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Illinois House passes sweeping abortion rights bill after emotional floor debate

After a lengthy and emotional debate, the Illinois House passed a controversial abortion rights bill Tuesday that opponents characterized as extreme but supporters say is necessary to protect women as several states enact more restrictive laws.

The bill would repeal the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 and its provisions that called for spousal consent, waiting periods, criminal penalties for physicians who perform abortions and other restrictions on facilities where abortions are performed. The bill would establish “the fundamental right” of a pregnant woman to have an abortion and states that “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights.”

The bill now heads to the Senate, where it likely faces an easier path to passage than in the House.

• The Supreme Court signaled it is more open to state restrictions on abortion, upholding an Indiana law that requires the burial or cremation of fetal remains.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces first test of her ability to ‘get s--- done’ with her plan to overhaul the City Council

After weeks of Lori Lightfoot hyping her campaign pledge to reform City Hall, and of some aldermen complaining both about her ideas for shaking things up and her bedside manner, Chicago’s new mayor will ask them to vote for her plan to overhaul the City Council on Wednesday. Central to that effort is her plan to award council committee chairmanships — and the jobs and prestige that come with them — to 18 members. The success or failure of this first move to put her imprint on the council will give an indication how things will go for the next several years.

• Lightfoot laid out her 100-day ethics agenda in a wide-ranging speech on Tuesday: “Make no mistake about it: Change is hard, but change is necessary”

A Chicagoan who survived a deadly week on Mount Everest says more precautions are needed

News organizations across the world last week carried a mind-boggling photo taken near the top of Mount Everest: Dozens of climbers formed a nearly unbroken line on the final ascent to the summit, a throng you might expect to see at the opening of a new roller coaster, not in the “death zone” approaching the highest spot on earth.

Chicago mountaineer Alexander Pancoe wasn’t in that queue, but he did reach the summit last Thursday and blamed the recent high death toll on uncooperative weather, inexperienced climbers and tour companies that take too many chances.

ICE raided the Chicago home of a student pastor and her husband. Now they’ve been deported to Colombia.

On a recent morning, Betty Rendón Madrid was still in her pajamas and making breakfast when immigration agents showed up at her home on Chicago’s South Side. ICE agents arrested Rendón Madrid, a student pastor at an Evangelical Lutheran church in southern Wisconsin, along with her husband. On Tuesday, less than three weeks later, the couple had been placed on an airplane and deported to their native Colombia.

Chicago police say they fatally shot the brother of a suspect, after earlier saying they killed the suspect

The brother of a man wanted in the slaying of a 15-year-old boy earlier this month was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon by Chicago police officers about half a block from a grade school in the South Chicago neighborhood, authorities said. A police spokesman said Tuesday evening that fingerprints determined the man who was shot by police was the brother of the murder fugitive who was being sought. Officials said earlier Tuesday that the man shot was the suspect.

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Aquaculture technicians Zed Leath and Michael Schneider take a sample of Atlantic salmon raised at AquaBounty Farms Indiana, a commercial fish farm in Albany, Ind., on April 30, 2019. The 24,000-gallon tank contains around 15,000 fish weighting 3.5 ounces. The farm will raise the first genetically modified Atlantic salmon cleared for human consumption in the U.S. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Soon, your salmon could come from Indiana. The first-ever GMO animal in the U.S. could hit supermarket shelves next year.

A Massachusetts-based biotech company has chosen Indiana to raise its genetically altered salmon, which grow about twice as fast as their wild counterparts. It’s the first GMO animal the FDA has approved for human consumption. The Indiana operation could be a landmark moment for the Midwest, where land-based fish farming has struggled to turn a profit. Experts say GMO animals will likely be necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population, but consumers remain skeptical about what might wind up on their dinner plate.

• There are GMO animals all around us — from glowing pet fish to “friendly” mosquitoes.

I tested Verizon's 5G network in Chicago

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Verizon’s 5G network is up and running in Chicago, and when it works, the fifth generation of wireless lives up to the hype. But the network is still in its very early days, with spotty coverage and limited uses. Armed with Samsung’s newly released 5G phone, the $1,300 Galaxy S10 5G, Tribune business reporter Ally Marotti tested the network throughout River North and the Loop last week.

Chicago winter without a furnace or gas bill: Passive houses make it possible and are slowly catching on

The idea is simple: airtight construction that leads to energy conservation and, in the ideal scenario, no carbon footprint. But even as the construction industry and homebuyers put more emphasis on eco-friendly building practices — and owners can vouch for the benefits — true passive houses are still relatively rare and have been slow to catch on.

“It’s so unsexy,” Tom Bassett-Dilley joked about the science behind building passive, noting it doesn’t have the same flare as, say, solar power.

Tribune Voices

• At People's Music School, parents clean toilets, repair leaks, work security — all for a shot at a world-class education for their kids. Heidi Stevens reports.
• Democrats seem to have lost their sense of curiosity when it comes to looking at the origins of the Trump-Russian investigation, says John Kass.
• By defending Andrew Jackson’s legacy against the Obama-era initiative to honor abolitionist hero Harriet Tubman, Trump is appealing directly to those who are threatened by all sorts of liberal second-guessing of America’s past, writes Eric Zorn.