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katherineharron

10 cases that could change how the Supreme Court looks at the Second Amendment - CNNPol... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 26 May 20 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court's solid conservative majority could soon choose to take up its first major Second Amendment case in nearly a decade, positioning the court to override state laws established to limit the availability and accessibility of some firearms and when they can be carried in public.
  • It's been over a decade since 2008's landmark 5-4 ruling in District of Columbia v Heller that held the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms at home for self-defense. Except for a follow-up decision two years later, the court has not weighed in significantly again.
  • "The Court's composition has changed considerably since Heller,
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  • A New York City law regulated where licensed handgun owners can take a locked and unloaded handgun, but it was changed before the court would rule after supporters of gun regulations feared the justices would take an idiosyncratic state law and use it as a vehicle to expand upon Heller. But conservative justices were clearly unhappy with how lower courts were deciding Second Amendment cases.
  • Five of the 10 cases the court is looking at ask justices to determine whether the Second Amendment allows the government to restrict the ability of citizens to carry a firearm outside the home to those with "good cause" or "justifiable need" to do so.
  • The law "effectively bars ordinary, law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense," Paul Clement, a lawyer for Rogers, said in court papers. Clement is a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush.
  • In court papers, New Jersey said it has not "banned carrying a firearm in public; instead, the State has carefully limited public carrying to those individuals with a need to do so."
  • We hope the court will consider the issue of carry outside the home, as the lower courts have ignored existing Supreme Court precedent regarding the right to bear arms," said the NRA's Amy Hunter.
  • The plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case, including two firearm dealers and the Gun Owners' Action League, claim that the law is contrary to the decision in Heller, in which Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that Washington, DC's ban on handgun possession in the home "violates the Second Amendment."
  • Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said the state's ban is on "weapons with distinct military origins that are used disproportionately in mass public shootings and killings of law enforcement officers."
  • The court also previously declined to weigh in on challenge to a Chicago suburb's ban on semiautomatic firearms with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition in 2015.
  • Kavanaugh testified at his Senate confirmation hearing in 2018 that he based his opinion on the Heller decision. "This is all about precedent for me," he said and noted that Scalia had said that dangerous and unusual weapons could be prohibited. Kavanaugh said it's "very important to recognize under the Heller decision that machine guns can be prohibited" but he continued that the ban at issue "seemed to fit common use and not being a dangerous and unusual weapon."
  • one case challenges the federal ban on out-of-state handgun purchases. The plaintiff, Frederic Russell Mance, Jr. attempted to sell handguns to Tracey and Andrew Hanson, who were residents of the District of Columbia, in Texas. However, federal law generally makes it illegal for a licensed firearms dealer to sell any firearm to a person who does not reside in the same state.
  • Pena v. Horan concerns California's Unsafe Handgun Act, requiring new models of semiautomatic handguns manufactured or sold in the state to include certain safety features.
  • "When the court will take another gun case, what it will be, and what the court will decide is all guesswork," said Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel and vice president of pro-gun safety organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence. "They could grant cert in these cases as soon this week, or soon after, and we will be ready to ensure that Americans' right to life is not infringed upon by the gun industry."
  • "The bottom line is that is that the American public overwhelming supports gun safety laws and what we've seen over the last two years in statehouses across the country lawmakers are responding to that," he said. "So the gun lobby is looking to the courts."
Javier E

Nepal Bans TikTok, Saying It Disturbs 'Social Harmony' - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...sturbs-social-harmony-760e99b2

nepal harmony tiktok ban

shared by Javier E on 14 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • NEW DELHI—Nepal is banning TikTok over concerns that the video platform is “disturbing social harmony,
  • “Through social-media platform TikTok, there’s a continuous dissemination of content disturbing our social harmony and family structures,” said Sharma.
  • Nepal has faced increasing problems with TikTok, including cases of cyberbullying,
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  • Over the past four years, more than 1,600 cybercrime cases on TikTok have been reported to authorities, said Kuber Kadayat, a Nepal police spokesman. He said most of the complaints were related to sharing nude photos or financial extortion.
  • Last week, the government said it would require social-media companies running platforms used in Nepal to set up liaison offices in the country.
  • India banned TikTok—citing threats to national security—along with dozens of other Chinese apps in 2020 after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops on the countries’ disputed border.
  • Nepal isn’t the first to cite concerns about the content shared on the app. Pakistan has banned the app multiple times after authorities received complaints of indecent content, later lifting the bans after receiving promises from TikTok to better control the content. In August, Senegal blocked access to the app citing hateful and subversive content being shared on it.
lilyrashkind

