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Adam Wainwright just wrapped up his career as a professional baseball player and is well into another one as a country music artist, but he's not stopping there.

Sheriff Vernon Betts seemed to reach an agreement this afternoon with St. Louis circuit court judges, who had previously publicly mulled no longer working with Betts’ deputies and being responsible for their own security. Last month, a letter from presiding Judge Elizabeth Hogan said that the court had plans to hire 36 bailiffs to provide daily security to the courtrooms, duties that are currently under the sheriff's department's purview.

Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, filed a bill this month to reinstate the Distressed Area Land Assemblage Tax Credit.

WOOD RIVER - Devon Green, a senior on a young East Alton-Wood River boys basketball team, is providing leadership for the Oilers and also sets an example for the younger players to look up to and aspire to this season. Green was the leading scorer for the team with 10 points recently against Roxana. Green, a very engaging and friendly gentleman, is optimistic about the Oilers improving and reaching new heights before the season's close. Green is a Midwest Members Credit Union Male Athlete of the Month for the Oilers. Green is the leading scorer and rebounder on the team. "I'm feeling pretty optimistic," Green said when asked if the Oilers can turn things around before the close of the year. As the only senior on the team with much basketball experience, Green sees his role on the team as a very simple one: Encourage and help his teammates in any way possible. "I would say I see myself as a senior leader," Green said, "and try to pick people off the ground. I would say, just make

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Founded in 1849, the Hager Cos. this year is marking its 175th anniversary. Longevity, however, brings with it a responsibility to ensure that the St. Louis-based company reaches its bicentennial, said R. Johnston Hager III, the company's president and chief operating officer. Recalling his early days at the family-owned business, Johnston Hager said he received advice from his grandfather, Bill Hager. “He said, ‘you’re part of the sixth generation. Don’t be the generation that screws this…

Here's your quick recap on the E. Jean Carroll affair. In 2019 Carroll claimed that Donald Trump had raped her in a dressing room a couple of decades ago. Trump denied it and said a bunch of nasty things about her, so she sued him for defamation. She won and was awarded $5 million, but ...continue reading "Trump’s latest trial has turned into a clown show"

Eckert’s, a family farm in Belleville, Illinois, welcomes you to the Cozy Cider Cabin. Open from Jan. 10 to Feb. 25, the wintery pop-up bar boasts a mountainside-cabin atmosphere with […]

The post The Cozy Cider Cabin: A Pop-Up Bar appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

To You, I Go (2023) is Jessica Page’s visual love letter to St. Louis. Although St. Louis is rarely romanticized, Page aims to showcase the softest purest side of her […]

The post To You, I Go appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

Broken Hearts - a juried art exhibit. See how local artists create artwork which explores the complexity of emotion within a broken heart. The exhibit is free and will run […]

The post Broken Hearts – a juried art exhibit appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

EDWARDSVILLE - Gabby Cook, a sophomore guard with the Edwardsville High girls' basketball team, has contributed much to the development of the Tigers in the 2023-24 season, and is being looked to to help the Tigers as the season begins to enter its stretch run. Cook has averaged 2.2 points and 1.2 rebounds-per-game so far for Edwardsville, also having an assist and steal, along with two blocked shots. Gabby is a Johnston Law Firm Female Athlete of the Month for the Tigers. Cook is now looking ahead to the remainder of the season and feels optimistic about how things may go. "I'm feeling pretty good," Cook said. "I know we're a pretty good team, we've just got to build more. Alton's a great team, so, just going up from here and I think we're starting to finally get our groove." Edwardsville played Alton to within two points at the half of a recent game at Edwardsville before the Redbirds pulled away in the second half. Cook sees her role on the Tigers as doing whatever she can t

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The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger is one of the executive producers behind an upcoming two-part documentary on the Godfather of Soul James Brown, which is set to debut in February on A&E. James Brown: Say it…

