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The shooting happened around 10:50 p.m. in the 5000 block of Queens Avenue. That places the shooting close to where Kingshighway Boulevard meets Interstate 70.

WOOD RIVER — Authorities responded to a shooting incident Thursday night at 242 E. Ferguson Ave. in Wood River, resulting in one fatality and the detention of a suspect. At approximately 10:14 p.m. on May 15, 2025, the Wood River Police Department and Fire Department were dispatched following a call for immediate assistance. Upon arrival, officers found an adult male in front of the building who reported that another adult male had been shot behind the building. Emergency personnel located the victim and began life-saving measures. Multiple law enforcement agencies, including East Alton, Bethalto, Hartford, Roxana, South Roxana, and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, assisted in securing the scene. Preliminary investigations identified the man found in front of the building as the individual who discharged the firearm. He was taken into investigative custody without incident. The gunshot victim was transported by ambulance to a hospital in Alton and later airlifted

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STAUNTON - Macoupin County Safe Families will host their annual golf tournament. On June 27, 2025, community members can come out to Timber Lakes Golf Course in Staunton for a golf tournament fundraiser that aims to help survivors of domestic violence. Registration starts at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. is the shotgun start. There will be a $1,000 shootout winner. “It’s geared around a really fun time going out and golfing and then getting financial support for our program,” explained Juliet Milton, Domestic Violence Advocate Coordinator. “It’s something that people could get together and take the afternoon and morning off to go do something fun while supporting a good organization.” The four-man scramble costs $400 per team of four, and all skill levels are welcome. Skins and mulligans will be available for purchase on the day of the event. There will also be raffle baskets, a 50/50 drawing, a booze cooler and more fun throughout the day. MCSF is

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May 16 has been a date marked by significant events throughout history, spanning continents and centuries, each contributing uniquely to the tapestry of our global story. From monumental battles that changed empires to groundbreaking cultural milestones, this day offers a fascinating glimpse into the forces that have shaped our world. One of the most impactful events on May 16 occurred in 1521: the fall of Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec Empire, to Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés. This moment marked a turning point in the history of the Americas, signaling the beginning of Spanish dominance in the region and the eventual establishment of New Spain. The conquest not only reshaped the political landscape but also had profound cultural, social, and demographic consequences that reverberate to this day. In the early 16th century, the Aztec Empire was one of the most powerful and sophisticated indigenous civilizations in the Americas. Its capital,

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Did you know that approximately one-third of the food we consume every day relies directly on pollination by bees? Despite their small size, bees play a colossal role in maintaining biodiversity and ensuring food security worldwide. Yet, these industrious insects are facing unprecedented threats that jeopardize not only their survival but also the health of ecosystems and economies globally. The Crucial Role of Bees in Ecosystems Bees are among the most efficient pollinators on the planet. Pollination—the transfer of pollen from the male parts of a flower to the female parts—enables plants to produce fruits and seeds. While many animals contribute to pollination, bees stand out for their effectiveness and specialization. Pollination and Biodiversity Over 80% of wild plants depend on animal pollinators, with bees being the primary agents. This process supports biodiversity by enabling flowering plants to reproduce and maintain genetic diversity within populations. For

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UMSL plans to demolish old buildings there and develop a workforce district with retail and businesses where students can learn on the job.

"Hey hometown - this one's for you. Look up, STL!" he wrote in the post.

Earlier this month we noted how Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr thinks he can have it both ways. Carr desperately wants to please dear leader, and be part of Trump’s mindless quest to dismantle most U.S. corporate oversight and regulatory independence. Yet at the same time he wants to bully companies for not being racist […]

All schools in the Union R-XI School District will be closed on Friday due to the unexpected death of a school employee, and the district is requesting the community to keep the families and staff in their thoughts and prayers.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances, all #unionrxi schools are closed today, Friday 5/16/25," the announcement on both social media accounts said.

DEFIANCE, Mo. - The Power of Two is live in your neighborhood, Defiance. FOX 2’s Ty Hawkins and Margie Ellisor visit Defiance, highlighting the people, places, and stories that make the area special. Visit FOX 2’s YouTube channel to check out the locations the trio visited while in Defiance.

