Good afternoon! It’s Monday, and my husband is getting ready for a weeklong trip out of town, which means I’m going to get wild and crazy by eating pizza for breakfast and cereal for dinner! Here’s what you need to know today.

(By the way, if you’d like this emailed to your inbox, you can sign up here.)

1. The Summer Olympics begin this week amid concerns over the delta variant

The opening ceremony is Friday, and the first competitions are set for Wednesday, as the Summer Olympics in Tokyo begin under the shadow of the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century.

And safety precautions are being put to the test as three cases have been reported inside the Olympic Village, where about 11,000 athletes will be staying during the games. A Czech beach volleyball player and two South African men’s soccer players recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Today, an alternate on the U.S. women’s gymnastics team tested positive while training outside of Tokyo. The Associated Press reports Olympic champion Simone Biles “was not affected.” [AP]

Meanwhile, here’s a look at the more than 50 athletes who have connections to Illinois. [Chicago Tribune]

2. After another violent weekend, Chicago police create new team to tackle illegal guns

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown is creating a team of about 50 officers that will target the flow of illegal weapons, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

The team will partly focus on gun stores in the suburbs and nearby states that sell weapons to “straw purchasers,” people who can legally buy weapons but then hand them off to others.

The new gun team had been in the works for months, the Sun-Times reports, and officers were expected to begin working on it over the weekend. [Sun-Times]

The news comes after 60 people were shot — 10 fatally — over the weekend. Among those wounded were six children aged 15 and younger. [Sun-Times]

Meanwhile, police officers tell WBEZ that morale is at a new low as officials regularly cancel days off and mandate 12-hour shifts. [WBEZ]

And Mayor Lori Lightfoot and a coalition of community groups reached a deal on creating an elected board to oversee the Chicago Police Department, but the compromise doesn’t go as far as some activists had hoped. [WTTW]

3. Chicago-area immigration activists vow to fight after federal judge halts DACA applications

Local activists say they hope Congress will take up major immigration reforms after a federal judge halted first-time applications in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.

The judge ruled on Friday that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program through an executive order in 2012.

“It’s not the end and we can fight,” Luis Rodriguez, a local immigration activist and DACA recipient, told the Sun-Times. “We got this. I know that my people will do the very best to organize against this injunction.” [Sun-Times]

4. Scientists are worried about a climate change “blind spot”

This summer’s deadly heat wave in the Pacific Northwest may indicate that the more extreme effects of climate change are happening faster than expected, according to several scientists who spoke with Axios.

These scientists say they are concerned that models projecting the trajectory of climate change may be out of date.

“If you’d asked me this three months ago, I would have said ‘models are doing fine,’ ” said climate scientist Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M University. “But this last string of disasters has really shaken my confidence in the models’ predictions of regional extremes.” [Axios]

5. iPhones aren’t as hacker-proof as originally believed

Spyware developed by an infamous hacker-for-hire outfit known as the NSO Group can penetrate Apple’s security systems for iPhones, potentially exposing contact lists, passwords, pictures and other sensitive information to outside parties, according to an investigation conducted by a consortium of global media outlets.

The investigation reviewed more than 50,000 phone numbers from more than 50 countries, and it found that more than 1,000 individuals had been targeted by clients of NSO.

They include 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state. [AP]

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies accused China of hacking Microsoft. [AP]

Here’s what else is happening

• Stocks tumbled today amid concerns over the impact of the delta variant. [CNBC]
• Downstate Alexander County has the lowest vaccination rate in Illinois. [Chicago Tribune]
• Nashville Predators prospect Luke Prokop announced he’s gay, becoming the first player under contract with an NHL team to do so. [NPR]
• Disney+’s Loki is the “Black Lives Matter story we didn’t know we needed,” according to this fascinating review. (h/t WBEZ’s Cianna Greaves.) [The Grio]

Oh, and one more thing …

Chicago historian and Tiktok celebrity Shermann “Dilla” Thomas is teaming up with WBEZ to give listeners a crash course on fascinating stories you might not have learned in school.

Thomas, known as 6figga_dilla on Tiktok and Twitter, has made a name for himself on social media by using his charming sense of humor to highlight little-known tales of Chicago’s history.

Tomorrow, Thomas will dive into the story of the Jones brothers, three African American brothers who came to Chicago from Mississippi during the Great Migration and created one of the most successful gambling syndicates in the country.

You can catch the segment at 7:45 a.m. and 2:33 p.m., and new ones will air every other week.

Tell me something good …

I have to do a performance review for work because apparently showing up everyday isn’t enough. But I’d like to know: What was the first job you had, and did you learn anything meaningful from the experience?

I somehow got a job in the attendance office at my high school, and it was just as boring as it sounds. I had to manually enter attendance records into a computer for every class taught at that fun factory. So I guess I learned that if I’ve got to do something, it might as well be something a whole lot more fun that an attendance office.

Feel free to email me at therundown@wbez.org or tweet me at @whuntah.

Have a nice night! If you like what you just read, you can subscribe to the newsletter here and have it delivered to your inbox.