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Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country. ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — The signs on the empty historic buildings […]

WOOD RIVER - Riverbend Family Ministries (RFM) is proud to announce that it has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2024 Community Impact Challenge Grant from the Edwardsville Community Foundation (ECF). The $4,050 grant will support RFM’s SOAR Program, which empowers adolescents by teaching critical skills for resilience and healthy decision-making. Thanks to this generous grant, students from the Edwardsville School District will be further empowered to access this transformative program, strengthening the reach of SOAR within the Edwardsville community. “ECF is pleased to support Riverbend Family Ministries’ important work of serving vulnerable youth in our communities through their SOAR Program,” said Pamela Farrar, ECF executive director. “The adolescent years are a pivotal developmental stage, and we appreciate RFM’s efforts to positively impact this age group, which in turn helps to strengthen our communities as a whole.” T

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Well, it worked. We’ll have to see how this plays out in the lawsuit WhatsApp brought against NSO Group, but it has managed to shed one litigant thanks to intervention from the home team: the Israeli government. In July, documents obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) revealed the desperate measures NSO Group deployed to […]

A Mark Lanegan tribute concert will take place Dec. 5 in London, about a week after what would've been the late Screaming Trees frontman's 60th birthday.The lineup includes Queens of…

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ALTON - Alton Little Theater is super-charged with excitement to offer its first-time-ever production of “ROCKY HORROR – The Musical,” with seven performances from Oct. 25 to Nov. 3, 2024, with a midnight (11:59 p.m.) performance on Halloween, Oct. 31, 2024! Fun bags of “ props” will be sold and the audience is encouraged to dress up, let go, and have a blast with this cult-favorite celebrating 25 years of pure enjoyment! The Author, Richard O’ Brian, wrote the show with some great jokes - and even though “ROCKY HORROR” encompassed his love for B-Science-Fiction-movies and frivolous entertainment, he also found himself unwittingly compelled to write his unique take on the “fall of man,” with lead roles Brad and Janet being the depiction of Adam and Eve and the snake’s temptation being Frank-N-Furter! The stage version features all of your favorite characters and songs from the movie, including “Time Warp”

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WOOD RIVER - Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine and Wood River Police Chief Brad Wells announced today that a Glen Carbon man has been charged in connection with a home invasion that ended in a fatality. August C. Archambault, 20, has been charged with Home Invasion (class X felony), Aggravated Robbery (class 1 felony) and Residential Burglary (class 1 felony). The charges allege that on May 16, 2024, Archambault, or one for whose conduct he was legally accountable, entered a residence on Thompson Street in Wood River. The charges also allege that the defendant, or one for whose conduct he was legally accountable, caused injury to the resident and took property, a firearm, from the resident. The most serious of the charges is Home Invasion, which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Police responded to the apartment on the night of May 16 after receiving reports of a gunshot. Haine’s office has filed a detention petition against the defendant, arguing that h

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Armory STL, the massive entertainment complex in Midtown, will "temporarily close."

August C. Archambault, 20, faces charges of home invasion, aggravated robbery and residential burglary.

Two men have pleaded guilty to federal charges following an armed robbery of a St. Louis Gamestop store last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports today about a massive Chinese cyberattack on US broadband suppliers: The hacking campaign, called Salt Typhoon...is the latest in a series of incursions that U.S. investigators have linked to China in recent years. ....Last week, U.S. officials said they had disrupted...a China-based hacking group called Flax Typhoon. And in January, ...continue reading "We are facing a typhoon of Chinese cyberattacks"

Israel is starting a wider conflict.

by A.C. Thompson, James Bandler and Brandon Roberts

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.

The recent crackdown on the social media platform Telegram has triggered waves of panic among the neo-Nazis who have made the app their headquarters for posting hate and planning violence.

“Shut It Down,” one person posted in a white supremacist chat on Tuesday, hours after Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced he would begin sharing some users’ identifying information with law enforcement.

With over 900 million users around the globe, Telegram has been both revered and reviled for its hands-off approach to moderating posted content. The platform made headlines this summer when French authorities arrested Durov, seeking to hold him responsible for illegal activity that has been conducted or facilitated on the platform — including organized drug trafficking, child pornography and fraud.

Durov has called the charges “misguided.” But he acknowledged that criminals have abused the platform and promised in a Telegram post to “significantly improve things in this regard.” Durov’s announcement marked a considerable policy shift: He said Telegram will now share the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate the platform’s rules with authorities “in response to valid legal requests.”

This was the second time in weeks that extremists had called on their brethren to abandon Telegram. The first flurry of panic followed indictments by the Justice Department of two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists accused of inciting others on the platform to commit racist killings.

“EVERYONE LEAVE CHAT,” posted the administrator of a group chat allied with the Terrorgram Collective the day the indictments were announced.

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, however, shows that despite the wave of early panic, users didn’t initially leave the platform. Instead there was a surge in activity on Terrorgram-aligned channels and chats, as allies of the group tried to rally support for their comrades in custody, railed against the government’s actions and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, with a slew of felonies including soliciting the murder of government officials on Telegram.

Humber has pleaded not guilty. She made a brief appearance in federal court in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 13, during which she was denied bail. Humber, shackled and clad in orange-and-white jail garb, said nothing. Allison, who has not yet entered a plea, was arrested in Idaho but will face trial in California.

