As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move back to the White House, he has said he will keep his promise to sign a nationwide "concealed carry reciprocity" law.

The Israeli military "intends to continue its tireless efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in the Strip during the ongoing conflict," a statement said.

Immigrant rights lawyers are preparing to fight back against Donald Trump’s plans to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history once he takes office again in January. The president-elect has already named some leading anti-immigration figures for his incoming administration who will lead the plan, including former ICE head Tom Homan and his longtime aide Stephen Miller. Trump’s picks were central in family separations, the Muslim ban, attacks on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and other anti-immigrant policies during the first Trump administration. Trump is also reportedly planning to greatly expand immigrant detention in private for-profit prisons, and during the campaign he spoke of invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations. “We have been preparing nearly a year for this,” says attorney Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued some of the most high-profile immigration cases during the first Trump administration. He stresses that while groups like the ACLU will challenge the Trump administration in the courts, “it needs to be a national effort” to prevent abuses. “We are not opposed to basic immigration reform, but this cannot be a situation where we’re just going after immigrants left and right.”

Members of diverse religions can picnic in peace at Garden of Paradise in Clearwater and send the message that religions can enjoy each other and learn from each other.

Small business advocates largely grumbled after the nation's highest court overturned a decades-old decision on online sales tax.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states now have the power to force online retailers to collect sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence, reversing a ruling from 1992 in a 5-4 decision. The move also revives a 2016 South Dakota law that required large, out-of-state e-commerce companies to collect sales tax, one that big e-commerce players fought. Some online retailers, such as Amazon.com, currently collect state sales tax on products they directly sell but do not collect taxes from many of the independent sellers on the site.

The decision removes the sales-tax savings that consumers could reap by making purchases online instead of buying from local brick-and-mortar shops. Although the move does help to level the playing field for physical small businesses, it also places new burdens on small online retailers.

complete article

Decade of Growth: LaserLightShow.ORG's Vegan Facebook Groups Flourish Over the past 10 years, their expanding online community has become a vibrant hub for plant-based enthusiasts to connect, share, and inspire each other. [PR.com]

Google Groups might be a viable alternative to using a Forum software on my site for Behold Genealogy user discussions. There are several good reasons I see:

1. Gives you all the features of Google Groups.
2. If you already use Google Groups for other newsgroups, it makes it very convenient for you.
3. Allows you to get messages via e-mail and post via e-mail.
4. Has an RSS feed if you want it.
5. Will be indexed and searchable by Google, so others can find out about Behold.
6. Very little maintenance required by me.

I got the idea from Firebug, a Firefox addin that uses it quite successfully. See at: http://groups.google.com/group/firebug

So I'd like your opinion. Do you think I should use this for Behold's User Forum, or should I stick to my own installed Forum software on my Behold website?

So if you want, feel free to go to the Google Group I quickly created at: http://groups.google.com/group/behold-genealogy and let me know what you think.

We published our report on the world’s top selling EV models yesterday. Now, let’s look at which auto brands and auto groups sold the most plugin vehicles and the most BEVs in September. Top Selling Brands In September, #1 BYD, now deep into pricing out the competition (fossil fueled and electric…) didn’t ... [continued]

The post World EV Sales Report — Top Selling Auto Brands & Groups appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Elissa describes the "Psalter group" and its purpose during Great Lent.

Dr. Rossi interviews Fr. Nicholas Solak, parish priest of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Stroudsburg, PA, on the topic of Clergy Peer Learning Groups in the life of a priest.

Eco groups call for a mining firm to "break its silence" over a coal mine.

There is a growing consensus that cooperative goal structures are more effective at motivating groups than competitive goal structures. However, such results are based largely on studies conducted in highly-controlled settings where participants were provided with the necessary resources to accomplish their assigned task. In an attempt to extend the boundary conditions of current theoretical predictions, we undertook a field experiment within a base-of-the-pyramid setting where resource scarcity is extremely high. Specifically, we collected data on 44 communities within rural Sri Lanka who were tasked with contributing a portion of their resources to the construction of a school building; 24 were assigned to a competition condition and 20 to a cooperation condition. The results of our field experiment, and subsequent follow-up interviews and focus groups, collectively suggest that competitive goal structures generally lead to higher levels of motivation within a resource scarce environment. However, our results also suggest that cooperative goal structures can be highly motivating when groups are unfamiliar with one another, as cooperating with unfamiliar groups can provide access to valuable and rare knowledge within such settings.