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This fall, St. Louis University will launch a program that will allow students to graduate with a B.S. and M.S. in speech-language pathology in five years, one year sooner than a traditional six-year track. The effort comes after projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that the profession is expected to grow 19% by 2032. Dr. Travis Threats, professor and chair of St. Louis University’s Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and graduate student Lucy Heller join the show.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) issued the following statement after the Senate passed a continuing resolution to keep our government open and spare working families the pain of a partial shutdown: “Today’s vote is good for working families, our economy and our entire nation. By passing this continuing resolution, the Senate is providing House Republicans an opportunity to avoid a needless government shutdown that would hurt working families and halt government services relied on by millions of Americans while creating a pathway to pass critical appropriations bills to keep the government open and working for the people for the rest of the fiscal year. “It’s clear that bipartisanship is the only path forward here. The Senate has done our job—and now, it’s critical that House Republicans do theirs by passing this resolution quickly so we can get it to the President’s desk for signature before parts of the government

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  WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans Thursday held a second hearing on the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, even as Mayorkas works to reach a deal on changes in immigration law with a group of senators. Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee argued that Mayorkas has not upheld his oath of office […]

The post U.S. House Republicans move ahead with drive to impeach Mayorkas over immigration policy appeared first on Missouri Independent.

More than a decade removed from their last World Series title, the St. Louis Cardinals have brought back three champions from the 2011 roster in three different roles.

Screenshot of what's left of a Lawfare blog post summarizing Reuters' reporting about an Indian tech firm, Appin, and its alleged hack-for-hire operations.

News outlets worldwide have been heeding demands to remove articles about an Indian tech company called Appin and its co-founder, Rajat Khare. Major U.S. outlets are among those that have been successfully pressured to take down their reporting — not just in India, but here as well.

The ordeal raises serious concerns about the global reach of local judges thousands of miles away. It also raises questions about the adequacy of existing legal safeguards to deal with international censorship campaigns arising from countries like India, with governments that don’t respect human rights, let alone press freedom. Even when the government is not directly involved in a censorship campaign, its reputation precedes it, and it would be impossible for news publishers not to take note.

Multiple news outlets take down stories globally

Everyone from Reuters to the U.K.’s The Sunday Times and outlets in Luxembourg and Switzerland has censored their reporting about Khare and Appin after either lawsuits or takedown letters, according to a report in the Daily Beast. The legal actions often come from an entity calling itself the “Association of Appin Training Centers” or its alleged executives.

Reuters, for example, ran a detailed investigation last November about how Appin functioned as a “hack-for-hire powerhouse.” Khare and Appin vehemently deny the allegations. Reuters published the article despite an injunction, entered in 2022, prohibiting it from reporting anything “defamatory” about the association. Presumably, Reuters believed the article wasn’t defamatory, so the injunction wouldn’t apply.

But within weeks, an Indian court deemed the article “indicative of defamation” — despite failing to identify any fallacies in the report — and ordered it removed from the internet. Reuters complied, taking down the article not just in India but around the world. Even the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine removed the Reuters story. Fortunately, DDoSecrets has stepped up to host the Reuters story and other censored reporting. (Sidenote: It is raising funds so it can continue doing its important work.)

The order doesn’t expressly limit the required takedown to India, which may suggest the Indian court intended it to be removed globally. But Indian courts don’t have global jurisdiction. And a U.S. court would be particularly unlikely to enforce the order, given the nearly insurmountable constitutional presumption against prohibitions on publication, or prior restraints. There’s even a law in the U.S., the SPEECH Act, against honoring defamation judgments from countries that don’t protect free speech.

So why did Reuters remove the story in the U.S. and everywhere else, replacing it with an editor’s note that it stands by its reporting and plans to appeal (a slow process anywhere, but especially in India)? And why have so many others complied with takedown demands?

Some publications, like The New Yorker, have kept their stories up despite reported threats from Khare’s lawyers (which reportedly included the firm Clare Locke, known for representing Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News), but at least 18 other outlets also either removed articles about Appin outright or erased mentions of Khare.

It can’t just be ignorance of the law. Khare is far from the first rich guy to try to silence critics. Reuters and other censored outlets have plenty of First Amendment lawyers and must know U.S. law is on their side. They also know that Clare Locke succeeded in the Dominion case largely because it had some very helpful evidence to work with, not because it possesses some secret legal magic wand that makes the First Amendment disappear.

Demands for removal leverage risk of deplatforming by tech companies

A closer look at the association’s tactics may provide answers. For one, the order in the Reuters case not only requires the story to be taken down by Reuters but to be deindexed by Google. The association is making sure to let its other targets know about that, including in a recent takedown letter to Ron Deibert of the Citizen Lab (judging from Deibert’s X post about the letter, he’s unlikely to take down his article). Others have received similar letters.

