and came just hours after gunfire erupted at a party in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, killing a man and wounding two women wounded.
Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-TimesPeople watch as a crew removes four bodies from a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan after they were all shot to death when an argument broke inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021. Four other people were wounded in the shooting.
The weekend before, six men and two women were wounded when someone in a silver car opened fire in a shooting in the 8900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the Burnside neighborhood.
Lightfoot blamed the violence on the lack of national laws that would curb the flow of illegal guns.
“When gun [laws] are so porous that they can come across our borders with such ease, as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence,” she said. “And that starts with eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again—not just this year, but every year.”
Lightfoot bristled when asked how the steady stream of mass shootings might impact her efforts to reopen the city and encourage Chicagoans to come downtown to dine and shop and patronize the stores and restaurants in their own neighborhoods.
She noted that the Englewood shooting happened “inside a single residence” — not out on the street or in a large outdoor gathering.
“The reality is, our city is safe,” the mayor said. “And I stand by that. We have done yeoman’s work over the course of a very difficult year where every major city—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta and on and on the list goes—has seen similar surge in violence.”
Pressed about the perception of safety, she said, “What I’m concerned about is the fact that people lost their lives this morning. I’m concerned about the fact that there are people who are dead in an act of violence that makes no sense to me.”
Asked whether she believes Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is doing a good job prosecuting gun offenders, Lightfoot pointed to what one of the state’s attorney’s top aides said about the Chicago Police Department during a recent webinar for reporters.
“The conclusion of her policy person was that the Chicago Police Department is arresting the wrong people who possess guns. I fundamentally disagree with that,” she said. “We are a city that’s awash in illegal guns. Those illegal guns cause deep pain and injury and death.”
A Tuesday deadline looms for developers to submit initial offers to Churchill Downs Inc. for the historic Arlington Park Horse Racetrack and Arlington Heights Mayor Tom Hayes says the Bears moving to the Northwest suburb is still on the table as a possibility.
Mount Prospect’s Mallory Smart, who publishes the online journal Maudlin House, has a new book coming out from Trident Press this year.
“Lit!” is what writer and publisher Mallory Smart says more often than not. I don’t always know what she means, but I think it’s a good thing.…Read More
Some performing arts groups are opening their doors, but others are inviting audiences to soak up the sun.
In just the past couple of weeks, theaters have started sending out announcements that they’re getting ready to reopen. Second City is already welcoming audiences back with Happy to Be Here on the mainstage and Out of the House Party at Second City e.t.c. Goodman plans to open its doors with Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, on July 30.…Read More
Who ever thought that we could transition so quickly from high to low inventory?
Of course, there are still houses for sale. For instance, Winnetka currently has 46 listed homes, some of which have not sold after several months on the market.
Exactly half of the those homes are priced over $2 million which necessarily means that they will take longer to sell. Of the 23 homes under $2 million, some are overpriced and even in this hot market buyers will push back when they sense price exceeds value.
In Wilmette where there are 69 homes for sale, 38 have been on the market for over 30 days. Price seems to be the issue for many of those, or location or condition. Which all comes down to price.
With all five villages taken together there are 181 homes for sale priced between $325,000 and $18,000,000. Sixty-nine of those homes are under $1 million and 60 are under $2,000,000. Inventory might be historically low (I remember during the recession having 200 homes for sale in Winnetka) but there are still plenty of good homes for sale.
And, there are 64 more homes for sale in the MLS Private Network*. Not all are available for sale right now, but many, if not most, are and help to alleviate the strain on inventory.
Most popular homes are those that are newer, remodeled, and priced under $1 million. The median price for all homes sales in Winnetka, Wilmette, Glencoe, Kenilworth, and Glencoe in the past six months is $930,000.
For just homes priced over $1 million, the median price is $1,450,000.
How low has inventory gone in the past year for the five North Shore villages listed above?
Right now the focus is on buyers getting the home they want. But it’s sellers who control the market in so much as inventory goes. If they decide to stay put, the problem of low inventory will persist.
One reason people are not selling is because they need to buy a house themselves. Some don’t want to enter that brawl and prefer to stay in their current homes until the rush is over.
So we have a chain reaction that results in an impasse which may be where we are now. But don’t be mistaken – there are many determined buyers who are still hoping to find the right home and they’ve probably made other, unsuccessful bids.
Other issues leading to low inventory are high costs of materials for new construction and the 30-year fixed mortgage which is at a 50-year low. The pandemic is still pushing a certain segment of buyers out of smaller condos and into suburban homes helping to fuel the frenzy.
Prices have risen slightly over 10% (local number, not national) in the last 12 months and as you can see from this graphic, it seems to be leveling off. But with the summer months still ahead, it’s too early to determine that for certain.
If you have the desire and wherewithal to list your home now, I can almost guarantee a quick sale and a dream price. Real estate pundits have different things to say about how long this market will last.
And all the preparation that goes into getting a house ready for market has not changed. It still needs to be done (i.e. repairing, painting, staging) in order to get the ideal results. Most younger buyers may be discouraged but they still aren’t keen to buy a home that needs work.
