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April 29, 2016 1:24 PM EDT - "Southside With You" is the story of Barack and Michelle Obama's very first date in Chicago in 1989, starring Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as the young couple. (Roadside Attractions)

The freshman nursing major said that after most of the passengers in her rail car got off at the UIC-Halsted stop, one man moved to the seat in front of her. As the train left the station, Hughes said she got a bad feeling. That's when the 19-year-old said the man tried to take her iPhone. "He started pushing me and then he pushed me to the floor and when he pushed me to the floor, he started hitting on me constantly. His body was on top of me holding me down so I couldn't fight back," she said. But...

<p>In broad daylight at 10 AM Thursday, 19 year old nursing student Jessica Hughes was attacked and beaten by a pair of muggers whose race the media do not care to mention, as other passengers on the train did not lift a finger to help her.</p>

Evanston is joining a number of other cities, teaming with the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day on the city's celebration calendar later this year. The city and museum, which is based in Evanston at 3001 Central St., announced Wednesday in a press release hey are joining other cities, universities and cultural institutions to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, to be celebrated Monday, Oct. 10.

A vermin infestation has overrun the kitchen of a suburban Chicago Veterans Affairs hospital and is reportedly so severe that cockroaches routinely crawl across countertops as cooks prepare meals. The insects have even found their way into patients’ food, employees say. The bug invasion has attracted the attention of a U.S. senator who is demanding to know how the VA is fixing the problem. It’s just the latest scandal at an agency rocked by allegations of abuse, incompetence and the needless deaths of veterans who wait years for medical appointments.

As far-left MSNBC hosts go--an admittedly low bar--I'll admit to having found Chris Hayes a relatively fair and decent proponent of his misguided policies. But he did two things tonight that made me lose respect for him. First, he literally laughed in the face of Rick Tyler, calling "preposterous" his depiction of Donald Trump as a "northeastern liberal progressive." This despite Trump's record of donating to . . . northeastern liberal progressives and describing himself, among other things, as "very pro-choice." Would Hayes ever be so rude to a liberal guest? Even worse when it comes to hypocrisy, it is...

Three major cities accounted for more than half of the rise in the national murder rate between 2014 and 2015, a new report shows. Though overall crime rates were stagnant in America’s 30 largest cities the murder rate rose 13.3 percent, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice. The violent crime rate also rose by 3.1% in those major cities, lead by increases in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Charlotte.

Two men were killed and at least six other people were wounded in shootings Tuesday across Chicago. One man was killed and another was critically wounded in a shooting at 4:37 p.m. in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side. The men, ages 19 and 24, were traveling in a vehicle in the 900 block of West Garfield when another vehicle pulled up and someone inside fired shots, according to Chicago Police. Earlier Tuesday evening, a man was shot in the West Side Austin neighborhood. The 23-year-old was outside of a home in the 4700 block of...

(Washington, DC) – The Obama State Department last week admitted it withheld a key Benghazi email of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Judicial Watch since at least September 2014. If the State Department disclosed the email when first supposedly found, Clinton’s email server and her hidden emails would have been disclosed nearly two years ago, before Clinton authorized the alleged deletion of tens of thousands of emails. The developments come in a July 2014 Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records related to the drafting and use of the Benghazi talking points (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of...

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who wrote a letter asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate Chicago Police policies in December, recently said the windy city’s law enforcement is “holding back.” In coverage of the 44 people killed or injured in last weekend’s shootings in Chicago, WGN-TV reports:U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin feels the spike in shootings could be related in part to low officer morale, as the Department of Justice investigates the police department. “I think they’re holding back now in fear of video cameras, DNA, and losing a job over a mistake they might make,” Durbin said.…

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - At first, Mexico's government did its best to ignore Donald Trump. Then it likened him to Adolf Hitler. Now it has appointed a new ambassador to come up with a better plan. Fed up with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination labeling Mexico as a cradle of drug-runners, job poachers and rapists, the government is sending in respected diplomat Carlos Sada to lead a fightback. Mexico's new ambassador in Washington, Sada acknowledges his country has neglected its image across the border and aims to fix that with PR and media campaigns, and by lobbying prominent...

In a complicated political season, nobody has more complications to worry about than the half-dozen Republican senators seeking re-election in tight, swing-state contests. Those senators–hailing from Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina—are being buffeted by big forces largely out of their control as they try to hang onto their seats. Their fate will determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate, where they currently have a 54-46 advantage. The predicament of these GOP senators comes into clearer focus in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, completed just last week, which helps crystallize three big complications they...

Three people were killed and at least 20 others have been wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening. The most recent homicide happened early Sunday in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

resident Obama argued that the US does not have more people in prison than any other developed country “because we have more criminals. It’s because we have criminal justice policies, including unfair sentencing laws, that need to be reformed.” He added “simply locking people up doesn’t make communities safer” because “It doesn’t deal with the conditions that lead people to criminal activity in the first place, or to return to prison later.”

A Senate bill that would allow families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi government has achieved a rare Washington distinction, by uniting the Obama administration and some of its fiercest GOP critics. President Barack Obama and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are rallying to kill the bipartisan plan that would make it possible for American citizens to sue foreign governments believed to be linked to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said the plan should be reviewed through regular order before decisions are made about advancing the measure. White House Press...

Republican groups, leaders and candidates opposed to Donald Trump increasingly see the Indiana primary as a central front in their last-ditch efforts to stop him from clinching the GOP presidential nomination. But fractures in the movement, and a clear lack of urgency among local Republicans to unite against Trump, are undercutting their ability to deliver the state.

With the city facing the threat of a teachers strike, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis focused attention on Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday in an incendiary speech that likened the Republican governor's actions to terrorism. "Rauner is the new ISIS recruit," Lewis said during an address at a packed City Club of Chicago luncheon, using a term that refers to the Islamic State terrorist group. "Yes, I said it, and I'll say it again," Lewis continued. "Bruce Rauner is a liar. And, you know, I've been reading in the news lately all about these ISIS recruits popping up all...

Surveillance video shows more than a dozen people doing nothing to help a Chicago bartender as he is attacked, left unconscious on the street and accidentally run over by a taxi. Marques Gaines later died at a hospital. The family of 32-year-old Gaines has filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against several businesses and taxi companies in his Feb. 7 death. …

Chicago Blackhawks’ forward Andrew Shaw has been suspended for one game after using a homophobic slur twice during Tuesday night’s playoff loss against the St. Louis Blues. The league announced the suspension Wednesday along with a $5,000 fine for "directing an inappropriate gesture at the on-ice officials" during the game. Shaw will also be required to undergo sensitivity training, according to the NHL. The suspension means Shaw will miss Game 5 of the team's series against the Blues, where they are facing elimination.

A new cluster of Elizabethkingia infection, previously rarely seen in humans, has been found in Illinois, health officials said Wednesday. Testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the Elizabethkingia anophelis infection in 10 Illinois residents, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Six of those individuals have died. Most of the infected patients had underlying health conditions, and it's unknown if they died from the infection or pre-existing conditions.