Good morning. Here is today’s SPEED READ:
1. The time is coming quickly for White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to decide whether to run for mayor of Chicago, President Barack Obama said Monday. Some reports predict that the move will be announced as soon as Friday.
2. Back from his latest jaunt to China and Korea, Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is not seeking re-election, says his final months could see the fruition of a long-frustrated dream — a high-speed rail connection between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport — with help from “foreign investors.”
3. Once one of the “Four Tops” in Springfield, retired state Senate President Emil Jones says he could run for mayor, too. Jones told Fox Chicago News that he knows well that the city’s fiscal woes defy easy solution: “I need this like I need a hole in my head.”
4. Before the Mexican Independence Day parade on 26th Street, Gery Chico first told us that he was likely to run for mayor, and now he has made it official. Chico had told the CNC that he would need at least $4 million to make a run. He will hope to garner far more than the 4.3 percent of the vote he received in the 2004 Democratic primary for U.S. senator.
5. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got all glammed up like you’ve never seen her before for the cover of the October issue of Today’s Chicago Woman, which hits newstands Wednesday.