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The boy was found safe, according to St. Louis County police.

Major League Soccer franchise St. Louis City SC ranked near the top of MLS for digital engagement during the 2023 season, according to a third-party report that also details the league’s sponsorship revenue.

The role oversees responsibility for controlling Boeing's supply chain, quality, manufacturing and engineering.

He is also charged in a separate shooting that happened in December 2023.

This is Agathla Peak in Arizona. According to our friends at Wikipedia, it is an "eroded volcanic plug consisting of volcanic breccia cut by dikes of an unusual igneous rock called minette." It is one of many such volcanic diatremes that are found in Navajo country of northeast Arizona and northwest New Mexico. The English ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

by Seth Freed Wessler

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In late February, a smuggling boat carrying dozens of Haitians bound for the U.S. was intercepted so close to Florida’s shore that those aboard could see the lights of hotels and passing cars. But although they were in U.S. waters, they have few rights compared to people who arrive at land borders. That’s even true of the three young children traveling alone on that boat, a 10-year-old boy and two sisters, 8 and 4.

I spent months reporting on this group of people, the children in particular, and on the hidden world of immigration enforcement at sea, a border where different rules apply. These are five key findings of the investigation, published last week in partnership with The New York Times Magazine.

Coast Guard detentions in the Caribbean and straits of Florida have reached their highest level in nearly three decades.

Since the summer of 2021, the Coast Guard has detained more than 27,000 people aboard its fleet of cutters in the Caribbean and straits of Florida, more than in any similar period in nearly three decades.

“We are in extremis,” a senior Coast Guard official wrote to colleagues in an email, part of a trove of internal records and data that I obtained. Most of the 27,000 are Haitian and Cuban, people who in recent years have faced extraordinary levels of violence and political unrest. But even people fleeing violence, rape, the threat of death — who on land would be likely to pass an initial asylum screening, according to legal experts — are routinely sent back to the countries they’ve fled when they try to arrive by sea.

The U.S. government has a separate system for people detained at sea to ask for protection. But it is nearly impossible to get through. Of the 27,000 people detained since July 2021, the Coast Guard logged 1,900 such claims, according to an internal Coast Guard database I obtained. Only about 60 of them had those claims approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.

Yet even the people whose “fear” claims are approved are not allowed into the U.S. Instead they can agree to be sent to an immigration detention facility on the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they’re told they should be prepared to wait for two years or more, until another country agrees to take them as refugees. Only 36 of the people with approved claims since July 2021 agreed to be sent to Guantánamo.

Unlike on land, even unaccompanied children traveling by sea are almost always denied protection in the U.S.

Since July of 2021, the Coast Guard has detained about 500 unaccompanied minors, mostly Haitians. Nearly every one of them was sent back.

On land, unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada cannot simply be turned back. But at sea, children are treated much like adults. Of the 500, only about 1% were allowed into the U.S. because officials determined they would likely be persecuted or tortured if sent back to the countries they fled.

The Coast Guard says that its crew members screen children to identify “human-trafficking indicators and protection concerns including fear of return.” A spokesperson told me that “migrants who indicate a fear of return receive further screening” by Homeland Security officials.

Once children are sent back to Haiti, some face uncertain fates.

No U.S. agency would explain what, if any, precautions the U.S. government takes to protect children, beyond an initial screening conducted aboard cutters.

Our reporting centered on the experience of a 10-year-old boy named Tcherry who, after he was delivered to Haiti by the Coast Guard, left the port with a man he’d met only weeks before at a smuggler’s house. No U.S. or Haitian officials spoke with Tcherry’s mother, who is in Canada, before the man was allowed to leave with the boy. The man himself was surprised how easy it had been.

“When we have custodial protection of those children, we want to make sure that the necessary steps are taken,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said, “to ensure that when we repatriate those migrants, they don’t end up in some nefarious actor’s custody or something.”

But one official from an agency involved in processing people delivered by the U.S. Coast Guard to Haiti told me, “Children leave the port, and what happens to them after they leave, no one knows.”

People are harming themselves in the hopes of making successful asylum claims.

As more and more people have taken to the sea, and their desperation has grown, an increasing number of migrants and refugees have harmed themselves in hopes that they will be rushed to hospitals on land, where they believe they can make asylum claims.

People detained on cutters have swallowed jagged metal cotter pins pulled from the rigging and stabbed themselves with smuggled blades, apparently trying to cause such severe injury that they’d be taken to a hospital. In January, a man plunged a five-inch buck-style knife that he’d carried onto a cutter into the side of his torso and slashed it down his rib cage. Crewmembers now start every leg at sea by scouring the decks for anything that people might use to harm themselves. According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, “medical evacuations do not mean that migrants have a greater chance of remaining in the United States.” But without the ability to claim asylum on cutters, more people are trying anyway.

