Olympics Back On (Quick Hits)

The last stumbling block to a Chicago Olympics was removed:

• The U.S. Olympic Committee had everything to lose and nothing to air.
  
  That made the decision to postpone plans for its own television network, in deference to the International Olympic Committee's wishes, an easy one.
  
  ``There is no question that we underestimated the intensity of the reaction that we got from multiple constituents,'' USOC chairman Larry Probst said Sunday, after meeting with IOC president Jacques Rogge and deciding to postpone the effort.
  
  The negative reaction came mainly from the IOC and TV partner NBC. All of it seemed to be hurting the effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.

So now it comes down to the suitcases full of cash. Who will win? The smart money is on this hemisphere - Chicago vs. Rio. Japan just had the Winter Games ten years back and Madrid isn't going to get the Games right after London has them. We're under 50 days away.

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Uptown shooting, blocks away from the "riot" video posted here and elsewhere this weekend:

• Three people were shot early Sunday while driving through an alley in the North Side Uptown neighborhood.

  About 4:50 a.m., three males, whose ages were not available, were in a vehicle traveling through an alley in the 1200 block of West Leland Avenue, police News Affairs Officer Amina Greer said.

  An unknown offender approached the vehicle on foot and fired shots, striking one person in his arm, one in his thigh and grazing another, Greer said.

Related?

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No good deed goes unpunished:

• Like many cops, Chicago Ridge Police Chief Tim Baldermann has walked the line between extending courtesies to outside officers for minor infractions and slapping cuffs on them for more serious crimes. But a courtesy he recently extended to an off-duty Chicago officer is causing him a headache.

This is why so many of us tell our neighbors we're garbage men.