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Police said Erik Zerr got on an app frequently used by teens to meet up with the child. They're concerned more victims could be out there.

Today on TAP: Different stresses for different folks

Cherokee Street hosted the inaugural Brass Band Blowout on Saturday February 12th, 2022. For the first time ever, St. Louis's top brass bands shared the stage together, featuring Saint Boogie Brass Band, Red & Black Brass Band and Funky Butt Brass Band. The sold-out show was hosted by Cherokee Street Foundation, the street's nonprofit organization […]

The post Photos: Cherokee Street’s Brass Band Blowout appeared first on Cherokee Street.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that new federal investments are expected to help several rural businesses and communities across Illinois create 170 jobs and save 328 additional jobs. Today’s investments come through multiple United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Programs. “I’m proud to see this federal support helping create and save good-paying jobs in rural communities and glad that the Biden Administration is committed to helping uplift local businesses in Illinois,” said Duckworth. “Federal support like this helps create economic opportunities that can empower working families, and I’ll continue working with Senator Durbin and others to make sure hardworking Illinoisans throughout our state receive the resources they deserve.” “These USDA grants and loans will help create jobs, support small businesses, and spur economic development

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ST. LOUIS – Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria’s next Giveback Tuesday event will take place on Tuesday, February 22nd in Town and Country, Missouri. Funds raised from the day will be donated to Girls on the Run St. Louis (GOTR-STL), a nonprofit organization that inspires girls to lead joyful, healthy, and confident lives through an experience-based curriculum that creatively integrates running. Every month, Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria features a local nonprofit organization and donates 100% of profits from the entire day to the charity. So far, Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria has donated $297,725 to local nonprofit organizations. Girls on the Run St. Louis will use the funds raised from Giveback Tuesday to fund their scholarships, since the program is open to all girls who want to participate, regardless of their financial status. Families unable to pay the registration fees can request financial assistance, and in the past year, GOTR-STL provided more than

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Ask the experts from the Missouri Department of Transportation, St. Louis and St. Charles counties and St. Louis City your questions about highways and roads. The live chat starts at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

A new report from the St. Louis County Department of Public Health (DPH) shows a significant increase in Omicron cases and deaths among those living in long-term care facilities.

Pretrial reports include details on the number and types of charges are filed monthly in St. Louis Circuit Court and provide data on defendants afforded bail or jailed without as they await trial.

Soulard's Mardi Gras parade is Feb. 26, but there's plenty of partying happening before then.

Just 26 days after the region set a record with more than 1,400 COVID-19 hospitalizations, the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported Wednesday 472 people were currently hospitalized for the virus, a 66.8% decrease in less than a month.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (NEXSTAR) -- In his first public appearance since a bipartisan panel of lawmakers voted to suspend the statewide mask mandate in schools, Governor J.B. Pritzker again urged school districts not named in a pending lawsuit to continue enforcing the mask requirement, citing his emergency powers. "The executive order requiring masks is still in [...]

Fontbonne, based in St. Louis for nearly 100 years, has shed an alarming number of students and recorded growing deficits, raising questions about its long-term viability. The university's president lays out its multipronged turnaround strategy.

Ever wonder what items designers rely on to create beautiful spaces for their clients? We asked seven local talents to open up about some of their preferred sofas, chairs, rugs, and more.

ALTON - The Alton Salvation Army red kettle bell-ringing campaign is officially complete and the goal has been exceeded. The final report is $113,207.17 was raised and that exceeds the goal of $106,000. Taylor and Lily Freer were the co-chairs of this year's event. Taylor and Lily said it was because of the public's support the organization was able to meet the goal. Taylor said: “We are very thankful for our community and their generosity.” Lily was also extremely excited and said: "The fact this campaign helps so many people." Both girls also added: "To the multitude that rang bells, promoted and gave “YOU ROCK” Thank you from the bottom of our hearts." Captain Sean Grey said, “I am beyond grateful for this wonderful community. Thank you so much for making it possible for us to continue to provide help to our neighbors who are struggling. Thank you for loving beyond and helping us give a hand up to Hope! "We served more than 340 families with Thanksgivin

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Delta 8 is a legal psychoactive often called "weed-lite" and it has been linked to hundreds of reports to the National Poison Data System.

