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There have been two double homicides reported on the West Side since 5 p.m. Friday.

At least 42 people have been shot, eight fatally, since Friday night in Chicago, including a 15-year-old boy killed in Lawndale on the West Side.

About 11:50 p.m. Friday, Dajon Gater was on a front porch in the 3900 block of West Lexington Street when two males approached and began firing shots at him, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

He suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.

Early Sunday, a man was killed in a shooting in West Garfield Park.

The 49-year-old was standing outside about 12:15 a.m. in the first block of North Kilbourn Avenue when a male exited a silver sedan and began firing shots, police said.

He was struck multiple times in the face and body and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. He has not yet been identified.

On Saturday night, a man was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting in Washington Park.

The trio was standing on the sidewalk about 7:30 p.m. in the 5500 block of South Michigan Avenue when people inside a gray Jeep and blue Acura opened fire, police said. A 46-year-old man was shot in the back and was taken to the University of Chicago, where he was pronounced dead. The medical examiner’s office identified him as Johnnie Williams.

Another man, 30, was shot in the head and was also transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition, police said. A third man, 50, was struck in the arm and was taken to the same hospital in good condition.

Early Saturday morning, two people were fatally shot in West Garfield Park.

The men were standing outside about 2 a.m. in the 4000 block of West Wilcox Street when someone approached them on foot and fired shots, police said.

One man, 24, suffered gunshot wounds to the head, neck, chest and leg, police said. He was transported to Loretto Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. He was identified as Haniff Collins, according to the medical examiner’s office.

The second man, 29, was struck in the chest, torso and arm, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital where he was also pronounced dead, police said. He was identified as Derrick McCampbell.

Hours earlier, a man was fatally shot on the Eisenhower Expressway on the West Side.

The 27-year-old was westbound on Interstate 290 about 12:07 a.m. on the ramp to Austin Boulevard when someone fired shots from another vehicle, Illinois State Police said.

The man was pronounced dead at a hospital, state police said.

Friday night, two people were fatally shot following an incident at an East Garfield Park convenience store.

About 10:25 p.m., a male was in an argument with a 23-year-old woman in the 500 block of North Kedzie Avenue when he began shooting at her and an 18-year-old man she was with, police said.

The woman suffered a gunshot wound to the torso and was transported to Stroger Hospital where she was pronounced dead, officials said. She was identified as Destiny Nunez of Aurora.

The man was struck multiple times in the torso and leg and transported to Norwegian American Hospital, where he died, officials said. He was identified as Adrian Navarro.

At least 30 other people have been wounded in shootings since 5 p.m. Friday.

Last weekend, 48 people were shot citywide, including a 2-year-old girl, a 13-year-old boy and two Chicago police officers.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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Denzel Robinson was shot at a gas station May 7 in the 600 block of West 31st Street, officials said.

A 27-year-old man who was wounded in a shooting earlier this month in Bridgeport has died from his injuries.

Denzel Robinson was pronounced dead at 4:34 p.m. May 20 at Stroger Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

He was shot at a gas station May 7 in the 600 block of West 31st Street, Chicago police said.

Robinson was in his vehicle in the parking lot of the station about 10 p.m. when a male approached and fired shots, striking him in the face and neck, officials said.

Autopsy results released Sunday ruled his death a homicide, saying he died from a gunshot wound to the head, the medical examiner’s office said.

Jabari Johnson, 27, was arrested May 20 and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting, police said.

He was being held without bail at the Cook County Jail, according to the sheriff’s office.

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But Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University, a leading advocate of widespread, rapid testing, said that with more than 60% of Americans not fully vaccinated, screening of those without symptoms still has a role.

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials’ new, more relaxed recommendations on masks have all but eclipsed another major change in guidance from the government: Fully vaccinated Americans can largely skip getting tested for the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that most people who have received the full course of shots and have no COVID-19 symptoms don’t need to be screened for the virus, even if exposed to someone infected.

The change represents a new phase in the epidemic after nearly a year in which testing was the primary weapon against the virus. Vaccines are now central to the response and have driven down hospitalizations and deaths dramatically.

Experts say the CDC guidance reflects a new reality in which nearly half of Americans have received at least one shot and close to 40% are fully vaccinated.

“At this point we really should be asking ourselves whether the benefits of testing outweigh the costs — which are lots of disruptions, lots of confusion and very little clinical or public health benefit,” said Dr. A. David Paltiel of Yale’s School of Public Health, who championed widespread testing at colleges last year.