Hi – My name is Margaret Goss and I have been selling real estate in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs since 1998.
I’ve been writing blog posts about the North Shore since 2008 – real estate, restaurants, stores, civic and community events, plus interesting people. It’s a beautiful place to call home.
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 topped 600,000 on Tuesday, even as the vaccination drive has drastically brought down daily cases and fatalities and allowed the country to emerge from the gloom and look forward to summer.
The number of lives lost, as recorded by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Baltimore or Milwaukee. It is about equal to the number of Americans who died of cancer in 2019. Worldwide, the death toll stands at about 3.8 million.
The milestone came the same day that California and New York lifted most of their remaining restrictions, joining other states in opening the way, step by step, for what could be a fun and close to normal summer for many Americans.
“Deep down I want to rejoice,” said Rita Torres, a retired university administrator in Oakland, California. But she plans to take it slow: “Because it’s kind of like, is it too soon? Will we be sorry?”
With the arrival of the vaccine in mid-December, COVID-19 deaths per day in the U.S. have plummeted to an average of around 340, from a high of over 3,400 in mid-January. Cases are running at about 14,000 a day on average, down from a quarter-million per day over the winter.
The real death tolls in the U.S. and around the globe are thought to be significantly higher, with many cases overlooked or possibly concealed by some countries.
President Joe Biden acknowledged the approaching milestone Monday during his visit to Europe, saying that while new cases and deaths are dropping dramatically in the U.S., “there’s still too many lives being lost,” and “now is not the time to let our guard down.”
The most recent deaths are seen in some ways as especially tragic now that the vaccine has become available practically for the asking.
More than 52% of all Americans have had at least one dose, while almost 44% are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But demand for shots in the U.S. has dropped off dramatically, leaving many places with a surplus of doses and casting doubt on whether the country will meet Biden’s target of having 70% of all adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. The figure stands at just under 65%.
As of a week ago, the U.S. was averaging about 1 million injections per day, down from a high of about 3.3 million a day on average in mid-April, according to the CDC.
At nearly every turn in the outbreak, the virus has exploited and worsened inequalities in the United States. CDC figures, adjusted for age and population, show that Black, Latino and Native American people are two to three times more likely than whites to die of COVID-19.
Also, an Associated Press analysis found that Latinos are dying at much younger ages than other groups. Hispanic people between 30 and 39 have died at five times the rate of white people in the same age group.
Overall, Black and Hispanic Americans have less access to medical care and are in poorer health, with higher rates of conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. They are also more likely to have jobs deemed essential, less able to work from home and more likely to live in crowded, multigenerational households.
With the overall picture improving rapidly, California, the most populous state and the first to impose a coronavirus lockdown, dropped its rules on social distancing and limits on capacity at restaurants, bars, supermarkets, gyms, stadiums and other places, ushering in what has been billed as its “Grand Reopening” just in time for summer.
Disneyland is throwing open its gates to all tourists after allowing just California residents. Fans will be able to sit elbow-to-elbow and cheer without masks at Dodgers and Giants games
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that 70% of adults in the state have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and he announced that the immediate easing of many of the restrictions will be celebrated with fireworks.
“What does 70% mean? It means that we can now return to life as we know it,” he said.
He said the state is lifting rules that had limited the size of gatherings and required some types of businesses to follow cleaning protocols, take people’s temperature or screen them for COVID-19 symptoms. Businesses will no longer have to restrict how many people they can allow inside based on the 6-foot rule.
For the time being, though, New Yorkers will have to keep wearing masks in schools, subways and certain other places.
Massachusetts officially lifted its state of emergency Tuesday, though many restrictions had already been eased, including mask requirements and limits on gatherings.
The first known deaths from the virus in the U.S. were in early February 2020. It took four months to reach the first 100,000 dead. During the most lethal phase of the disaster, in the winter of 2020-21, it took just over a month to go from 300,000 to 400,000 deaths.
With the crisis now easing, it took close to four months for the U.S. death toll to go from a half-million to 600,000.
Kinda cheap — $800 in today’s dollars — considering it was an illegal procedure, performed in secret, condemned by the church at a time when organized religion had even more of a stranglehold on American society than it does now, which is really saying something.
Chicago women back then had abortions anyway, for the same reasons they do now, ranging from medical to financial to emotional necessity. It was a fairly routine procedure in 1941. Your doctor would jot down an address — 190 N. State St. — and you’d hurry to the Gabler Clinic on the 6th floor.
The Gabler clinic had been open since the early 1930s, mostly. It would be periodically raided, only to open again. Leading to the question of how this criminal procedure was performed an average of five times a day in the heart of the Loop for almost a decade.
Therein lies the tale.
One reason religious zealots have such success restricting abortion is that it is seen as affecting only women. So they marshal their zombie army of imaginary babies and send them off to do battle against actual living people — mostly young, poor women — and thus approach the New Jerusalem, in their own minds.
