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Alton's 26th Annual All-Wheels Drive-In Car Show Set For This Sunday

2 years 6 months ago
ALTON - Alton’s 26 th annual All-Wheels Drive-In Car Show will be held on Sunday, June 11 th from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. The event typically attracts over 200 classic cars, hot rods and motorcycles, which the public is welcome to browse on 3 rd , 4 th , State and Belle Streets. There is no charge for admission. Alton Main Street organizes this tradition with support from Time Machines Unlimited Car Club. Come out for the autos and stay for the live music, 50-50 drawing, vendor displays and festival food court. This year’s entertainment is Number4Combo; from 1:00-3:00 p.m. the band will perform live rock music with a smooth dance groove. We will also be featuring a pin-up contest at 3:00 p.m. to celebrate the glamour, sophistication and class of the 1950’s. Registration for automobiles is open from 8:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m., and trophies will be given at 4:00pm. Please note that we are reconfiguring the event grounds to improve traffic flow, and registration

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Attorney General Raoul Urges Illinois Residents To Be Alert For Email And Text Message Scams

2 years 6 months ago
CHICAGO - Attorney General Kwame Raoul today urged Illinois residents to be wary of scammers who use unsolicited email or text messages to trick consumers into sharing personal and financial information. Raoul encourages all consumers to stay aware of these unsolicited messages and to continue to report these incidents to his office. Unsolicited messages may be email phishing or text message smishing scams. Phishing is when scammers send a deceptive email to trick Internet users into revealing personal or confidential information. Smishing, or Short Message Service (SMS) phishing, is when scammers send a deceptive text message to trick cell phone users in the same way. Phishing and smishing messages may contain links to harmful software that could enable scammers to steal information from your phone or computer. Raoul’s office warned consumers to not click any links in an unsolicited email or text and to delete the message immediately. “Consumers should be suspicious

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Alby Railroad Crossing (Near Humbert Road) Will Be Temporarily Closed Overnight On June 11 For Union Pacific Maintenance

2 years 6 months ago
GODFREY - Godfrey officials are advising residents that Union Pacific Railroad will be temporarily closing the North Alby Street (at Humbert) crossing this Sunday near Humbert Road for routine maintenance and repairs. Village officials are advising local residents and motorists to prepare and pre-plan for temporary detours next Sunday night due to the fact the Union Pacific Railroad will be temporarily closing the North Alby Street railroad crossing (at Humbert) overnight for routine maintenance/repair work. Work shall begin Sunday night, June 11th starting at 7 p.m. and will re-open on Monday morning, June 12th around 7 a.m. Godfrey Public Safety Administrator Chris Sichra states that local first responder agencies and mutual aid companies (Fire, Police, EMS), as well as local utility companies, have already been notified of the upcoming temporary closure so that they can adjust their response routes accordingly. Residents and motorists should also pre-plan to consider alternate

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NGRREC Welcomes New Education Specialist, Jolena Pang

2 years 6 months ago
ALTON - Earlier this spring, Jolena Pang joined the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) education team as an environmental educator. She will be responsible for leading tours of the NGRREC facility for students of all ages and community members. “I hope to make the community more cognizant of the environmental issues facing our rivers and watersheds, and what that means for them,” Pang said. “And I hope to help inspire and motivate the community into positive action.” Prior to joining NGRREC, Pang completed a master's degree in political ecology and environmental justice in Barcelona, where she lived for the past few years. Pang also worked as a community organizer for the Wilderness Society, where she engaged over 600 grassroots supporters and led events focused on bringing a more diverse and inclusive perspective to conservation. “The best part of being an environmental educator is getting a chance to teach kids about the

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Research Shows Twitter Was Missing Known Child Sex Abuse Material

2 years 6 months ago
Soon after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he insisted that stopping child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was his top priority, and while some of his fans insisted that he had magically done so, the fact is that he fired nearly the entire team that was handling that issue, meaning that CSAM was running rampant on […]
Mike Masnick

