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ST. LOUIS--Food. Fear. Vigilance. These are the three keys Missouri Department of Conservation officials are warning the public to keep in mind in what are four very active months for coyote activity in the state. Breeding season begins in February, with mothers giving birth within two months. With pups comes the need for more food. [...]

Cyber threats to water systems are not unheard of, a DNR representative said, but the current threat isn’t targeted at Missouri specifically.

The producers of a TV series about Pam Hupp won't share profits with the family of a man she killed, lawyer says.

A Missouri state senator has proposed legislation that would allow exemptions for COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

St. Louis saw quite a mix of weather Thursday. Thanks for sending in your photos!

A press release said the victim could not give consent because the victim had Down syndrome and is non-verbal.

Last month, Dead & Company was forced to call off its two-weekend Playing in the Sand destination festival due the Omicron surge of COVID-19.  But the band's Bob Weir is…

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Nautica Turner admitted trying to set the 7-Eleven near 17th and Pine streets, on fire.

Feds took $44 million contract from troubled Dismas House board, but new nonprofit has struggles of its own.

‘We will always have term limits in Missouri, but the current terms are too short,’ the resolution's sponsor said.

A lawsuit filed against both California and federal law enforcement agencies claims the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department is exploiting the disagreement between state and federal marijuana laws to stop and seize cash being transported from legal marijuana dispensaries.

Marijuana is legal in many forms in multiple states. Unfortunately, the federal government has yet to legalize marijuana in any form, putting purveyors of legal products at risk of being prosecuted by the federal government despite their adherence to local laws.

Empyreal -- a cash transport business -- has experienced the SBSD's abuse firsthand on multiple occasions.

The driver of an armored car carrying $712,000 in cash from licensed marijuana dispensaries was heading into Barstow on a Mojave Desert freeway in November when San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies pulled him over. They interrogated him, seized the money and turned it over to the FBI.

A few weeks later, deputies stopped the same driver in Rancho Cucamonga, took an additional $350,000 belonging to legal pot stores and gave that cash to the FBI too.

The transport company says it complies with all federal laws pertaining to handling of cash generated by legal pot businesses -- something that is supposed to allow the cash to travel unmolested to banks willing to handle this cash. The banks also have to perform their own due diligence, which encompasses those entrusted with moving the cash from businesses to banks and vice versa.

Despite everything being on the apparent up-and-up, this particular sheriff thinks his department is doing the right thing by targeting vehicles officers can safely assume are full of cash and walking away with that cash while mumbling things about drug trafficking and money laundering. The department also sends out drug dogs to guarantee deputies have "permission" to perform warrantless searches, since it's highly likely proceeds from marijuana businesses will smell like marijuana.

(On top of that, a large percentage of cash in circulation contains trace amounts of drugs, which would logically be detected by drug dogs. This should be seen as evidence of nothing more than a bill being in circulation, but cops pretend it means the cash could only have come from drug sales. It's all extremely -- and conveniently -- stupid.)

San Bernardino Sheriff Shannon Dicus (one of the defendants in Empyreal's lawsuit) and his department are some of the main beneficiaries of cash seized during operations like these -- ones that involve federal agents to sidestep local marijuana legalization laws and ensure the retention of a majority of every dollar seized. That's because his department heads the Inland Regional Narcotics Enforcement Team (IRNET). IRNET's relationship to federally adopted forfeitures is extremely profitable.

Through the U.S. Department of Justice’s equitable sharing program, the Sheriff’s Department’s participation in IRNET enables it to receive up to 80% of the proceeds recovered from civil forfeitures, he said.

IRNET has obtained nearly $18 million in equitable sharing funds since 2016, according to the Department of Justice.

If these seizures were made without federal adoption, they'd be illegal. But with the FBI's help, the Sheriff's Department can continue to make millions a year by taking legally earned cash from cash transport trucks.

All this adds up to a suin', one being handled by the Institute of Justice, which has been instrumental in securing dozens of returns of property illegally seized by law enforcement. The lawsuit [PDF] notes that the San Bernardino sheriff isn't alone in his targeting of Empyreal cash trucks. The same Dickinson County (KS) deputy, Kalen Robinson, stopped Empyreal drivers twice and seized over $165,000 during the second stop, turning it over to the DEA.

San Bernardino Sheriff Dicus hasn't offered much in support of these stops and seizures -- none of which were accompanied by citations or criminal charges. What he has offered is something that exists solely within the boundaries of pure speculation.