While it is true that women are the primary beneficiaries of abortions, and suffer most when abortion is restricted, they are not the only victims of criminalizing a highly popular medical procedure. With the U.S. Supreme Court taking a case arising from Mississippi’s draconian abortion laws, and Texas’ “Heartbeat Law” criminalizing abortion after six weeks, now seems an apt moment to remember a case that rocked Chicago 80 years ago. A taste of what’s in store for us should the faith-addled fanatics Donald Trump placed on the high court overturn Roe v. Wade.
They called it “The Million Dollar Abortion Ring,” for the nearly 20,000 abortions, at $50 a pop, performed at the Gabler Clinic. The clinic went from open secret to front page news after Detective Daniel Moriarity, a 15-year veteran of the state’s attorney police force, went to 4367 N. Lake Park, pushed past a maid, and fired five shots into what he thought was the sleeping form of Ada Martin, who ran the clinic.
It wasn’t Martin. It was her daughter, Jennie, 24.
Martin had been paying Moriarity $100 a month, part of the network of corruption required to provide an illegal public service. He could deflect local heat, but the federal authorities were interested in collecting tax on that million dollars. Hoping to further motivate him, Martin threatened to take Moriarity down with her, and the shooting had been his attempt to avoid that.
The death of the sleeping young woman was just one ripple in an ever-widening circle of human wreckage. Moriarity’s wife had a nervous breakdown when he was arrested. One doctor involved in the clinic, Dr. Henry J. Millstone, took poison after being indicted. As he died he wrote letters exposing the ring. Millstone also wrote one to his wife, Emily, urging her to “keep her chin up.” She drank ammonia instead, and died too. A pair of assistant state’s attorneys were also found to be on the Gabler payroll and fired. Moriarity was sentenced to life and died in Joliet in 1946.
The dream of eliminating abortion is a fantasy from the same folks who’d eliminate sex, too, if only they could, or at least appoint themselves guardians to dictate to you how, when, why and with whom you do it. That door being closed, mostly, fighting abortion is what they’ve got left, not realizing that abortion has been a reality since ancient times and isn’t going away. The only choice is whether abortion is legal, safe and available, or illegal, dangerous and hard-to-get.
I was wondering how the $50 in 1941 compares to the cost of abortion now. My guess is an average of $1,600 to $2,400, between double and triple in current dollars what it cost in 1941, the difference made up by increases in complexity and cost of medical technology. Hoping to do better than guesswork, I contacted Planned Parenthood of Illinois. Either they don’t know or won’t say — apparently it’s complicated. I pressed, but they wouldn’t even whisper a range or ballpark figure. No wonder the good guys are losing, when they can’t cough up a simple statistic like that.
NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that 70% of adults in New York have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.
“What does 70% mean? It means that we can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo told an invitation-only crowd at the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Effective immediately, he said, the state is lifting rules that had limited the size of gatherings and required some types of businesses to follow cleaning protocols or take people’s temperatures or screen them for recent COVID-19 symptoms.
Businesses will no longer have to follow social distancing rules, or limit how many people they can allow inside based on keeping people 6 feet apart.
Some rules will remain: New Yorkers, for now, will continue to have to wear masks in schools, subways, large venues, homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, jails and prisons.
Cuomo, a Democrat, said there would be fireworks displays around the state Tuesday. He said in previous days that the fireworks would commemorate the 70% threshold, but said Tuesday the fireworks are to honor essential workers.
It’s unclear how many more people have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity, which is when enough people have immunity that the virus has trouble spreading.
It’s unclear what that threshold is for the coronavirus, though many experts say it’s 70% or higher. Just half of all 20 million residents in New York are fully vaccinated, according to federal data as of Monday. About 58% of residents of all ages have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Over the past seven days, New York has been averaging around 450 new coronavirus cases a day, the lowest level since the pandemic began.
Vaccination rates are particularly low in parts of the state that were hit hard by the winter COVID-19 surge, including parts of New York City and rural counties in western and central New York.
About 30% of the population is vaccinated in Allegany County, compared with 37% in nearby Wyoming County.
In New York City, 38% and 40.6% of residents are fully vaccinated in the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively. That contrasts with 58% of Manhattan residents and 51% in Queens.
Also Tuesday, health officials announced that nearly 900 people received expired COVID-19 vaccine doses at a vaccination site in Times Square earlier this month. The 899 people who received doses of the Pfizer vaccine at the former NFL Experience building in Times Square between June 5 and June 10 should schedule another Pfizer shot as soon as possible, the New York City Health Department said.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660671/Screen_Shot_2021_06_15_at_9.47.42_AM.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660336/FOURDEAD_061621_08.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660674/Screen_Shot_2021_06_15_at_1.53.53_PM.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660622/FOURDEAD_061621_12.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660747/FOURDEAD_061621_17.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660620/FOURDEAD_061621_09__1_.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660920/FOURDEAD_061621_02__1_.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660628/FOURDEAD_061621_06.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22660630/FOURDEAD_061621_08__1_.jpg)
