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Feldman landed new full-time job outside of radio and can't work on morning-drive show with Debbie Monterrey. Station hopes to bring him back in future.

For the first time since December, the seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 admissions was less than 100.

A man died Monday after a suspected overdose in the same area of at least eight similar incidents over the weekend, police said.

Approximately one month ago, Missouri was in the midst of a massive spike in COVID-19 cases, as the fast-spreading omicron variant pushed case totals to record levels. As of Monday, the average number of newly-confirmed COVID cases has plummeted by more than 60%.

In addition to announcing the team name and logo, City SC said it has signed 21 players for its MLS Next Pro squad.

The court took no immediate action Monday.

NORMAL, Ill. (WMBD) -- Family, friends, Bloomington and Normal police and fire departments, and the Battle Cross Crusaders came out in droves Sunday to celebrate one man's milestone birthday. "My name is Roy Roberts, and I'm 100." Roberts is a World War II army veteran. "I was in the 14th armored division, and I was [...]

It’s easy to assume that if one person in your household contracts COVID-19, then everyone will, but that is not always the case.

EDWARDSVILLE — An Illinois judges’ ruling preventing the state from ordering school districts requiring students to wear masks will be a topic of discussion Tuesday night during Madison County’s Health Advisory Committee. “Some school districts over the weekend made the decision to make masks optional and others have kept them in place,” Chairman Kurt Prenzler said. “The County made its decision July 21, 2021, when the Board passed a resolution recommending to the school districts to give parents a choice on whether their children should wear masks or not.” Last Friday, a judge in Sangamon County ruled against the governor’s mask mandate inside school buildings, in response to lawsuits involving parents and teachers from more than 150 districts. The temporary restraining order prevents school districts from mandating to students and school employees involved in the lawsuit to wear masks, show proof of vaccinations, or be tested weekly

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Perhaps the way to your lovers heart is through a one-of-a-kind bouquet flowers from Flowers & Weeds, or maybe you're dealing with someone a bit outside the box who would enjoy a bouquet of conchas from El Chico Bakery. No matter the person, Cherokee Street is here to help! Find a few of the many […]

The post Cherokee Street Treats for your Valentine appeared first on Cherokee Street.

by Lulu Ramadan, The Seattle Times

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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Seattle Times. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A school district in Washington state has offered an extraordinary $34 million settlement to students and parents exposed to toxic chemicals that lingered for at least eight years on a public school campus.

The Monroe School District, northeast of Seattle, proposed the striking settlement in November under court seal, preventing the public from seeing the offer. However, the $34 million figure appears in a separate court document obtained last week by The Seattle Times.

In publicly available court documents, the school district did not accept responsibility for hazardous conditions on the Sky Valley Education Center campus, detailed in a recent Times investigation. Instead, the district defended its cleanup efforts on campus, saying it acted appropriately to remove toxic chemicals and inform parents.

Records show the school district was slow to clear out toxic material from the Monroe campus, even as pressure from parents and staff escalated and dozens reported illnesses. As early as 2014, Monroe School District officials found a mixture of harmful conditions at the school, including poor air ventilation and the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a banned, synthetic chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to some cancers and other illnesses.

Children and staff claimed they became severely ill, reporting hormonal problems, skin conditions, cancers and brain damage. More than 200 parents, teachers and students filed lawsuits against Monsanto, the manufacturer of the PCBs, for exposure to the toxicant at Sky Valley. Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, has gone to trial in two of the lawsuits, with juries awarding 11 plaintiffs a collective $247 million. Several other suits are awaiting trial.

Monsanto originally produced the PCBs, a chemical preservative used in light fixtures and caulking in Sky Valley’s 1950s- and 1960s-era buildings. The light fixtures at Sky Valley started failing in 2014, leaking oily, yellow PCB liquids into classrooms.

The school district has been slow to remove the PCB-laden light fixtures from the campus, even after the EPA stepped in to guide officials and encourage a swift cleanup. At one point, school officials certified in writing — and assured parents — that they had removed all PCB-containing material from Sky Valley, but an EPA inspection later revealed that wasn’t the case, The Times reported last month.