NGRREC River Days Of Action: Coffee & Cleanup

2 years 6 months ago
ALTON – Lewis and Clark Community College’s National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) will host a Coffee and Cleanup event this month as part of the 1 Mississippi River Days of Action Initiative. The event will take place from 9 a.m. to noon, Thursday, June 15, at the NGRREC Field Station, located at 1 Confluence Way, East Alton, Illinois. All are welcome to join for free coffee and bagels and to learn about the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative , a community science project aimed at tracking trash in the Mississippi River watershed using the Marine Debris Tracker app. Community Ecologist Anthony Dell will give a brief overview of his research, which focuses on microplastics found in rivers. Microplastics come from plastic litter and trash that degrade overtime into microscopic pieces and exist in water sources, especially near more populated areas. Microplastics are a growing concern as they become more prevalent in drinking sources,

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St Louis Man Used Rake to Steal Donation Box from Dairy Queen Drive-Thru

2 years 6 months ago
A 59-year-old St. Louis man was caught on surveillance video earlier this week wearing a headlamp and using a rake to reach through a Dairy Queen drive-thru window and steal a box full of donations. David Meshoto is facing burglary and stealing charges after police say the headlamp-wearing thief was captured on video opening the drive-thru window at the St. Louis Hills Dairy Queen on Hampton Avenue, reaching in and trying to steal the donation box, which an employee tells the RFT was collecting money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. According to a police probable cause statement, the box was just out of reach for Meshoto, who left the premises.
Ryan Krull

Judge hears arguments over Missouri AG push to inflate cost of abortion initiative petition

2 years 6 months ago

Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s attempt to increase the cost of an abortion-rights initiative petition was unprecedented and illegal, lawyers for the Missouri ACLU and state auditor’s office argued Wednesday in Cole County Court.  ”No attorney general has ever attempted to exercise this level of discretion,” said Robert Tillman, deputy general counsel for Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.  […]

The post Judge hears arguments over Missouri AG push to inflate cost of abortion initiative petition appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Jason Hancock

Texas Public Records Transparency Bill That Got Lost Amid GOP Infighting Finally Headed to Governor’s Desk

2 years 6 months ago

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.

After a week’s delay, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has forwarded to the governor legislation that aims to increase the transparency of the state’s public records law.

Patrick had been holding up the bill amid increasingly frayed political relations between him and his Republican counterparts in state leadership, House Speaker Dade Phelan and Gov. Greg Abbott.

A priority for Phelan, House Bill 30, filed by Texas Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody, was the only measure out of more than 1,300 bills that Patrick had not signed. That is a requirement before legislation can be sent to the governor.

State law allows government agencies to withhold or heavily redact law enforcement records if a person has not been convicted of a crime or received probation. If approved by Abbott, the bill would close a long-standing loophole in the law that government agencies have used to withhold information in situations in which suspects die in police custody, are killed by law enforcement or kill themselves, as ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported last month.

Phelan publicly expressed support for closing the loophole after advocates and families raised concerns that government entities might use it to keep secret information about the dead shooter in the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

On Tuesday, near the end of a news conference that Patrick mostly spent lambasting Phelan and Abbott’s plans for cutting property taxes, the lieutenant governor offered his reason for the delay.

Patrick told reporters that the Senate agreed to pass the transparency bill on the condition that the House pass a measure that would reform how complaints can be filed against Texas judges, including requiring people to make sworn statements in order to file grievances.

After learning that the judicial conduct measure failed, Patrick accused the House of “playing games.” He said he pulled Moody’s bill out of a stack that he was slated to sign. “I said: ‘What’s that bill all about? Let me see that bill.’”

Patrick said he “stuck” the legislation on his podium, where it remained for days. He told reporters Tuesday that he’d always planned to sign it. The lieutenant governor’s office did not respond to additional questions.

Phelan’s communications director, Cait Wittman, said the delay “absolutely is political.”

“The bottom line, he has a constitutional duty to sign this bill,” Wittman said. “You don’t make deals off the constitution.”

Wittman also accused Senate officials of initially lying about what happened to the bill by blaming the House. A Senate journal clerk told Austin television station KXAN last week that the House never delivered the bill to the Senate. House officials maintained the bill made it to the Senate for signature.

Moody declined to publicly comment on the bill’s status until after the legislation was en route to the governor’s office Tuesday. In a statement to ProPublica and the Tribune, Moody did not address the delay, focusing instead on the eight years he’s spent trying to close this loophole.

“I don’t mind waiting another week for the bill to come to the governor as long as Texas families don’t have to wait any longer for the answers they deserve,” Moody said in the statement. “I appreciate Speaker Phelan making it a priority to shine this light on something that should never be in the dark in a free society.”

by Vianna Davila