The librarians uniting to battle school book ban laws - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

librarians school us

shared by lilyrashkind on 26 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Last fall, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to the state's school board association saying public schools shouldn't have "obscene" books and called on certain books about gender and sexual orientation, among others, to be removed.
  • Texas is the latest state to introduce legislation concerning how controversial subjects including race and even the Holocaust are taught in schools.There have been over 122 such bills introduced across the country since last year.Books focusing on LGBTQ and racial issues that critics say are inappropriate for students are being banned across the country. Now, some librarians are joining together to protest those bans.
  • who advocate for students' freedom to read books. They came together in November 2021 in response to Republican Texas Rep. Matt Krause's request that schools inform him if they carry books that focus on LGBTQ and racial issues.FReadom Fighters started as a social media movement with the hashtag "#FReadom" in protest of Krause's request, and then blossomed into activism.
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  • While Foote and some librarians are fighting for these books to stay on shelves, others disagree and are fighting to keep them off."I felt that I had a duty as a parent, because this type of material is so over the top in terms of inappropriateness … I felt I had a duty as a parent, to warn other parents and to bring it to the attention of the school board, because quite honestly, you know, I didn't know at that moment who's making these decisions as to what books are put into our school library," Stacy Langton, a Virginia mother and co-founder of Mama Grizzly, a conservative grassroots organization that she says aims to protect "our children's learning environments."
  • In other states, including North Carolina, Maine and Missouri, Republicans have begun campaigns targeting books that deal with segregation and racism.However, according to an American Library Association poll, 71% of Americans are opposed to banning books.
  • "It's just really important that we understand that just because we read something or watch a TV show or read a newspaper article, it doesn't mean we personally or our students are going to go out and enact anything they read about. Books just have ideas in them, and ideas cause us to think, and we can use our own minds to make critical decisions. And as educators ... we train students to ask critical questions like, 'Where did this data come from? And who wrote this? What is their point of view?'" Foote said."And I think that if parents considered that point of view, then they would understand that we're all in this together as partners," she added.
lilyrashkind

Utah bans transgender athletes in girls sports : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...sgender-athletes-veto-override

