* NBC…

The architects of the country’s strongest state AI laws are calling on the largest AI companies to rein in the speed of AI development until their safety-focused efforts can match their technological advances.

In a joint statement shared with NBC News, five state lawmakers say they are worried that the companies are dangerously prioritizing greater AI capabilities over research into how to make cutting-edge AI systems safe.

The country’s leading AI companies should “work together to eliminate the risk that a catastrophe will result from their rush to build highly capable AI systems before solving problems of alignment and safety,” the statement says.

Pointing to recent AI-fueled incidents at frontier AI companies, the five state lawmakers argue AI systems may be getting dangerously adept at cheating on tests or tricking humans, potentially putting the public and critical digital infrastructure at risk. […]

Bores and Gounardes authored New York’s RAISE Act, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed in March and will take effect in January. Edly-Allen and Didech authored Illinois’ SB 315, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed in July and will also take effect in January.

*** Chicago ***

* Block Club | Mayor’s Office Revises Renter Protection Ordinance, Giving Break To Small Landlords: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has revised its proposed Protecting Renters Ordinance, making key changes in an effort to get it passed this month. The updates, being circulated to alderpeople this week as City Council returns from its August break, would exempt small landlords with six or fewer units from several of the legislation’s provisions and reduce relocation payments.

* NBC Chicago | More than 300 Chicago Uber employees part of company’s ‘mass layoff’: More than 300 Uber employees in Chicago will lose their jobs in a “mass layoff” as the rideshare company seeks to reduce its workforce by 10%. The reduction was announced Tuesday in a memo to employees from Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The memo, titled “Building a simpler, faster Uber,” said the company was making “significant organizational changes” and simplifying team structures despite Uber’s growth over the past five years.

* Sun-Times | Once-secret records show grand jurors sought Bovino testimony, more evidence in doomed Midway Blitz cases: The court records, unsealed at the request of the Chicago Sun-Times, offer a rare window into grand jury proceedings during the feds’ pummeling deportation campaign last fall. Far from being a rubber stamp, grand jurors repeatedly pushed for proof that defendants had broken the law.

* Crain’s | What would Bears game day look like in Hammond? The team is asking fans: The detailed survey asks fans and potential ticket buyers to weigh in on everything from seating, suites and food packages to parking and tailgating as the Bears continue due diligence on a potential stadium site near Wolf Lake. While the team stresses that the concepts and prices are hypothetical, the questionnaire provides a strikingly detailed look at how the Bears are thinking about a possible move to northwest Indiana.

* WBEZ | Here’s how extreme heat affects Chicago’s moveable bridges: When closed, Chicago bascule bridges like DuSable Lake Shore Drive bridge are somewhat protected from thermal expansion due to cooler air from the river below, explained Jim Phillips, founder of website ChicagoLoopBridges.com. (Translated from French, “bascule” means “seesaw.”) “Once raised, the bridge leaf is exposed to higher temperatures and it expands,” he said. Sometimes the expansion “is enough to cause problems returning the leaf to the closed position.”

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Crain’s | Ascension Illinois taps new executives at two northwest suburban hospitals: Ascension Illinois has announced executive moves at two northwest suburban hospitals this week, naming Dr. Bruce McNulty chief medical officer at its Alexian Brothers acute care hospital and Gregory Ammon as president of Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital.

* NBC Chicago | Prime Healthcare ‘unable’ to provide answers on cuts to OB/GYN, pediatric units at hospitals, Illinois Rep. says: Hours after California-based hospital owner Prime Healthcare announced it would be suspending obstetrics services at three of its busy Chicago-area hospitals, Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood released a statement slamming Prime, saying they have been “unable” to provide answers around recent cuts and have “made no plans” to help moms travel miles away for maternal care. The suspension of labor, delivery and maternity services at Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Joliet, Mercy Medical Center in Aurora and Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago was announced by the hospital system in a release Tuesday. According to Prime, materinuty services will instead be “consolidated,” with plans to develop a “Centers of Excellence for Maternal Care” at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago and Olympia Fields Hospital in the south suburbs.

* Daily Herald | Affordability is key as Lake election races enter stretch run: ‘We may have a higher turnout than usual’: Just as the county’s partisan leaders see affordability as the primary issue, Lake County Clerk Anthony Vega said the attitudes he is sensing may bring a record turnout on Election Day, as well as through early and mail voting. […] Vega said a turnout of 60% will not surprise him. Four years ago, 49.77% of people eligible to vote cast ballots. In the November 2024 presidential election, turnout was 70.06% of registered voters.

*** Downstate ***

* WCIA | Vermilion Co. Animal Shelter at ‘urgent capacity’ after 51% rise in animal intake: Staff wrote on Facebook that they’ve taken in 438 animals in the last month. That number is 51% higher than the number of animals they took in during the same time last year, which was 290. “Our shelter simply does not have the kennel capacity to handle numbers this high,” staff said. “We need our community’s help now…If you’ve been thinking about fostering, adopting, or donating but have been waiting for the right time, that time is now.”