WASHINGTON — Students and families could see significant changes to how student loans are repaid as well as cuts to federal student aid as congressional Republicans look to slash billions of dollars in federal spending to offset the cost of President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda. Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move a […]

by Talia Buford

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

We are pleased to announce the journalists chosen as the 2025 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program.

The program was established in 2023 to expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country and help better reflect the nation as a whole. Nine journalists from across the country will join four ProPublica staffers for this year’s program.

This program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

Participants will undergo a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.

“By providing investigative editing tools to journalists across the country, we aim to ensure that there will be more accountability reporting in more newsrooms across the country,” said Ginger Thompson, a managing editor at ProPublica. “It’s an effort we have long considered one of our highest priorities.”

Introducing the 2025 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:

Alejandra Cancino is a senior reporter at Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom investigating the Cook County court system. Her award-winning investigations focus on the intersection of government and business, combining data with personal stories to expose systemic failures. Most recently, she co-authored a five-part narrative series that exposed how the judicial system favors landlords’ property rights over their tenants’ rights. The project was recognized with an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. In 2022, Cancino spent a year editing and training emerging journalists at City Bureau, a nonprofit organization focused on Chicago’s marginalized communities. Previously, she covered manufacturing, economic development and labor as a business reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She is a 2025 recipient of Chicago’s Studs Terkel Award, which honors a journalist’s body of work. Cancino serves on the Investigative Reporters and Editors board and is a former president and board member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Chicago Headline Club.

Daarel Burnette II is a senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Before joining the Chronicle in 2022, he served as an assistant managing editor and reporter for Education Week and the bureau chief of Chalkbeat Tennessee, a news organization based in Memphis. He has worked as an education reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Louisville Courier Journal. He also worked as a general-assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He received his undergraduate degree in print journalism from Hampton University and a master’s degree in politics and journalism from Columbia University.

Daphne Chen is the investigations editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a former investigative data reporter for the news organization. In 2022, Chen was part of a reporting team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for a project that uncovered how electrical fires disproportionately endanger poor Black renters. Previously, she was a data reporter for USA Today, where she revealed that state officials repeatedly sent children to live with foster parents accused of abuse. She also spent a year as a reporting fellow in Cambodia.

Nic Garcia is The Texas Tribune’s regions editor, leading a team of reporters who live across the state and tell the story of Texas policy and politics from the ground up. In 2022, his team produced a series on Texas’ failing water infrastructure — especially in rural communities — that propelled a statewide investment in water. Garcia joined the Tribune after a year as politics editor at The Des Moines Register in Iowa. He also was a senior writer at The Dallas Morning News, where he was named journalist of the year and won a second place Headliner award for his COVID-19 coverage. A Colorado native, Garcia covered the Colorado legislature for The Denver Post. His analysis of lobbying records inspired changes to the state’s lobbying laws.

Nicole Lewis is the engagement editor for The Marshall Project, leading the organization’s strategic efforts to deepen reporting that reaches communities most affected by the criminal legal system. She previously served as a senior editor at Slate, where she led a team of writers covering the array of legal issues before the Supreme Court for the publication’s jurisprudence section. In 2020, she was the lead reporter on a first-of-its kind political survey of the incarcerated, which received an honorable mention for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Award for the project’s pioneering use of social science research methods. Prior to The Marshall Project, Nicole reported for The Washington Post’s America desk and the Fact Checker. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Andrea Lopez-Villafaña is the managing editor at Voice of San Diego. She is also a co-host on the VOSD Podcast, the most popular local public affairs podcast in San Diego, and writes a weekly newsletter, Cup of Chisme. She previously worked as a reporter at The San Diego-Union Tribune, where she covered the city’s neighborhoods.

Jennifer Palmer is an investigative reporter at Oklahoma Watch. She has more than two decades of news reporting experience and her work has been recognized with awards in public service reporting and investigative reporting. She started her career covering police and courts at the Rio Grande Sun, a scrappy weekly in northern New Mexico, where her reporting led to the ouster of a prominent judge. Before joining Oklahoma Watch, she previously worked as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and The Oklahoman. She is a native of Norman, Oklahoma, and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.

