Extra, Extra - A.M. Edition

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Dec 27, 2008 4:00PM

Photo by trippchicago

Catching up on news from over the holiday...

• Dueling Blagos - Gov. Blagojevich has to figure out how to be in two places at once on January 14 when he's constitutionally bound to be in Springfield to oversee the swearing in of new members to the state senate and is also required to be in federal court in downtown Chicago for a preliminary hearing focusing on probable cause in the current federal case against him.

• Police continue to search for the mother of an infant who was abandoned in the vestibule of an Uptown apartment building earlier this week.

• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - Area drivers and riders of mass transit weren't the only ones dealing with treacherous conditions. After a plane skidded off a taxiway at O'Hare on Wednesday, a plane got stuck in a snowbank on a taxiway at Midway yesterday.

• It's been a rough week for CTA workers. A CTA bus driver is recovering from a bullet graze wound suffered on Christmas Day. The incident happened at 66th & Western when two men outside the bus got into an argument and one fired a gun which went through the bus and grazed the driver on the knee. And then last night a Blue Line train conductor was injured last night when the worker left the train near Morgan Street to check a mechanical problem and fell on the southbound tracks. The tracks were shut off for around half-an-hour and the worker was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

• An interesting yet completely unsurprising report from the Tribune identifies Chicago as "America's most segregated big city." According to the study, "To truly integrate Chicago, 84 percent of the black or white population would need to change neighborhoods, the data show."

• State Rep. Will Burns (D-26th) is prepared to introduce legislation that would allow Governor Rod Blagojevich to appoint President-Elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate replacement, but would call for two public hearings and require both the State House and Senate to approve the selection. Burns also says the legislation would apply to this specific instance only.

• We can't stress this enough: beware of carbon monoxide. Three people, including two children, on the city's northwest side were hospitalized yesterday morning as a result of a carbon monoxide leak in their building. Meanwhile, a Park City man died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning after he seemingly passed out in his car while it was running. Suicide was not suspected and it's speculated the man may have been drinking before he passed out.

• Congrats to Naperville Central grad Candace Parker who was selected the Associated Press's 2008 Female Athlete of the Year thanks to a year that saw her win a national championship at Tennessee, drafted first in the WNBA, earn WNBA Rookie of the Year and MVP honors, and help the U.S. Women's team capture Olympic Gold. Damn.