In response to the lawsuit over the armored cars, Dicus released a statement claiming that more than 80% of the marijuana sold in licensed dispensaries is grown illegally, but he provided no evidence that any of the eight businesses whose cash deputies seized from Empyreal’s vans were selling black-market cannabis.

“My deputies are professional, and I am confident we will prevail,” Dicus said.

No one's doing any due diligence here, least of all Sheriff Dicus. His department isn't researching dispensaries and targeting them with searches and criminal charges. Instead, his department has decided to do the easiest and most profitable thing: allow dispensaries to sell allegedly illegally grown marijuana and then take their cash once it's conveniently located in the back of a transport van. This shows the department is far less interested in disrupting illegal drug sales and far more interested in profiting from illegal behavior it seemingly has no desire to stop.

EDWARDSVILLE — Madison County officials recognized an Alton woman Wednesday night as a “Living Legend” for her contributions in the community. Chairman Kurt Prenzler and County Board member Michael “Doc” Holiday of Alton presented Maxine Jackson Caldwell with the 8th annual Madison County Living Legends Community Service Award at the County Board meeting. The county presents the award during Black History Month to a resident who makes extraordinary contributions in the community. Prenzler said it’s an honor to present Caldwell with such and accolade. “Maxine is very deserving of this award,” Prenzler said. “She’s a small business owner who’s worked for decades to put children first. You don’t find many people who stay in the child care business as long as she’s been in it.” Caldwell is the owner/operator of Maxine’s Daycare Inc. in Alton. She holds a daycare license and meets regulatory standards

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Researchers at WashU are studying how psychedelics like psilocybin can be used therapeutically. They discuss its uses — and its limits — during what they say is a “renaissance” of research into the impact of psychedelic drugs.

The company spelled out three scenarios for its more than 6,000 local employees as it set a return-to-office date for headquarters staff.

GLEN CARBON - Elite Fitness Training (“Elite FT”) is a family-oriented fitness facility located inside The Sports Academy in Glen Carbon. Not only have they recently revamped their sports performance training program, they’re also offering a free trial of their fitness classes during the week of February 28. Owner Justin McMillian said both the program and the gym itself have been upgraded. “We are now offering the program every evening Monday through Thursday, plus Saturday mornings,” McMillian said. “We’ve remodeled our gym to create more square footage, and then we are adding in seasonal testing for our members that will measure their improvements, and we’ll be sharing that feedback with their parents.” The four training components Elite FT focuses on are strength, speed, power and fitness. At the beginning of each training cycle, athletes from all sports are tested on their abilities. After a couple months of training,

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Carol M. Highsmith

There’s a lot going on in the world, so you’ll be forgiven if you missed the disturbing news last week that the CIA is amassing a significant amount of private data on Americans through a secret surveillance program that the agency is running outside any oversight from either Congress or the courts.

In a letter released Feb. 10, Sens. Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich revealed only the vaguest of contours of the program while demanding the director of national intelligence declassify the details, so that Americans can find out what the CIA has been doing under their name. Many of the specifics, including what types of data the CIA has been collecting on Americans, remain hidden behind a wall of secrecy.

Just two weeks after the director of national intelligence admitted the U.S. classification system is so broken that it hinders our democracy, we learn of yet another mass surveillance program affecting Americans’ rights that has been totally hidden from public view.

The New York Times’s Charlie Savage has an excellent rundown of the scandal. These paragraphs get to the crux of the matter:

In 2015, Congress banned bulk collection of telecommunications metadata under the Patriot Act and limited other types of bulk collection by the F.B.I. under laws governing domestic activities like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Yet “the C.I.A. has secretly conducted its own bulk program” under Executive Order 12333, the senators wrote.

“It has done so entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes with FISA collection,” the letter continued. “This basic fact has been kept from the public and from Congress."

Digging deeper, these pieces each explore other important facets of the burgeoning scandal:

• Longtime national security reporter Spencer Ackerman, who was one of the Guardian’s lead reporters during the Snowden disclosures, wrote about how “the CIA has been stealing your data for years.”
• Elizabeth Goitein at Brennan Center, who knows more about surveillance law than just about anyone, wrote a really informative article about “how the CIA is acting outside the law to spy on Americans.”
• Our friends at EFF analyzed many of the aspects of the program we don’t know about, and how outrageous it is that the U.S. government continues to use its classification program to hide potentially illegal programs from any public scrutiny.

We'll have more on this story as it develops.

A city official said Root 66 still doesn't have the needed permissions to open, but said the government has limited options to stop the business from opening.

Many unseen photos of the late Joe Strummer -- plus some well-known pictures, like the cover of his 1989 album, Earthquake Weather -- have been compiled in a new book…

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