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City of Champaign v. Madigan is a 2013 case decided by the Appellate Court of the US state of Illinois, ruling that messages sent and received by elected officials during a city council meeting and pertaining to public business are public records subject to disclosure, even when stored on personal electronic devices. It was the first court ruling in Illinois to hold that private messages were subject to disclosure under the state's Freedom of Information Act. The case addressed a public records request from a reporter for The News-Gazette in Champaign, Illinois, who observed city council members and the mayor using their personal electronic devices to send messages during a city council meeting. City officials denied the reporter's request; the case eventually reached the Appellate Court, which held that public officials have to disclose their records, even if they are stored on a personal electronic device or account, but only when acting as a public body, such as during a council meeting. (Full article...)

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May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908); Victoria Day in Canada (2024)

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Hurricane Calvin
Hurricane Calvin

Eighteen tropical cyclones formed during the 1993 Pacific hurricane season, an event in the annual formation of tropical cyclones over the Pacific Ocean north of the Equator and east of the International Date Line. Fifteen cyclones developed into named tropical storms, of which eleven became hurricanes and nine became major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson scale). The season officially began on May 15 in the Eastern Pacific proper (east of 140°W) and June 1 in the Central Pacific (140°W to the International Date Line), and ended on November 30. The most impactful storm of the season was Hurricane Calvin (pictured), which made landfall near Manzanillo in the Mexican state of Colima as a Category 2 hurricane; it killed more than 30 people, mainly due to significant flooding, and damages amounted to $32 million. (Full list...)

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