Who’s Who in Payments – Complete Overview of Key Payment Providers encompasses key trends in the payments industry.

(The Paypers) The European Banking...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicines Task Force on the 2020 Census today issued a letter report and submitted it as a public comment to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which recently requested public comments on the 2020 Census.

The first-ever Nobel Prize Summit, Our Planet, Our Future, will bring together Nobel Laureates and other world-renowned experts and leaders to advance new insights into global sustainable development and explore actions that need to be taken to ensure humanity’s future on a prosperous, stable, and resilient planet.

Autonomous vehicles (AV) took center stage at the Chair’s Luncheon of the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting today.

As we welcome a new year and a new decade, we can make one prediction with certainty -- profound change lies ahead.

“Reports & Events” is a monthly tip sheet for the news media that highlights selected meetings of interest and reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

“Reports & Events” is a monthly tip sheet for the news media that highlights selected meetings of interest and reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

People sit on a hill overlooking Dodger Stadium on what was supposed to be Major League Baseball's opening day, now postponed due to the coronavirus, on March 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. ; Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Had the 2020 MLB season started at the end of March like it was scheduled to, at this point we’d be starting to see divisions shape up, star pitchers and position players separating themselves from the rest of the league and a first look at who this year’s contenders and pretenders really would be. Sadly, the COVID-19 outbreak forced the league to postpone the start of the season, and now the question has become if there will be a season, not when. 

Not to be dragged down by the idea of no baseball, Wall Street Journal sports writer Jared Diamond took a recent proposal the league floated for an abbreviated 2020 campaign and gamed out how that might look in real life. The league’s idea would do away with the National and American Leagues and divide all 30 MLB teams into three divisions of 10 teams separated by region, and those teams would play in empty stadiums and only against other teams in their geographic division in the interests of reducing travel. But how viable is this, really? And what other considerations would the league and players union have to take with regards to testing and protocol for what happens if someone were to contract COVID-19? Is there a world where baseball still happens this year?

Today on AirTalk, Jared Diamond joins the Triple Play of Larry Mantle, Nick Roman and A Martinez to talk about what a shortened 2020 MLB season might look like, which teams stand to win and lose the most from the realignment and what other precautions the league would have to take against the spread of COVID-19.

Guests:

Jared Diamond, national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal; his new book is "Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution” (William Morrow, March 2020); he tweets @jareddiamond

Nick Roman, host of KPCC’s “All Things Considered”; he tweets @RomanOnTheRadio

A. Martinez, host of KPCC’s “Take Two”; he tweets @amartinezLA

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to controversy, but it still gets higher marks in public opinion polls than the other branches of government. Now though, for the first time in memory, the court is not just split along ideological lines, but along political lines as well: All the conservatives are Republican appointees, all the liberals Democratic appointees. That division could put the court in the crosshairs of public opinion if it is forced to make decisions that affect the 2020 election.

Chief Justice John Roberts has worked hard to persuade the public that the justices are fair-minded legal umpires--not politicians in robes. That image got pretty scuffed up earlier this month when the conservative court majority shot down accommodations for the coronavirus that would have allowed six more days for absentee ballots to be received in Wisconsin's election for 500 school board seats, over 100 judicial seats, and thousands of other state and local positions.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the COVID-19 pandemic had become a public health crisis. Encouraged by local officials, about a million more voters than usual requested absentee ballots, and local officials were unable to keep up with the surge. To mitigate that problem, the lower courts allowed an extra six days for election officials to receive completed absentee ballots.

But the day before the election, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court ruling by a 5-to-4 vote. The result was that tens of thousands of people who had not yet even received their absentee ballots were forced to, as the dissenters put it, choose between their health and their right to vote.

The TV footage of people wearing masks waiting for hours to vote at the very few precincts that were open amid the pandemic was, to say the least, not a good look. Health officials in Milwaukee have since identified six voters and one poll worker who appear to have contracted the virus during the election.

The majority opinion was unsigned, so no one knows who the principal author was. But we do know some things.