While vaccinated people can still catch the virus, they face little risk of serious illness from it. And positive test results can lead to what many experts now say are unnecessary worry and interruptions at work, home and school, such as quarantines and shutdowns.

Other health specialists say the CDC’s abrupt changes on the need for masks and testing have sent the message that COVID-19 is no longer a major threat, even as the U.S. reports daily case counts of nearly 30,000.

“The average Joe Public is interpreting what the CDC is saying as ‘This is done. It’s over,’” said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University, a leading advocate of widespread, rapid testing.

With more than 60% of Americans not fully vaccinated, he thinks screening of those without symptoms still has a role, particularly among front-line workers who have to deal with the public.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the updated guidelines are based on studies showing the robust effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing disease in various age groups and settings. Even when vaccinated people do contract COVID-19, their infections tend to be milder, shorter and less likely to spread to others.

As a result, the CDC says vaccinated people can generally be excluded from routine workplace screening for COVID-19.

That change could eliminate testing headaches like the one recently reported by the New York Yankees, when one player and several staffers tested positive on a highly sensitive COVID-19 test, despite being vaccinated.

Baseball officials are discussing whether to drop or reduce testing of people who have no symptoms.

But widespread attempts to waive testing for vaccinated people could face the same dilemma seen with the CDC’s new guidelines on masks: There’s no easy way to determine who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.

Employers can legally require vaccinations for most workers, though few have tested that power, since the vaccines don’t yet have full regulatory approval. Even asking employees to disclose their vaccination status is viewed as intrusive by many employment-law specialists.

For now, testing appears to be continuing unchanged in places that adopted the practice, from offices to meatpacking plants to sports teams.

Pork producer Smithfield Foods said it continues to conduct a combination of mandatory and optional testing for employees, depending on conditions at work sites. Amazon said it will still offer regular, voluntary testing.

The NBA has indicated it plans to keep its testing system in place for now. The league has been praised for using rigorous testing to create COVID-19-free “bubbles” around players, coaches and staff.

On a national level, the supply of COVID-19 tests now vastly surpasses demand. U.S. officials receive reports of about 1 million tests per day, down from a peak of over 2 million in mid-January, though many rapid tests done at home and workplaces go uncounted.

Consumers can buy 15-minute, over-the-counter tests at pharmacies and other stores. That’s on top of increased capacity from U.S. laboratories and hospitals, which ramped up testing after last year’s crushing demand.

The U.S. will be capable of conducting 500 million monthly tests in June, according to researchers at Arizona State University.

As recently as this winter, many health experts were calling for a huge testing effort to safely reopen schools, offices and other businesses. But that was before it was known how effective the vaccine would be in the real world, how quickly it could be distributed and whether it would protect against variants.

“The vaccines overperformed, which is the best news possible,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “So now you can begin to peel back some of these other layers of mitigation like mask use and screening.”

Congress set aside $46 billion in the last pandemic relief package to boost testing, particularly in schools. But with all Americans 12 and older now eligible for shots, many middle and high school students will be fully vaccinated when they return to classrooms in the fall.

And many school systems have already rejected routine testing for elementary students, since children rarely become seriously ill and a positive test can trigger disruptive quarantines.

Some states have even returned federal testing funds, preferring simpler measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.

Many school officials, Engel said, “just see screening programs as a huge burden that’s not going to help.”

AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this story from New York

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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They were outside about 2:50 p.m. in the 3300 block of West Ohio Street when a vehicle pulled up and someone inside fired shots at them, Chicago police said.

Four people were wounded in a shooting Sunday in East Garfield Park.

They were outside about 2:50 p.m. in the 3300 block of West Ohio Street when a vehicle pulled up and someone inside fired shots at them, Chicago police said.

A 25-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man were struck and taken to Stroger Hospital, where their conditions were stabilized, police said.

A male, whose age was not immediately known, was shot multiple times and taken to the same hospital in critical condition, police said.

Later, a female who was also shot took herself to Norwegian American Hospital, police said. Her condition was not immediately known.

No arrests have been reported. Area Four detectives are investigating.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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A rambling ad published in Saturday’s New York Times named Lipa and the models Bella and Gigi Hadid as three “mega-influencers” who have “accused Israel of ethnic cleansing” and “vilified the Jewish State.”

NEW YORK — Singer Dua Lipa is blasting an organization that paid for a full-page ad in The New York Times that called her antisemitic for her support of Palestinians, saying it used her name “shamelessly” to “advance their ugly campaign with falsehoods and blatant misrepresentations.”

