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Aged care royal commission hears of grandfather sick of sitting in his own faeces

The standard of care provided to an elderly man, often found in soiled pants, at a regional Queensland aged care facility was so appalling even his own granddaughter was too distressed to visit, the royal commission into aged care hears.





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Giant crocodile, Howard, has 10yo Elroy on his side fighting for him to remain on creek bank

A 10-year-old boy writes to Queensland's Environment Minister pleading with authorities not to remove a giant crocodile that has been sunning itself on a creek bank.




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Royal Flying Doctor Service combats pilot shortage with aviation mentoring program

Queensland's Royal Flying Doctor Service trades training for loyalty in a new program to bring in more pilots.




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Gold Coast aged care facility Earle Haven to be referred to royal commission

People still living at a Gold Coast nursing home that was partially evacuated last Thursday are told the facility will be referred to the aged care royal commission, a move backed by operator HelpStreet.




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Aged care royal commission told staff were threatened during evacuation of Earle Haven nursing home

Arthur Miller faced a demand for almost $4 million for breach of contract the day before his Gold Coast retirement village Earle Haven was abruptly shut, prompting the evacuation of 68 elderly residents, the aged care royal commission is told.




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Heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge in Gold Coast hinterland destroyed in Queensland bushfires

Queenslanders recall the nights in the 60s spent dancing in the hall of the Binna Burra Lodge the same place where hundreds of others have married the love of their life after fire guts the heritage-listed resort.




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Aerial footage of destroyed homes in the Gold Coast hinterland



  • ABC Gold Coast
  • northcoast
  • goldcoast
  • Disasters and Accidents:Fires:Bushfire
  • Australia:NSW:Binna Burra 2479
  • Australia:QLD:Binna Burra 4211

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Boxer Troy Waters dies aged 53 after battle with leukaemia

Legendary Australian boxer Troy Waters, a former junior middleweight world title boxing contender, dies at the age of 53 following a long battle with leukaemia.




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How Royal scandal of Edward and Wallis jeopardised CWA cookbook

When speculation grew that a reigning British monarch would step down from the throne, it jeopardised the publication of a cookbook organised by one of Australia's largest community associations.





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Tiger: Running 'pretty much destroyed my body and my knees'




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Halladay's wife: Roy was addicted to painkillers late in career with Phillies




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Benaroya v. Willis

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversing a trial court judgment relating to a motion picture company's contract to pay Bruce Willis to perform in a movie because the owner of the company was joined to arbitration despite his not having been named personally in the arbitration agreement relating to the never-produced movie Wake.




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Royal Crown Co. v. Coca Cola Co.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Vacated and remanded a decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board dismissing plaintiffs opposition to the registration of defendants trademarks including the term ZERO. The Federal Court of Appeals determined that the Board erred in legal framing of the question and failed to determine whether the marks were at least highly descriptive.




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McIlroy 'would much rather' delay 2020 Ryder Cup than play without fans




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BPP Illinois v. Royal Bank of Scotland Grp. PLC

(United States Second Circuit) - In a suit brought by a group of hotel-related businesses, along with their investor and guarantors, alleging fraud claims against a bank and its subsidiaries, the district court's dismissal of the fraud claims is affirmed where the because plaintiffs failed to list their cause of action in a schedule of assets in their now-concluded bankruptcy proceeding, they are barred on judicial estoppel and timeliness grounds.




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Senne v. Kansas City Royals Baseball

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed in part, reversed in part. Minor league baseball players seeking class status in an action under the Fair Labor Standards Act appeal the denial of class certification in Arizona and Florida. The panel held certification is appropriate and consistent with “the great public policy” embodied by the FLSA.




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Roy Allan Slurry Seal, Inc. v. American Asphalt South, Inc.

