Aggregator

Missouri is gearing up to issue a second round of cannabis microbusiness licenses which will be awarded after a random lottery-style drawing this summer.

Bluebird Network, a communications infrastructure provider and data center operator based in south St. Louis County, has named Jason Adkins as CEO.

The gracious leeway of the Terry stop — as set down by the Supreme Court’s 1968 decision — gave a lot a law enforcement agencies a permission slip for suspicionless stops of pedestrians. Random people got braced, patted down, aggressively questioned, and otherwise hassled. Very few arrests followed. Very little contraband was discovered. But it […]

The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you get the most out of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]

A manhunt is underway in rural St. Francois County for a man accused of sodomy and arson.

Landmark agreements would cut big states’ water usage for decades and deliver water to the Navajo Nation.

Fans of The Doobie Brothers can look forward to some new music soon.In an interview with Billboard, co-founders Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston reveal they're finishing up a new album that…

Source

The news formally ends the possibility of a strike among the breweries' union members.

In 150 days, 35 of Dr. Intimaa Salama’s family members have been killed in attacks by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.  U.S. Representative Cori Bush (D-St. Louis) has invited Salama, a Palestinian dentist and graduate student at Saint Louis University, as her honored guest to the State of the Union address Thursday.  “The ongoing violence in Gaza is an international crisis and it directly impacts people from St. Louis to the Middle East and everywhere in between,” Bush said in a press release Wednesday.

A manufacturing plant in the St. Louis region is the United Auto Workers' latest target in its campaign to unionize carmakers like Toyota, Honda and Tesla.

A previously convicted sex offender appeared in federal court on Tuesday to be sentenced for asking underage teens to send him explicit pictures.

Veronica chats with artist Katherine Bernhardt about her iconic St. Louis home, inspired by the Memphis Milano movement of the 1980s.

by Eric Umansky

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

The federal Department of Education has announced a historic $14 million fine against Liberty University for failing to properly handle reports of sexual assault and other campus safety issues.

Universities are required by law to support victims of violence. The Education Department found that the Christian evangelical Liberty University had fundamentally failed to do so. Sexual assault victims were “punished for violating the student code of conduct,” the report concluded, “while their assailants were left unpunished.”

The government found that Liberty’s actions had created a “culture of silence.”

The findings, which the department announced Tuesday, echo a ProPublica investigation that detailed how officials had discouraged and dismissed women who tried to come forward with accounts of sexual assault. Women who went to school officials to report being raped recalled being threatened with punishment for breaking the university’s strict moral code, known as “The Liberty Way.”

The coverage prompted widespread outrage, including demands from senators for a Department of Education investigation.

That investigation culminated in Tuesday’s announcement. The fines against Liberty are more than double the amount of the next-largest fines in Department of Education history — against Michigan State University for its failures to protect hundreds of women and girls from sexual abuser Larry Nassar.

Liberty will also face two years of federal oversight.

Elizabeth Axley, a former Liberty University student who was threatened with punishment when she reported her rape to campus officials, said the government’s findings against Liberty feel “so validating and sort of surreal.”

“For an official report to say, ‘Yes, everything you said happened, everything you described was real,’ is more powerful than I can describe,” said Axley, who recalled that when she first wanted to report her rape, a resident adviser told her to pray instead. “After I first fought to stand up for myself at Liberty, I was silenced. I didn’t feel hopeful. It took everything for me to stand up to tell my story again and hope it turned out right. This reminds me it was completely worth it.”

In response to the government’s report, Liberty University said in a statement that it faced “unfair treatment.” But the school also admitted to mistakes and committed to spending $2 million to improve campus safety.

“We acknowledge and sincerely regret these errors and have since corrected them in a manner that allows us to maintain compliance in each of these areas,” the school said. “Today is a new day at Liberty University. We remain committed to prioritizing the safety and security of our students and staff without exception.”

Liberty University was co-founded in 1971 by the televangelist Jerry Falwell. His son, Jerry Falwell Jr., took over the university’s helm in 2007 but resigned in 2020 after a series of scandals. With more than 90,000 students enrolled on its Virginia campus and online, Liberty remains one of the most influential Christian universities in the country.

S. Daniel Carter, who helped craft the Clery Act, the federal law that requires schools to report sexual assault and other crimes, said the significance of the Department of Education’s actions go beyond the record fines. “It’s not about a bottom line number,” Carter said. “It’s about the fact that they are proactively investigating and leading efforts to bring schools into compliance.”

Hannah Dreyfus contributed reporting.

An employee of a rural Missouri boarding school is accused of bloodying a boy’s face while boxing. The man is the third person associated with the same school to be charged this month.

WASHINGTON — Despite facing 91 felony counts, hefty civil penalties and a packed 2024 legal calendar, Donald Trump emerged on Super Tuesday as the Republican Party’s presumptive choice as its presidential candidate in November. The former president has secured 995 of the necessary 1,215 GOP delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination, and likely will […]

The post Trump, Biden close in on clinching nominations after broad Super Tuesday victories appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Billy Idol’s sophomore album, Rebel Yell, turned 40 in November, and now, he's celebrating the milestone with a new deluxe expanded edition of the record. The reissue will be available digitally and as a two-LP…

Source

It’s no secret that I’m often skeptical of antitrust actions, many of which feel like bureaucrats doing a “general punishment” for disliking a successful company, rather than an actual response to abusive, anti-competitive behavior by a large company. However, that does not mean that there is no place for antitrust enforcement. It’s just that it […]

Putting together Easter baskets for kids can get pricey, but you can save money with these Easter basket stuffers at Five Below.