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Police were searching for a man Sunday armed with a machete after they say he intentionally rammed a vehicle into a home. They took him into police custody at around 1 p.m.

Kamala Harris borrows from Donald Trump with a perk to the Culinary Union at a raucous rally in Las Vegas: eliminating taxes on tips.

The program, offered by nonprofit Gateway Global at its new education center in north St. Louis, aims to be a part of making the area the geospatial industry's national headquarters.

Opera Edwardsville Aug 23 Blends with Musical Theater EDWARDSVILLE – High notes and high drama will celebrate high summer, when Opera Edwardsville brings its annual outdoor spectacle to Edwardsville’s City Park on Aug. 23. This is the first time Opera Edwardsville will present its annual outdoor concert in late summer. The free concert will begin […]

The post Outdoor Music theater at Edwardsville City Park appeared first on flovalleynews.com.

Westbound I-44 traffic in Sullivan, about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis, had been stopped after police shot and killed a man.

Bailey Snider, 25, of Rolla, 32-year-old Steelville resident Chelsea Smith, and an unnamed 5-year-old boy were killed in the crash Saturday night.

Plant of the Week: native False Dragonhead, Obedient Plant If you missed the Seed St. Louis Fall Seedling Sale, The Garden Shop on Hampton has got you covered. They are selling seedlings: arugula, cabbage, lettuce, peas, Swiss chard, more. Friday, August 16th through August 31st at The Garden Shop, Deep Discounts on select annuals and … Continue reading This Week in Gardening & Nature →

A 5-year-old and two women were killed in a Franklin County crash on Saturday, involving five vehicles, including three semi-trucks and two cars, after a chain-reaction collision.

Welcome to another edition of This Day in History! Today, we’re diving into the significant events that have unfolded globally on August 10 and August 11 across different years in history. 1945: Japan Announces Surrender in World War II On August 10, 1945, just days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan announced its intention to surrender, effectively bringing an end to World War II. This pivotal moment marked the conclusion of one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. The announcement set the stage for the formal surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri, officially ending the war. 1792: Storming of the Tuileries Palace August 10, 1792, saw a critical event in the French Revolution—the storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris. On this day, revolutionaries attacked the residence of King Louis XVI, leading to the suspension of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Republic. This event was a turning point

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Eric Meyer, publisher of the Marion County Record, outside the newspaper's office with a memorial for his mother Joan, who died the day after police raided their home.

Mark Reinstein/MediaPunch via AP Photo

It’s been a year since Marion, Kansas — population 1,922 — made global headlines after its whole police department raided the Marion County Record’s newsroom and its owners’ home. The paper’s 98-year-old co-owner Joan Meyer, shocked by the intrusion, died the next day.

The fallout continues. This week, special prosecutors finally released their long overdue report on the raid. It’s a mixed bag. They cleared the Record’s journalists of wrongdoing, but that should’ve been easy: The notion that they violated computer crime laws by using a government website to verify a tip was nonsensical from day one. Better late than never, though.

The Marion raid was an unusually dramatic violation, but authorities disregard the law on a smaller scale all the time, in ways its drafters couldn’t have imagined.

We also learned that Gideon Cody, the ex-police chief behind the raid, will be charged with after-the-fact obstruction. But he should be charged for the raid itself, not just the cover-up. What message does that send? Feel free to orchestrate revenge raids on newsrooms, as long as you're honest about it?

And it does seem like Cody — a Marion outsider who started as chief a few months before the raid — was the fall guy. He certainly did not act alone, but he’s the only one being charged.

One reason it should’ve taken days, not a year, to deem the raid illegal is its irreconcilability with the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. From the outset, press freedom advocates and the Record’s lawyers cited the little-known federal law — which probably makes the news about as often as Marion, Kansas. It should have stopped the raid before it started because it makes clear that Judge Laura Viar should never have issued the warrant authorizing the search.

The act outlaws searches and seizures of journalists’ materials, unless the journalist is being investigated for a crime. Congress was uncharacteristically prescient in anticipating that authorities would abuse that crime exception by inventing ways to characterize newsgathering itself as criminal. It included an exception to the exception to ensure that wouldn’t happen.

And yet, in Marion, it did. Still, newsroom raids are rare, especially since the enactment of the act in response to a 1971 intrusion into The Stanford Daily student newspaper’s offices. After the Marion raid backfired so spectacularly, it is hopefully less likely that we will see a similar one anytime soon.

But that doesn’t mean the act should fade back into obscurity. The Marion raid was an unusually dramatic violation, but authorities disregard the law on a smaller scale all the time, in ways the act’s drafters couldn’t have imagined. Searching a journalist’s phone after a protest arrest, for example, is just as illegal as barging into the Record’s office and stealing its computers and files.

In fact, The Stanford Daily recently had another run-in with the act, which it prompted lawmakers to pass in the first place decades ago — but this time in a distinctly 21st-century setting.