politics us

shared by lilyrashkind on 26 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers voted Friday to override GOP Gov. Spencer Cox's veto of legislation banning transgender youth athletes from playing on girls teams — a move that comes amid a nationwide culture war over transgender issues. Before the veto, the ban received support from a majority of Utah lawmakers, but fell short of the two-thirds needed to override it. Its sponsors on Friday successfully flipped 10 Republicans in the House and five in the Senate who had previously voted against the proposal.
  • Salt Lake City is set to host the NBA All-Star game in February 2023. League spokesman Mike Bass has said the league is "working closely" with the Jazz on the matter.
  • I cannot support this bill. I cannot support the veto override and if it costs me my seat so be it. I will do the right thing, as I always do," said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher. With the override of Cox's veto, Utah becomes the 12th state to enact some sort of ban on transgender kids in school sports. The state's law takes effect July 1.
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  • Leaders in the deeply conservative Utah say they need the law to protect women's sports. As cultural shifts raise LGBTQ visibility, the lawmakers argue that, without their intervention, more transgender athletes with apparent physical advantages could eventually dominate the field and change the nature of women's sports.
  • he team is also partially owned by NBA all-star Dwyane Wade, who has a transgender daughter.
  • The looming threat of a lawsuit worries school districts and the Utah High School Athletic Association, which has said it lacks the funds to defend the policy in court. Later Friday, lawmakers are expected to change the bill so state money would cover legal fees.
  • The group Visit Salt Lake, which hosts conferences, shows and events, said the override could cost the state $50 million in lost revenue. The Utah-based DNA-testing genealogy giant Ancestry.com also urged the Legislature to find another way. The American Principles Project is confident that states with bans won't face boycotts like North Carolina did after limiting public restrooms transgender people could use. It focused on legislation in populous, economic juggernaut states like Texas and Florida that would be harder to boycott, Schilling said.
  • Friday's deliberations came after more than a year of debate and negotiation between social conservatives and LGBTQ advocates. Republican sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland worked with Cox and civil rights activists at Equality Utah before introducing legislation that would require transgender student-athletes to go before a government-appointed commission.
  • The proposal, although framed as a compromise, failed to gain traction on either side. LGBTQ advocates took issue with Republican politicians appointing commission members and evaluation criteria that included body measurements such as hip-to-knee ratio.
  • But the ban won support from a vocal conservative base that has particular sway in Utah's state primary season. Even with primaries looming, however, some Republicans stood with Cox to reject the ban.
  • Ready for more bad infectious diseases news? There's an outbreak of bird flu making its way into U.S. poultry flocks. If the virus continues to spread, it could affect poultry prices — already higher amid widespread inflation. The price of chicken breasts this week averaged $3.63 per pound at U.S. supermarkets — up from $3.01 a week earlier and $2.42 at this time last year, the Agriculture Department says.
  • The latest data from the USDA show 59 confirmed sites of avian flu across commercial and backyard flocks in 17 states since the start of the year. That figure includes chickens, turkey and other poultry. The USDA identified a case of avian flu in a wild bird in mid-January, the first detection of the virus in wild birds in the U.S. since 2016. Wild birds can spread the virus to commercial and backyard flocks. By Feb. 9, the virus had been identified in a commercial flock in Indiana.
  • The last major avian flu outbreak in the U.S. was from December 2014 to June 2015, when more than 50 million chickens and turkeys either died from highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) or were destroyed to stop its spread.
  • Whether the 2022 avian flu will affect the price of eggs and poultry depends on how widespread it becomes, says Ron Kean, a poultry science expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences. "In 2015, we did see quite an increase in egg prices," Kean told Wisconsin Public Radio. "The chicken meat wasn't severely affected at that time. We did see quite a loss in turkeys, so turkey prices went up. So, we'll see. If a lot of farms contract this, then we could see some real increases in price."
  • For producers who suspect their flock may be affected by avian flu, the USDA has a guide to the warning signs, including a sudden increase in bird deaths, lack of energy and appetite, and a decrease in egg production. If a flock is found to be infected by bird flu, the USDA moves quickly — within 24 hours — to assist producers to destroy the flock and prevent the virus from spreading.
  • A new Virginia state law prohibiting mask mandates in public schools does not apply to 12 students with disabilities whose parents challenged the law, a federal judge has ruled. Last month, the parents of 12 students across Virginia asked the court to halt enforcement of the law, saying it violated their rights under the federal American with Disabilities Act. The law, signed by newly elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, went into effect March 1; it gives parents a say over whether their children should wear masks in school.
  • The group of parents have children whose health conditions range from cystic fibrosis to asthma that put them at heightened risk for COVID-19.
  • The American Civil Liberties Union, which was one of several legal organizations that filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the injunction served as a "blueprint."
  • In a statement, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said the ruling affirms that "parents have the right to make choices for their children."
  • When Judge Katanji Brown Jackson entered the Senate chamber this week to face questions on her readiness to join the Supreme Court, she did so as the first Black woman in the nation's history to be nominated to that position. For many Black law students and professionals, including a group of 150 who traveled from across the country to watch the historic hearing, Jackson's rise to likely associate justice gives a message of profound hope for what they too might one day be able to accomplish.
  • Dudley was one of 100 law students selected nationwide to attend a series of events and watch parties for Jackson's nomination, hosted by the progressive organization, Demand Justice. The group also included 50 public defenders — a nod to Jackson's own background in that field. "I see a lot of myself in her. I see a lot of my friends in her, and I wanted to be there to support," Dudley said, calling Jackson "overly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court."
  • The cohort of legal professionals cheered on Jackson as she faced questions from Republicans about her past cases, particularly those relating to child sex abuse, and on what school of thought she would bring to determining the constitutionality of high-profile cases. Republicans had vowed to oppose President Joe Biden's nominees to the court, and when news of Justice Stephen Breyer's imminent retirement broke, the GOP quickly mobilized to attack potential nominees who might replace the longtime liberal justice on the bench.
  • Particularly, some sentencing decisions in child pornography cases drew GOP fire. But Jackson's measured responses throughout the three days of questioning solidified the support of many onlookers, who reveled in what it would mean to have a Black woman sit on the bench for the first time in the court's 233-year history. "The fact of the matter is that I'm the father of three black girls, right? And to be able to tell them that finally, someone who is Black — female nonetheless — is finally on the precipice of a mountain that has never been climbed before by any other Black woman, is huge," said Edrius Stagg, a third-year law student at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge.
  • Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — whose break from Democrats on a number of politically fraught votes had worried some as to whether he would support Biden's nominee — announced on Friday he would vote in favor of Jackson's confirmation, all but assuring her path to join the bench.
  • For some, the optics of seeing Jackson — a Black woman — defend her credentials to a group of largely white, predominantly male detractors, was a familiar scene. It has played out, students said, in workplaces the world over and across the socioeconomic spectrum.
  • Booker called the attacks on Jackson's record "dangerous" and "disingenuous," noting the complexities of cases that had been boiled down to their basest points in order to damage Jackson's image.
  • "I'm not gonna let my joy be stolen," he continued. "Because I know, you and I, we appreciate something that we get that a lot of my colleagues don't." And while Jackson's opponents peppered her with politically polarizing questions, her supporters grew even more convinced that Jackson was qualified for the job. "To see her hold her composure and just answer the questions just to the best of her capabilities was just really great to see," said Jasmine McMillion, a third-year law student at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law.
Javier E

Abortion Rights Debate Shifts to Pregnancy and Fertility as Election Nears - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ortion-roe-wade-pregnancy.html

