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After the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, it is anticipated that Sweden will soon become the alliance’s 32nd member. The heart of this alliance – which was established in the aftermath of World War II to promote the collective security of its mostly Western European members – is Article 5 of the North Atlantic […]

The post NATO isn’t the only alliance countries are eager to join – a brief history of the Five Eyes appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A Q&A on the fashion industry's toxic chemicals problem — and how we can protect ourselves.

Cue up Glenn Frey, because the heat is on. Another very warm start, around 80, and then we’ll heat up quickly.

A serious accident had part of eye 70 closed this morning in St. Charles.

Thousands of Cardinal fans were heading to Busch Stadium to watch the Cards take on the Cubs despite the summer heat.

The heat has claimed lives from Arizona to Greece to China.

by Jeremy Schwartz

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

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Two months after Texas lawmakers stripped millions of dollars from a company that supplies child identification kits, a bill to fund a similar program in Pennsylvania is facing key opposition.

In March, two Pennsylvania senators filed legislation that called for purchasing and distributing child identification kits for all of the state’s first graders. The kits, which would cost the state about $350,000, needed to use “inkless” fingerprinting technology, according to the bill.

Such a provision would provide an advantage to one vendor: the National Child Identification Program, a Waco, Texas, company run by former NFL player Kenny Hansmire, who has a track record of failed businesses and has been disciplined by Connecticut banking regulators.

On May 2, the bill sailed through the Senate Education Committee on a unanimous vote, a key step that was celebrated by the company’s representatives and the legislation’s authors. During a press conference that day, Hansmire turned to a common phrase he uses to promote the kits, calling the bill a “gift of safety” and urging the lawmakers to support the measure.

“We’re asking the state of Pennsylvania to step up, the Senate and the House to step up,” he said.

A week later, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published an investigation that found no evidence that the kits had ever been used to find a missing child and that the company had used exaggerated statistics as it sought to secure government dollars across the country.

After the investigation was published, Texas lawmakers — who had approved legislation in 2021 that delivered nearly $6 million to the company — zeroed out future funding for the effort.

Pennsylvania lawmakers also began taking a closer look at the company. The bill’s authors removed the requirement that kits be “inkless,” and the measure passed the full Senate last month with a 34-15 vote. Now the bill is awaiting a hearing in the House Education Committee. But the chair of that committee told the news organizations that he has no plans to bring the legislation forward for a vote.

Jason Thompson, a spokesperson for bill sponsors Sens. Scott Martin and Camera Bartolotta, both Republicans, said the removal of the provision that required the kits to be “inkless” would allow a wider pool of potential vendors to seek a state contract. Hansmire has claimed that his company’s inkless technology makes its kits superior.

“Understanding the clear value of providing these kits to young people, Senator Bartolotta and Senator Martin amended their bill to provide additional flexibility to ensure whatever kits are distributed to students meet the needs of Pennsylvania families, law enforcement and taxpayers,” Thompson said.

But that change was not enough to persuade multiple state lawmakers who questioned the use of taxpayer funding to pay for the kits, including Rep. Peter Schweyer, chair of the House Education Committee.

“This just never seemed like it was all that well thought out,” Schweyer, a Democrat, said, adding that addressing school violence and mental health are more urgent priorities. “I’d rather hire a couple more cops or spend money on a couple more psychologists in our most at-risk schools.”

Two Democratic senators offered similar concerns.

Sen. Maria Collett said she was worried that the legislation, as originally proposed, appeared to benefit a single vendor. She noted that several nonprofits in the state already provide child ID kits for free to parents who want them.

“To ask the taxpayers of Pennsylvania to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, year over year, to a private vendor for a product that we have no data showing the efficacy of is unconscionable, in my opinion,” she said.

Sen. Nikil Saval said the news organizations’ investigation raised concerns among lawmakers.

“A number of us, initially, were supportive of the effort,” Saval said. “Frankly, the reporting gave a number of us pause.”

Beyond questions of the kits’ effectiveness, the news outlets’ investigation found Hansmire had a string of failed businesses, had millions of dollars in outstanding federal tax liens and had previously been barred from some finance-related business in Connecticut by banking regulators because of his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.

Hansmire, who did not respond to emailed questions for this article, has said the kits help law enforcement find missing children and save time during the early stages of a search. But none of the law enforcement agencies contacted by the news outlets could recall the kits having assisted in finding a missing child.

Hansmire also previously said that his legal disputes, including his sanction in Connecticut, had been “properly resolved, closed and are completely unrelated to the National Child ID Program.” He claimed to have “paid debts entirely” but did not provide details.

The Pennsylvania House Education Committee is scheduled to reconvene in late September, following the Legislature’s summer break.

If the committee takes no action, another legislative avenue called a “code bill” could potentially provide funding for the kits, but Schweyer said he isn’t aware of a push for such a move.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of momentum for it here,” he said. Schweyer added: “For now, it’s a dead issue in Pennsylvania.”

Def Leppard’s Rick Allen and wife Lauren Monroe’s Raven Drum Foundation has announced some great new events to support veterans, firefighters and trauma survivors. Both events will be happening in September, one in…

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It was the middle of the summer in the early 1950s, and the temperature was above 100 degrees.

The meetings and events industry is almost back to pre-pandemic levels, but St. Louis-area experts say it has changed in several ways.