Is there a contest in the Senate to see who can propose the highest number of unconstitutional bills? You might think that the leader in any such contest would have to be a crazed populist like a Josh Hawley or a Ted Cruz, but it seems like Senator Amy Klobuchar is giving them a run for the money. Last summer, she released a bill to try to remove Section 230 for "medical misinformation," as declared by the Ministry of Speech Director of Health and Human Services. We already explained the very, very serious constitutional problems with such a bill.

And now she's back with a new bill, the NUDGE Act (Nudging Users to Drive Good Experiences on Social Media) which she announced by claiming it would "hold platforms accountable" for the amplification of "harmful content." You might already sense the 1st Amendment problems with that statement, but the actual text of the bill is worse.

In some ways, it's an improvement on the health misinformation bill, in that she's finally realized that for any bill to pass 1st Amendment scrutiny it needs to be "content neutral." But... it's not. It claims that it's taking a "nudge" approach -- popularized from Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's 2008 book of that name. But the whole point of "nudges" in that book is about small tweaks to programs that get people to make better decisions, not threats of government enforcement and regulations (which is what Klobuchar's bill does).

The bill starts out fine... ordering a study on "content-agnostic interventions" to be done by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to look for such content-agnostic interventions that would "reduce the harms of algorithmic amplification and social media addiction." And, sure, more research from independent and trusted parties sounds good -- and the NSF and NASEM generally are pretty credible and trustworthy. Perhaps they can turn up something useful, though historically, we've seen that academics and government bureaucrats who have no experience with how content moderation actually works, tend to come up with some ridiculously silly ideas for how to "fix" content moderation.

But, unfortunately, the bill goes beyond just the studies. Once the "initial study report" has been delivered, the bill then tries to force social media companies to adopt its recommendations, whether or not they'll work, or whether or not they're realistic. And... that is the unconstitutional part. You can call it "content-agnostic" all you want, but as soon as you're telling companies how they have to handle some aspect of the editorial discretion/content moderation on their sites, that's a 1st Amendment issue. A big one.

The bill requires the Commission it creates to start a rulemaking process which would release regulations for social media websites. The Commission would determine "how covered platforms should be grouped together" (?!?), then "determine which content-agnostic interventions identified in such report shall be applicable to each group of covered platforms..." and then (play the ominous music) "require each covered platform to implement and measure the impact of such content-agnostic interventions..."

And here's where anyone with even a tiny bit of trust and safety/content moderation experiences throws back their heads and laughs a hearty laugh.

Content moderation is an ever-evolving, constantly adapting and changing monster, and no matter what "interventions" you put in place, you know that you're immediately going to run into false positives and false negatives, and more edge cases than you can possibly imagine. You can't ask a bunch of bureaucrats to magically come up with the interventions that work. The people who are working on this stuff all day, every day are already trying out all sorts of ideas to improve their sites, and through constant experimentation, and adaptation, they keep gradually improving -- but it's a never-ending impossible task, and the idea that (1) government bureaucrats will magically get it right where companies have failed, and (2) a single mandate will work is beyond laughable (even excluding the constitutional concerns).

Also, the setup here seems totally disconnected to the realities of running a website. "Covered platforms" will be given 60 days to submit a plan to the Commission as to how they'll implement the mandated interventions, and the Commission will approve or disapprove of the plan. And any changes to the plan need to also be approved by the Commission. Some trust and safety teams make multiple changes to rules all the time. Imagine having to submit every such adjustment to a government Commission? This is the worst of the worst kind of government nonsense.

If companies fail to implement the plans, as the Commission likes, then the bill says the websites will be considered to have committed "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" enabling the FTC to go after them with potential fines.

The bill has other problems, but seems to just be based on a bunch of tropes and myths. It would only apply to sites that have 20 million active users (why that many? who the hell knows?), despite the fact that over and over again we've seen that laws that target companies by size create very weird and problematic side effects. The bill is nonsense, written by people who don't seem to understand how social media, content moderation, or the 1st Amendment work.

And, bizarrely, the bill might actually have some support because (astoundingly?!?) it has bipartisan backing. While it's a Klobuchar bill, it was introduced with Senator Cynthia Lummis from across the aisle. Lummis has, in the past, whined about social media companies "censoring" content she wanted to see (about Bitcoin?!?), but also was a co-sponsor of a bill that would require social media companies to disclose when the government pressures them to remove content, which is kinda funny because that's what this bill she's sponsoring would do.

I'm all for doing more credible research, so that's great. But the rest of this bill is just unconstitutional, unrealistic nonsense. Do better, Senator.

A winning $2 million Powerball ticket was sold in Girard, Illinois, Saturday, Feb. 12.

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