The Department of Justice announced today that the Western Union Remission Fund began its first distribution of approximately $153 million in funds forfeited to the U.S. government from the Western Union Company (Western Union) to over 109,000 victims located in the United States and abroad. These victims, many of whom were elderly victims of consumer fraud and abuse, will be recovering the full amount of their losses.

The Department of Justice announced today that it has repatriated to Malaysia approximately $300 million (RM 1.292 billion) in additional funds misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s investment development fund, and laundered through financial institutions in several jurisdictions, including the United States, Switzerland, Singapore and Luxembourg.

The Department of Justice has reached a settlement of its civil forfeiture cases against assets acquired by Khadem al-Qubaisi using funds allegedly misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s investment development fund, and laundered through financial institutions in several jurisdictions, including the United States, Switzerland, Singapore and Luxembourg.

A Lake Worth, Florida, businessman pleaded guilty today to tax evasion and willful failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank or Financial Account, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan for the Southern District of Florida.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted to adopt rule amendments to implement certain provisions of the Small Business Credit Availability Act and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act relating to business…

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has voted to propose a new rule that would establish a framework for fund valuation practices.  The rule is designed to clarify how fund boards can satisfy their valuation obligations in…

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it is providing temporary, conditional relief for established smaller companies affected by COVID-19 that may look to meet their urgent funding needs through a Regulation Crowdfunding offering.…

The announcement follows MLB's decision that refunds could be issued.

On Tuesday, June 9, 2009, the National Park Service began a project to reconstruct the South Kaibab Trail in Grand Canyon National Park. The project is funded, in part, with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-begins-trail-reconstruction-project-using-funds-received-under-presidents-economic-recovery-plan.htm

The National Park Service continues to accomplish work on projects at Grand Canyon National Park that have been funded, in part, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/national-park-service-continues-repair-and-reconstruction-projects-at-grand-canyon-with-funds-from-the-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act.htm

Under clear blue skies the National Park Service and Havasupai tribal members held a ribbon cutting ceremony today for newly constructed housing in Supai Camp located within Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/5aug10-2_news.htm

Western Australia will establish a multi-million-dollar fund to boost research into the coronavirus and to ramp up the state's testing regime.

FACEBOOK has announced the over 200 news organizations to receive close to $16 million in grants through its FACEBOOK JOURNALISM PROJECT COVID-19 relief fund for local news, part of the $25 … more

Former iHEARTMEDIA Top 40 KHTS (CHANNEL 933)/SAN DIEGO morning co-host STEVE KRAMER, now hosting his "CERTIFIED MAMA'S BOY" podcast, raised over $6000 to feed third shift … more

CHILDREN’s HOSPITAL LOS ANGELES (CHLA) has announced that their WALK & PLAY L.A. event is going virtual this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with proceedings set for SATURDAY … more

TODAY, CUMULUS and WESTWOOD ONE are leading the charge for THE RADIO CARES: FEEDING AMERICA EMERGENCY RADIOTHON and is asking for all radio stations to get involved and … more

QUEEN’s BRIAN MAY and ROGER TAYLOR in the U.K. and singer ADAM LAMBERT in L.A. have connected virtually to record a new version of QUEEN’s classic anthem, “We Are The … more

CUMULUS MEDIA Classic Rock WXMX  (98.1 THE MAX)/MEMPHIS, TN and the MEMPHIS MADE BREWING CO. are teaming up with AJAX DISTRIBUTING COMPANY of MEMPHIS to help hospitality workers … more

ENTERCOM's BOSTON cluster aired a special "Feed NEW ENGLAND Radiothon" on TUESDAY (5/5), raising funding to provide 156,684 meals for people in need through GREATER BOSTON FOOD … more

HUBBARD RADIO Classic Rock WDRV (97.1 THE DRIVE)/CHICAGO's morning guys SHERMAN & TINGLE partnered with the AMERICAN NURSES FOUNDATION to present “Healthcare Heroes," a … more

U.K.'s BRIGHTON MUSIC CONFERENCE has partnered with the charity LAST NIGHT A DJ SAVED MY LIFE (LNADJ) and issued an invitation to DJ's around the world to take part in Set For Love, … more

JIMMY IOVINE and DR. DRE have stepped forward to help COMPTON, CA residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. The duo is funding a program through the city of COMPTON that will provide drive-thru … more

MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE and the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER are both carrying reports on rumors that SAUDI ARABIA's PUBLIC INVESTMENT FUND is making an offer to buy WARNER MUSIC GROUP. The fund … more

An Iowa judge has ruled unconstitutional a state law that would have blocked Planned Parenthood of the Heartland from receiving federal money to provide sex education programs to Iowa youth. Fifth...

Serving as state representative of House District 85 for the past few years has been a privilege and an honor. I have worked hard to stand for the people of my district fighting for issues that are important to them and to the voters of Iowa City. I want to continue that advocacy and am running for another term in the Iowa House and ask for your vote.

I vigorously support adequate funding for education from pre-school to our community colleges and universities. Our young people are Iowa’s future and deserve the best start available through our excellent education system in Iowa. But we need to provide the dollars necessary to keep our teachers in the classroom so our children are prepared for whatever may lie ahead of them.