In the rambling ad which appeared in Saturday’s newspaper in the main section, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the head of the World Values Network, named Lipa, and the models Bella and Gigi Hadid as three “mega-influencers” who have “accused Israel of ethnic cleansing” and “vilified the Jewish State.”

Lipa took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to “reject the false and appalling allegations” and said the World Values Network twisted what she stands for. “I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people and reject all forms of racism,” she wrote.

Tensions increased in the Mideast since May 10, when Hamas militants in Gaza fired long-range rockets toward Jerusalem. The barrage came after days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

A cease-fire was declared Friday. The 11-day war left more than 250 dead — the vast majority Palestinians — and brought widespread devastation to the already impoverished Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Many celebrities have taken to social media to post pro-Palestinian messages, including the singer Zayn, Roger Waters, The Weeknd and Mark Ruffalo. Lipa is dating Anwar Hadid, Gigi and Bella’s brother.

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Clashes between police and Palestinian protesters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque had helped trigger an 11-day war in Gaza.

JERUSALEM — Israeli police escorted more than 250 Jewish visitors Sunday to a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem where clashes between police and Palestinian protesters helped trigger a war in Gaza, according to the Islamic authority overseeing the site.

The 11-day conflict between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers came to a fragile halt Friday, but left behind immense ruin in Gaza, including hundreds of homes in that have been completely destroyed and many more that were badly damaged, according to the U.N.

With tensions still high, police cleared young Palestinians out of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and barred entry to Muslims under the age of 45, according to the Islamic Waqf, which oversees the site. Muslims who entered were required to leave their IDs with police at the entrance. It said six Palestinians were detained, with four later released.

Israeli police denied there was any age restriction and said they arrested five people who “violated the public order.” Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the site was open for “regular visits” and that police had secured the area.

The visits later ended without any further incident.

Israeli police had briefly clashed with Palestinian protesters after Friday prayers in an early test for the truce, which had taken effect hours earlier. The cease-fire in Gaza has held, but violence in Jerusalem could set off another cycle of escalation.

The Waqf said Sunday was the first time Jews had been allowed to visit the site since May 4, a week before the war broke out.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam. It sits on a sprawling hilltop in Jerusalem’s Old City that is revered by Jews as their holiest site because it was the location of the biblical temples. The site has often been the scene of Israeli-Palestinian violence over the years and was the epicenter of the 2000 Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Israeli police repeatedly clashed with Palestinian protesters at the site in the days leading up to May 10, when Hamas fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem, saying they were protecting the city in the wake of the skirmishes. The threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families from a nearby neighborhood was cited as another major trigger of the war.

In recent years, increasing numbers of religious and nationalist Jews have visited the site. Palestinians fear Israel plans to eventually take over the compound or partition it. The Israeli government has repeatedly said it has no intention of changing the status quo, in which the Waqf oversees the site under Jordanian custodianship.

The recent war saw Israel unleash hundreds of airstrikes across Gaza at what it said were militant targets. Hamas and other armed groups fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel, most of which were intercepted or landed in open areas. At least 243 Palestinians were killed, as were 12 people in Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken leaves this week for the Mideast. He told ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday that the cease-fire offers a chance to “make a pivot to building something more positive.”

Blinken said the priorities include addressing the immediate humanitarian situation in Gaza, reconstructing what was lost in the violence and “engaging both sides in trying to start to make real improvements in the lives of people so that Israelis and Palestinians can live with equal measures of security, of peace and of dignity.”

The Israeli strikes leveled a number of large buildings in the impoverished coastal territory, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas, an Islamic militant group, seized power from forces loyal to the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in 2007.

Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said some 300 buildings in Gaza — including an estimated 1,000 homes — had been completely destroyed. She said hundreds more had been heavily damaged. She cautioned that those were “very, very preliminary numbers” as the damage is still being assessed.

Hastings said a total of six hospitals and 11 primary health care centers were damaged, and that one hospital was not functioning because of a lack of electricity. She said around 800,000 people lack access to tap water and 400,000 people do not have proper sewage treatment because of damage to local infrastructure.

Israel says it made every effort to avoid harming civilians and only targeted militant infrastructure, including a vast tunnel network and rocket launchers. It blames the war and its devastation on Hamas.

Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told “Fox News Sunday” that Israel had dealt Hamas a “heavy blow” and hoped it would serve as a deterrent. But he also expressed hope that the truce could last, noting “over half a decade of relative peace and quiet” after the last round of fighting in 2014.

