MOLINE, ILLINOIS (December 11, 2019) — In April 2013, Mary Pruess was named General Manager of WQPT, Quad Cities PBS. During her tenure, WQPT moved offices, restructured master control and programming, and continued with a focus on the creation of local television-programming, to be aired along with PBS programming. As Mary put it, “We are creating a new way of being a public broadcasting station.”

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, boasting revenues of more than $230 billion last year. But last month, the company sued the US Department of Defense over a paltry potential  $10 billion spread over ten years. Amazon lost out to Microsoft in bidding for the Pentagon's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (yes, JEDI, because the most important part of a government program is coming up with a cool acronym) cloud-computing program.

On November 29, FBI agents arrested hacker and cryptocurrency developer Virgil Griffith. His alleged crime: Talking. Yes, really. The FBI alleges that Griffith "participated in discussions regarding using cryptocurrency technologies to evade sanctions and launder money."

In early November, French president Emmanuel Macron complained that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization  (NATO) is experiencing "brain death" as its member states go their own ways, with "no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making." US president Donald Trump's reply: "Nobody needs NATO more than France." The two continued their duel over NATO's future at an early December meeting of the alliance's members in London.