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Among the 987 deaths last year, 128 were pedestrians, some of them struck on roadways after exiting their own vehicles in the wake of incidents.

Fewer than 20 American red wolves live in the wild throughout the U.S., all in a refuge in North Carolina. Two Missouri-born wolves were flown there last month to join the population, providing a critical source of new genetic diversity.

PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo must bring more transparency and accountability to its practices around account freezes and closures, argues a new letter signed by Freedom of the Press Foundation and nearly two dozen human rights and civil liberties groups.

The payment giant has become notorious for suspending or disrupting transfers for lawful controversial content without due process, including of course in the financial blockade against the whistleblower site WikiLeaks in the early 2010s — an extralegal embargo that Freedom of the Press Foundation was founded in part to address. In another case, PayPal froze the account of News Media Canada over a payment to submit an article about Syrian refugees for an award.

The risk of arbitrary interruption to online payments can be a serious one, especially for independent reporters without institutional support. And the problem isn't limited to news reporting: supporters of the privacy network Tor, creators engaged in erotic fiction or sex work, and online communities simply accused of copyright infringement have all faced restrictions at one point or another. These disruptions can be existential, as we note in the letter:

In our increasingly digital world, in which websites and online consumers rely on payment processors such as PayPal to send online payments for goods and services, fund their online infrastructure, and even pay staff, these opaquely implemented account freezes can be disruptive and disadvantageous to individuals, nonprofits, and companies. PayPal and your subsidiary Venmo have over 360 million users — which means you have a staggering amount of influence over the financial lives of these individuals as well as access to an enormous trove of highly sensitive information that should not flow to the government without adequate safeguards.

The recommendations in the letter are in line with the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which aim to help companies center human rights when moderating user-generated content and accounts.

Today's letter, which can be found in full below, was led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and signed by 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Access, ACLU of Northern California, American Civil Liberties Union, Article 19, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research (CLEAR), Demand Progress Education Fund, European Legal Support Center (ELSC), Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Global Voices, Masaar-Technology and Law Community, Mnemonic, New America’s Open Technology Institute, PDX Privacy, the Tor Project, Taraaz, Ranking Digital Rights, Restore the Fourth Minnesota, and SMEX.

On this unusual episode of Politically Speaking, former state Rep. Stephen Webber steps in as host to talk with St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum about what's changed in Missouri politics and journalism over the past 15 years. Rosenbaum and Webber have had a professional relationship since 2005 — when Rosenbaum interviewed Webber when he was signing a book about his experiences in Iraq. Webber served as a state representative from 2009 to 2017 and then as Missouri Democratic Party chairman after the 2016 election cycle. He's currently the political director of the Missouri AFL-CIO

Doctors have found new ways to utilize support animals, in physical and speech therapy, and in substance abuse programs. Now educators are using the strategy to help ease teachers, students and staff back into the classroom after roughly a year of online learning.

If you’re looking for a unique and delicious alternative to hummus, muhamarra is the perfect recipe to try! It’s super easy to whip up in a hurry and is an...

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The post Muhamarra with walnuts and roasted red pepper appeared first on Plant Craft.

Three major news organizations are set to meet with the Department of Justice (DOJ) today to discuss the recent journalist surveillance scandals, and talk with the Attorney General Merrick Garland about how the DOJ plans to to prevent the use of subpoenas and surveillance to root out journalistic sources in future leak investigations.

While the news outlets plan to push for more concrete promises from the Justice Department to prevent further spying on reporters, it’s vitally important that the same publishers use today’s opportunity to press the Attorney General to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which constitutes the most clear and present danger to this country’s press freedom rights. If the case continues, it would render Garland’s new promises worthless.

Assange is charged under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, largely for activities U.S. national security journalists engage in all the time. When the Trump administration proceeded with the indictment, many major news publishers spoke out forcefully against it, despite harshly criticizing Assange in the past. Virtually every major human rights and civil liberties group in the country urged Biden's DOJ not to continue with the prosecution earlier this year.

Beyond the injustice of the case itself, though, its precedent threatens to undermine the very same new rules that publishers will discuss today. As Garland said in Senate testimony Wednesday: “In developing this policy, we have to distinguish between reporters doing their jobs and reporters committing crimes unrelated to the leaking.”

If the Justice Department is promising on the one hand not to use subpoenas against journalists unless they are otherwise engaged in a crime, and on the other hand is laying out the blueprint for charging journalists who report on sensitive national security information, the problem could not be more clear.

We are cautiously optimistic about the new Department of Justice rules, pending final language, and we view their introduction as a possible sea change for press freedom in the United States. We absolutely encourage the news organizations meeting today to push for the strongest possible guidelines, and for Congress to codify those guidelines into law that cannot be changed at the stroke of a future president's pen.

But we also must remain vigilant to loopholes and exceptions to these new guidelines, and expect this and future administrations to interpret the rules as they see fit. With the Knight First Amendment Institute, we've written about one major unknown in terms of who constitutes a "journalist" for the purpose of the guidelines.

Today, as stakeholders hammer out the details of this new rule, we urge the news organizations and the self-described press freedom advocates within the administration to consider the danger of pending Espionage Act charges against a publisher. And we continue to urge the Department of Justice to drop the prosecution.

In this encore episode, we hear about Missouri History Museum's virtual "Gateway to Pride" exhibit. It delves into the many untold stories of St. Louis’ LGBTQ residents, and wants St. Louisans to contribute any stories and artifacts they have that can expand the narrative.

In this encore episode, we listen back to our conversation with Carolyn Cox. Her nonfiction book explores how the FBI was able to end the plague of kidnappings that terrorized St. Louis and the U.S. in the 1930s.

We'll listen back to how landscaper Susan Van de Riet designed a time and budget-friendly garden plan with plants native to St. Louis in this encore discussion.

Many are struggling with anxiety about resuming certain pre-pandemic activities, even after they have been fully vaccinated. A study from the American Psychological Association shows nearly half of respondents feel uneasy about returning to in-person interactions after the pandemic.

Kim Rutledge of the Wildlife Rescue Center explains how the center handled its busiest year yet during the pandemic and details its work to assist turtles, deer, fox and even badgers in need.

Jean Ponzi of the Missouri Botanical Garden explains how fogging for mosquitoes has grave impacts on the ecosystem as a whole -- and how we can make ourselves less attractive to these pests without harming the environment.

We explore a promising clinical trial out of Washington University. Some lung cancer patients are seeing huge benefits from a new drug that just received FDA approval.

St. Louis Artworks, 5959 Delmar, is just one of the locations hosting Juneteenth festivities in the Delmar Loop with an art show and live art demonstrations by Dexter Silvers. The event is from 2 PM to 5 PM on both Saturday, June 19th and Sunday, June 20th. For more information visit the St. Louis Artworks […]

Several new St. Louis leaders are changing the way the city used tax incentives to leverage growth in thriving areas to help other parts of the city. It's part of a vision for more equitable development.

Peter Joy of Washington University School of Law says the current system is broken. He discussed possible solutions.

Mark Anthony Campbell died last month, three weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Sylvester Brown Jr. discusses why Campbell wouldn't get vaccinated and what we can learn from his tragic death

STI rates dropped in 2020 — but it’s not because people stopped having sex. Area sexual health centers aim to catch up after the pandemic hindered efforts to mitigate and treat sexually transmitted infections.

A new vision of Shakespeare's "King Lear" is coming to Forest Park. St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is setting the classic play in northern Africa 30 years in the future. The aim is to attract a diverse audience some say is long overdue in American theater.