I have advocated for the fair treatment of workers in Iowa and support their right to organize. I have worked on laws for equal pay for equal work and whistle blower protection.

I am for essential funding for mental health services for Iowans of all ages. Children and adults who are struggling with mental health issues should have services available to them no matter where they live in this state.

I have fought to keep government open and accessible to Iowans. I support open records and open meetings laws to ensure that availability and transparency to all Iowans.

Keeping voting easy and accessible to voters has been a priority of mine. I support a fair and balanced redistricting system for voting in Iowa.

I have advocated to keep the bottle deposit law in place and expand it to cover the many new types of containers available.

I have worked on oversight legislation after several investigations into defrauding government which involved boarding homes, government agencies and pharmacy benefit managers (the “middleman” between pharmacies/Medicaid and the healthcare insurance companies.)

I cannot avoid mentioning the challenge of the coronavirus in Iowa. It has impacted our health, jobs, families and businesses. No one could have predicted this pandemic but as Iowans, we need to do our best to limit contact and the spread of this disease. My sincere appreciation goes to those workers on the frontlines of this crisis: the healthcare workers, store owners, businesses, farmers, teachers and workers who show up every day to keep this state moving forward. Thank you all!

There is still much work to be done to keep Iowa the great place where we live, work and raise our families. I am asking for your vote to allow me the privilege of continuing that work.

Vicki Lensing is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Iowa House District 85.

An Iowa judge has ruled unconstitutional a state law that would have blocked Planned Parenthood of the Heartland from receiving federal money to provide sex education programs to Iowa youth.

Fifth Judicial District Judge Paul Scott on Wednesday ruled the law “has no valid, ‘realistically conceivable’ purpose that serves a legitimate government interest as it is both irrationally overinclusive and under-inclusive.”

“The act violates (Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s) right to equal protection under the law and is therefore unconstitutional,” Scott ruled in issuing a permanent injunction to prevent the law’s implementation.

House File 766, passed in 2019 by the Republican-controlled Iowa House and Senate, excluded any Iowa organization that “provides or promotes abortion” from receiving federal dollars that support sex education and related services to Iowa youth.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and ACLU of Iowa challenged the law, filing a lawsuit shortly after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the bill into law.

Polk County District Court issued a temporary injunction blocking the law, which was to go into effect July 1, allowing Planned Parenthood to continue providing sex education programming throughout the past year.

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood and ACLU argued that by blocking the abortion provider from the two federal grants — the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and the Community Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (CAPP) — the law violated protections of free speech, due process and equal protection.

“The decision recognizes that the law blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving grants to provide this programming violated the constitutional requirement of equal protection,” ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said in a statement Thursday.

Though Planned Parenthood would be excluded, the law did allow “nonprofit health care delivery systems” to remain eligible for the federal funding, even if they are contracted with or are affiliated with an entity that performs abortions or maintains a facility where abortions are performed.

By doing so, the law effectively singles out Planned Parenthood, but allows other possible grant recipients to provide an array of abortion-related services, according to the court documents.

“The carved-out exception for the ‘nonprofit health care delivery system’ facilities undermines any rationale the State produces of not wanting to be affiliated with or provide funds to organizations that partake in any abortion-related activity,” Scott ruled. .

In fiscal year 2019, Planned Parenthood received about $265,000 through the federal grants, including $85,000 to offer PREP curriculum in Polk, Pottawattamie and Woodbury counties.

It was awarded $182,000 this year to offer CAPP curriculum in Linn County, as well as in Dallas, Des Moines, Jasper, Lee, Polk, Plymouth and Woodbury counties.

The grants are administered by the Iowa Department of Human Services and the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Planned Parenthood has provided sex education to students in 31 schools and 12 community-based youth organizations in Iowa using state-approved curriculum since 2005, according to a new release.

The focus has remained “on areas with the highest rates of unintended pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections,” the news release said.

“Today’s decision ensures that teens and young adults across Iowa will continue to have access to medically accurate sex education programs, despite the narrow and reckless policies of anti-abortion lawmakers,” said Erin Davison-Rippey, executive director of Planned Parenthood North Central States.

Comments: (319) 368-8536; michaela.ramm@thegazette.com

13 Questions You Should Ask Before Backing A Crowdfunding Project on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Beyond

Receiving service-related disability compensation does not interfere with the funds veterans receive from the GI Bill, explains Adam.

Willems et al.'s fundamental lemma asserts that all trajectories of a linear system can be obtained from a single given one, assuming that a persistency of excitation condition holds. This result has profound implications for system identification and data-driven control, and has seen a revival over the last few years. The purpose of this paper is to extend Willems' lemma to the situation where multiple (possibly short) system trajectories are given instead of a single long one. To this end, we introduce a notion of collective persistency of excitation. We will then show that all trajectories of a linear system can be obtained from a given finite number of trajectories, as long as these are collectively persistently exciting. We will demonstrate that this result enables the identification of linear systems from data sets with missing data samples. Additionally, we show that the result is of practical significance in data-driven control of unstable systems.