The rigid immigration restrictions at sea, combined with the nearly 30-year spike in people detained, has created a moral crisis for Coast Guard members, too.

Coast Guard crew members described to me their distress at having to reject desperate person after desperate person. Several people I talked to said that the worst part of the job was turning away the children who were traveling alone. “The hardest ones for me are the unaccompanied minors,” one crew member told me. “They’re put on this boat to try to come to America, and they have no one.”

Crew members were seeing so much suffering, including encountering the bodies of people whose boats had capsized in the sea, that it was not uncommon for them to find each other sobbing. Some were struggling with what one former crew member called a “moral dilemma” because they had begun to understand that the job required them to inflict suffering on others. “We hear their stories, people who say they’d rather we shoot them right here than send them back to what they’re running from,” another Coast Guard member told me. “And then we send them all back.”

The Coast Guard leadership was getting worried: “I don’t see how the current level of operations is sustainable,” the commander of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Miami wrote to colleagues, “without the breaking of several of our people.”

Jason Kao contributed data reporting.

A large bank has moved about 50 employees from downtown St. Louis to its office in Earth City in St. Louis County.

Rush’s Geddy Lee wrapped the North American leg of his My Effin’ Life book tour with an extra surprise for Rush fans. The rocker’s appearance at Massey Hall in Toronto on Thursday, December 8, featured a very…

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The New York Times has an interesting piece today about pedestrian deaths in the US. As I've noted before—along with lots of others—US pedestrian fatalities decreased for decades but then suddenly turned around in 2010. Since then fatalities have continued to drop in other countries but have increased about 50% in the US. Why? The ...continue reading "Are pedestrians at fault for increasing pedestrian deaths?"

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Buc-ee's has officially opened in Springfield on Monday, Dec. 11. Tons of people were braving the cold on Monday for the grand opening. People were waiting in line to get in the Buc-ee's at 6 a.m. Buc-ee's employees gave out prizes and even the Buc-ee's mascot was there hanging out with the [...]

The post said Highway 94 was closed from Highway 47 to Bluff Road while crews tended to the downed power lines and tried to remove the truck from the creek.

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — A judge in Lake County set a trial date Monday for the man accused of the mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July Parade. Proceedings are set to begin in February 2024 and Robert Crimo III is planning to represent himself. Crimo III, who prosecutors say opened fire on crowds [...]

We’ve already talked a bit about Elon Musk’s obvious censorial bullshit lawsuit against Media Matters. It’s quite obvious from the lawsuit that his intent is to intimidate critics and suppress speech about hateful content on ExTwitter. So far, it’s not working, as that lawsuit seems to have inspired more people to find more ads next […]

Today on TAP: The Trumpian right discovered antisemitism only when it needed a cudgel to bash the Ivies.

This article originally ran on St. Louis Business Journal on December 4, 2023. Surgical technology manufacturer Corza Medical has opened a multimillion-dollar facility in Fenton. Corza Medical opened its Ophthalmology Center of Technology and Innovation at 1317 Horan Drive to help advance the development of next-generation devices for ophthalmic surgeries and other eye treatments, officials said. The 30,000-square-foot facility will […]

The post Corza Medical, Surgical Technology Manufacturer Opens Facility in Fenton appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.

This article originally ran on St. Louis Business Journal on December 1, 2023. Warehouse retailer Sam’s Club is opening two new distribution centers in the Midwest next year, one of which will be in the St. Louis area. Sam’s Club is preparing for a 370,000-square-foot facility in the 5700 block of Inner Park Drive in Edwardsville. Officials say it will […]

The post Sam’s Club to Open New Distribution Center in Edwardsville appeared first on St. Louis Regional Freightway.

GODFREY - A man from Godfrey has been charged with aggravated battery of a pregnant woman and more, according to recent Jersey County court filings. Adam J. Webster, 34, of Godfrey, was charged with aggravated battery, unlawful restraint, and domestic battery in the form of physical contact. According to court documents, on or about Dec. 4, 2023, Webster, “knowing to be pregnant, committed a battery … in that he shoved her down the hallway and stated, ‘I could just strangle the life out of you.’” In total, Webster was charged with a Class 3 felony for the aggravated battery charge, in addition to a Class 4 felony for unlawful restraint and a Class A Misdemeanor for domestic battery in the form of physical contact. Webster was initially taken into the custody of the Jersey County Jail, but has since been granted pretrial release under certain conditions including a no-contact order and electronic GPS monitoring. His arraignment hearing is no

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