(California Court of Appeal) - Held that citizen groups could not proceed with their challenge to the environmental review conducted for a proposed mixed-use development project in downtown San Francisco. Affirmed the denial of writ relief.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed. Plaintiff performed framing work on a commercial building owned by Defendant. Plaintiff was not paid for his work and filed a mechanic’s lien. Defendant complained of problems with some of the framing and Plaintiff performed repair work. Plaintiff filed this action to foreclose on its mechanic’s lien. The trial court granted Defendant summary judgment ruling that the mechanic’s lien was filed prematurely, before Plaintiff had ceased work. The appeals court agreed.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Held that President Trump's executive order withholding all federal grants from so-called sanctuary cities was unconstitutional. California municipalities brought this suit arguing that the executive order violated the principle of Separation of Powers as well as the Spending Clause, which vests exclusive power to Congress to impose conditions on federal grants. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit agreed and affirmed summary judgment in favor of the municipalities. However, the panel vacated the nationwide injunction based on an absence of specific findings justifying the broad scope, and remanded for further findings.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that citizen groups could not proceed with their challenge to the environmental review conducted for a proposed mixed-use development project in downtown San Francisco. Affirmed the denial of writ relief.

(Supreme Court of California) - Upheld a San Francisco ordinance that requires wireless phone service companies to obtain permits and conform with aesthetic guidelines when installing lines and equipment on utility poles. The companies sought a declaratory judgment that the ordinance is inconsistent with state law. However, the California Supreme Court was not persuaded by the companies' arguments.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed. Plaintiff performed framing work on a commercial building owned by Defendant. Plaintiff was not paid for his work and filed a mechanic’s lien. Defendant complained of problems with some of the framing and Plaintiff performed repair work. Plaintiff filed this action to foreclose on its mechanic’s lien. The trial court granted Defendant summary judgment ruling that the mechanic’s lien was filed prematurely, before Plaintiff had ceased work. The appeals court agreed.

Friday on Fox News Channel's "Your World," Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued when determining how and whether or not China was responsible for coronavirus global pandemic, it was undeniable China allowed the virus to spread beyond its borders.

(Supreme Court of California) - Upheld a San Francisco ordinance that requires wireless phone service companies to obtain permits and conform with aesthetic guidelines when installing lines and equipment on utility poles. The companies sought a declaratory judgment that the ordinance is inconsistent with state law. However, the California Supreme Court was not persuaded by the companies' arguments.

(Supreme Court of California) - Held that baseball stadium security guards did not need to submit their wage claims to arbitration. The issue involved whether the claims turned on the meaning of their collective-bargaining agreement. Answering no, the California Supreme Court held that the security guards could proceed in state court.

(Supreme Court of California) - Held that it is constitutional for San Francisco to impose a tax on drivers who park their cars in paid parking lots, even when the parking lot is operated by a state university.

The Colorado Supreme Court has all but cemented a two-way Democratic primary for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat in June between John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff after reversing another Denver District Court decision. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Democratic candidate Lorena Garcia shouldn’t be placed on the primary ballot because she didn’t collect enough […]

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed. The district court denied Plaintiff’s national-interest waiver petition for lack of jurisdiction. Affirming, the panel held that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii) strips the federal courts of jurisdiction to review the denial of a national-interest waiver.

A Comprehensive Overview Of The Confederation's Work To Serve 4 Million Creators And 239 Authors Societies Across The World

A Comprehensive Overview Of The Confederation's Work To Serve 4 Million Creators And 239 Authors Societies Across The World

From TFOI Toby Guerin: I thought that I would share an exercise which we posted this week through the Workplace Mediation Service at University of Maryland, Baltimore.  It can be easily adapted for classes and other environments. Several years ago Andrea Schneider and others wrote an article, “Cooking Up a Deal: Negotiation Recipes for Success.”  … Continue reading Toby Guerin’s Negotiation Exercise →

More people, many inexperienced, have been in the backcountry since the coronavirus outbreak shut down downhill skiing.

Denver has issued a mandatory mask order for when you're in public.

Max von Sydow, the self-described “shy boy”-turned-actor known to art house audiences through his work with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and later to moviegoers everywhere when he played the priest in the horror classic “The Exorcist,” has died. He was 90.