We define local indices for projective umbilics and godrons (also called cusps of Gauss) on generic smooth surfaces in projective 3-space. By means of these indices, we provide formulas that relate the algebraic numbers of those characteristic points on a surface (and on domains of the surface) with the Euler characteristic of that surface (resp. of those domains). These relations determine the possible coexistences of projective umbilics and godrons on the surface. Our study is based on a "fundamental cubic form" for which we provide a closed simple expression.

We establish versions of Conley's (i) fundamental theorem and (ii) decomposition theorem for a broad class of hybrid dynamical systems. The hybrid version of (i) asserts that a globally-defined "hybrid complete Lyapunov function" exists for every hybrid system in this class. Motivated by mechanics and control settings where physical or engineered events cause abrupt changes in a system's governing dynamics, our results apply to a large class of Lagrangian hybrid systems (with impacts) studied extensively in the robotics literature. Viewed formally, these results generalize those of Conley and Franks for continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical systems, respectively, on metric spaces. However, we furnish specific examples illustrating how our statement of sufficient conditions represents merely an early step in the longer project of establishing what formal assumptions can and cannot endow hybrid systems models with the topologically well characterized partitions of limit behavior that make Conley's theory so valuable in those classical settings.

You might not know it from the fancy attire they wear on stage at the Fox Theater, but for the musicians in the Spokane Symphony, it's a part-time gig. It's a prestigious gig, to be sure, but like most artists, for the musicians, it's just one piece of a puzzle full of hustle they have to solve to make a living.…

A coalition of immigrant-focused organizations has created the Spokane Relief Fund for Undocumented Immigrants, in order to help families who are unable to access federal aid during the coronavirus shutdowns. The partners sponsoring the work include the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (SIRC), the Hispanic Business and Professional Association, Latinos en Spokane, Mujeres in Action and Raiz.…

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, a transmission device that includes a transmitter that generates a first electromagnetic wave to convey data. A coupler couples the first electromagnetic wave to a single wire transmission medium having an outer surface, to forming a second electromagnetic wave that is guided to propagate along the outer surface of the single wire transmission medium via at least one guided wave mode that includes an asymmetric or non-fundamental mode having a lower cutoff frequency. A carrier frequency of the second electromagnetic wave is selected to be within a limited range of the lower cutoff frequency, so that a majority of the electric field is concentrated within a distance from the outer surface that is less than half the largest cross sectional dimension of the single wire transmission medium, and/or to reduce propagation loss. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A FUNDRAISING page has been launched to help a Hedge End man and his wife after the helicopter they were sightseeing in crashed into the Grand Canyon.

A HAMPSHIRE charity has launched its annual search for local good causes that need a cash boost.

IT IS an ambitious fundraising target but one that dedicated fundraisers are confident of reaching in a bid to make a state-of-the art children’s emergency department in Hampshire a reality.

HAMPSHIRE Masons have raised funds to help provide specialist equipment for children and young people at Hampshire hospices.

GENEROUS music lovers have secured the immediate future of an iconic Southampton music venue after a desperate plea for help over coronavirus cancellations.

A TURKISH restaurant in Southampton, which launched in a blaze of glory last year winning Best Middle Eastern Restaurant in the UK, is crowd funding to reopen following the coronavirus crisis.

Yet another go at the Founding Fathers? Well, to judge from historian and documentary filmmaker Tom Shachtman’s new book, “The Founding Fortunes,” Yes and No. Subtitled “How the Wealthy Paid for and Profited from America’s Revolution,” Shachtman’s analysis of the years 1763-1813 merits a yes because he does revisit some of the big names and battles of the day. But the answer is also no because “The Founding Fortunes” is not just another look at Colonial and post-Colonial politics and economics. Shachtman has a timely and provocative take on who in America supported the War for Independence, and why. Relying on hundreds of historical documents and contemporary scholarship, Shachtman’s out to dispel what he calls “myths” about some of the movers and shakers of the day. And to suggest, by comparison, the less-than-generous or suspect ambitions of some of the wealthy today who would influence current events under the heading of patriotism. It’s a complicated and complex story Shachtman

The New York State Senate majority held a roundtable on Long Island this week to figure out how to make state funding for public schools more fair to schools with extra needs.

Residents in the Riverhead Central School District will vote next month on two proposals that would pay for facility upgrades.

Long Island school officials say limited state budget increases and a growing student population will create a crisis in the near future.

The City of Ypsilanti has created a housing expenditure program for residents who need financial assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority is getting a boost in funding from the federal government to help cover operational costs during the coronavirus pandemic. We get the details from WEMU’s Taylor Pinson.

The ABC has launched a $5 million development fund to support independent Australian producers and safeguard local content and creativity across multiple genres, including drama, comedy, children's, factual, music and the arts. Out of the five production streams (see further down) of the Fresh Start Fund, of particular interest is the Australian Music Fund, which supports independent Australian artists and musicians across all ABC music networks, including by commissioning new works for ABC Classic and ABC Jazz.