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The judge says that no one could be excluded from school for health reasons without family consent or a public health quarantine order.

 WENTZVILLE, Mo. - The Wentzville School District's superintendent has received a national honor. Curtis Cain was named National Superintendent of the Year by the School Superintendents Association. Cain has worked in Wentzville since 2013. Last month, he was named the new superintendent of the Rockwood School District. He starts there on July 1.

Living in St. Louis allows them to pursue their best lives: a dream that combines their love for each other, the love of food and the love for their new way of life.

If watching the Get Back docuseries has made you crave more Beatles, then we've got good news: Paul McCartney is hitting the road for what he's calling the Got Back…

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The ruling comes about two weeks after a central Illinois judge invalidated the mask mandate.

TOPEKA (KSNT) - The "Freedom Convoy" that took Canada by storm may soon be driving across the Midwest with stops in Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. According to the Facebook group Kansas Truckers for Freedom Convoy, the truckers will leave a truck stop on March 3 in Aurora, Colorado before taking I-70 across Kansas, stopping for [...]

ST. LOUIS - The 22nd annual Rise and Shine for Heat was a huge success. In addition to the sale of Hardee's biscuits on Friday, February 11 volunteers continued to collect donations through Valentine's Day. That helped push this year's total to more than $650,000 for Heat Up St. Louis. That shattered their goal of $200,000. [...]

OverDrive, SLPL’s original eBook provider, has long been a popular resource for eBooks, eAudiobooks, and more recently, eMagazines. For several years, there hav

That's because all of the precipitation left on roadways can re-freeze overnight.

Every year or so, the FCC unveils a new plan to combat robocalls it claims will finally tackle the annoying menace. Granted, year after year, the problem either gets worse or stays relatively the same. We've already noted that this is generally due to few things: one, a steady erosion by the courts (and lobbyists) of what the FCC can or can't actually do when it comes to various annoyances like automated spam texts or live robocalls.

The other issue is that regulators and policymakers tend to frame the problem as one exclusive to scammers -- when a wide variety of telecoms, marketing, and debt collection companies use all the same dodgy tactics to annoy consumers they often know can't pay anyway. If you hadn't noticed, trying to craft rules that leave huge carve outs for "legitimate" companies while still hamstringing outright scammers generally doesn't work very well. You've also got to craft rules and systems that allow robocalls people want (medical and dental appointment reminders, for example).

Even when only talking about scam robocalls, there's still room for meaningful improvement. The steady adoption of SHAKEN/STIR authentication technology has helped crack down on phone number spoofing. Targeting "gateway providers," who act as a proxy here in the U.S. for robocalls originating overseas, could also help.

Meanwhile the FTC says it's also going to start filing lawsuits against voice over IP (VOIP) companies that fail to cooperate with investigations into illegal robocalls:

"Companies that receive FTC Civil Investigative Demands must promptly produce all required information,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “These demands are not voluntary. Companies that don’t respond fully, or don’t respond at all, will have to answer to a federal district court judge, as these cases demonstrate."

The agency receives upwards of two million consumer complaints about robocalls every nine months. The YouMail Robocall Index indicates that there are still 3.9 billion robocalls placed to U.S. consumers alone every single day, or 5.3 million robocalls per hour. And again, contrary to the narrative generally seeded by regulators, most U.S. robocallers aren't "scammers": they're cable companies, banks, and debt collectors.

And while a lot of the calls are companies calling about overdue bills, many of these calls cross a line into outright harassment. Many of these companies know the customers they're reaching out to can't pay; yet the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has repeatedly testified before Congress that these robocallers can sometimes call folks upwards of hundreds of times a day, even after being asked to stop. And they often use many of the same tactics used by outright scammers.

As with everything at the FTC, it's a matter of resources. The agency is tasked with tackling everything from bleach labeling to home heating system repair scams, generally with limited staff and funds. And while the FCC and FTC dole out a ton of fines against robocallers, the vast majority of them are simply never paid or collected. Either because the target company is a scammer that's hard to find, or they're a deep-pocketed corporation that can litigate any penalties for ignoring robocall rules into oblivion.

Again though, you'll notice focus remains on "illegal" robocalls, which is a problem when the courts and lobbyists keep weakening the definition of what constitutes a "legal" robocall and what regulators can do about it. The broader the definition and the more loopholes allowed to make sure large, "legitimate" companies can continue to annoy and harrass people, the easier they are for outright scam robocallers to exploit.

Lawmakers said that FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, who is stepping down March 31, did not provide adequate answers during their probe into how the agency responded to Boeing decisions that contributed to two deadly 737 Max crashes.

The extended Missouri Senate filibusters about congressional redistricting is a reminder about how bitter and divisive this issue can be. This year it has involved an historically long Senate filibuster, objections by women legislators about the tone of the debate, a tweet by the governor’s communications director that escalated the gender issue and repeated arguments […]

The post Capitol Perspectives: Missouri Congressional redistricting appeared first on Missouri Independent.

In a word, substantially.

Our city. Our schools. Our future. This city’s future is as bright or dark as the quality of its schools. When St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) was founded in the mid-19th century, it quickly rose to prominence as one of the finest school districts in the nation. This contributed to the economic and cultural boom […]

The post Our future: It’s time for St. Louis to get behind St. Louis Public Schools appeared first on NextSTL.

The Mercy health system said it is returning to pre-pandemic visitor policies for the hospitals in the St. Louis area for most patients. A spokeswoman for the hospital systems said visitors won't be screened when they enter Mercy facilities but will still be required to wear a medical-grade mask. Also, visitor restrictions will remain for Covid-positive patients. The spokeswoman said policies may differ based on the location, and visitors should check with the hospital or facility before they arrive. The…