Behind another strong start from Jon Gray and five home runs, the Rockies continued their scorching hot start to the season with a 10-3 win over the Giants.

Hate against Asians has been on the rise.

She says she's doing something she's "always wanted to do."

Company says white models portray a more "positive image."

One child was wearing a darkened Obama caricature

Governor Gretchen Whitmer was outraged.

Beau surprises Mary Jane with a life-changing request.

Many accused him of not abiding by social distancing laws.

Kicker Justin Rohrwasser said he would cover the tattoo

She got the message as her daughter looked over her shoulder

The message came after her comments on reopening businesses

One child was wearing a darkened Obama caricature

Governor Gretchen Whitmer was outraged.

Here’s how to deal with the ignorance online.

The use of performance measures and data is informing transportation decision making.  Transportation Research Circular E-C263: Conference on Performance and Data in Transportation Decision Making summarizes many presentations from the conference, which attracted more than 350 professional transportation planners, consultants, industry experts, and academic researchers, from 42 states and three countries, to Atlanta, Georgia.

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 76: Addressing Uncertainty about Future Airport Activity Levels in Airport Decision Making provides a systems analysis methodology that augments standard airport master planning and strategic planning approaches. The methodology includes a set of tools for improving the understanding and application of risk and uncertainty in air traffic forecasts as well as for increasing the overall effectiveness of airport planning and decision making.

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 106: Being Prepared for IROPS: A Business-Planning and Decision-Making Approach describes a process to help justify airport planning, and funding decisions (capital, and operations and maintenance) related to supporting irregular operations (IROPS) contingency planning. The report presents a structured approach to quantifying the lifecycle economic value of proposed IROPS mitigation alternatives through a spreadsheet-based business-planning and dec...

"Cisco Webex" email scam removal guide

What is the "Cisco Webex" scam email?

"Cisco Webex" is an email phishing scam. These letters claim to be official mail the Cisco Webex Team, stating that issues have been detected with recipients' Webex Mettings SSL certificates; therefore, their accounts must be verified. Cisco Webex is the name of a legitimate company, developing web conferencing and videoconferencing software. While the scam emails closely copy the graphic design and formatting of genuine Cisco Webex Team letters, they are illegitimate. If recipients attempt to log-in via link presented in the fake email to rectify the nonexistent problems, they are redirected to a phishing website that looks identical to the legitimate Webex Meetings log-in page. It is noteworthy that there has been an increase in scams/infections centering Cisco Webex services/products.

A couple of months ago, a records request revealed a private surveillance contractor had access to nearly every piece of surveillance equipment owned and operated by the state of Utah. Banjo was the company with its pens in all of the state's ink. Banjo's algorithm ran on top of Utah's surveillance gear: CCTV systems, 911 services, location data for government vehicles, and thousands of traffic cameras.

All of this was run through Banjo's servers, which are conveniently located in Utah government buildings. Banjo's offering is of the predictive policing variety. The CEO claims its software can "find crime" without any collateral damage to privacy. This claim is based on the "anonymization" of harvested data -- a term that is essentially meaningless once enough data is collected.

This partnership is now on the rocks, thanks to an investigation by Matt Stroud and OneZero. Banjo's CEO, Damien Patton, apparently spent a lot of his formative years hanging around with white supremacists while committing crimes.

In grand jury testimony that ultimately led to the conviction of two of his associates, Patton revealed that, as a 17-year-old, he was involved with the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. On the evening of June 9, 1990 — a month before Patton turned 18 — Patton and a Klan leader took a semi-automatic TEC-9 pistol and drove to a synagogue in a Nashville suburb. With Patton at the wheel, the Ku Klux Klan member fired onto the synagogue, destroying a street-facing window and spraying bullets and shattered glass near the building’s administrative offices, which were next to that of the congregation’s rabbi. No one was struck or killed in the shooting. Afterward, Patton hid on the grounds of a white supremacist paramilitary training camp under construction before fleeing the state with the help of a second Klan member.

If you're wondering where the state of Utah's due diligence is in all of this, there's a partial explanation for this lapse: the feds, who brought Patton in, screwed up on their paperwork.

Because Patton’s name was misspelled in the initial affidavit of probable cause filed in Brown’s case — an FBI agent apparently spelled Damien with an “o” rather than an “e” — any search of a federal criminal court database for “Damien Patton” would not have surfaced the affidavit.

