Nearly 100 people have been shot in Chicago in less than a week, pushing the number of shooting victims this year to more than 2,500 — about 800 more than at this time last year, according to data kept by the Chicago Tribune.
Between last Friday afternoon and early Thursday, at least 99 people were shot in the city, 24 of them fatally. At least nine people were killed Monday alone, the deadliest day in Chicago in 13 years, according to Tribune data. Among the wounded that day was a 10-year-old boy shot in the back as he played on his front porch in the city’s Lawndale section.
The number of shooting victims in Chicago stood at 2,514 on Thursday morning. At that point last year, 1,725 people had been shot. The city has not seen this level of gun violence since the 1990s. The police department blames the trend on lax gun laws and feuding gangs.
In the space of eight hours from Wednesday evening through early Thursday, three people were killed and at least 10 others were wounded by gunfire in the city.
— McClatchy-Tribune
Virginia Tech researchers who exposed the lead problem in Flint, Mich., gave an upbeat opinion of the city’s water quality Thursday after finding no detectable levels of the toxin in nearly half of 162 homes tested in July.
Marc Edwards still urged residents to drink only filtered tap water or bottled water while the system improves. But at the same time, he said, “the wind is kind of at our back” as long as the water continues to be treated with phosphates to reduce corrosion, a critical step that was missed when the city used water from the Flint River for 18 months.
“This is nearing the end of the beginning of the end of the public health disaster response,” said Edwards, an expert in environmental engineering. “Flint water now looks like it’s entering a range that’s considered normal for other U.S. cities.”
Edwards is credited with blowing the whistle a year ago on high levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water, although it took several more weeks for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and federal regulators to finally acknowledge a disaster in the city of roughly 100,000.
— Associated Press
The map that has twice been used to elect the North Carolina General Assembly is unconstitutional because many of the districts are racially gerrymandered, a panel of federal judges ruled Thursday.
Elections can proceed this year, the judges said in their order, because delaying the vote would cause “undue disruption.” But the legislature must redraw the districts in the next legislative session for use in 2018.
The judges concluded that “the overriding priority of the redistricting plan was to draw a predetermined, race-based number of districts.”
The defendants “have not shown that their use of race to draw any of these districts was narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest,” the opinion said.
Of the 170 legislative districts, 28 are racially gerrymandered, judges ruled.
Legislative redistricting leaders said their attorneys are reviewing the ruling. After the legislature approved the districts, the Justice Department signed off on them.
— McClatchy-Tribune