abortion rights debate pregnancy fertility

shared by Javier E on 25 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • The public conversation about abortion has grown into one about the complexities of pregnancy and reproduction, as the consequences of bans have played out in the news. The question is no longer just whether you can get an abortion, but also, Can you get one if pregnancy complications put you in septic shock? Can you find an obstetrician when so many are leaving states with bans? If you miscarry, will the hospital send you home to bleed? Can you and your partner do in vitro fertilization?
  • That shift helps explain why a record percentage of Americans are now declaring themselves single-issue voters on abortion rights — especially among Black voters, Democrats, women and those ages 18 to 29. Republican women are increasingly saying their party’s opposition to abortion is too extreme, and Democrats are running on the issue after years of running away from it.
  • Tresa Undem, who has been polling people on abortion for 25 years, estimated that before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, less than 15 percent of the public considered abortion personally relevant — women who could get pregnant and would choose an abortion.
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  • “People used to talk about politicians trying to control our bodies,” she said. “Now it’s, they have no business getting involved in these medical decisions, these politicians don’t have medical expertise, they’re making these laws, and they’re not basing it on health care or science.”
  • Seventy-three percent of independents who support abortion rights said stories about women almost dying because of bans would affect how they vote.
  • “Now it’s about pregnancy, and everybody knows someone who had a baby or wants to have a baby or might get pregnant,” she said. “It’s profoundly personal to a majority of the public.”
  • Anti-abortion groups have responded by trying to carve out a difference between “elective abortion” for unwanted pregnancies — which they want banned — and “maternal fetal separation” in medical emergencies. (The medical procedure is the same.)
  • Opponents have long stigmatized abortion as something irresponsible women use as birth control or because they care more about their careers than having children. “When the focus shifts to the dangers that abortion bans inflict on pregnant people,” said Reva Siegel, a constitutional law professor at Yale who has written extensively about the country’s abortion conflict, “it’s easier for Americans to talk about.”
  • Technology and criminal law have flipped the script, she said.
  • Before Roe legalized abortion nationally in 1973, the law allowed more leeway for what were considered “therapeutic abortions.” Doctors, often solo practitioners, could use their good faith judgment to provide them. Even the Southern Baptist Convention supported abortions in cases of fetal deformity or when a woman’s physical or mental health was at risk.
  • Now, the threat of prosecution, $100,000 fines and loss of their medical licenses have chilled doctors and hospital systems in treating women with pregnancy complications. More often than not in some states, lawyers are making the decisions.
  • In Georgia, she said, more people opposed the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy once they were told that this meant two weeks after the average woman misses her period — not, as her own partner believed, six weeks after conception. Some voters, she said, believed that six weeks meant six weeks after women found out they were pregnant.
maddieireland334

Mikhail Gorbachev banned from Ukraine - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Gorbachev Ukraine Soviet Banned

shared by maddieireland334 on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • The Ukraine has banned Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, after he came out in support of Russia's annexation of Crimea.
  • Gorbachev's comments on Crimea are the latest wedge between Ukraine and Russia.
  • Ukraine's Security Service told CNN the ban was because of Gorbachev's "public support of military annexation of Crimea."
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  • Gorbachev's spokesman, Vladimir Polyakovm, said the former leader knew Ukraine was mulling the ban and had earlier brushed it off, saying he did not travel to the country anyway.
  • saying he would have acted the same way as Russian President Vladimir Putin on Crimea if he were Russia's leader today.
  • He also accused the United States of "rubbing its hands with glee" over the demise of the Soviet Union.
  • Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until his resignation in 1991
  • The Crimean Peninsula was annexed through a controversial referendum, which returned a large majority in support of joining Russia.
  • The United States and Europe introduced a wide range of sanctions against Russia in an effort to pressure Moscow to back down from aggressive moves against Ukraine.
  • Most recently, the two countries bickered over Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot who was detained by Russia for two years, and two Russian soldiers held in Ukraine
redavistinnell

The Russian Govt. has Decided to COMPLETELY BAN the Use of Any & All Genetically Modifi... - 0 views

www.realfarmacy.com/russian-ban

russian govt ban modified ingredients

shared by redavistinnell on 27 May 16 - No Cached
  • The Russian Govt. has Decided to COMPLETELY BAN the Use of Any & All Genetically Modified Ingredients in Food Production
  • In other words, Russia just blazed way past the issue of GMO labeling and shut down the use of any and all GMOs that would have otherwise entered the food supply through the creation of packaged foods (and the cultivation of GMO crops).
  • If this announcement were to be made in the United States, for example, it would mean a total transformation of the food manufacturing industry. But in Russia, the integration of GMOs is not close to the same level as in the U.S.
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  • We know that, in the United States, 90 plus percent of staple crops like corn are genetically modified, along with 94 percent of soybeans and 94 percent of cotton. A ban on GMOs in food production would radically change the entire food supply. In Russia, however, the country is much more poised for a GMO food revolution. [
  • President Vladimir Putin believes that he can keep GMOs out of the country, even while staying in compliance with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) commandments. In a past meeting addressing the members of the Board of the Russian F
  • deration Council he stated:
Javier E

I'm with the banned: International visitors are already turning their back on Trump-era... - 1 views

www.economist.com/...i-m-banned

international visitors us tourism crisis economic trump effects

shared by Javier E on 16 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • a market research firm, looked at online searches for flights into America, comparing the final weeks of the Obama administration with the first weeks of Mr Trump’s presidency. It found that these searches had declined by 17%.
  • The overwhelming majority of countries studied showed a drop in interest. The most notable exception was Russia
  • it is “hard to see any other short-term significant events that could be related,” other than Mr Trump’s assumption of the presidency and his travel ban.
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  • Another study, this time looking specifically at business travel, backs up these findings. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), which represents corporate travel managers, found that business travel transactions in America declined by 3.4% over the course of one week following the president’s order.
  • If a 3.4% decline sounds small, consider the group’s assertion that a 1% drop in business travel over the course of a year correlates with a loss of 71,000 American jobs and close to $5bn in gross domestic product
  • a net $185m in business travel bookings was lost
  • as Mr Trump is broadly unpopular in much of the world, some people were probably already thinking twice about coming to America before the executive order was announced.
  • Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a consultancy, told Forbes that the furore will probably “severely damage the US travel sector this year”
  • He cites the $246bn that international visitors spent in America last year, a figure that vastly exceeds the value of other major American exports such as cars ($152bn), agricultural products ($137bn) and petroleum products ($97bn)
  • Those high stakes explain why travel firms, normally reluctant to annoy customers by taking a political stance, have gone out of their way to condemn Mr Trump. 
aqconces