Now that his past has been exposed, the state of Utah has announced it won't be working with Banjo.

The Utah attorney general’s office will suspend use of a massive surveillance system after a news report showed that the founder of the company behind the effort was once an active participant in a white supremacist group and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue.

The AG's office can only shut down so much of Banjo's surveillance software. Other government agencies not directly controlled by the state AG are making their own judgment calls. The University of Utah is suspending its contract with Banjo, but the state's Department of Public Safety has only gone so far as to "launch a review" of its partnership with the company. City agencies and a number of police departments who have contracts with Banjo have yet to state whether they will be terminating theirs.

And the AG's reaction isn't a ban. The office appears to believe it might be able to work through this.

“While we believe Mr. Patton’s remorse is sincere and believe people can change, we feel it’s best to suspend use of Banjo technology by the Utah attorney general’s office while we implement a third-party audit and advisory committee to address issues like data privacy and possible bias,” Piatt said. “We recommend other state agencies do the same.”

It's refreshing to hear a prosecutor state that it's possible for former criminals to turn their lives around and become positive additions to their communities, but one gets the feeling this sort of forgiveness is only extended to ex-cons who have something to offer law enforcement agencies. Everyone else is just their rap sheet for forever, no matter how many years it's been since their last arrest.

The other problem here is the DA's office's tacit admission it did not take data privacy or possible bias into account before granting Banjo access to the state's surveillance equipment, allowing it to set up servers in government buildings, and giving it free rein to dust everything with its unaudited AI pixie dust.

These are all steps that should have taken place before any of this was implemented, even if the state had chosen to do business with a company with a less controversial CEO. This immediate reaction is the right step to take, but a little proactivity now and then would be a welcome change.

Switchzilla issues a whopping 30+ patches in time for the long UK weekend

Cisco has emitted a fresh round of software updates to address nearly three dozen security holes in its products.…

The renaissance of complement diagnostics and therapeutics has introduced precision medicine into a widened field of complement-mediated diseases. In particular, complement-mediated diseases (or complementopathies) with ongoing or published clinical trials of complement inhibitors include paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, cold agglutinin disease, hemolytic uremic syndrome, nephropathies, HELLP syndrome, transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy, antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, myasthenia gravis, and neuromyelitis optica. Recognizing that this field is rapidly expanding, we aim to provide a state-of-the-art review of (a) current understanding of complement biology for the clinician, (b) novel insights into complement with potential applicability to clinical practice, (c) complement in disease across various disciplines (hematology, nephrology, obstetrics, transplantation, rheumatology, and neurology), and (d) the potential future of precision medicine. Better understanding of complement diagnostics and therapeutics will not only facilitate physicians treating patients in clinical practice but also provide the basis for future research toward precision medicine in this field.

There's got to be a reason for the Democrats to suppose to exist. And the reason the Democrats are supposed to exist is to be an opposition party to the Republicans. If you're in bed with the same people, taking money from the same people, you're no longer an opposition party. There's no reason for you to exist. And guess what? Don't be surprised that people don't vote for you. Continue reading →

NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans will air the first new episodes of 2017 tonight. You can find sneak peeks, tweets and photos...

NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans aired new episodes last night. You can find ratings and links to watch the episodes below, along...

NCIS: Los Angeles will air the first new episode of 2017 tonight. “Kulinda” is scheduled to start at 8:00pm ET/PT. (If anything...

NCIS: Los Angeles aired the twelfth episode of season eight last night. “Kulinda” pulled in 10.35 million viewers at 8:00pm, earning a...

Компания Precision Hydration, помогающая спортсменам избежать обезвоживания, станет партнёром и официальным поставщиком команды Williams.

Twitter and IBM today announced a landmark partnership that will help transform how businesses and institutions understand their customers, markets and trends – and inform every business decision. The alliance brings together Twitter data that distinctively represents the public pulse of the planet with IBM’s industry-leading cloud-based analytics, customer engagement platforms, and consulting services.

Papel San Francisco garantiza la continuidad de operaciones aprovechando Servicios de IBM

Cisco e IBM Security anunciaron hoy una magna colaboración para abordar la creciente amenaza global de la delincuencia cibernética. Mediante un nuevo acuerdo, las compañías trabajarán juntas de forma más abierta en productos, servicios e inteligencia de amenazas.