On Sunday morning, hundreds of municipal workers and volunteers started a one-week campaign to clear rubble from Gaza’s streets. The work began outside a high-rise building that was flattened by Israeli warplanes during the early days of airstrikes on Gaza, with workers loading rubble into donkey carts and small pickup trucks.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday that the war may have left hundreds of unexploded munitions, which could cause further casualties and hinder efforts to rebuild.

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — In the summer of 1952, the International Amphitheater in Chicago, with air conditioning and state-of-the-art accommodations for a new breed of broadcast journalists, hosted not one but two presidential nominating conventions. The city’s 3.6 million people made it nearly twice the size of Los Angeles which, while glamorous and growing, was still a 40-hour train ride away, too distant even for big-league baseball.

With Chicago leading the way, midcentury Illinois was king of the nation’s middle, second only to New York. But those days were a distant memory last month when the Census Bureau reported that in the last decade, Illinois lost population for the first time in its history.

“We like to compare ourselves to New York and to L.A.,” said Erin Aleman, executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “To see the state experience a decline, it’s tough.”

Reversing the flow of young people out of Illinois poses tough questions for Democrats, who’ve proposed new legislative maps and whose control of the state has tightened as its national influence has shrunk. Experts say the state has to dump a Rust Belt mindset by widening employment opportunities, putting affordable housing in the right places and turning current tax policy on its head.

The decline was just 18,124 people, or about one-tenth of 1%, but it cost the state one of its 18 U.S. House seats — from a high of 27 in 1930 — a consequence more than psychological. Only two other states, Mississippi and West Virginia, lost residents.

Historically, an Associated Press review found that, not counting the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico, a decennial population loss has occurred to a state only 31 times since 1900. Downturns often occurred during cataclysms: half a dozen states lost people during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s; New York diminished in the 1970s amid a financial crisis that nearly pushed New York City into bankruptcy; Iowa fell during the farm crisis of the 1980s.

William Frey, senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, said Illinois is losing young people of child-bearing age, a loss compounded when those people go on to have their children in other states. And Illinois isn’t attracting enough young people from elsewhere, he said.

The decline was apparent early in the decade, even before Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who served from 2015-2019, advocated his conservative “turn around” agenda — lower taxes and fewer business regulations — to stem what he claimed was an exodus-from-Illinois stampede.

It’s the echo of Rauner’s drumbeat that piqued Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s response. Pritzker, who defeated the one-term Rauner in 2018, decried “the carnival barkers and the right-wing zealots” who he said were exaggerating the decline. He also hit Trump-era policies — late in the 2010s — that hampered immigrant inflow, long a source of growth for the state.

“I’m not going to downplay it in any way. We have to do better. We have to do more,” Pritzker said. “We need to keep our students here. We need to make it affordable for people to come to the state of Illinois and go to school here.”

Aleman believes there are answers in the Chicago Metropolitan Agency on Planning’s outlook, “On to 2050,” with appropriate housing planned for areas targeted for employment growth and with updated, community-friendly tax policies. Grousing about property taxes, at or near the nation’s highest, is an Illinois pastime.

“Those policies that are in place today were developed decades ago and really need to be brought up to date to deal with how we’re buying goods, how we’re living our lives, how we’re traveling on the roads,” Aleman said.

Two of those proposals, when floated during the past 20 years, have hit fierce opposition: Broadening the sales tax base to include services as well as products and substituting a usage fee for the motor fuel tax, whose impact has plummeted with fuel efficiency. Another key change would restructure the way state tax revenue is shared with municipalities to give them more flexibility in determining land use.

Stu Piper grew up in the Chicago suburb of LaGrange in a family that first farmed land in 1836, before Chicago was even incorporated as a city. Now a Realtor in Washington, D.C., but still a Prairie State booster, Piper said there’s strength outside Chicago in the stable housing prices offered by an abundance of smaller metropolitan areas such as Rockford, Peoria, the Quad Cities, Bloomington-Normal and Springfield.

“With the gig economy, there’s opportunities for people to work from home and live 100 miles from Chicago, maybe go in Chicago once or twice a month, or go to Rockford or Moline,” said Piper, past president of the Illinois Society of Washington, a group of Illinois ex-pats who promote the state in the nation’s capital.

“There’s a lot of people in Illinois, politicians and community leaders, that are thinking outside the box,” he said. “Not the same old, same way, go-along-get-along kind of politics, which Illinois has had for way too long.”