Chastity Pratt is the national education editor at The Washington Post. Prior to joining the Post in 2024, she was the education bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal, a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and covered education at the Detroit Free Press, Newsday and The Oregonian. Over the years, she has helped train students and journalists for Harvard College, the Education Writers Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Milton Valencia is The Boston Globe’s criminal justice editor in metro, overseeing coverage of crime, policing and public safety. He was previously deputy editor of the Globe’s inaugural Money, Power, Inequality team, which focuses on addressing the racial wealth gap across the region. Milton started as a reporter at the Globe in 2007. In that role, he reported from the Globe’s City Hall bureau, helping lead coverage of Boston’s historic 2021 race for mayor. In 2020, he was part of a Globe police accountability team that exposed corruption and mismanagement in the Boston Police Department. He also spent several years covering the federal justice system, including the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was part of the staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the bombings. Milton began his career at local newspapers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He holds a degree in philosophy and public policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and lives south of Boston with his wife and their two children.

Additionally, four ProPublica staffers will join this year’s cohort. They are:

Peter DiCampo is a visuals editor at ProPublica, where he primarily works with local partner newsrooms across the country through the Local Reporting Network. His visual editing and art direction have been awarded by the National Press Photographers Association, the Society for News Design, The Society of Publication Designers and the Online Journalism Awards. Prior to joining ProPublica, he was NPR’s international visual editor. Before turning to editing, he worked for more than a decade as a freelance photojournalist, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. He co-founded Everyday Africa, a collective of photographers using social media to broaden coverage of Africa beyond the headlines, and The Everyday Projects, a global community of photographers and a visual literacy nonprofit. He was a 2019 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, and he is the recipient of grants and awards from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Code for Africa, the Magnum Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, Pictures of the Year International and the Pulitzer Center, among others.

Duaa Eldeib is an investigative reporter at ProPublica. She has examined failures that have led to a stillbirth crisis in the U.S., the ways in which insurance companies interfere with mental health treatment and the fatal consequences of delaying care during the pandemic. She was a reporter and producer on the documentary “Before a Breath.” Her reporting has sparked legislative hearings, spurred government reform and led to the exoneration of a mother who was wrongly convicted of murder, as well as the release of young men who were incarcerated as juveniles and later sent to adult prison for minor offenses. Before joining ProPublica, she worked at the Chicago Tribune, where she and two colleagues were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. She was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting twice — first in 2023 for her series on stillbirths and again in 2025 as part of the team covering access to mental health care.

Hannah Fresques is the deputy data editor at ProPublica. She has edited data-driven investigations on the aftermath of Texas’ abortion ban, high-interest tribal lending and a salmonella outbreak. She joined the organization in 2016, and her work as a reporter and editor has earned recognition from Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Journalism Awards, as well as the Online News Association and Sigma Delta Chi Journalism awards. Before working in journalism, Fresques conducted evaluations of education policy for a nonprofit research organization. She holds a master’s degree in quantitative methods for social sciences from Columbia University.

Andrea Wise is the visual strategy editor at ProPublica, where she edits photography, illustration and other forms of visual journalism. She is also the co-founder of Diversify Photo, a nonprofit organization amplifying the voices of visual creatives from underrepresented groups in the global visual media landscape. She commissioned and led a yearlong photo essay that was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of ProPublica’s reporting on the harmful consequences of state abortion bans and was also Pictures of the Year International’s Online Storytelling Project of the Year. That body of work was also recognized with a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, George Polk Award for Medical Reporting, Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, and Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism, among other honors. Her photo editing and art direction have also been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the National Press Photographers Association, the Society of Publication Designers, and the Society for News Design. She holds a bachelor’s with honors in studio arts from Trinity College and a master’s in photography from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Aisha Sultan writes: When I heard that the PBS hit show, "Antiques Roadshow," was coming to town, I was intrigued by the possibility of extracting the truth from this family lore.

It’s easy to see why the city wants to avoid lawsuits over police misconduct. But a policy of dropping charges only if a person agrees not to sue is questionable.