For and against: Should Donald Trump be banned from entering Britain? - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ned-from-entering-Britain.html

donald trump banned britain

shared by aqconces on 19 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The Republican candidate for US President has demanded all Muslims to be shut out of the USA, prompting calls to give him the same treatment
  • Donald Trump is an outright fascist
  • "We must confront the reality that his comments have provoked, and consider whether we want to import such hatred to this country"
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  • We have already banned people very similar to him
  • So it is hard to see what possible public good would be served by welcoming to the UK a man who has effectively called for a race war.
  • "The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good"
  • Let's welcome Trump into Britain
  • Donald Trump is an idiot and a chancer. What he said about Muslims was offensive, outrageous, racist and just plain stupid.
  • “Get him over here and put him on a platform so his odious and, frankly, weird views can be shot down in flames" Tim Farron
redavistinnell

Trump UK ban petition passes 329,000 signatures - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/uk-35052505

trump ban petition passes bbc news

shared by redavistinnell on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Trump UK ban petition passes 329,000 signatures
  • The petition went on Parliament's e-petition website on Tuesday.
  • Chancellor George Osborne criticised Mr Trump's comments but rejected calls for him to be banned from the UK.
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  • Any petition with more than 100,000 signatures is automatically considered for debate in Parliament.
  • He said on Wednesday he would never leave the 2016 race, despite the volume of calls for him to step aside.
  • People banned from entering the UK under the exclusion policy in recent years include leaders of the Westboro Baptist Church, Islamist preachers and Ku Klux Klan officials, and two anti-Muslim bloggers.
  • Mr Osborne told the Commons that the remarks by Mr Trump flew in the face of America's founding principles and "were not welcome".
  • The full text of the petition - entitled "Block Donald J Trump from UK entry" - reads: "The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK.
  • On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry added to the widespread condemnation of Mr Trump's comments, saying they were "not constructive" in the fight against IS.
Javier E

Facebook to ban white nationalism and separatism content | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...te-nationalism-hate-speech-ban

language Bias social media facebook

shared by Javier E on 28 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • The company suggested in a post announcing the change that it had originally seen white nationalism as an acceptable point of view, similar to American nationalism, or Basque separatism.
  • Javier E on 28 Mar 19
     
    pany wrote in a post on Wednesday. Facebook's training documents for moderators, obtained last year by Vice News' Motherboard, explained that content promoting organized hate groups and leaders were banned and should be removed, but that white nationalism and white separatism were explicitly permitted. Phrases like "I am a proud white nationalist" and "The US should be a white-only nation" were cited as examples of acceptable viewpoints, even as "I am a white supremacist" was banned, Motherboard reported. The documents argued that white nationalism "doesn't seem to be always associated with racism (at least not explicitly)" and that white nationalists "carefully avoid the term supremacy because it has negative connotations".
malonema1

Trump administration implements new restrictions on refugee program as ban comes to an ... - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

Terrorism US refugee

shared by malonema1 on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Trump administration resumed the U.S. refugee program Tuesday after a 120-day ban, but there will be severe new restrictions on admissions going forward. After the four-month review, the administration enhanced vetting for all refugee applicants and determined that an additional 90-day review was needed for 11 countries.
  • During the ban, the Departments of State and Homeland Security, in consultation with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), were tasked with determining whether additional security procedures identified during the review process were sufficient to ensure the security and welfare of the United States and whether the program should be reinstated. Those 11 nationalities were deemed to have a higher risk to the U.S. by the interagency review. Those countries are not being identified because of "law enforcement sensitivities," according to a senior DHS official.
  • At the end of January, one week into President Donald Trump's term, he signed an executive order banning all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, indefinitely banning all Syrian refugees and stopping all refugee admissions for 120 days.
anonymous

'We call it the Muslim Ban 3.0': the young Yale lawyers fighting Trump's order | US new... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-ban-legal-battle-mike-wishnie

muslim ban lawyers fighting trump US

shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • 'We call it the Muslim Ban 3.0': the young Yale lawyers fighting Trump's order
  • Trump’s travel bans have prompted a forceful counter campaign, bolstered by a soft-spoken Yale professor who leads a team of passionate proteges
  • many people stood against the president’s first travel ban. Among them was a small group of young lawyers, working at a series of nonprofits, who one jokingly called Dumbledore’s army. They stand against Trump still.
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  • As outrage spread across America, an ambitious plan started to form. Going home from the basketball game in a taxi, Wishnie mobilized about 20 current students to start researching and drafting papers that would, in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union, be filed with a duty judge in Brooklyn.
draneka

