stLouIST

a Better Bubble™

Aggregator

Victim Identified: Man Found Dead From Multiple Gunshot Wounds In Washington Park

Riverbender 🕸
4 months 2 weeks ago
WASHINGTON PARK, Ill. — Authorities responded early Thursday morning, July 31, 2025, to a fatal shooting in the Metro East, where a 46-year-old man was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Police were called to a residence in the 5000 block of Warren Avenue near Kingshighway in Washington Park shortly before 5:40 a.m., Illinois State Police said. St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. said that Demario D. Walker was the victim. Dye Sr. said Walker was pronounced dead at the scene. According to the coroner, Walker’s last known address was in the 5000 block of Warren Avenue. The Illinois State Police were requested by Washington Park police to investigate the shooting. No additional information about the circumstances of the shooting or potential suspects has been released. The investigation remains ongoing.

Continue Reading

Armed Suspect Killed After Refusing Commands During Violent Carjacking Investigation

SLMPD 🚓
4 months 2 weeks ago

Around 1:30 p.m. on July 31, 2025, SLMPD Intelligence Detectives were in the Hyde Park neighborhood relative to an investigation into a Ford Fusion. The Ford was revealed to have been taken in a violent armed carjacking around 1:20 a.m. that morning from Blair Avenue & Palm Street. Relative to that carjacking, a 53-year-old man […]

The post Armed Suspect Killed After Refusing Commands During Violent Carjacking Investigation appeared first on St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

Evita Caldwell

Like Water

Explore STL
4 months 2 weeks ago

An international and multigenerational group of artists will take over the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis for Like Water, which considers water from different angles – from fonts of inspirations […]

The post Like Water appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

Rachel Huffman

How to Celebrate National Picnic Month in Style

Riverbender 🕸
4 months 2 weeks ago
Did you know that the concept of picnicking dates back thousands of years, with evidence of outdoor feasts found in ancient civilizations from Mesopotamia to the Roman Empire? Despite its long history, the simple act of sharing food outdoors remains a timeless way to connect with nature and each other. National Picnic Month offers a perfect opportunity to rediscover this tradition and elevate it beyond the usual sandwich-on-a-blanket routine. Reimagining the Picnic Experience Picnics often conjure images of casual gatherings in a park, but celebrating National Picnic Month invites us to rethink what a picnic can be. The essence of a picnic is communal enjoyment of food in an outdoor setting, but this can be adapted to suit a variety of tastes, moods, and locations. Whether you prefer a quiet escape with a book or a lively get-together with friends, embracing creativity can turn a simple meal into a memorable event. Choosing the Perfect Location The backdrop of your picnic plays

Continue Reading

This Day in History on August 1: Germany Declares War on Russia, Escalating World War I

Riverbender 🕸
4 months 2 weeks ago
August 1 stands as a day rich with historical significance. Moving back in time, August 1 marks a significant moment in 1914 when Germany declared war on Russia, triggering the escalation of World War I. This declaration set in motion a series of alliances and conflicts that engulfed much of the world, reshaping borders, societies, and international relations for decades to come. The Great War's profound impact is still studied and remembered as a cautionary tale about the complexities of global politics and warfare. On a different note, August 1 has also been a day of notable achievements in exploration and innovation. In 1774, the element oxygen was discovered independently by both Joseph Priestley in England and Carl Wilhelm Scheele in Sweden. This discovery was pivotal in advancing the fields of chemistry and biology, deepening our understanding of respiration and combustion. In the sports world, August 1, 1980, is remembered for the opening ceremony of the Moscow Summer Olympics.

