Aggregator

The 6,000 payments total more than $3 million, or nearly 2/3 of the more than $4 million available for the program.

Battle of the Bulge veteran recalls horrors and lessons of war

St. Louis lawmakers on Friday finally approved a $22 million plan for a protected bicycle path downtown and bridge replacement, among other improvements.

Ever wondered about who lived in your house — and what they did? An expert from the Missouri History Museum details how to research your home’s history, while locals who unearthed details about their house share their stories.

The date for resuming service has yet to be determined; a Federal Transit Administration official wants that to happen in June.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A police group that advocates for minority officers filed a lawsuit against St. Louis and some city officials contending that procedures used for promotions do not …

Paul McCartney just announced a 2022 U.S. tour today, which should help him offset the big loss he recently took on the sale of a New York City penthouse he…

Source

Welp. This isn't going to help future fundraising drives. Not when a public radio station is negatively affecting, you know, driving.

Drivers of certain vehicles in Seattle and other parts of Western Washington are shouting at their car radios this week. Not because of any particular song or news item that’s being broadcast, but because an apparent technical glitch has caused the radios to be stuck on public radio station KUOW.

The impacted drivers appear to all be owners of Mazda vehicles from between 2014 and 2017. In some cases the in-car infotainment systems have stopped working altogether, derailing the ability to listen to the radio at all or use Bluetooth phone connections, GPS, the rear camera and more.

Behold the collision of OTA and IO(car)T. This unique situation -- limited solely to drivers in the Upper West -- presented a host of new problems and a lot of speculative answers. The radio station had absolutely no idea why this was happening. One local dealership told a customer it had something to do with 5G, which apparently meant affected Mazdas were now infected with a car-borne form of COVID, presumably necessitating plenty of expensive diagnostics and what have you.

Fortunately, the cars' manufacturer was actually able to pinpoint the cause of the malfunction -- which left some drivers staring at in-car systems stuck in a perpetual "loading…" loop. The answer arrived roughly a week after the problem presented itself. The problem -- discussed in this entertaining Reddit thread -- had nothing to do with network upgrades or an unexplained bug in Mazda software.

Instead, the public radio station had done something completely unexpected, sending affected vehicles into in-car entertainment purgatory. This is the statement Mazda gave to Geekwire.

“Between 1/24-1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software,” the Mazda statement said. “Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue.”

While it's somewhat troubling to note that Mazdas manufactured within the last eight years are running what Mazda considers to be outdated software, the good news is that it can be fixed. The bad news follows the good news: due to shipping constraints affecting goddamn everything, drivers affected by this oddity shouldn't expect to see a fix anytime soon. "Part delays" cited by Mazda could put permanent fixes months off.

On the other hand (good news!), even older models will be covered by these repairs, whether or not they're still under warranty. The company has instructed dealers to honor "goodwill requests" for free repairs of affected vehicles. Back to the bad news: the part that apparently needs to be replaced is the ominous-sounding "connectivity master unit," which indicates a whole lot of connectivity will be affected until dealers get the part in stock and start dealing with the backlog of semi-bricked Mazdas. Some users have reported in-car entertainment systems stuck in permanent loops, non-functioning GPS systems, and bricked back-up cameras.

This isn't going to go well for Mazda, considering it's the only manufacturer whose systems have been rendered useless by a misconfigured file distributed by a radio station. While this situation is certainly an outlier, there's likely a reason other in-car entertainment systems weren't similarly affected, which suggests a crucial shortcoming in the tech installed in those models -- one that could be exploited by entities far more nefarious than local public broadcasters.

EDWARDSVILLE - On February 8, Edwardsville attorney James Craney entered his appearance on behalf of Madison County Circuit Judges Sholar and Threlkeld in the lawsuit pitting the voters of Madison County against various state bodies. The suit alleges that the Judicial Circuits Districting Act of 2022 is unconstitutional in its application and unfairly prejudices Madison County voters and judicial candidates. Judges Sholar and Threlkeld have intervened in the suit as plaintiffs. Speaker of the House Chris Welch and Senate President Dan Harmon has also intervened as defendants in this rare contest pitting the Illinois judiciary against the legislature. Welch and Harmon are represented by long-time Madigan attorney, Michael Kasper. When asked about the intervention, Craney stated “I don’t usually comment on pending cases, but in this instance I’ll make an exception, to call attention to the cynical, Chicago-machine style attempt to prevent these judges to run for

Continue Reading

After a bout with COVID, St. Louis musician Kevin Buckley had to get out of the house. He traveled to one of the largest springs in the country — in the heart of Missouri’s Ozarks. That’s where he drew inspiration for his new debut solo album, “Big Spring.”

St. Louis County health officials says COVID-19 case numbers are improving As the most recent COVID-19 surge from the omicron variant declines, St. Louis County health officials are saying we may be on a path to improvement. In a letter addressed to St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, Dr. Faisal Khan wrote that the metrics used to track the pandemic “continue to show rapid improvement.” Khan detailed that hospitalizations are on the decline in the St. Louis area, as well as case numbers.…

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he will ask the state's high court to weigh in on statewide masking and other COVID-19 mitigation measures at schools.