Perhaps the message is that resistance is futile: There’s no point in paying lawyers to fight takedown demands if, at the end of the day, Google can make the articles invisible anyway.

But another line from the letter to Deibert stood out even more: It claims the “article is contemptuous not only to the Plaintiffs concerned however it is absolutely derogatory to the entire Indian Nation.” The article says nothing about India in its entirety.

Further nationalistic language appears in correspondence to Meta, attached to court documents filed in the Reuters case. Those letters, from the association's Indian counsel, baselessly accuse the journalists behind the Reuters story (Christopher Bing, Zeba Siddiqui, and Raphael Satter) of a “serious unusual espionage operation” and “a well-planned modus operandi to malign Ruling Indian Government,” demanding Meta therefore block their WhatsApp accounts.

According to court documents, the association also sent demands to block the journalists’ accounts on LinkedIn and Naukri, an Indian platform they allegedly used to contact potential sources. Fortunately, neither LinkedIn nor Meta appears to have complied to date, but the threat of deindexing or deplatforming is a powerful cudgel. Tools like WhatsApp are essential for journalists these days.

Veiled threats have an impact regardless of credibility

The allusions to the nation of India and its current rulers in legal correspondence about disputes between private companies also may serve another purpose.

The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is infamous for its crackdowns on speech and the press, especially online. India, for example, managed to “tame Twitter” with its “hostage” law, requiring social media companies to keep representatives in the country for authorities to arrest if their employers misbehave. That law may not bind news outlets, but it doesn’t have to. They need to have personnel in India if they want to cover news there.

Lawyers in the suit against Reuters have already asked for the three reporters to be jailed. They’re not based in India, but might authorities arrest someone else in their place? News outlets may not want to find out the hard way, especially if they’re under the impression that they’ve offended the “Ruling Indian Government.”

We’re unaware of any indication that the Modi administration takes criticism of Appin or Khare personally or would even care at all. The claim that the Reuters article maligns the current government is perplexing given that the reporting focuses on events predating Modi’s 2014 inauguration. As for Khare, he’s now an Antiguan national living in Switzerland.

Nonetheless, perhaps the association’s intent in invoking the “Ruling Indian Government” is to issue a not-so-subtle reminder, to anyone considering flouting its demands, of who they may be messing with. And it seems to be working. Bluff or not, news outlets may be afraid to call it.

American legal protections can’t stop foreign censorship tactics

While the U.S. may not always be the global leader in press freedom it thinks it is, its legal protections against foreign censorship orders are relatively strong. But that may not matter if others follow Appin’s playbook.

U.S. outlets know the First Amendment can’t protect them from stories being suppressed, or reporters deplatformed, by tech companies at the behest of foreign courts. It also provides no solace against veiled threats, however noncredible they may be, to sic authoritarian regimes on journalists.

The aforementioned SPEECH Act was intended largely to stop U.S. courts from enforcing judgments entered under the U.K.’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws. That’s helpful when U.S. outlets are primarily worried about legal risk back home. But in cases arising from countries ruled by governments like Modi’s, there may be larger concerns than that.

And if the U.S. is going to continue its partnerships with such countries, then policymakers here need to think seriously about how to address those concerns.

The Biden administration has maintained that it won’t “lecture” India about its domestic human rights problems (although recent reporting says alleged Indian assassination plots have “complicated” the U.S.-India relationship). But censorship emanating from Indian courts is not a domestic issue when it’s stopping U.S. citizens from reading important news about a U.S. “strategic partner.” Whether or not India’s government had any direct involvement with this latest campaign to silence the press, it may have created the climate that enabled it.

If the U.S. insists on partnering with censorial regimes, then policymakers need to start thinking seriously about the consequences for free speech back home, and the administration needs to do more to stand up for American values than empty talk. Otherwise who is going to tell us about the next hack-for-hire operation — or assassination plot, for that matter?

Kansas City, Missouri, police are asking for the public's help as they continue to investigate a shooting at the Crown Center shopping center.

There’s nothing more urbane than omnipresent surveillance, apparently. London is considered one of the classiest places on earth, what with its wealth of history, iconic landmarks, and… thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras. It’s also home to knife crime, pervasive racism, and soccer hooligans, with plenty of residents exhibiting all three of these traits simultaneously. […]