(Supreme Court of California) - In a government contracts dispute alleging the tort of intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, the Court of Appeals judgment overturning the trial court's judgment sustaining defendants demurrer, is reversed where plaintiffs' allegations -- that they had submitted the second lowest bids on several contracts awarded to defendant, and that their bids would have been accepted but for defendant's wrongful conduct during the bidding process -- are insufficient because: 1) public works contracts are a unique species of commercial dealings; 2) in the contracts at issue here, the public entities retained broad discretion to reject all bids; 3) the bids were sealed, and there were no postsubmission negotiations; 4) in awarding the contracts, the public entities could give no preference to any bidder based on past dealings, and were required to accept the lowest responsible bid; and 5) in these highly regulated circumstances, plaintiffs had 'at most a hope for an economic relationship and a desire for future benefit.' Blank v. Kirwan (1985) 39 Cal.3d 311, 331.




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Parcel Delivery Malware Spam - Royal Mail Shipment Status No 00087904

Royal Mail Shipment scam with a ZBot Trojan attached to it.




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Broyles v. Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Vacated. The district court erred in finding that plaintiffs lacked standing under Delaware law to bring a direct action against investment advisors instead of initiating a derivative action. They only need to plead an arguable position that they were not relegated to derivative actions.




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Shroyer v. New Cingular Wireless Servs., Inc.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an action claiming that Cingular Wireless, after its merger with AT&T, disregarded its obligations under plaintiff's phone service contract with AT&T by failing to provide adequate service coverage and requiring plaintiff to sign a different contract with defendant if he desired to get the service that AT&T had contracted to provide under the first agreement, and that Cingular misrepresented and omitted key facts about the consequence of the merger to the FCC, dismissal of the complaint is affirmed in part where: 1) "all the advantages that only the nation's largest wireless company can provide" was a vague statement and provided nothing concrete upon which plaintiff could reasonably rely; 2) plaintiff failed to allege that he actually read or heard the alleged misrepresentations; and 3) violations of the common law of unfair competition and breach of contract did not alone violate California's Unfair Competition Law. However, the dismissal is reversed in part where plaintiff's complaint sufficiently stated a claim that Cingular breached its contract with him.




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Senne v. Kansas City Royals Baseball

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed in part, reversed in part. Minor league baseball players seeking class status in an action under the Fair Labor Standards Act appeal the denial of class certification in Arizona and Florida. The panel held certification is appropriate and consistent with “the great public policy” embodied by the FLSA.




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Muller v. Roy Miller Freight Lines, LLC

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that a truck driver did not have to arbitrate his claim for unpaid wages. He fell within the Federal Arbitration Act's exemption for transportation workers engaged in interstate commerce. Affirmed the ruling below.



  • Transportation
  • Dispute Resolution & Arbitration
  • Labor & Employment Law

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Senne v. Kansas City Royals Baseball

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed in part, reversed in part. Minor league baseball players seeking class status in an action under the Fair Labor Standards Act appeal the denial of class certification in Arizona and Florida. The panel held certification is appropriate and consistent with “the great public policy” embodied by the FLSA.





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Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy dies from coronavirus at 75

LAS VEGAS — Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, the duo whose extraordinary magic tricks astonished millions until Horn was critically injured in 2003 by one of the act’s famed white tigers, has died. He was 75. Horn died of complications from the coronavirus on Friday in a Las Vegas hospital, according to a statement […]




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Angry Mob Music Group Hires Paula Savastano As Senior Director Of Copyright & Royalties

Savastano Will Oversee Audits, Royalty Collection And Processing, Licensing, Copyright Issues, And All Other Copyright And Royalty Duties.




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Sound Royalties Unearths Millions In Undistributed Royalties

Nearly $14 Million In Undistributed Royalties Has Been Found By Music-focused Finance Firm Sound Royalties




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Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy dies from coronavirus at 75

LAS VEGAS — Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, the duo whose extraordinary magic tricks astonished millions until Horn was critically injured in 2003 by one of the act’s famed white tigers, has died. He was 75. Horn died of complications from the coronavirus on Friday in a Las Vegas hospital, according to a statement […]




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Watch Meghan Markle's First Interview Since Royal Split



The Duchess of Sussex is embarking on a new adventure.