Do tougher gun laws lead to 'dramatically lower rates of gun violence'? - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ly-lower-rates-of-gun-violence

shared by draneka on 17 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • To be fair, the ban had some limitations. For one, assault weapons were not widely used in gun crimes prior to the ban. And, the ban may not have covered all forms of assault weapons because it did not ban all semiautomatic weapons. Instead, it banned semiautomatic weapons with large capacity magazines and weapons that “appear useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense.”
  • A 10-year ban on assault weapons such as AR-15s didn’t do much to reduce gun violence.
lmunch

Opinion: Arkansas abortion ban isn't a law. It's a message - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US Culture Policy abortion Arkansas

shared by lmunch on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • This week, Arkansas passed one of the nation's most sweeping abortion bans to date, criminalizing any procedure unless a patient's life is at risk. But the sweep of Arkansas's proposal, which very consciously includes a ban for cases of rape and incest, isn't the only thing that stands out. Quite simply, Arkansas's latest abortion ban isn't just a law. It's a letter to the Supreme Court's conservative six -justice majority -- and a preview of the case against Roe v. Wade.
  • And the state says that Roe sanctioned the equivalent of Jim Crow segregation by withdrawing "legal protection" for fetal life. Arkansas would certainly know something about segregation. The state long enforced strict segregation laws and was home to one of the most gruesome race-based massacres of the Jim Crow era.
  • Antiabortion think tanks have published studies arguing that abortion increases the risk of everything from post-traumatic stress to depression, infertility and cancer. Antiabortion groups insist that access to abortion doesn't help women achieve equal citizenship; it makes them sick.
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  • The irony is that abortion foes have seen this movie before. More than anyone, those in the antiabortion movement should know that obsessing over the Supreme Court can get you only so far. After all, way back in 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun issued a decision he firmly believed would end conflicts about abortion. That decision was called Roe v. Wade.
anonymous

California gun ruling: A federal judge, who compares an AR-15 to a Swiss Army knife, ov... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • a federal judge overturned California's longtime ban on assault weapons on Friday, ruling it violates the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.
  • Assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989, according to the ruling. The law has been updated several times since it was originally passed.
  • According to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego, the assault weapons ban deprives Californians from owning assault-style weapons commonly allowed in other states.
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  • In his ruling, the judge also criticized the news media, writing, "One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter."
  • However, as CNN has previously reported, AR-15 style rifles have been the weapon of choice for numerous mass shooters,
  • Last year, Benitez ruled California's ban on high-capacity magazines was unconstitutional. He also struck down the state's restriction on remote purchases of gun ammunition. California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the ruling Friday, calling AR-15's a "weapon of war."
  • He said in a statement that the comparison made by the judge between a Swiss Army Knife and the AR-15 "completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who've lost loved ones to this weapon."
  • The ruling and injunction are stayed for 30 days, during which time the Attorney General may appeal and seek a stay from the Court of Appeals.
  • California Attorney General Rob Bonta said he will be appealing the ruling. "Today's decision is fundamentally flawed, and we will be appealing it," Bonta said in a news release.
katherineharron

Trump revokes rule barring lobbying by former officials - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 20 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • As his term comes to an end, President Donald Trump revoked a rule he signed early in his term that imposed a five-year lobbying ban for administration officials and a lifetime ban on lobbying for foreign governments.
  • Trump had signed the order "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees" within his first week in office
  • The January 28, 2017 executive order required appointees to pledge that they will not "engage in lobbying activities with respect" to the executive agency they were appointed to serve within five years after "termination of their employment" -- effectively allowing them to lobby other areas.
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  • As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump initially called for enacting the five-year lobbying ban through legislation and for a similar restriction for members of Congress and their staff.
  • At the signing, Trump slammed former President Barack Obama for enacting a two-year lobbying ban for officials
  • Because lobbying can be ambiguously titled in practice, former staffers can still "shadow" lobby or cash in on their government expertise by joining firms where they help lobbyists and lobbying firm clients navigate Washington without formally registering as lobbyists.
  • Clinton had also nixed the five-year lobbying ban at the end of his tenure, which Trump had criticized during the 2016 campaign.
Javier E

Trump Retreats From Flavor Ban for E-Cigarettes - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-vaping-ban.html