This article originally ran in the St. Louis Business Journal on February 11, 2022 CRG, Clayco’s development arm based in St. Louis, has sold five newly built industrial warehouses, including two in St. Louis, in a $425 million deal. In what is CRG’s largest multiproperty sale since it was formed nine years ago, the company sold the fully leased warehouses […]

The post St. Louis-based developer inks largest multiproperty sale to date appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.

SPRINGFIELD - Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s appeal of a downstate judge’s order that invalidated his statewide school mask mandate has been dismissed. The judge's ruling late Thursday was a huge blow to the governor’s COVID-19 mitigation strategy in schools. Pritzker’s appeal of the order that stopped his school mask mandate was rendered “moot” because of a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers earlier this week. There was an attempt by the Illinois Department of Public Health to reinstitute mask rules for classrooms. The Fourth District Appellate Court ruled that Illinois' indoor mask requirement in schools has expired and the appeal made by the Illinois attorney general of a temporary restraining order issued Feb. 4 barring schools from enforcing it was dismissed. The appellate court's decision noted that the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) "in no way restrains school districts from acting independently from the executive orders or the IDPH in creating

Continue Reading

As of Friday, Feb. 18., the City Museum is holding steady in the top spot in the voting with the Magic House at No. 3.

EAST ST. LOUIS – The U.S Attorney's Office announced Friday that Demarko Hines, 50, of Cahokia Heights, Illinois, was sentenced today to five years federal prison for distributing crystal methamphetamine. Hines will also serve a four-year term of supervised release following his release from federal prison. On February 23, 2021, a federal grand jury indicted Hines and his brother, Laquan Hines, for a drug transaction that occurred in August of 2020. Demarko Hines pled guilty on September 18, 2021. Laquan Hines remains innocent until proven guilty. The investigation was conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney John Trippe.

Continue Reading

The postponement impacts several Cardinals spring training games.

CC BY-SA, Gage Skidmore

The case Sarah Palin lost against The New York Times this week was the first libel claim to even go to trial against the paper in nearly two decades. One might imagine these trials could be a lot more common: after all, the Times publishes constantly and there is no shortage of public figures who love to air complaints about critical reporting.

Some of those complaints even make it into legal claims. The Times was sued for libel in the United States 10 times between 2011 and 2017, for example, though none of those cases went to trial. That actual “close calls” are so rare reflects a critically important precedent in American law — one established by the Times itself.

That precedent, New York Times v. Sullivan, is a cornerstone of American press freedom, a unanimous 1964 Supreme Court decision that recognized the censorious possibility of libel litigation and adopted an appropriately high standard. Thanks to Sullivan, public figures need to show that publishers acted with “actual malice” to win a libel case. In legal terms, the actual malice standard means that the publishers must know the information they’re publishing is false, or act with reckless disregard of whether it’s true or false.

This technique for harassing and punishing a free press — now that it has been shown to be possible — is by no means limited to cases with racial overtones; it can be used in other fields where public feelings may make local as well as out-of-state newspapers easy prey for libel verdict seekers.

In Sullivan, Montgomery police had sued the Times over an ad placed by Martin Luther King Jr. supporters that described how civil rights activists had been treated during protests in Alabama. The Supreme Court recognized, however, that the same silencing tactics could be used in all sorts of cases. As one justice wrote: “This technique for harassing and punishing a free press — now that it has been shown to be possible — is by no means limited to cases with racial overtones; it can be used in other fields where public feelings may make local as well as out-of-state newspapers easy prey for libel verdict seekers.”

In Palin’s case, the Times and its supporters have always conceded that there was a factual error in the editorial in question, and ran a correction the day after its initial publication. Five years into the former governor’s litigation over the issue, the judge announced he would rule for the paper as a matter of law, and the jury ruled for the paper based on the specific facts. Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, is very clearly a public figure, and her legal team simply could not show that the newspaper or its editors acted with actual malice towards her.

That high bar has been a critical press freedom protection for decades, and its value may be clearer now than ever. But it has come under unprecedented threat. Politicians — up to the former president of the United States — unhappy with the scrutiny of an independent press, have called for libel laws to be “opened up.” Two Supreme Court justices have suggested the Sullivan standard be revisited.

We’ve also witnessed litigants, bankrolled by billionaires, bringing ruinous suits against media outlets — such as the Florida case that bankrupted Gawker Media in 2016. In the Palin case, the Times likely paid a small fortune in legal fees, despite winning, and is likely to face more costs if Palin appeals. As the most financial stable newspaper in the country, it can afford it; there are countless media outlets that could not.

The intimidation effect of suing even when the Sullivan standard makes winning unlikely is common enough that there’s a name for these kinds of legal claims: a strategic lawsuit against public participation, usually abbreviated SLAPP. In some states, there are anti-SLAPP laws on the books to allow defendants to claim legal fees in cases they win — but these are limited in scope and only apply in those states. Passing a strong federal anti-SLAPP would be a major step forward for press freedom.

Until then, the Sullivan precedent is largely what stands between us and deep-pocketed plaintiffs from replaying the Gawker playbook against other news outlets. Palin’s attempted attack on the precedent should be understood as an effort to bring that grim future closer to reality.

We’re not the only ones to make that observation. Charles Harder, the attorney who led the Peter Thiel-funded team that brought down Gawker, was reportedly in attendance at the trial, taking very detailed notes.