At least 15 of the King County Superior Court lawsuits, totaling 195 plaintiffs, also took aim at the Monroe School District, which opted to negotiate a settlement separately from Monsanto. The proposed settlement excludes Sky Valley staff who sued Monsanto, because Washington state law bars employees from suing their employers for negligence in most cases.

The $34 million offer is the maximum allowed under the Monroe School District’s insurance policy “in order to protect MSD’s finances and its ability to continue operating,” according to a statement the district provided to The Times last week.

The district called the settlement a “prudent action under the circumstances.”

It isn’t clear if the $34 million is the highest settlement payout for a school district in the state, but the sum is about half the total that the district’s insurance service, Washington Schools Risk Management Pool, paid out all of last year on claims, according to risk management records. Washington state schools enroll about 1 million students.

The Monroe School District, which serves about 6,000 children, has an annual budget of $93 million.

The $34 million settlement figure first appeared in a report by a special master, an outside judge tasked with deciding how the sum should be split among the 195 claimants.

The report suggests that those who were exposed to PCBs as children, some of whom are now adults, should collect the bulk of the payout. Adults who were exposed would get the next highest payouts. And family members of those exposed would collect the least.

About a third of the settlement would go toward attorneys’ fees and costs. After subtracting the fees, each child exposed would collect roughly $171,000; each adult exposed would collect about $58,000; and each family member of someone exposed would collect about $2,300, according to estimates in the report.

Many plaintiffs experienced “significant, profound damages which they will have to live with for the remainder of their lives and for which they deserve to be compensated,” wrote the special master, King County Superior Court Judge Richard McDermott.

Though McDermott is only overseeing the school district cases, he offered his opinion on the ongoing lawsuits against Monsanto, writing that the chemical giant “is going to have to get serious about a global settlement that is large enough that the plaintiffs will have to pay attention.”

Earlier this week, Monsanto filed a motion to strike elements from McDermott's report or seal the report entirely and bar any parties from publicly releasing it. Monsanto, which claimed the report commented on topics that were still being litigated in trials, wasn’t involved in the Monroe School District settlement discussions.

“The anti-Monsanto statements in the report were not supported by any judicial fact-finding, not adopted by the court, and are damaging to a fair and impartial jury selection and trial process,” read a statement provided to The Times by Bayer, which in 2018 acquired Monsanto, explaining the request to revise or seal the reports.

King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North, overseeing the Sky Valley cases, hasn’t ruled on Monsanto’s request.

The cases have apparently pitted Monsanto and the school district against one another, with each party arguing that the other is to blame for the health crisis at Sky Valley.

McDermott wrote in his report that Monroe School District is “far less culpable than the product manufacturer.”

Monsanto, on the other hand, argued in court that the school district was repeatedly warned about PCBs but failed to take aggressive action.

To this day, the EPA is still working with the district on a cleanup, and Sky Valley, with about 700 students and teachers, remains open. In response to the Times story, Monroe School District said it prioritizes the health and safety of students and continues to work on remediation efforts. The latest PCB testing on campus, carried out in August by a district contractor, showed negligible levels of the chemical, according to school district records.

Experts say hazardous PCBs are likely lingering in aging campuses across the state and country, but Washington does not require testing school buildings for PCBs.

And though health districts are required to inspect campuses for environmental hazards, state law does not require enforcing recommendations or removing certain hazards — a gap that afforded school and health officials a defense against allegations of negligence at Sky Valley. State law also does not require school districts to disclose testing results to parents, students or teachers.

Those omissions have lingered despite the Washington State Department of Ecology flagging PCBs in schools as a priority in 2015, calling the hazard posed by the chemicals “especially concerning.” The department requested legislative dollars to survey schools and target potential hotbeds of PCB exposure, but because lawmakers delayed funding the request, Ecology only started surveying school districts last summer, starting with Eastern Washington districts.

Without a survey, there’s no way to know how many campuses across the state may be exposing students and staff to toxic conditions.