vaping ban trump culture politics gop

shared by Javier E on 20 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • A lack of federal action prompted several states to try to institute bans on flavored e-cigarettes, spurring the vaping and tobacco industries to mount legal challenges and lobby lawmakers and the White House against regulatory restrictions that would impede adult e-smokers.
  • he is concerned about his chances in 2020, and allies working for the vaping industry have told Mr. Trump of battleground state polling of his own voters that showed the issue costing him support.
  • One such poll was commissioned by John McLaughlin, one of the Trump campaign pollsters, for the Vapor Technology Association. The poll, which surveyed battleground state voters who vape, showed negative results for Mr. Trump if he went ahead with a ban, and was passed around to a number of people in Mr. Trump’s circle,
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  • Mr. Trump has also been under an intense lobbying campaign over the past seven weeks, waged by tobacco and vaping companies, along with conservative organizations, like Americans for Tax Reform, which are opposed to regulatory limits that would affect retailers, small businesses and adult consumers of e-cigarettes.
  • the flavor ban has also become a proxy issue for how his advisers see Mr. Trump’s path to re-election. In one camp are those who believe he should try to win back suburban women, including mothers of teenagers who would presumably worry about their children becoming addicted to nicotine. In the other are those who advise him to assume that voting bloc would not favor him anyway and to focus only on energizing his base.
  • E-cigarette users have held protests outside the White House and outside Trump rallies that they may have attended under other circumstances. Protesters have also raised concerns about the potential closing of thousands of vape shops, which they said would hurt the economy and cost jobs across the country.
  • While some advice to Mr. Trump was grounded in polling, some was based on a gut-level understanding of Trump voters: Taking away the right to smoke or vape would be something akin to taking away firearms.
  • Mr. Azar, have been pushing the administration to address the issue, as parents and schools as well as public health experts have grown increasingly concerned about the rise in teenage vaping. Mr. Azar had told the president that about more than one-fourth of high school students reported vaping e-cigarettes within the previous 30 days, according to this year’s survey of tobacco use among youths
Javier E

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rivacy-facial-recognition.html

privacy surveillance face recognition

shared by Javier E on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so; in 2011, Google’s chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used “in a very bad way.” Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial recognition technology.
  • without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year
  • The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.
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  • it’s not just law enforcement: Clearview has also licensed the app to at least a handful of companies for security purposes.
  • “The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”
  • While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.
  • The company eventually started answering my questions, saying that its earlier silence was typical of an early-stage start-up in stealth mode. Mr. Ton-That acknowledged designing a prototype for use with augmented-reality glasses but said the company had no plans to release it.
  • In addition to Mr. Ton-That, Clearview was founded by Richard Schwartz — who was an aide to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was mayor of New York — and backed financially by Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist behind Facebook and Palantir.
  • “I’ve come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there’s never going to be privacy,” Mr. Scalzo said. “Laws have to determine what’s legal, but you can’t ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can’t ban it.”
  • “In 2017, Peter gave a talented young founder $200,000, which two years later converted to equity in Clearview AI,” said Jeremiah Hall, Mr. Thiel’s spokesman. “That was Peter’s only contribution; he is not involved in the company.”
  • He began in 2016 by recruiting a couple of engineers. One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo
  • Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition
  • Another engineer was hired to perfect a facial recognition algorithm that was derived from academic papers. The result: a system that uses what Mr. Ton-That described as a “state-of-the-art neural net” to convert all the images into mathematical formulas, or vectors, based on facial geometry — like how far apart a person’s eyes are
  • Clearview created a vast directory that clustered all the photos with similar vectors into “neighborhoods.”
  • When a user uploads a photo of a face into Clearview’s system, it converts the face into a vector and then shows all the scraped photos stored in that vector’s neighborhood — along with the links to the sites from which those images came.
  • Mr. Schwartz paid for server costs and basic expenses, but the operation was bare bones; everyone worked from home. “I was living on credit card debt,” Mr. Ton-That said. “Plus, I was a Bitcoin believer, so I had some of those.”
  • The company soon changed its name to Clearview AI and began marketing to law enforcement. That was when the company got its first round of funding from outside investors: Mr. Thiel and Kirenaga Partners
  • Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Ton-That met in 2016 at a book event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Mr. Schwartz, now 61, had amassed an impressive Rolodex working for Mr. Giuliani in the 1990s and serving as the editorial page editor of The New York Daily News in the early 2000s. The two soon decided to go into the facial recognition business together: Mr. Ton-That would build the app, and Mr. Schwartz would use his contacts to drum up commercial interest.
  • They immediately got a match: The man appeared in a video that someone had posted on social media, and his name was included in a caption on the video. “He did not have a driver’s license and hadn’t been arrested as an adult, so he wasn’t in government databases,”
  • The man was arrested and charged; Mr. Cohen said he probably wouldn’t have been identified without the ability to search social media for his face. The Indiana State Police became Clearview’s first paying customer, according to the company
  • Clearview deployed current and former Republican officials to approach police forces, offering free trials and annual licenses for as little as $2,000. Mr. Schwartz tapped his political connections to help make government officials aware of the tool
  • The company’s most effective sales technique was offering 30-day free trials to officers, who then encouraged their acquisition departments to sign up and praised the tool to officers from other police departments at conferences and online, according to the company and documents provided by police departments in response to public-record requests. Mr. Ton-That finally had his viral hit.
  • Photos “could be covertly taken with telephoto lens and input into the software, without ‘burning’ the surveillance operation,” the detective wrote in the email, provided to The Times by two researchers,
  • Sergeant Ferrara found Clearview’s app superior, he said. Its nationwide database of images is much larger, and unlike FACES, Clearview’s algorithm doesn’t require photos of people looking straight at the camera.
  • “With Clearview, you can use photos that aren’t perfect,” Sergeant Ferrara said. “A person can be wearing a hat or glasses, or it can be a profile shot or partial view of their face.”
  • Mr. Ton-That said the tool does not always work. Most of the photos in Clearview’s database are taken at eye level. Much of the material that the police upload is from surveillance cameras mounted on ceilings or high on walls.
  • Despite that, the company said, its tool finds matches up to 75 percent of the time. But it is unclear how often the tool delivers false matches, because it has not been tested by an independent party
  • One reason that Clearview is catching on is that its service is unique. That’s because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from scraping users’ images — Clearview is violating the sites’ terms of service.
  • Some law enforcement officials said they didn’t realize the photos they uploaded were being sent to and stored on Clearview’s servers. Clearview tries to pre-empt concerns with an F.A.Q. document given to would-be clients that says its customer-support employees won’t look at the photos that the police upload.
  • Mr. Clement, now a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, wrote that the authorities don’t have to tell defendants that they were identified via Clearview, as long as it isn’t the sole basis for getting a warrant to arrest them.
  • Because the police upload photos of people they’re trying to identify, Clearview possesses a growing database of individuals who have attracted attention from law enforcement. The company also has the ability to manipulate the results that the police see.
  • After the company realized I was asking officers to run my photo through the app, my face was flagged by Clearview’s systems and for a while showed no matches. When asked about this, Mr. Ton-That laughed and called it a “software bug.”
  • “It’s creepy what they’re doing, but there will be many more of these companies. There is no monopoly on math,” said Al Gidari, a privacy professor at Stanford Law School. “Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we’re all screwed.”
  • But if your profile has already been scraped, it is too late. The company keeps all the images it has scraped even if they are later deleted or taken down, though Mr. Ton-That said the company was working on a tool that would let people request that images be removed if they had been taken down from the website of origin
  • Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University in Boston, sees Clearview as the latest proof that facial recognition should be banned in the United States.
  • We’ve relied on industry efforts to self-police and not embrace such a risky technology, but now those dams are breaking because there is so much money on the table,”
  • “I don’t see a future where we harness the benefits of face recognition technology without the crippling abuse of the surveillance that comes with it. The only way to stop it is to ban it.”
  • Mr. Ton-That said he was reluctant. “There’s always going to be a community of bad people who will misuse it,” he said.
  • Even if Clearview doesn’t make its app publicly available, a copycat company might, now that the taboo is broken. Searching someone by face could become as easy as Googling a name
  • Someone walking down the street would be immediately identifiable — and his or her home address would be only a few clicks away. It would herald the end of public anonymity.
woodlu