Attorneys for Humber and Allison did not respond to separate requests for comment.

The two are alleged Accelerationists, a subset of white supremacists intent on accelerating the collapse of today’s liberal democracies and replacing them with all-white ethno-states, according to the indictment.

Through a constellation of linked Telegram channels, the collective distributes books, audio recordings, videos, posters and calendars celebrating white supremacist mass murderers, such as Brenton Tarrant, who in early 2019 stormed two mosques in New Zealand and shot to death 51 Muslim worshippers.

The group explicitly aims to inspire similar attacks, offering would-be terrorists tips and tools for carrying out spectacular acts of violence and sabotage. A now-defunct channel allegedly run by Humber, for example, featured instructions on how to make a vast array of potent explosives. After their arrests, channels allegedly run by Humber and Allison went silent.

But within days of the indictments, an anonymous Telegram user had set up a new channel “dedicated to updates about their situation.”

“I understand that some people may not like these two, however, their arrests and possible prosecution affects all of us,” the user wrote. The criminal case, they argued, “shows us that Telegram is under attack globally.”

The channel referred to Humber and Allison by their alleged Telegram usernames, Ryder_Returns and Btc.

A long-running neo-Nazi channel with more than 13,000 subscribers posted a lengthy screed. “We are very sad to hear of the egregious overreach of government powers with these arrests,” stated the poster, who used coded language to suggest that white supremacists should forcefully overthrow the U.S. government.

One group closely aligned with the Terrorgram Collective warned like-minded followers that federal agents could be lurking. In a post, it said that it had been in contact with Humber since her arrest, and that she gave them information about an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the Accelerationist scene.

“If this person is in your chats, remove them,” said one post, referring to the supposed agent. “Don’t threaten them. Don’t say anything to them. Just remove them from contacts and chats.”

Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, said the Terrorgram Collective had already been badly weakened by a string of arrests in the U.S., Europe and Canada over the past two years. “Overall, the arrests of Humber and Allison are likely the final blow to the Terrorgram Collective,” Kriner said.

In the U.S., federal agents this year have arrested at least two individuals who were allegedly inspired by the group. The first was Alexander Lightner, a 26-year-old construction worker who was apprehended in January during a raid on his Florida home. In a series of Telegram posts, Lightner said he planned to commit a racially or ethnically motivated mass killing, according to prosecutors. Court records show that agents found a manual produced by the Terrorgram Collective and a copy of “Mein Kampf” in Lightner’s home.

Lightner has pleaded not guilty to charges of making online threats and possessing an illegal handgun silencer. His attorney declined to comment.

This summer, prosecutors charged Andrew Takhistov of New Jersey with soliciting an individual to destroy a power plant. Takhistov allegedly shared a PDF copy of a different Terrorgram publication with an undercover agent. The 261-page manual includes detailed instructions for building explosives and encourages readers to destabilize society through murder and industrial sabotage. Takhistov has not yet entered a plea. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Durov’s August arrest also sent a spasm of fear through the extremist scene. “It’s over,” one user of a white supremacist chat group declared.

“Does this mean I have to Nuke my Telegram account?” asked another member of the group. “I just got on.”

Their concerns grew when Telegram removed language from its FAQ page stating that the company would not comply with law enforcement requests regarding users in private Telegram chats.

Alarmed, Accelerationists on Telegram discussed the feasibility of finding another online sanctuary. Some considered the messaging service Signal, but others warned it was likely controlled by U.S. intelligence agencies. One post suggested users migrate to more obscure encrypted messaging apps like Briar and Session.

In extremist circles, there was more discussion about fleeing Telegram after Durov’s announcement this week. “Time is running out on this sinking ship,” wrote one user. “So we’re ditching Telegram?” asked another.

“Every time we have a success against one of them, they learn, they adapt, they modify,” said Don Robinson, who as an FBI agent conducted infiltration operations against white supremacists. “Extremists can simply pick up and move to a new platform once they are de-platformed for content abuses. This leaves law enforcement and intelligence agencies playing an endless game of Whac-a-Mole to identify where the next threat may be coming from.”

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Eric Clapton has shared a video for “One Woman,” the first single off his upcoming album, Meanwhile.The video, directed by Dessie Jackson, features a book filled with drawings brought to life through animation.Meanwhile,…

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Finally the preliminary steel import numbers for August are here. They're down 2.4% from July. And whether you care or not, you are going to see who we get our steel from:

ALTON - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rivers Project and The National Great Rivers Museum is thrilled to announce its inaugural Halloween event, Haunted Night at the NGRM, set to take place on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024 from 6 to 9 p.m. Nestled in America’s most haunted small town, Alton, Illinois, this festive fall event promises a night filled with thrills, chills, and family-friendly fun! The public is invited to visit the National Great Rivers Museum for a wide array of family-friendly yet spooky activities to kick off the Halloween season. Visitors can enjoy "Haunted Dam Tours" from sunset to dark, offering guests the chance to travel 80 feet to the top of the Melvin Price Locks and Dam above the Mississippi River at night, a rare opportunity. “We encourage guests to join us for the Haunted Dam Tours, an intriguing exploration that combines Navigation with a touch of Halloween excitement” said Natural Resources Specialist and Museum Director Allison Kennington.

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