First, the emergency appeal in the case came through the justice assigned to that region of the country, Brett Kavanaugh. Typically, when a justice refers a case to the full court, he or she writes a memo about the issues, likely with a recommendation. Kavanaugh almost certainly did that. But other justices would then chime in. And in a voting case, Chief Justice Roberts assuredly would have played a pivotal role.

"John Roberts' fingerprints are on this as chief justice and as someone who has owned this area of the law," says Joan Biskupic, a Supreme Court biographer and CNN legal analyst who is the author of a critically acclaimed biography about Roberts.

Indeed, Roberts was invested in voting-rights law as far back as 1982 when he was a staffer in the Reagan administration. Back then, he led the effort to narrow the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. When that failed, President Reagan signed the broad extension of the law, rejecting advice to veto it. But years later, on the Supreme Court, Roberts wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting a key provision of that law.

So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, called the language "callous," "cynical," and "unfortunate."

In fact, the word "pandemic" appears not once in the court's unsigned opinion. Rather, the majority sought to portray the issue before the court as a "narrow, technical question." The majority said the lower court had overstepped the Supreme Court's established rule that courts should "ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."

The dissenters replied that the court's treatment of the current situation as ordinary "boggles the mind." Writing for the dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined that "a voter cannot deliver...a ballot she has not yet received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested absentee ballots" are being asked to do just that.

"I do think there's something to this idea that we need to stick with the rules even in the context of an emergency," says law professor Rick Hasen, an election expert at the University of California, Irvine.

He and others see the legal question before the court as a close call, but say the decision was, at the very least, tone deaf in light of the reality of a pandemic.

Hasen says that the court could have recognized "the inhumanity of making people vote in this way," but that instead the tone of the opinion was "really dismissive of the entire threat facing these voters."

Chief Justice Roberts has, on some occasions tried to bridge the two wings of the court, in a couple of big cases siding with the court's liberals, or sometimes trying to fashion a compromise. But as Hasen observes, "there really is not any case I can think of involving elections where Roberts has forged a larger consensus."

Roberts must have anticipated at least some of the outcry over the Wisconsin decision. He is, after all, an astute political observer.

But as any student of the court knows, Roberts is a reliable, and often leading member of the conservative majority when it comes to a whole host of issues involving campaigns, voting and elections. That includes decisions he has written striking down laws aimed at limiting the role of big money in campaigns and decisions upholding partisan gerrymanders. Moreover voting rights in particular "is an area of the law where John Roberts has not been deterred by anticipated public criticism," says Biskupic, his biographer.

For the chief, says Biskupic, "It's not just voting rights. It's a broader overlay of representation" in his decisions, a pattern that "often will favor Republicans, but more fundamentally, it seems to favor entrenched powers, the status quo in many states, against ordinary citizens. And we certainly saw that in Wisconsin."

Uncertainties around COVID-19 remain, with states facing decisions about when to reopen and what size of public gatherings are safe. As November inches closer, those decisions could affect the 2020 election. Who gets to vote, when, and how, are unanswered questions and states are surely exploring different plans to keep voters safe. But Roberts' Supreme Court may be the ultimate arbiter of what changes and accommodations to voting are allowed.

The majority opinion "tried to tell the public that this was a very small decision," says Biskupic. "But as the dissent pointed out, it laid down a very serious marker about how voters will be accommodated in the middle of the coronavirus crisis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Sean's pick this week is MATLAB R2020a by MathWorks' Development. Contents New... read more >>

Closing Night Party at last year's 2019 TCM 10th Annual Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, California. ; Credit: Presley Ann/Getty Images for TCM

Like all public events following the start of widespread stay-at-home orders from the state and federal government, the 2020 TCM Classic Film Festival was unfortunately cancelled this year due to health concerns posed by COVID-19. But festival faithful and classic film buffs won’t be left hanging this year.

