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A city employee caught in gang crossfire was among five people killed and 40 more wounded in shootings across Chicago between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. Chicago Police issued a statement Sunday in the middle of one of the first consistently warm weekends of the spring, as intensified city gun violence typically accompanies rising temperatures. “As we look toward the summer months, Superintendent Johnson has made it very clear that the violence will not be tolerated – period,” the statement said. “The cause of the violence traces back decades, and everyone has a role to play in fixing it –...

CHICAGO - A city employee caught in gang crossfire was among four people killed and 29 more wounded in shootings across Chicago since late Friday afternoon, police said. The most recent homicide happened Saturday night in the South Side Englewood neighborhood. A 26-year-old man was walking in the 7000 block of South Carpenter about 7:40 p.m. when two gunmen walked out of a gangway and opened fire, shooting him in the abdomen, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center where he later died. The latest wave of violence saw seven people wounded in about less than five...

Headline only per FR posting rules. EgyptAir flight MS804: Pilot spoke with air traffic control 'for several minutes before crash'

Data transmitted from a doomed EgyptAir flight minutes before it fell off radar screens suggests a fire had broken out on board the plane, according to an aviation industry website. AvHerald.com is reporting that data transmissions from EgyptAir Flight 804 to ground stations show smoke was detected in a bathroom near the cockpit. The report includes the plane-to-ground messages sent in the final minutes of the flight: 00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE 00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE 00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR 00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT 00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT The information would suggest the...

Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created NY state exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: "We don't take Obamacare," the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president's signature health legislation. Though their insurance cards look the same as everyone else's the plans are often very different from those provided to most Americans by their employers....

Donald Trump will have a climate plan and it will be ugly. For now, the Republican frontrunner is pedaling the kind of denialism his party loves, having called global warming everything from a "hoax" to a "con job" to a Chinese plot. But an interview with his energy adviser hinted that Trump might endeavor to Make Atmospheric Carbon Levels Great Again. "My advice would be, while I'm a skeptic as well", Trump energy honcho Kevin Cramer [said], "he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change". Cramer has...

Right now, thousands of people are taking direct action as part of a global wave of protests against the biggest fossil fuel infrastructure projects across the world. With so many governments still dependent on a fossil fuel economy, they can't be relied upon to make the radical change required in the time we need to make it. It is unjust that corporations and governments can commit crimes against the planet and society without retribution. And if we really want climate justice, protest in the pursuit of this must be normalized. To overcome political barriers, we need to reclaim our power...

After raising its premiums for coverage on the Obamacare exchange by 36.3 percent for 2016, the state's dominant health insurer is heralding another increase of the "same order of magnitude" for 2017. BlueCross BlueShield claims it lost more than $150 million in 2015 when its rates were among the lowest in the land. But the 36.3 percent increase for 2016, the largest of any state, brings Tennessee rates to just about the national average. So how on Earth can costs be going up so exponentially to justify such a rate increase on the part of a nonprofit insurance company whose...

Four people were killed and at least 14 people have been wounded in Chicago since early Wednesday afternoon, including a triple fatal shooting in Englewood and five people shot in the evening in the Park Manor neighborhood. A man and two women were shot to death during a domestic-related incident in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side. A 50-year-old man, his 30-year-old daughter and her 26-year-old sister-in-law were in the 1500 block of West 71st Street when a known man fired shots at them during a domestic-related incident. The shooting happened inside and outside of a home on the...

The shrinkage of employee retirement resources in the US has been well documented, as employers shift more risk onto their workers. Less so is the rate at which employers have been eliminating healthcare benefits for retirees. As the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported, retiree health coverage is becoming an endangered species. "Employer-sponsored retiree health coverage once played a key role in supplementing Medicare," observe Tricia Neuman of the foundation. "Any way you slice it, this coverage is eroding." The chances of reversing this trend, plainly, are nil. But it's important to keep an eye on it, if only as a...

Humana wasn't kidding when it hinted last week of big premium hikes for 2017 in those ObamaCare markets where it remains. This year, the nation's fifth-largest insurer offers the cheapest bronze and silver plans in Michigan's largest market, including Detroit. But Humana has filed for a 50% premium hike for its low-cost silver plan. Meanwhile, Humana wants a 38% premium increase for its lowest-cost bronze plan. So far only Oregon, where insurers are requesting an average 27% premium hike, and Virginia, where insurers want an 18% hike, are the only two states to make all rate filings available.

Pension fund chiefs from California and New York City urged Exxon Mobil shareholders on Wednesday to back a measure that would force the company to finely detail how its business will be impacted as governments move to tackle climate change. CalPERS investment director Anne Simpson and NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer also said in a letter they would engage other shareholders as they push the world's largest publicly-traded oil company to say more about how its revenues, reserves and operations could be hurt by the Paris Agreement that governments signed in December to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Their...

Citizens turned out in massive crowds to add their signatures to the recall referendum against Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro. And for good reason. The country is in a state of paralysis: frequent blackouts; food, medicine and vaccine scarcities; closed-down factories and frequent looting. Chaos and anarchy hang over the nation that not so long ago was the most rich and advanced in Latin America. Without a doubt the fault of the country's dire situation is on the late president Hugo Chávez. His socialist policies devastated Venezuela's flourishing economy. But in a less obvious way, Venezuelan citizens are also to blame....

A Mexican judge has ruled that drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman can be extradited to face charges in the United States, the country's federal court authority said on Monday, days after he was moved to a prison on the U.S. border. He faces charges ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder in cities that include Chicago, Miami and New York. Juan Pablo Badillo, one of Guzman's lawyers, said his client's legal situation was still being processed and that to extradite him now would be a violation of his human rights.

US Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. wants colleges to stop asking applicants about their criminal histories early in the admissions process. Because a disproportionate number of people who have been charged with crimes are people of color, the U.S. Department of Education says, these questions increase the barriers disadvantaged students face when seeking an education. “We believe in second chances and we believe in fairness,” King said in a statement. “We must ensure that more people ... have the chance at higher education opportunities.” The Department of Education is sending a guide, called “Beyond the Box,” with suggestions...

CHICAGO (WLS) - The violence plaguing Chicago did not stop this Mother's Day weekend. At least 49 people were shot and seven died over the last three days in locations all over the city. On Friday, mothers who lost children to violence pleaded for calm over the weekend, but their pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. Community members spoke out against the violence on a weekend when mothers are supposed to be spending time with their children, not saying goodbye.

Two men were killed and at least 22 other people have been wounded in shootings since Friday afternoon across the city, according to Chicago police.

For some Democrats, Donald Trump may seem to be a gift - set to steer Republicans into a trainwreck election in November - but senior Democrat Harry Reid said on Thursday he worried people might be too confident. "Am I concerned about it? Of course I am," the U.S. Senate Democratic leader said. "I think this race could be a debacle for the Republicans," Reid added. "But I'm not taking anything for granted. I'm not being over confident." "By nominating Trump, I guess it's the natural evolution of a party that's spent eight years defining itself entirely on what it's...

State lawmakers in California are circulating legislation that would open the door for illegal immigrants to buy health insurance from Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange. State Sen. Ricardo Lara introduced the bill to pave the way for illegal immigrants to purchase health plans from Covered California. Many people believe this move to not grant money makes the legislation mainly symbolic because most illegal immigrants would not practically be able to pay for health premiums on their own, according to Kaiser Health. Covered California staff personnel presented an analysis of the proposed legislation to the organization's board last month and...

California's public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to know where their money's at," said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, a Republican. The two bills went down Wednesday on a party-line vote, after dozens of union members came out against the legislation....