Continue Reading

Tom Lane State Farm Insurance Female Athlete Of Mo.: Eagles' Grace Burton Is Perfect Behind The Plate

Riverbender 🕸
4 months 2 weeks ago
BETHALTO — Civic Memorial High School’s girls softball catcher Grace Burton delivered a standout performance during the 2025 season, excelling both offensively and defensively for the Eagles. Burton recorded 14 hits and 12 RBIs this season, contributing significantly to the team’s overall success. She has amassed 34 hits in her three-year career with CM and hit one home run in 2025. Defensively, she achieved a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage, underscoring her reliability behind the plate. Her achievements have earned her recognition as a Tom Lane State Farm Insurance Female Athlete of the Month for Civic Memorial. Civic Memorial Head Girls Softball Coach Raigen Linton praised Burton’s impact on the team. “She was one catcher that I could trust to call the game,” Linton said. “She really knows the game and sees the field well. She is also a good leader on the field, which is sometimes hard to come by. Her fielding percentage was also very

Continue Reading

Lose the law license, keep the lapel pin

Freedom of the Press
4 months 2 weeks ago

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s been 129 days that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and the 47th day that Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest. Read on for more, and click here to subscribe to our other newsletters.

Lose the law license, keep the lapel pin

This week we filed an ethics complaint with the Washington, D.C., attorney disciplinary commission against Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, calling for him to be disbarred.

Carr’s approval of the $8 billion merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, which came after Paramount agreed to pay President Donald Trump $16 million to settle his frivolous lawsuit, was the last straw. It’s clear that Carr is abusing his power to help the president, whose face he wears as a lapel pin (seriously), use the court system to extract payments that U.S. senators and plenty others have called illegal bribes.

“Trump’s shakedown of Paramount could not have worked without a credible threat that the administration would not approve Paramount’s merger with Skydance unless it paid up,” Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Advocacy Director Seth Stern told Status. “It seems obvious to us that a licensed attorney should not be able to help his boss make a mockery of the legal system by laundering bribes through the courts without consequence.”

Read the complaint here.

FPF sues over Qatari plane secrecy

Two months ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo giving the Trump administration permission to accept a $400 million jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One.

The memo argued this was permissible as long as the plane was transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation at the end of Trump’s term. But the document, and Bondi’s basis for that politically convenient conclusion, have never been made public.

FPF, represented by watchdog group American Oversight, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this week to force the Justice Department to release the memo. Read more here.

Google search exploited to censor reporting on censorship

On a Friday afternoon in mid-June, independent journalist Jack Poulson made a curious discovery: An article that we published about the aggressive attempts of a San Francisco-based tech executive named Maury Blackman to censor Poulson’s reporting about his sealed domestic violence arrest had, itself, disappeared from Google search results.

After Poulson alerted us to the issue, we investigated, and found that the article vanished from Google search because of a novel maneuver that apparently hasn’t been publicly well documented before: a sustained and coordinated abuse of Google’s “Refresh Outdated Content” tool. Now that Google says it has fixed the glitch so it can’t be further exploited, we can reveal what we found. Read more here.

The libel-proof president

Trump’s latest frivolous lawsuit, against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, faces plenty of legal obstacles.

One of them should be the “libel-proof plaintiff” doctrine, which theorizes that some people are so reputationally damaged, either across the board or on a certain topic, that even false statements about them can’t make it quantifiably worse.

As Stern wrote for The Palm Beach Post, the doctrine is often used against private litigants with long criminal records. That’s a tough sell to judges who believe in rehabilitation, which is likely why the doctrine is rarely applied. A better use may be as an added layer of defense to libel suits by disgraced politicians and public figures like Trump. Read the op-ed here.

What we’re reading

’If You Can Keep It’: Weakening whistleblower protections (NPR). The Trump administration is trying to portray journalism as a threat to national security. FPF’s Lauren Harper debunked these claims on “1A.”

Anna Gomez’s lonely fight (Columbia Journalism Review). Despite the FCC’s obligation to refrain from censorship, Commissioner Anna Gomez says a local station manager instructed reporters to “be extra careful about how they described the administration, because they couldn’t afford to be dragged before the FCC.” Also listen to FPF’s June conversation with Gomez here.

This U.S. citizen recorded an immigration arrest. Officers told him to delete it or face charges. (Reason). The constitutional right to record law enforcement applies equally to immigration officers, and this story shows why.

The fight for free speech goes corporate (Columbia Journalism Review). “People can’t trust a news outlet that is bribing the same officials it’s supposed to hold accountable,” FPF’s Stern said.

A more perfect media (Free Press). Read this new report on corporate influence on the media from Free Press (not the Bari Weiss one). It accompanies their new Media Capitulation Index.

Freedom of the Press Foundation