Contributing: AP Researcher Monika Mathur in New York; AP Writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago.

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NEW YORK — Singer Dua Lipa is blasting an organization that paid for a full-page ad in The New York Times that called her antisemitic for her support of Palestinians, saying it used her name “shamelessly” to “advance their ugly campaign with falsehoods and blatant misrepresentations.”

In the rambling ad which appeared in Saturday’s newspaper in the main section, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the head of the World Values Network, named Lipa, and the models Bella and Gigi Hadid as three “mega-influencers” who have “accused Israel of ethnic cleansing” and “vilified the Jewish State.”

Lipa took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to “reject the false and appalling allegations” and said the World Values Network twisted what she stands for. “I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people and reject all forms of racism,” she wrote.

Tensions increased in the Mideast since May 10, when Hamas militants in Gaza fired long-range rockets toward Jerusalem. The barrage came after days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

A cease-fire was declared Friday. The 11-day war left more than 250 dead — the vast majority Palestinians — and brought widespread devastation to the already impoverished Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Many celebrities have taken to social media to post pro-Palestinian messages, including the singer Zayn, Roger Waters, The Weeknd and Mark Ruffalo. Lipa is dating Anwar Hadid, Gigi and Bella’s brother.

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Any discussion about public subsidies to help Chicago hotels reopen should begin with their commitment to offer jobs first to laid-off workers.

Chicago’s hotels are beginning to reopen as the pandemic subsides, preparing to do business again as summer tourist attractions like Lollapalooza return, and the industry is asking the city for $75 million to help cover reopening costs.

We don’t know if that’s a good idea. Chicago could spend that $75 million, a portion of the city’s federal American Rescue Plan funds, in a dozen other good ways.

But we do know this: Any discussion about subsidizing the costs of reopening for hotels should begin with a commitment by the industry, enshrined in an ordinance, to bring back workers laid off during the pandemic before hiring new employees.

Hotels have been devastated by the pandemic. Their entire reason for existence — to offer food and lodgings to people going places and meeting in person — came to a halt. But employees of the hotels have been hurt as much or more. Tens of thousands of Chicago hotel workers who were paid modestly to begin with were laid off last year because there no longer were jobs to do — no bed sheets to change, no bathrooms to clean, no tables to set.

“No industry has been harder hit by the pandemic than the hospitality industry, whose workers are overwhelmingly women of color,” Karen Kent, president of UNITE HERE Local 1, which represents workers at 51 hotels in the city, told us. “These women have worked years, if not decades, in the same hotel, spending late nights, weekends and holidays taking care of guests. They deserve the right to return to the work they love as hotels begin to rehire.”

We have no doubt that hotels will be recalling many of those workers without outside prompting, just as a matter of good business. Hard-working and experienced workers are prized. But we also have no doubt that some employers won’t want to bother with the hassle of reaching out to former employees as job applications from potential new employees pile up in human resources. Hotels might also see this as an opportunity to permanently unload higher paid workers.

A proposed ordinance pending in the City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development, dubbed the “Right to Return to Work” bill, would require hotels to notify laid-off employees by seniority when jobs become available for which they are qualified and given them 10 days to accept or decline the offer.

That would include the job the laid-off worker previously did — a hotel housekeeper, for example, would have to be offered a housekeeper job that opened up — but also any job for which that worker could reasonably be trained, just as any new employee would have to be trained.

The Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, as you would expect, opposes the ordinance, saying it would created an unnecessary burden on hotels that already are in financial dire straits because of the pandemic and will be struggling to reopen. Hotels usually hire back former workers first in these situations anyway, as they did when they rebounded after the attacks of Sept. 11, the association argues, and record-keeping requirements of the proposed ordinance just add to their costs. The industry worries about litigation, as well, if some former employees feel they were overlooked.

The reality, though, is that Chicago’s hospitality industry was doing strong business before the pandemic, and it will do strong business again as the pandemic lifts. The industry can afford to treat its workers — including the laid-off ones — right. Hotels will be hiring back workers, with the incurred expenses of doing so, only as business and revenues pick up.

The Chicago ordinance is supported by UNITED HERE, which reports that only about a fourth of its 16,000 members are working. The ordinance was introduced in November by Ald. Ray Lopez, 15th, and Ald. Ed Burke, 14th.

Similar ordinances and laws have been approved in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and the state of California, and casino workers are pushing for the law in Nevada.

Send letters to [email protected].

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