Aggregator

Multiple St. Louis area police agencies engaged in an incredibly chill chase early this afternoon, with both pursuers and pursued traveling at speeds somewhere between OJ Simpson’s white Bronco and a sloth. It's unclear where this pokey pursuit began, but it passed through Lemay in south county and ended in south city not far from Hampton and Chippewa. 

A Missouri city will pay nearly $3 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it and six other St. Louis suburbs of violating the constitutional rights of residents by jailing them and forcing them to pay fees, often for minor traffic violations.

ALTON - Alton Police was called to a scene where an adult male was found in a wooded area in the 2300 block of Lincoln Avenue at 12:37 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. Alton Police Chief Jarrett Ford said when officers arrived at the scene, they determined the male subject to be deceased. "The investigation into the male subject’s death is ongoing," Chief Ford said. "Investigators with the Alton Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division are conducting the investigation and are being assisted by the Illinois State Police and Madison County Coroner’s Office." Ford closed with the following statement: "Anyone with information is asked to call the Alton Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division at 618-463-3505 Ext. 634."

Continue Reading

Paul McCartney wrapped his 2023 Got Back tour in Brazil last month, and he’s sharing highlights from the trek with fans. The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer debuted a video recapping…

Source

CAHOKIA HEIGHTS – Cahokia Heights detectives are investigating a deadly shooting that occurred at 11 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023, at the Greystone Apartments off Old Missouri Avenue. Cahokia Heights Police have reported a woman was shot and killed in her car outside an apartment complex. The neighborhood has reported previous gunfire activity to police, so it is not unknown in that vicinity. To date, no one has been apprehended and suspects or a victim have not been identified.

Continue Reading

Meteorologists are expecting some snow starting Friday and a significant winter storm system to move into the area next week.

ST. LOUIS - Between Thanksgiving and New Year, residential waste increases by 25%. As the Christmas season winds down, the City of St. Louis Parks, Recreation, and Forestry Department is offering locations throughout the city to take your live Christmas trees to be properly recycled. “Once they’re dropped off into the yard waste, which is [...]

An FBI raid on journalist Tim Burke’s home newsroom in May, and the government’s refusal to explain it, risks chilling journalism.

Courtesy of Tim Burke

It’s been more than seven months since the FBI raided Florida journalist Tim Burke’s home newsroom, after Burke found and publicized Fox News interview outtakes where Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, made antisemitic remarks. Yet the government still has not explained the basis for the raid or returned all of Burke’s seized equipment and information.

That’s a huge problem for press freedom, as Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), the ACLU and five other organizations explained in an amicus brief filed with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 2, 2024, in support of Burke’s request to unseal the affidavit filed with the search warrant authorizing the raid and to return newsgathering materials that were seized during it.

“Because of the search warrant executed in this case, journalists are rightfully concerned that the government considers routine, modern-day newsgathering techniques—including accessing unencrypted and unsecured websites—to be criminal under the Wiretap Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),” the amicus brief explains.

Burke says he’s being criminally investigated merely for finding the outtakes on a publicly available website. Absent any contrary claims from the government, which has refused to unseal the affidavit, other journalists are likely to assume he’s correct. As a result, they may well refrain from scouring obscure corners of the internet to find newsworthy stories like Ye’s antisemitism, which remains in the headlines to this day.

“Uncovering newsworthy information on the internet and publishing it is newsgathering 101, since so much information is stored online today. Journalists shouldn’t have to work in fear of federal agents knocking down their doors, rifling through their notes, and seizing their computers for just doing their jobs,” said FPF Deputy Director of Advocacy Caitlin Vogus.

Reporters have found hidden information online and used it to expose everything from how Oracle markets its products for use in Chinese surveillance to a trove of videos shot by Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol. But the Burke investigation, and the government’s refusal to explain the investigation’s basis, leaves other journalists around the country uncertain about the legal risks of this kind of reporting.

Unfortunately, it’s not far-fetched to believe that the FBI may be stretching the law to go after Burke for ordinary newsgathering. Officials around the country have abused computer hacking laws to target journalism in the past because of the embarrassing information the reporting revealed. The most recent and prominent example of this was the shameful and illegal raid on the Marion County Record in Kansas.

“The First Amendment protects the vital role journalism plays in keeping powerful institutions accountable to the public. But it appears that the government is interpreting computer crime laws in a dangerously overbroad manner — despite Supreme Court case law warning against this kind of overreach. This is both impermissible and unwise,” said Jennifer Stisa Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

This chilling effect is amplified by the government’s alarming suggestion in legal filings that Burke isn’t actually a journalist, in part because he didn’t work for an established news outlet at the time he obtained the Ye video. But, as the amicus brief explains, the First Amendment and other legal protections for reporters aren’t limited to big-name news organizations and their reporters. Freelancers and small, independent news outlets need to know that the government will follow the law when it comes to investigations of them, too.