In response to the Times reporting on Sky Valley, state lawmakers and advocates plan to push for PCB testing and prioritize renovating or replacing older buildings. Legislators also proposed creating mandatory timelines for school cleanups and a working group to tackle environmental hazards in schools.

SPRINGFIELD - Statewide, COVID-19 cases are dropping. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) on Friday reported 60,389 new confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois and that number is less than half as many reported during the previous week (123,812). Another interesting stat is that on Jan. 22, 2022, the statewide daily cases peaked at 41,064, and on Feb. 4 was at 10,070 cases, a substantial decrease. Statewide, there were 608 deaths reported from Jan. 28, 2022, to Feb. 4, 2022. Madison County announced there were 493 new cases of COVID-19 from Wednesday to Friday of last week and the seven-day positivity rate is 12.3 percent. The transmission rate remains high in the county, the county report says. The seven-day rolling average of cases is 200. A total of 63 were reported in Madison County hospitals for COVID-19-related symptoms and 14 on ventilators on Friday. There were three COVID-19-related deaths reported on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022,

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The technology allows consumers to pay health providers at the time of service, while providing a self-defined, interest-free payment plan.

Last month, we wrote about how the IRS and other federal agencies were starting to require the use of private facial recognition from a somewhat sketchy private company, for people to access their own government's services. The main company in question, ID.me, had made some... questionable decisions that raised serious questions about why the government was forcing people to make use of such a private service.

Earlier this morning, Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the Treasury Department calling on them to drop the facial recognition requirement, and within hours the Treasury Department told Wyden it would be "moving away" from that plan, and then the IRS put up a more official statement:

The IRS announced it will transition away from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating new online accounts. The transition will occur over the coming weeks in order to prevent larger disruptions to taxpayers during filing season.

During the transition, the IRS will quickly develop and bring online an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition. The IRS will also continue to work with its cross-government partners to develop authentication methods that protect taxpayer data and ensure broad access to online tools.

"The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised," said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. "Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition."

The transition announced today does not interfere with the taxpayer's ability to file their return or pay taxes owed. During this period, the IRS will continue to accept tax filings, and it has no other impact on the current tax season. People should continue to file their taxes as they normally would.

Last week the Treasury Department had said it was "reviewing" the matter, but today's announcement is a big deal. It's rare to see a government agency move this fast, so kudos to Treasury/IRS for acting quickly (though, it can be argued that it never should have gotten this far in the first place). But also kudos to Wyden for helping make this happen as well.

Legislation to limit distracted driving will be up for debate in a Missouri Senate hearing in the coming weeks and you have a chance to help move the bill forward. …

The post Advocacy Alert: Add your voice and help end distracted driving appeared first on Trailnet.

A staff member at a Missouri prison in Bonne Terre was stabbed today and flown to St. Louis for treatment. The incident marked the third stabbing in three days at the Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Correctional Center.…

GLEN CARBON – Dr. Julie Steinhauer, OD, FCOVD, owner of Vision For Life and Success in Glen Carbon, and one of a select group of functional vision doctors in the nation, says syntonics (the use of light therapy) should be utilized in any customized vision therapy program to help patients recover from the loss of eyesight due to a brain-related injury or other conditions impacting binocular vision. Syntonics utilizes eyewear, similar to 3D-looking glasses, with various colored lenses. The lenses can include one of 25 syntonic filters each playing a specific role for various functions such as first calming the brain after trauma, and/or retraining the eye and brain connection to regain as much visual field as possible Dr. Steinhauer says syntonics has proven to be highly effective for patients seeking to regain vision after a stroke and for those with binocular vision disorders such as convergence insufficiency, strabismus and amblyopia (lazy eye). “Syntonics can help balanc

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St. Louis may be in the midst of its annual winter doldrums, but the city's restaurant scene has been doing its darnedest to give us sparks of joy during these gray days. Thanks to Brandi Artis and her three business partners, we got a jolt of New Orleans-inspired flavor courtesy of their new concept, 4 Hens Creole Kitchen, which is the latest addition to the Food Hall at City Foundry.…