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Pastor Troy Posts Heartfelt Message To Miss Minnie



She was killed in a car crash on Monday.




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Gospel Singer Troy Sneed Dies From COVID-19



The Grammy-nominated artist was 52 years old.




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Rick Ross and Lira Mercer Channel Modern Royalty



The couple shows off swanky Atlanta estate.




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Jamie Foxx's Birthday: Rolls Royce Custom Paint Job and ET



(Yes, the one who phones home).




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Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Celebrates 175 Years

The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club — which was established on November 1, 1844 –  recently celebrated its 175th anniversary, and the center of the celebration is the launch of a new scholarship fund which, in addition to existing bursaries, will make year-round sailing more accessible to young sailors. A spokesperson said, “The Royal Bermuda Yacht […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Photos: Royal Navy Helicopters Over Bermuda

Royal Navy aviators completed “vital reconnaissance sorties over Bermuda,” the Royal Navy said, adding that they “gathered crucial information on landing sites where humanitarian aid could be brought ashore if called for by the island’s governor in a time of need.” The report on the Royal Navy website said, “Royal Navy aviators have completed vital […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Photos & Video: Royal Air Force Land In Bermuda

Two groups of Royal Air Force military aircraft with eight Typhoon fighter jets and two A330 Voyager Tankers landed at Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport yesterday [Dec 1] having arrived from Lajes Air Base in Terceira, Azores. The group are on their way to the annual Red Flag Exercise in Las Vegas, Nevada where the […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Photos: Royal Air Force Land In Bermuda

Royal Air Force [RAF] military aircraft were recently spotted at LF Wade International Airport. It’s not unusual for military aircraft to make a stop in Bermuda while en-route to other destinations, and you can view our past photos, videos and coverage here. Related Stories Photos: RAF Military Jets & Tanker At Airport Photos/Video: RAF Typhoons Land […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Video: Roy Talbot’s Famed “Bermudavarius”

It was to plucked string instruments what the bumble bee is to flight. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Beautifully. The Talbot Brothers. Archie, Austin, Ross, Bryan and Roy along with their cousin Cromwell [Mandy] Mandres, entertained locals and visitors for decades. Talbot Brothers [1959] Their smooth blend of calypso and swing helped to […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Royal Bermuda Regiment Association Launched

A new association designed to reunite old friends from the Royal Bermuda Regiment and promote service in the military has been launched. Major Preston Gill, the president of the Royal Bermuda Regiment Association [RBRA], said the organisation was designed to promote, foster and maintain the traditions and well-being of the Regiment and its predecessors through […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Royal Caribbean Extends Suspension Of Cruising

Royal Caribbean Cruises extended their global suspension of cruising, and said they “expect to return to service on June 12.” The company said, “Given global public health circumstances, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has decided to extend the suspension of sailings of our global fleet through June 11, 2020. We are working with our guests to address […]

(Click to read the full article)




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History/Royalty – Full

Upcoming History/Royalty There are no applications to process at this time. Finished History/Royalty There are no finished forms to process at this time. Moved History/Royalty Pirates (People: Groups) Closed History/Royalty (Open for application) There are no closed forms to process at this time. Troubled History/Royalty(Not open for application) The following fanlisting is scheduled for removal […]




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Hedge Fund 'Asshole' Destroying Local News & Firing Reporters Wants Google & Facebook To Just Hand Him More Money

Have you heard of Heath Freeman? He's a thirty-something hedge fund boss, who runs "Alden Global Capital," which owns a company misleadingly called "Digital First Media." His business has been to buy up local newspapers around the country and basically cut everything down to the bone, and just milk the assets for whatever cash they still produce, minus all the important journalism stuff. He's been called "the hedge fund asshole", "the hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry", "a small worthless footnote", the "Gordon Gecko" of newspapers and a variety of other fun things.