Government must also return equipment

Finally, it’s outrageous that, months after the raid, the FBI continues to hold on to equipment and information it seized from Burke that isn’t relevant to its investigation (even assuming there is any legitimate basis for an investigation in the first place).

Burke needs his hardware to continue to engage in reporting and preserve his research, especially since Google recently threatened to delete his remote storage account. The government shouldn’t be allowed to use an investigation based on vague accusations to silence journalists’ reporting and threaten their careers and livelihoods.

It could be that the government’s investigation of Burke hinges on something other than routine newsgathering. (Though, based on what we know so far, we’re doubtful.) If so, many of the First Amendment concerns raised by the raid and its chilling effect on other journalists could be resolved if the government would just explain why it thinks Burke broke the law. But so far, it’s refused.

In October, more than 50 organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding transparency about how the government believes Burke’s newsgathering broke the law. The DOJ has not responded.

That means it’s up to the federal appeals court to order additional transparency about this troubling investigation. If the government is targeting a journalist for constitutionally protected newsgathering, the public deserves to know.

From Mark Lezama, a patent attorney, about recent announcements that Steamboat Willie (aka Mickey Mouse) will be starring in several horror films now that Disney's copyright has expired: The main thing is to be sure you’re not using Mickey in promotional materials in a way that would make someone think the film came from Disney. ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Mickey the slasher"

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) — An Illinois man charged with murder, attempted murder and a hate crime in an October attack on a Palestinian American mother and her young son appeared at a pretrial hearing Wednesday as community members gathered outside the courthouse in support of the child's family. Joseph Czuba, 71, is accused of fatally [...]

GRANITE CITY - Andrew Walker, a freshman guard on the boys basketball team at Granite City High School, has made many positive contributions to the Warriors in his first season with the team, and did have a good game against Collinsville on Dec. 12 at GCHS Memorial Gym, scoring eight points in a 67-60 loss to Collinsville. He has also been strong in several other Warriors' contests. Only a freshman, the potential for Andrew Walker at this point is limitless in his career with the Warriors. It was a game where Granite came back from being down by as many as 16 points to come within five late in the game, but the Kahoks were able to hold off the rally and preserve the win. Walker is a Stillwater Senior Living Male Athlete of the Month. Walker has averaged around 6.6 points and 2.3 rebounds per game, also having nine assists, eight steals and a blocked shot. "I feel like we've got to get back in the lab and work as a team," Walker said after the Collinsville game. "The biggest thing

Continue Reading

EDWARDSVILLE - Sophie Shapiro has been a starting guard for the girls' basketball team at Edwardsville High, and so far this season, she's made a positive contribution to a young team that's been gaining its footing day by day and is ready to break out in the second half of the season. Shapiro scored six points in the Tigers' 63-41 home win over East St. Louis on Jan. 2, to start the 2024 portion of the schedule, taking Edwardsville to 6-9 on the season and a three-game winning streak, going back to the Tigers' final two games of the Visitation Christmas Tournament over the Holidays. For the season, she's been averaging six points and 4.7 rebounds-per-game, adding 24 assists, 17 steals and a blocked shot to the mix. The Tigers played very solidly in the win over the Flyers, and in her postgame interview, Shapiro felt that the Tigers were building positive momentum during their current winning streak. "I'm feeling pretty good," Shapiro said. "It's good that we have a home game, I

Continue Reading

Thanks to politicians (including a former president) being overly willing to scratch the bigoted itch of a voting bloc that appears to prefer the brutal caress of fascism to the freedoms of a democratic republic, far too many state and local legislators are crafting and enacting laws designed to relegate a whole lot of the […]

Police said in a Wednesday update that the man had been located.

Two congresswomen from the St. Louis area were among 53 House members who urged the Biden administration on Wednesday to conduct a comprehensive regulatory review of Nippon Steel’s pending acquisition of U.S. Steel.

Lindab Group, a Sweden-based maker of equipment to produce ventilation ducts, is buying a U.S. business in the same sector that has much of its operations in Jefferson County.

A state-court judge on Dec. 28 ordered NorthSide Regeneration to abate nuisance conditions at a vacant commercial building it owns in the Covenant Blu-Grand Center neighborhood.

The Missouri Senate picked up Wednesday afternoon largely where it left off when it adjourned in May, with a group of Republicans holding court for more than an hour to vent frustrations with the chamber’s leadership.  For the past three years, a group of GOP senators who had previously been aligned under the banner of […]

The post Opening day of Missouri’s 2024 legislative session echoes past divisions appeared first on Missouri Independent.