Sheriff’s deputies in Santa Clara County arrested student journalist Dilan Gohill while he was on assignment covering a pro-Palestinian protest on campus. Stanford is, alarmingly, standing fully behind the prosecution, despite that the student journalist was indisputably not there to protest, let alone break laws, but to document the news.

It gets worse. Gohill’s lawyers allege that, while processing Gohill, officers tried to make him unlock his phone with his face. That’s a blatant violation of the act (and state law). Fortunately, Gohill refused to unlock his phone and was able to move his face to avoid being forced to do so.

Also in California, the San Francisco Police Department earlier this year obtained an unlawful search warrant against independent news outlet IndyBay — as well as an illegal gag order barring the outlet from talking about it.

Thanks to legal help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the warrant was eventually voided, but it wasn’t an isolated incident: The same department raided the home of freelance journalist Bryan Carmody in 2019.

The cumulative effect of these violations is to intimidate journalists and encourage self-censorship.

Of course, those examples are not as egregious as what happened in Marion. They didn’t involve nearly as much coordinating and conspiring. There’s no indication that the deputies had any personal beef with the Daily. Marion officials, on the other hand, had a long-standing grudge against the Record for investigating them. And, of course, no one died.

But these smaller-scale incidents add up. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has recorded 102 searches or seizures of journalists’ equipment since its launch in 2017.

And most of those searches violated the act, from Asheville, North Carolina, authorities obtaining an illegal warrant to search journalists’ phones for evidence of wrongdoing by protesters to the FBI raiding Tampa, Florida, journalist Tim Burke’s home newsroom over allegations that he broke computer fraud laws by finding interview outtakes online where a pop star went on antisemitic tirades.

Along with plenty of other alarming press freedom transgressions — arrests of journalists for reporting on local crime, restraining orders against reporters for knocking on officials’ doors, a marked increase in illegal judicial censorship orders — the cumulative effect of these privacy act violations is to intimidate journalists and encourage self-censorship.

Tech-savvy journalists attempt to mitigate these problems and protect their sources through digital security measures like encrypting their communications — but authorities try to criminalize that too, citing use of encryption as evidence of criminal intent. If you’ve got nothing to hide, why encrypt, say the same cops who want to encrypt their own communications to evade public scrutiny.

It’s a national problem, equally prevalent in urban and rural communities, whether in red or blue states. The anniversary of the Marion raid should not just serve as an occasion to shake our heads at the missteps of some small-town cops in Kansas. It should be a reminder to all journalists, and all law enforcement officers, of the rights afforded to journalists by the First Amendment and laws like the Privacy Protection Act.

But it would've been a far more effective reminder had there been swift and serious accountability for all of those responsible.

EDWARDSVILLE – Car enthusiasts and community members will gather on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2024, at Edwardsville High School, 6161 Center Grove Road, for the 32nd annual Edwardsville Police Department D.A.R.E. Car Show. This popular event, which has become a staple in the community, features an impressive display of hundreds of cars, trucks, motorcycles, tractors, bicycles, and more. Proceeds from the event benefit the Edwardsville Police Department's D.A.R.E. program, a long-standing educational initiative aimed at teaching fifth- and seventh-grade students about making smart decisions. The show, which runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., is free to the public and promises a day filled with food trucks, entertainment, a silent auction, and a raffle. For those looking to showcase their vehicles, participant registration is open from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with fees applicable for those entering the competition. For additional details, interested parties can visit the Edwardsville D.A.R.E.

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EDWARDSVILLE - Vote by mail applications officially opened this week for Madison County voters casting a mail-in ballot for the 2024 Presidential Election on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The Madison County Clerk’s Office website details the full application process to vote by mail. The first step is to verify your voter registration through their Voter Services portal; this allows you to apply to vote by mail both temporarily and permanently, find your polling place, and more. An application to vote by mail, either in this election only or in all future elections, is available online here . After filling out and turning in your application, a packet with an official ballot, instructions for voting, certificate envelope, and a return mailing envelope will be mailed to you. While ballot packets will not be sent out until Thursday September 26, 2024, they must be completed and turned in either by mail to 157 N. Main Street P.O. Box 218 or in-person to the Madison

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JERSEYVILLE - Applications are now open for Jersey County voters looking to vote by mail ahead of the 2024 Presidential Election on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The Jersey County Clerk’s Office recently reminded the public of some do’s and don’ts regarding mail-in voting applications. For instance, if your mailing address is different from your residential address, be sure to include your mailing address in your application. The County Clerk’s Office also asks the public to include phone numbers they can contact with potential questions and to ensure you’ve signed your application before turning it in. They also strongly emphasize not to fill out and sign an application for someone else - not only will they not accept it, they will flag it for investigation. Vote by mail applications for Jersey County voters are available here , and can be filled out and turned in via mail or in person to the County Clerk’s Office at 200 N. Lafayette

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The lawsuit was among a burgeoning crop of plastics litigation amid growing awareness of a global plastics crisis.