The Missouri Department of Corrections set a record for new applicants last month.

‘Oppenheimer’ and the anguish of creative destruction

The big opening weekend contrasts with everything the studios have been doing for the last couple of decades.

‘Barbie’ captures those thoughts that are difficult for women to express.

The father of the atomic bomb still speaks to the danger of complacency.

Streaming has given the studios one more way to exploit writers—and the writers are pushing back.

by Duaa Eldeib

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

Members of Congress on Thursday introduced sweeping legislation that aims to reduce the country’s stillbirth rate, tackling gaps in research, data and awareness as well as authorizing tens of millions of dollars in new funding.

If passed, the Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education (SHINE) for Autumn Act of 2023 would be the most comprehensive federal stillbirth law on record. Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., who introduced the bill in the House, called it “the first step in the right direction” to help prevent stillbirths and ensure healthy pregnancies.

As a mother, grandmother and co-chair of the Maternity Care Caucus, Kim said she understands the challenges firsthand. She said that when one of her daughters lost a baby a few years ago, the doctor’s response was, “It happens.”

“These experiences have made me want to be a part of the solution,” she said. “I want us to have more information and make sure things are better for my grandkids. We should be able to prevent the preventable.”

Every year in the U.S., more than 20,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks or more. Research shows as many as 1 in 4 stillbirths may be preventable, a figure that jumps to nearly half as the due date nears. But for years, the U.S. stillbirth crisis has been overlooked.

ProPublica has reported extensively on the devastating effects of stillbirth on families and the country’s failure to prevent, prioritize and raise awareness around stillbirth. Stark racial disparities underscore the crisis, as Black women are more than twice as likely to have a stillbirth as white women. But government officials, doctors and researchers often cite the dearth of research, data and autopsies as barriers to change.

Kim and other lawmakers lauded ProPublica’s reporting for bringing the stillbirth crisis to the forefront and revealing shortcomings in how the nation’s health care system was combating stillbirths.

“ProPublica’s work has been so important for shedding light on the challenges related to stillbirth, amplifying the stories of mothers and women whose voices have not been heard, and highlighting the gaps in our stillbirth-related data and where the United States stands compared to other countries,” said Kim, who was not involved in last session’s legislation.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced legislation in the Senate last year with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., but it did not pass. They joined forces again to reintroduce a measure on Thursday. Booker said the growing list of bipartisan cosponsors and the relentless work of advocates makes him optimistic that it will pass this session.

“Sadly, despite staggering statistics, stillbirth remains one of the most underfunded and understudied public health issues in the United States. This legislation would provide long-overdue resources towards research and data collection,” said Booker, adding that he was “incredibly grateful” to ProPublica for raising awareness and giving a human face to the ongoing crisis, which has been “critical” to garnering support for the legislation.

The SHINE for Autumn Act is named after the daughter of New Jersey maternal health advocate Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya. Autumn Joy was stillborn 12 years ago this month.

The SHINE for Autumn Act is named for the stillborn daughter of Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya, a maternal health advocate. Her daughter, Autumn Joy, was stillborn in 2011. (Liz Moughon/ProPublica)

“This is life-saving, historic, monumental legislation,” Haine Vijayvergiya said. “I’ve been waiting and working so hard all these years, knocking on doors and screaming from rooftops trying to get someone’s attention, trying to find anyone who can help to elevate the sense of urgency around this issue.”

She teared up as she expressed gratitude to the lawmakers who listened and signed on to the legislation. She’s now turning her attention to getting the bill passed, which means a steady stream of meetings and calls.

“ProPublica has helped to shine the very brightest light,” she said. “I don't think we’d be where we are today without the help of ProPublica.”

The bill marks the second time this month that federal lawmakers have introduced stillbirth legislation. The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act specifically adds stillbirth prevention to the list of federal funding programs earmarked for mothers and children.

The SHINE for Autumn Act would authorize a total of $45 million in federal funding over the next five years for the various programs. That includes building a partnership between federal and state agencies to focus on collecting better data on stillbirths and risk factors, as well as building capacity at the local level to assess and standardize that data. It also seeks to develop and make educational awareness materials publicly available. Many women interviewed by ProPublica said they didn’t know they were at risk until they delivered their stillborn baby.

In addition, the bill paves the way for a perinatal pathology fellowship program to help provide additional training for fetal autopsies. In 2020, autopsies were conducted or planned in less than 20% of stillbirths, according to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also shows that the cause of death is not determined in about one-third of stillbirths.

Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., are all cosponsors in the House. Kelly, who co-chairs the Maternity Care Caucus with Kim, said the federal government has a major responsibility when it comes to ensuring maternal and newborn care, and part of that includes addressing the alarming racial disparities in maternal mortality and stillbirth.

“Stillbirth is a deeply painful experience for many mothers, and another area (of) health care where Black women feel a disproportionate burden,” she said. “By shedding light on this issue and directing more resources and more awareness to supporting moms and babies, we can improve outcomes across the board.”

Key medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, have also backed the legislation. Dr. Tony Sciscione, president of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said preventing stillbirths is crucial.

“One of the most difficult things that maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists do is comfort families as they try to understand why their baby was stillborn,” he said. “For patients and clinicians, there are far too many questions and far too few answers.”