Five D.C. United fan groups said Monday they'll remain quiet for the first four matches this season to protest the Major League Soccer team's partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Israel has failed to meet U.S. demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war, international aid organizations said Tuesday.

Washington — OSHA’s Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health has scheduled its next meeting for Feb. 22.

Washington – A federal transportation safety advisory committee and a medical review board are scheduled to host a joint public meeting Sept. 9-10 in Alexandria, VA, to discuss several ongoing transportation safety topics.

Chantilly, VA — The International Association of Fire Chiefs and eight other national fire service organizations are urging drivers to exercise extra caution when approaching emergency vehicles and respect move over laws.

Washington — Concerned that firefighters’ protective gear may contain potentially harmful “forever chemicals,” the International Association of Fire Fighters and the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association are advising their members to take precautions to reduce exposure.

Washington – The American Trucking Associations wants Congress to allow fleets to use hair samples to test truck drivers for illegal drugs.

Elk Grove Village, IL – Two worker health groups have published guidance intended to help employers respond to marijuana use among the workforce.

Washington — Two environmental groups, along with 75 salon workers from across the country, have filed a citizen petition asking the Food and Drug Administration to ban hair straighteners containing formaldehyde.

ONVIF working groups are subsets of the ONVIF Technical Committee and Technical Services Committee, and any ONVIF member company at the full or contributing membership level is encouraged to participate in this work. 

Hartford, CT — Employers need to pay close attention to new and aging employees to help prevent workplace injuries, according to a report from insurance provider The Travelers Cos.

Washington — A coalition of 10 aviation industry groups led by Airlines for America, a trade association of U.S. passenger and cargo carriers, is requesting that the Department of Justice “commit to the full and public prosecution of onboard acts of violence” by passengers against airline employees.

San Diego — A U.S. Department of Agriculture proposal to remove maximum line speeds in pork-processing plants “will translate into even more illness and injury” among workers, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

Washington – Three advocacy groups on June 25 filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging that unsafe conditions in poultry plants threaten workers’ basic human rights.

Rockville, MD – Several construction industry trade associations have formed a coalition in response to OSHA’s proposed rule on crystalline silica.

Despite the downward trend in workplace fatalities, safety advocates are calling for stepped-up efforts to protect workers.

Washington – President Barack Obama should veto proposed funding legislation that would cut OSHA’s budget, 76 advocacy groups urged in an Aug. 5 letter.

Washington – Several public health advocacy groups have filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that aims to undo OSHA’s requirement for employers to electronically submit worker injury and illness data for public view.

Washington — Advocacy groups Farmworker Justice and Earthjustice filed a joint Freedom of Information Act lawsuit April 17 seeking Environmental Protection Agency meeting notes related to a pair of regulatory changes regarding worker protection.

Grain Valley, MO — The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and 12 other organizations have sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to oppose two House bills that would allow drivers younger than 21 to operate interstate commercial motor vehicles.

Washington — More than 130 organizations and 90 individuals are petitioning OSHA to issue regulations aimed at protecting workers against heat stress.

Washington — The National Employment Law Project and the Economic Analysis and Research Network recently released a policy brief intended to advise incoming governors and state legislators on best practices “to protect workers in their states so that all communities can thrive and grow.”

Washington — The National Employment Law Project and two other labor advocacy groups have filed a complaint against the Department of Labor, claiming DOL violated the Information Quality Act in its move to roll back child labor laws to allow unsupervised teens to operate powered patient lifts in health care settings.

Washington — A coalition of roadway safety advocacy groups, in conjunction with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Transportation challenging a controversial final rule FMCSA claims will add flexibility to hours-of-service regulations for commercial truck drivers.

Washington — A pair of advocacy groups are calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reconsider a final rule aimed at strengthening protections for drivers and passengers in light vehicles involved in “underride” crashes, which occur when vehicles strike the rear of large trucks and slide underneath.

Washington — The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 4 heard oral arguments on why it should order OSHA to issue a permanent standard on COVID-19 for the health care industry.

Washington — The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled it doesn’t have the authority to order OSHA to issue a permanent standard on COVID-19 for the health care industry, denying an emergency petition filed by National Nurses United and other labor groups.

Washington — Hearing conservation and women in construction are among the topics scheduled for discussion during an upcoming Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health meeting.

The post Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups was curated by information for practice.