Travel bans and the Omicron variant are hurting southern Africa | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...21806542

politics pandemic economics policy

shared by woodlu on 30 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • It was local virologists and epidemiologists who had honed their skills studying another virus, HIV, who discovered the new Omicron variant of covid
  • When cases spiked unexpectedly, they studied samples, determined that it was a new and worrying variant and—most importantly—shared their findings immediately.
  • Britain shut its airports to flights from South Africa and several other southern African countries. America and the European Union soon followed suit, banning flights and closing their borders to travellers from the region.
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  • Many South Africans felt they were being unfairly punished for their country being scientifically rigorous and open.
  • some South African scientists have pointed out that the travel ban may also be hampering the race to learn more about Omicron by blocking supplies of the reagents they need to study it.
  • Partly because of this South Africa was, until recently, recording less than one-tenth as many daily covid cases as Britain. “It boggles the mind that people in the United Kingdom can pile into a full football stadium and in the United States it appears as though it’s business as usual, but as soon as something happens on African soil, those countries go into a hysterical tailspin,”
  • The new travel restrictions will wallop the region’s tourism industry, just as hotels, game reserves and wine estates were preparing for their busiest months of the year
  • Tourism contributes about 3% of South Africa’s GDP and much more to some others in the region, such as Namibia (11%) and Botswana (13%).
  • Last year covid and travel restrictions cut foreign visits to South Africa by 71% and threw some 300,000 people out of work.
  • Because of the drop in tourism and the imposition of lockdowns the economy shrank by about 6% last year. Thousands of small businesses collapsed
  • The ripples may spread far beyond southern Africa to countries such as Kenya and Uganda that do not yet face travel restrictions.
  • South Africa’s health workers are gearing up for another December of mayhem as covid’s fourth wave washes over the country.
  • Modelling suggested that fewer people would end up in hospital than during a vicious third wave that crested in July. In part this was because antibody tests suggested that in many parts of the country a whopping 59-69% of people had already been infected. And around a quarter of people have been fully vaccinated.
  • The emergence of Omicron, which seems to spread easily, will probably upset those estimates. “It looks like it's spreading quickly but there’s so much that’s unknown, specifically if it will evade the vaccines and its severity,”
  • In previous lockdowns the government banned the sale of alcohol to prevent drunks from occupying precious beds in hospitals. Although this did indeed reduce hospital admissions from car accidents and drunken fights, it also taught many that lockdowns divide people into two groups: the quick and the thirsty.
  • It is difficult to fault governments elsewhere for trying to slow the spread of the new variant, after they were roundly criticised for having failed to act quickly when covid first emerged. But, in turn, South Africa deserves more than just praise for having informed the world quickly about the new variant.
  • If other countries are to be encouraged to do the same with future variants, rich countries should lift travel bans as quickly as it is safe to do so. Many South Africans think rich countries should go further, and compensate South Africa for taking an economic hit that may well spare the rich world a great deal of pain
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