* KOSU | Peoria Tribe to hold stomp dance in ancestral Illinois homelands for first time in 200 years: The first time Nick Hargrove visited the Cahokia Mounds was for the autumn equinox three years ago. He arrived in the dead of night in Collinsville, Illinois, near Saint Louis, and recalled seeing a pristine 100-foot mound. But when he visited the next morning, the view changed. “They have this circle of cedar posts called Woodhenge, and on the equinoxes and solstices, the sunlight hits it in such a way that it makes certain shadows,” Hargrove said. “…But then you kind of start to see like, ‘Oh, there’s a highway literally going right through the site.”

* Muddy River News | QPS superintendent adresses special education concerns before the Quincy Human Rights Commission: –Parents of special education students who were hoping for specific hard answers to their questions about where money for special ed is being allocated walked away from Thursday’s Human Rights Commission meeting still with questions, but at least someone was actually acknowledging what they were saying. Parents joined forces and are now looking to the HRC to assist them following Muddy River News’ recent article about the grant money drying up to fund the QHS STEP/PECT (Pre-Employment Career Training) Work Training program at QPS, a critical program to help special ed students in the 21+ program prepare for life after graduation.

* Muddy River News | Quincy Human Rights Commission takes up Islamophobia allegations facing Alderman Mike Adkins: Adkins’ critics, about a half dozen of whom spoke Thursday, further allege a lack of engagement with constituents who disagree with him, manifesting itself in blocking them from social media when they’re trying to communicate about city matters. HRC Chair Mark Philpot told the crowd there is no mechanism provided by state statute to recall municipal officials and that an option such as censure would be up to the Quincy City Council. Censure is defined as a formal, public statement of strong disapproval or harsh criticism.

* Daily Egyptian | SIU enrollment sees ‘historic’ increase, university says:
The recorded overall enrollment is the highest it’s been in eight years, the press release states, and the incoming undergraduate class – 1,779 students – is the highest it’s been in 11 years. In 2025, fall enrollment was down five students from the year before. Chancellor Austin Lane said in the press release that this was used “as a motivator to expand our strategic efforts to recruit and retain students.”

* WCIA | Gibson City asking residents to conserve water due to operating well issues: In a Facebook post Thursday afternoon, Gibson City said that due to an unexpected issue with one of their operating wells, they are urging residents to temporarily cut back on their overall water usage until further notice. The public is being asked to refrain from activities such as watering lawns, filling pools and washing vehicles throughout the weekend.

*** National ***

* The Guardian | Even high school reporters are facing censorship now: The Oracle’s hard-nosed investigative reporters aren’t the only ones making calls to the SPLC. Requests related to active censorship of articles and editorial content were up 17% in the past academic year. “We’ve seen an explosion of calls coming into our hotline,” says Mike Hiestand, SPLC’s senior legal counsel. The SPLC isn’t the only group taking an interest in threats to the student press. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), also runs the Student Press Freedom Initiative (SPFI). These groups have become more prominent at an auspicious time. The Trump White House has proven incredibly hostile to journalism, from personal attacks on individual journalists, to sustained criticism of news organizations which the US president paints as, “the enemy of the American people”.

* The 19th | Families lost weeks of food they couldn’t afford to replace. Then their SNAP claims were denied: The agency told The 19th in an email that only people who received their monthly benefits before the power outage hit on August 11 were eligible for replacement. Those whose benefits arrived after the outage started were not eligible for replacement because they would have used their benefits to buy food after the blackout had begun. That could impact a lot of people in need of food in Gary, which has the highest share of SNAP recipients in Northwest Indiana, according to the analysis by Capital B. A disproportionate number of people who rely on SNAP are single moms, elderly people and people with disabilities.

* Business Insider | Zuckerberg opposed AI regulation proposal in private call with Trump: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed concerns about plans for a national AI regulator in a previously unreported phone call with President Donald Trump last month, marking the involvement of one of the world’s top tech executives in a fraught White House policy debate. The proposal, championed by the Nobel Prize-winning Google DeepMind scientist Demis Hassabis and favored by some top White House officials, would create an independent organization modeled on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, the organization that oversees the securities industry under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission. White House officials envision the group reviewing advanced models and testing them for potential risks before they are deployed more broadly.

* Miami Herald | Florida congressional candidate preparing for wire fraud trial in Illinois: Before she launched a campaign for a South Florida congressional seat, Te Mayonna Brown – or Tedora M. Brown, as she was known just a few months ago – was indicted on federal wire-fraud charges in Illinois, where she and her husband are accused of defrauding taxpayers out of $750,000. In February 2023, Brown, the Republican on the November ballot in Florida’s Congressional District 24, was indicted alongside her spouse, Christopher Scott. Prosecutors said they created fake businesses and fraudulent business records during the COVID pandemic to illegally obtain $742,500 from the Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, created by Congress to provide relief for struggling businesses.

* NPR | Billy Strings honors his late mother with his album ‘So Much for Goodbyes’: “It was a rough thing, losing my mom, and my guitar has always been that kind of friend – where I can lean on it to deal with all these feelings,” Strings said. […] So Much for Goodbyes spans from mournful ballads to fast-paced finger-plucked barnburners. When Strings joined NPR’s A Martinez for the interview, he was practicing death metal guitar for a performance with the influential metal band Cryptopsy at Strings’ inaugural music festival, Freak Fair, in Ionia, Mich.