The post NIHR launches pipeline of Mental Health Research Groups across England [ £27 million to support mental health research teams in nine regions ] was curated by information for practice.

The post Conceptualizing bias in EHR data: A case study in performance disparities by demographic subgroups for a pediatric obesity incidence classifier was curated by information for practice.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print. Conspiracy theories have been treated mostly as a homogeneous phenomenon in empirical research. However, to fully understand their causes and consequences, a multifaceted approach to conspiracy theories would be useful. Here, we propose an organizational framework with three facets (groups, ideology, and status) to conceptualize conspiracy theories. […]

The post Conspiracy Theories: Groups, Ideology, and Status as Three Distinct Bases for Expressions in Society was curated by information for practice.

Dr. Neil Johnson, a physics professor at George Washington University, explores unconventional areas within physics, focusing on complex, "taboo" problems not traditionally tackled by physicists, like online hate networks.

[Politics] :
Labor and civic groups held massive anti-government rallies in Seoul on Saturday afternoon. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of the nation's two umbrella groups, staged a rally along with civic groups starting at 4 p.m. near Deoksu Palace and some of the protesters clashed with ...

[more...]

The symmetry groups of the weave patterns of the baskets, trays and mats of the Batak, an indigenous community in the Philippines, are discussed in this paper. The two-way twofold weaving technique is used by the Batak, and this study points to a total of 15 layer groups found in the Batak weaves out of the 80 layer groups known in crystallography.

In recent decades, sustained theoretical and software developments have clearly established that representation analysis and magnetic symmetry groups are complementary concepts that should be used together in the investigation and description of magnetic structures. Historically, they were considered alternative approaches, but currently, magnetic space groups and magnetic superspace groups can be routinely used together with representation analysis, aided by state-of-the-art software tools. After exploring the historical antagonism between these two approaches, we emphasize the significant advancements made in understanding and formally describing magnetic structures by embracing their combined use.

The embedded call to a special version of the web-based Bilbao Crystallographic Server tool k-SUBGROUPSMAG from within GSAS-II to form a list of all possible commensurate magnetic subgroups of a parent magnetic grey group is described. It facilitates the selection and refinement of the best commensurate magnetic structure model by having all the analysis tools including Rietveld refinement in one place as part of GSAS-II. It also provides the chosen magnetic space group as one of the 1421 possible standard Belov–Neronova–Smirnova forms or equivalent non-standard versions.

The compounds 2',3',4',6'-tetra-O-acetyl-β-d-gluco­pyranosyl N'-cyano-N-phenyl­carbamimido­thio­ate (C22H25N3O9S, 5a), 2',3',4',6'-tetra-O-acetyl-β-d-galacto­pyranosyl N'-cyano-N-phenyl­carbamimido­thio­ate, (C22H25N3O9S, 5b), 2',3',4',6'-tetra-O-acetyl-β-d-galacto­pyranosyl N'-cyano-N-methyl­carbamimido­thio­ate (C17H23N3O9S, 5c), and 2',3',4',6'-tetra-O-acetyl-β-d-galacto­pyranosyl N'-cyano-N-p-tolyl­carbamimido­thio­ate (C23H27N3O9S, 5d) all crystallize in P212121 with Z = 4. For all four structures, the configuration across the central (formal) C=N(CN) double bond of the carbamimido­thio­ate group is Z. The torsion angles C5—O1—C1—S (standard sugar numbering) are all close to 180°, confirming the β position of the substituent. Compound 5b involves an intra­molecular hydrogen bond N—H⋯O1; in 5c this contact is the weaker branch of a three-centre inter­action, whereas in 5a and 5d the H⋯O distances are much longer and do not represent significant inter­actions. The C—N bond lengths at the central carbon atom of the carbamimido­thio­ate group are almost equal. All C—O—C=O torsion angles of the acetyl groups correspond to a synperiplanar geometry, but otherwise all four mol­ecules display a high degree of conformational flexibility, with many widely differing torsion angles for equivalent groups. In the crystal packing, 5a, 5c and 5d form layer structures involving the classical hydrogen bond N—H⋯Ncyano and a variety of ‘weak’ hydrogen bonds C—H⋯O or C—H⋯S. The packing of 5b is almost featureless and involves a large number of borderline ‘weak’ hydrogen bonds. In an appendix, a potted history of wavelength preferences for structure determination is presented and it is recommended that, even for small organic crystals in non-centrosymmetric space groups, the use of Mo radiation should be considered.