Reading through some of those links above, you find a standard playbook for Freeman's managing of newspapers:

These are the assholes who a few years ago bought the Denver Post, once one of the best regional newspapers in the country, and hollowed it out into a shell of its former self, then laid off some more people. Things got so bad that the Post’s own editorial board rebelled, demanding that if “Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will.”

And here's one of the other links from above telling a similar story:

The Denver newsroom was hardly alone in its misery. In Northern California, a combined editorial staff of 16 regional newspapers had reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150. Farther down the coast in Orange County, there were according to industry analyst Ken Doctor, complained of rats, mildew, fallen ceilings, and filthy bathrooms. In her Washington Post column, media critic Margaret Sullivan called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”

And, yes, I think it's fair to say that many newspapers did get a bit fat and happy with their old school monopolistic hold on the news market pre-internet. And many of them failed to adapt. And so, restructuring and re-prioritizing is not a bad idea. But that's not really what's happening here. Alden appears to be taking profitable (not just struggling) newspapers, and squeezing as much money out of them directly into Freeman's pockets, rather than plowing it back into actual journalism. And Alden/DFM appears to be ridiculously profitable for Freeman, even as the journalism it produces becomes weaker and weaker. Jim Brady called it "combover journalism." Basically using skeleton staff to pretend to really be covering the news, when it's clear to everyone that it's not really doing the job.

All of that is prelude to the latest news that Freeman, who basically refuses to ever talk to the media, has sent a letter to other newspaper bosses suggesting they collude to force Google and Facebook to make him even richer.

You can see the full letter here:


Let's go through this nonsense bit by bit, because it is almost 100% nonsense.

These are immensely challenging times for all of us in the newspaper industry as we balance the two equally important goals of keeping the communities we serve fully informed, while also striving to safeguard the viability of our news organizations today and well into the future.

Let's be clear: the "viability" of your newsrooms was decimated when you fired a huge percentage of the local reporters and stuffed the profits into your pockets, rather than investing in the actual product.

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, nearly 2,000 (one in five) newspapers have closed and with them many thousands of newspaper jobs have been lost. In that same time period, Google has become the world's primary news aggregation service, Apple launched a news app with a subsription-based tier and Twitter has become a household name by serving as a distribution service for the content our staffs create.

Correlation is not causation, of course. But even if that were the case, the focus of a well-managed business would be to adapt to the changing market place to take advantage of, say, new distribution channels, new advertising and subscription products, and new ways of building a loyal community around your product. You know, the things that Google, Facebook and Twitter did... which your newspaper didn't do, perhaps because you fired a huge percentage of their staff and re-directed the money flow away from product and into your pocket.

Recent developments internationally, which will finally require online platforms to compensate the news industry are encouraging. I hope we can collaborate to move this issue forward in the United States in a fair and productive way. Just this month, April 2020, French antitrust regulators ordered Google to pay news publishers for displaying snippets of articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its news service. As regulators in France said, "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile." The Australian government also recently said that Facebook and Google would have to pay media outlets in the country for news content. The country's Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg noted "We can't deny the importance of creating a level playing field, ensuring a fair go for companies and the appropriate compensation for content."

We have, of course, written about both the plans in France as well as those in Australia (not to mention a similar push in Canada that Freeman apparently missed). Of course, what he's missing is... well, nearly everything. First, the idea that it's Google that's causing problems for the news industry is laughable on multiple fronts.

If newspapers feel that Google is causing them harm by linking to them and sending them traffic, then they can easily block Google, which respects robots.txt restrictions. I don't see Freeman's newspaper doing that. Second, in most of the world, Google does not monetize its Google News aggregation service, so the idea that it's someone making money off of "their" news, is not supported by reality. Third, the idea that "the news" is "owned" by the news organizations is not just laughable, but silly. After all, the news orgs are not making the news. If Freeman is going to claim that news orgs should be compensated for "their" news, then, uh, shouldn't his news orgs be paying the actual people who make the news that they're reporting on? Or is he saying that journalism is somehow special?

