This weekend in Chicago at least 41 people were shot, seven of them fatally. The youngest victim was 16 years old.

Lightning hits the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and another building during a storm in downtown Chicago Wednesday evening.

Paul Joseph Fronczak is not actually Paul Joseph Fronczak. Nor is he Scott McKinley. In fact, he has no idea who he is.

A strike that lasted ten years and became a fixture of Chicago's “Magnificent Mile,” finally ended Wednesday when workers at the Congress Plaza Hotel offered to return to work with no conditions.

The Chicago-Sun Times laid off its entire photography staff this morning in a purge that cut about 28 staffers, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Walking through a Chicago store, a Muslim activist spotted the perfect birthday card for the Fox News-hounds in our lives, featuring an adorable hijab-wearing doll with an explosive secret. Why is a tasteless greeting card newsworthy? Well, it turns out there's a little more going on behind the veil here.

First, watch the video. All of it. Especially from about 2:00 on.

An estimated 500 workers from various fast food restaurants and retail stores around Chicago went on strike this morning. The employees, from restaurants like McDonald’s and Subway and stores like Sears, Nike, and Victoria's Secret, are demanding an increase in the minimum wage—to $15—and for the ability to unionize.

If you're going to rob a store in Chicago, it'd probably be smart to make sure it's not one owned by Luis Quizhpe. In the video above, you can see the 62-year-old Quizhipe absolutely wrecking shit as he successfully fends off two gunmen armed only with a baseball bat.

Police in Chicago say a teenager with gang ties tried to blame a self-inflicted gunshot to the groin on a pair of ninjas before eventually coming clean.

A six-month-old died Tuesday morning, the day after she was the victim of a shooting in Chicago. The baby, Jonylah Watkins, was shot five times, reportedly while her father, the reported target of the shooting, changed her diaper in his mini-van in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. The father, Jonathan Watkins, was also shot several times and was taken to a nearby hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

Chicago and Minneapolis are bracing themselves for over 10 inches of snow as a major winter storm—the season's last, let's hope—gears up to blanket the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, and possibly even hit New York and Boston. The storm, currently hovering around the Great Lakes, has already started snowing over Minnesota, and will dump nearly a foot on Midwestern cities over the course of Tuesday and Tuesday night, before heading southeast toward West Virginia, Virginia and D.C., where six to 15 inches of wet, heavy snow could knock out power. From there, meteorologists believe it could swing back up northwards instead of on out to sea, leaving New York City with six inches and Boston with as many as 12. Snowplows were deployed in Chicago early this morning. Cancellations at O'Hare are likely. In D.C. they're calling it "Snowquester"; on the Weather Channel they're calling it "Saturn." We will be calling it neither of those things. [Chicago Tribune | AccuWeather | Weather.com | Boston Globe]

Hours after her sister sat behind President Obama during his speech in Chicago on Friday, 18-year-old Janay McFarlane was killed by a gunshot wound to the head. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is; not three weeks ago, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was killed by stray gunfire in Chicago, just days after performing at Obama's second inauguration. MacFarlane's 14-year old sister Destiny is a student at Hyde Park Career Academy, the school Obama visited on Friday to speak about Chicago's gun violence.

Civil rights scion and disgraced former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was officially charged today with, among other things, conspiracy to misuse around three-quarters of a million dollars in campaign funds. According to papers filed in a Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court today, Jackson, who was still a congressman at the time, used donor money to buy everything from a $43,000 gold Rolex to cashmere capes—capes, plural—to nearly $20,000 of Michael Jackson memorabilia. The documents allege that Jackson and a co-conspirator used a campaign credit card to make $582,772.58 of purchases for personal use, and that Jackson debited another $60,000 directly out of the campaign's account.

Michelle Obama will attend the funeral for the 15 year old shot to death just days after performing at the inauguration.

An honor student from one of Chicago's top schools who had just performed at President Obama's second inauguration ceremony last week was killed yesterday after being caught in the crossfire of a gang-related shooting.

Chicago Public School officials have apologized for an email typo that directed parents to a website dedicated to "explor[ing] and enrich[ing] women's sex lives and sensuality."

Ever wanted to be a policeman in Chicago? No? Me neither! But maybe we should all consider career changes, seeing as a few Chicago policemen (and other various city personnel) are probably making much more than you or I in overtime pay alone. The Inspector General of Chicago recently released its report for the fourth quarter of 2012, which includes the amount of overtime paid to city employees last year. It is a list of people that have figured their shit out.

Surveillance footage capturing a homeless man's death in the alley behind a CVS pharmacy in Chicago in 2010 was released today, showing several minutes of the attack in which store manager Pedro Villarosa held down and strangled 35-year-old Anthony Kyser while six passersby helped hold him down.

Officials at Chicago's O'Hare Airport intercepted a package containing eighteen severed human heads a couple week ago, and are getting a little tired of everyone acting like it's weird.