Chicago Daily Observer

Chicago Sun-Times Publisher John Cruickshank has resigned to head Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s news division, sources said Wednesday.

Cruickshank also is chief operating officer of the Sun-Times Media Group’s Chicago portfolio of 100 area newspapers. He will replace Tony Burman, who retired as CBC News editor-in-chief on July 13.

After years of inactivity in regulating so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs), U.S. policy may be on the verge of doing so. In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government was authorized to regulate GHG emissions from human activity, which some believe accelerate warming of the earth’s atmosphere, causing disruptive and costly climate changes. Carbon dioxide is the major source of such GHG emissions, making up 75–80 percent of the total volume. This fall, the U.S. Congress is expected to consider bills to control GHGs. Regionally, state and local governments are already acting to reduce GHGs or curb their growth. Most notably, California proposes to reduce emissions by one-third from 2004 levels by 2020. According to this plan, such reductions will be achieved by requiring more fuel-efficient cars and buildings and by requiring that the state’s electricity is generated from renewable energy sources and less carbon-intensive ... Read More...

Tracy Jan’s exposé on minority teachers failing certification exams, even in their designated fields, should be more than an eye-opener for those who continue to believe the blind can lead the blind.

The usual protectors of the dignity of non-performing minority teachers are quick to reassure us that the validity of the test is to be questioned due to potential for “cultural biases.” As education school deans ask for the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure to be redesigned, they also lament that we should determine “whether the quality of education that minority teaching applicants receive is good enough.”

Bank of America’s $21bn acquisition of ABN Amro’s US division has hit a potential stumbling block after two US senators requested assurances over potential job cuts and community involvement at the Chicago-based LaSalle.

Barack Obama, the presidential hopeful, and Senate whip Dick Durbin asked to meet Ken Lewis, BofA chief executive, to discuss a transaction that would eliminate the city’s last major bank headquarters and lead to at least 4,000 job losses.

If, as many are speculating, former Speaker Denny Hastert resigns his Congressional seat in early November, it could set up a truly bizarre spectacle on Feb. 5, 2008: the winner of the general special election to fill the unexpired term (likely to be held that day) could simultaneously lose his primary for the regular term. That would not just be a lame duck, but a duck born lame.
As the scenario is developing it seems likely that Hastert will step down then. If a seat in congress will be vacant for more than 180 days the governor must call a special election. In this case there would be two, a special primary before the regular primary and a special general. The special primary would probably be in late December or early January. It would almost certainly be a low turnout affair.
Most observers think the scenario has ... Read More...

Truer words may never have been spoken on the silver screen. That is when the late John Huston, playing Noah Cross in “Chinatown,” utters these immortal lines: “‘Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

An Atlanta based author, Karen Abbott, who has specialized in romance novels, has set out to prove this axiom true. In Sin in the Second City she seeks to rehabilitate the reputations of two brothel owners who were driven out of Chicago by the express orders of Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., nearly a century ago. It is the most recent book to revisit the notorious and opulent Everleigh Club. The former bordello was located in Chicago’s infamous segregated red light district, the Levee which was the city’s old red-light district which in its early 20th century heyday was a conglomerate of door-to-door gambling dens, clip ... Read More...

The National Institutes of Health has awarded one of 12 Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) for 2007 to a team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center. These awards, together with 12 CTSAs awarded in 2006, form the core of an NIH effort to build a national consortium of select centers that will “transform how clinical and translational research is conducted,” ultimately enabling researchers to provide new and better treatments more efficiently and quickly to patients.