Finally, and most importantly, he says all of this as if we haven't seen how these efforts play out in practice. When Germany passed a similar law, Google ended up removing snippets only to be told they had to pay anyway. Google, correctly, said that if it had to license snippets, it would offer a price of $0, or it would stop linking to the sites -- and the news orgs agreed. In Spain, where Google was told it couldn't do this, the company shut down Google News and tons of smaller publications were harmed, not helped, but this policy.

This surely sounds familiar to all of us. It's been more than a decade since Rupert Murdoch instinctively observerd: "There are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... Their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not fair use. To be impolite, it's theft."

First off, it's not theft. As we pointed out at the time, Rupert Murdoch, himself, at the very time he was making these claims, owned a whole bunch of news aggregators himself. The problem was never news aggregators. The problem has always been that other companies are successful on the internet and Rupert Murdoch was not. And, again, the whole "misappropriation" thing is nonsense: any news site is free to block Google's scrapers and if it's "misappropriation" to send you traffic, why do all of these news organizations employ "search engine optimizers" who work to get their sites higher in the rankings? And, yet again, are they paying the people who make the actual news? If not, then it seems like they're full of shit.

With Facebook and Google recently showing some contrition by launching token programs that provide a modest amount of funding, it's heartening to see that the tech giants are beginning to understand their moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism.

Spare me the "moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism," Heath. You're the one who cut 1,000 journalism jobs down to 150. Not Google. You're the one who took profitable newspapers that were investing in local journalism, fired a huge number of their reporters and staff, and redirected the even larger profits into your pockets instead of local journalism.

Even if someone wants to argue this fallacy, it should not be you, Heath.

Facebook created the Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 "to forge stronger ties with the news industry and work with journalists and publishers." If Facebook and the other tech behemoths are serious about wanting to "forge stronger ties with the news industry," that will start with properly remunerating the original producers of content.

Remunerating the "original producers"? So that means that Heath is now agreeing to compensate the people who create the news that his remaining reporters write up? Oh, no? He just means himself -- the middleman -- being remunerated directly into his pocket while he continues to cut jobs from his newsroom while raking in record profits? That seems... less compelling.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple News and other online aggregators make billions of dollars annually from original, compelling content that our reporters, photographers and editors create day after day, hour after hour. We all know the numbers, and this one underscores the value of our intellectual property: The New York Times reported that in 2018, Google alone conservatively made $4.7 billion from the work of news publishers. Clearly, content-usage fees are an appropriate and reasonable way to help ensure newspapers exist to provide communities across the country with robust high-quality local journalism.

First of all, the $4.7 billion is likely nonsense, but even if it were accurate, Google is making that money by sending all those news sites a shit ton of traffic. Why aren't they doing anything reasonable to monetize it? And, of course, Digital First Media has bragged about its profitability, and leaked documents suggest its news business brought in close to a billion dollars in 2017 with a 17% operating margin, significantly higher than all other large newspaper chains.

This is nothing more than "Google has money, we want more money, Google needs to give us the money." There is no "clearly" here and "usage fees" are nonsense. If you don't want Google's traffic, put up robots.txt. Google will survive, but your papers might not.

One model to consider is how broadcast television stations, which provide valuable local news, successfully secured sizable retransmission fees for their programming from cable companies, satellite providers and telcos.

There are certain problems with retransmission fees in the first place (given that broadcast television was, by law, freely transmitted over the air in exchange for control over large swaths of spectrum), and the value they got was in having a large audience to advertise too. But, more importantly, retransmission involved taking an entire broadcast channel and piping it through cable and satellite to make things easier for TV watchers who didn't want to switch between an antenna and a cable (or satellite receiver). An aggregator is not -- contrary to what one might think reading Freeman's nonsense -- retransmitting anything. It's linking to your content and sending you traffic on your own site. The only things it shows are a headline and (sometimes) a snippet to attract more traffic.

There are certainly other potential options worth of our consideration -- among them whether to ask Congress about revisiting thoughtful limitations on "Fair Use" of copyrighted material, or seeking judicial review of how our trusted content is misused by others for their profit. By beginning a collective dialogue on these topics we can bring clarity around the best ways to proceed as an industry.

Ah, yes, let's throw fair use -- the very thing that news orgs regularly rely on to not get sued into the ground -- out the window in an effort to get Google to funnel extra money into Heath Freeman's pockets. That sounds smart. Or the other thing. Not smart.

And "a collective dialogue" in this sense appears to be collusion. As in an antitrust violation. Someone should have maybe mentioned that to Freeman.

Our newspaper brands and operations are the engines that power trust local news in communities across the United States.

Note that it's the brands and operations -- not journalists -- that he mentions here. That's a tell.

Fees from those who use and profit from our content can help continually optimize our product as well as ensure our newsrooms have the resources they need.

Again, Digital First Media, is perhaps the most profitable newspaper chain around. And it just keeps laying off reporters.

My hope is that we are able to work together towards the shared goal of protecting and enhancing local journalism.

You first, Heath, you first.

So, basically, Heath Freeman, who has spent decade or so buying up profitable newspapers, laying off a huge percentage of their newsrooms, leaving a shell of a husk in their place, then redirecting the continued profits (often that exist solely because of the legacy brand) into his own pockets rather than in journalism... wants the other newspapers to collude with him to force successful internet companies who send their newspapers a ton of free traffic to pay him money for the privilege of sending them traffic.

Sounds credible.




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Senator Wyden And Others Introduce Bill Calling The DOJ's Bluff Regarding Its Attempt To Destroy Section 230 & Encryption

One of the key points we've been making concerning Attorney General William Barr and his DOJ's eager support for the terrible EARN-IT Act, is that much of it really seems to be to cover up the DOJ's own failings in fighting child porn and child exploitation. The premise behind the EARN IT Act is that there's a lot of child exploitation/child abuse material found on social media... and that social media companies should do more to block that content. Of course, if you step back and think about it, you'd quickly realize that this is a form of sweeping the problem under the rug. Rather than actually tracking down and arresting those exploiting and abusing children, it's demanding private companies just hide the evidence of those horrific acts.

And why might the DOJ and others be so supportive of sweeping evidence under the rug and hiding it? Perhaps because the DOJ and Congress have literally failed to live up to their mandates under existing laws to actually fight child exploitation. Barr's DOJ has been required under law to produce reports showing data about internet crimes against children, and come up with goals to fight those crimes. It has produced only two out of the six reports that were mandated over a decade ago. At the same time, Congress has only allocated a very small budget to state and local law enforcement for fighting internet child abuse. While the laws Congress passed say that Congress should give $60 million to local law enforcement, it has actually allocated only about half of that. Oh, and Homeland Security took nearly half of its "cybercrimes" budget and diverted it to immigration enforcement, rather than fighting internet crimes such as child exploitation.

So... maybe we should recognize that the problem isn't social media platforms, but the fact that Congress and law enforcement -- from local and state up to the DOJ -- have literally failed to do their job.

At least some elected officials have decided to call the DOJ's bluff on why we need the EARN IT Act. Led by Senator Ron Wyden (of course), Senators Kirsten Gillbrand, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown and Rep. Anna Eshoo have introduced a new bill to actually fight child sex abuse online. Called the Invest in Child Safety Act, it would basically make law enforcement do its job regarding this stuff.

The Invest in Child Safety Act would direct $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target the pedophiles and abusers who create and share child sexual abuse material online. And it would create a new White House office to coordinate efforts across federal agencies, after DOJ refused to comply with a 2008 law requiring coordination and reporting of those efforts. It also directs substantial new funding for community-based efforts to prevent children from becoming victims in the first place.

Basically, the bill would do a bunch of things to make sure that law enforcement is actually dealing with the very real problem of child exploitation, rather than demanding that internet companies (1) sweep evidence under the rug, and (2) break encryption:

  • Quadruple the number of prosecutors and agents in DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section from 30 FTEs to 120 FTEs;
  • Add 100 new agents and investigators for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Innocent Images National Initiative, Crimes Against Children Unit, Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams, and Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Forces;
  • Fund 65 new NCMEC analysts, engineers, and mental health counselors, as well as a major upgrade to NCMEC’s technology platform to enable the organization to more effectively evaluate and process CSAM reports from tech companies;
  • Double funding for the state Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces;
  • Double funding for the National Criminal Justice Training Center, to administer crucial Internet Crimes Against Children and Missing and Exploited Children training programs;
  • Increase funding for evidence-based programs, local governments and non-federal entities to detect, prevent and support victims of child sexual abuse, including school-based mental health services and prevention programs like the Children’s Advocacy Centers and the HHS’ Street Outreach Program;
  • Require tech companies to increase the time that they hold evidence of CSAM, in a secure database, to enable law enforcement agencies to prosecute older cases;
  • Establish an Office to Enforce and Protect Against Child Sexual Exploitation, within the Executive Office of the President, to direct and streamline the federal government’s efforts to prevent, investigate and prosecute the scourge of child exploitation;
  • Require the Office to develop an enforcement and protection strategy, in coordination with HHS and GAO; and
  • Require the Office to submit annual monitoring reports, subject to mandatory Congressional testimony to ensure timely execution.
While I always have concerns about law enforcement mission creep and misguided targeting of law enforcement efforts, hopefully everyone can agree that child exploitation does remain a very real problem, and one that law enforcement should be investigating and going after those who are actually exploiting and abusing children. This bill would make that possible, rather than the alternative approach of just blaming the internet companies for law enforcement's failure to take any of this seriously.




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Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM Research Collaborative Campus at Hartree Centre Receives Royal Seal of Approval

Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM today announced the opening of a new building for the collaborative research facility at The Hartree Centre in Daresbury. The building, opened by the Duke of York, is the latest evolution of the long-running collaboration between Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM.




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Dona IBM servicios de consultoría a organizaciones mexicanas para proyectos de impacto social

Con la finalidad de apoyar el desarrollo de proyectos de alto impacto en la Ciudad de México, la Asociación Mexiana de Ayuda a Niños con Cáncer (AMANC), Fondo Unido México, Fundación Carlos Slim, el Patronato del Museo Nacional de Antropología e IBM, ponen en marcha el día de hoy el programa de consultoría Corporate Service Corps (CSC), en su edición Ciudad de México.




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Organizaciones beneficiadas e IBM, comparten resultados de servicios de consultoría en proyectos de impacto social

Después de un mes de haber iniciado la consultoria pro-bono de IBM denominada Corporate Service Corps (CSC), el día de hoy se hizo la entrega del resumen ejecutivo de cada uno de los proyectos de las organizaciones receptoras de este apoyo: Asociación Mexiana de Ayuda a Niños con Cáncer (AMANC), Fondo Unido México, Fundación Carlos Slim, el Patronato del Museo Nacional de Antropología.




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Dona IBM Servicios de Consultoría a Organizaciones Queretanas para Proyectos de Impacto Social

IBM, Peace Corps y cuatro instituciones locales dieron inicio el día de hoy al programa de consultoría Corporate Service Corps (CSC), en su edición Cd. de Querétaro; con la finalidad de apoyar el desarrollo de proyectos de alto impacto en esta localidad. IBM y Peace Corps (PC) trabajarán en conjunto con la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social del Estado de Querétaro, el Instituto Queretano de las Mujeres, el Municipio de Querétaro - Delegación Santa Rosa Jáuregui, y la Universidad Politécnica de Santa Rosa Jáuregui (UPSRJ).