Instead of a live, in person event, TCM decided to do a Special Home Edition of the annual festival that will air on the TCM Channel. The festival kicked off Thursday evening with a screening of the 1954 version of “A Star is Born” starring Judy Garland and James Mason and will include a number of films from past years’ festival lineups as well as ones that were slated for this year’s event. It ends late Sunday night (technically early Monday morning) with a screening of the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, for which Julie Andrews was slated to be in attendance at the 2020 festival before it was cancelled.

Today on FilmWeek, Turner Classic Movies hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Dave Karger join Larry Mantle to preview this year’s Special Home Edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival, talk about having to pivot due to the pandemic, and sharing some of their favorite films that are screening at this year’s event.

For a list of films and showtimes, click here.

Guests:

Ben Mankiewicz, host for Turner Classic Movies; he tweets @BenMank77

Dave Karger, host for Turner Classic Movies and special correspondent for the Internet Movie Database (IMDb); he tweets @DaveKarger

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The elements of Goodrich Petroleum that make it a Buy are presented in a ROTH Capital Partners report.

With onshore storage becoming increasingly scarce, the volume of oil being stored on ships will continue to rise, delivering a once-in-a-generation opportunity for oil tankers, according to McAlinden Partners.

Ransomware operators continue their worldwide attacks against healthcare organizations and businesses, while leaking the data of victims who do not pay a ransom. [...]

Recycling of excess heat, via ‘district heating’, has the potential to improve energy efficiency in Europe. This study mapped excess heat and demands for heat in EU27 Member States to identify regions suitable for the large-scale implementation of district heating. The authors identified 63 ‘heat synergy regions’, generally large urban zones, which generated almost half of all excess heat generated in the EU27.

Egham (UK)In 2020, worldwide shipments of Internet of Things (IoT) enterprise drones (defined as flying drones) will total 526,000 units, an increase of 50% from 2019, Gartner Inc. said on Thursday.

Xiaomi's arch rival, Madhav Sheth-led Realme, has revealed plans to become a tech-lifestyle company in India next year, with introducing a bouquet of IoT products. Others are following suit too. Xiaomi has already shared how its AIoT (AI+IoT) dual strategy is going to shape its product vision.

As more businesses yield the benefits of NLP-powered analytics and conversational interfaces, demand for single-vendor solutions will increase.

The future challenge is to develop analytic strengths that span the organisation and not just areas of expertise.

R2020a is here... Time to highlight my favorite new Simulink features!” ... read more >>

Levels of the air pollutant PM_2.5 in Europe will continue to fall in 2020, concludes a recent study. Furthermore, deposition of nitrogen from air pollution will also drop. The outlook seems less positive for ground-level ozone, however, as large amounts of this pollutant continue drift over to Europe from other continents.

Taxpayers can pay online, by phone, by check, or in person.

Grey has a brand new Yearly Theme, Myke has been thinking of one for months, and they both discuss why Yearly Themes are better than resolutions.

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Kings Langley’s unbeaten run in 2020 came to an end on Tuesday night as they suffered a 2-0 home defeat to St Albans City in the semi-finals of the Herts Senior Challenge Cup.

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Media Release

Media Release

Media Release

Media Release

Media Release

Media Release

 
 000
 FONT15 KNHC 250232
 PWSAT5
 
 POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE SEBASTIEN WIND SPEED PROBABILITIES NUMBER  23
 NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL       AL202019
 0300 UTC MON NOV 25 2019
 
 AT 0300Z THE CENTER OF POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE SEBASTIEN WAS LOCATED
 NEAR LATITUDE 41.0 NORTH...LONGITUDE 28.9 WEST WITH MAXIMUM
 SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR 50 KTS...60 MPH...95 KM/H.
 
 Z INDICATES COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME (GREENWICH)
    ATLANTIC STANDARD TIME (AST)...SUBTRACT 4 HOURS FROM Z TIME
    EASTERN  DAYLIGHT TIME (EDT)...SUBTRACT 4 HOURS FROM Z TIME
    CENTRAL  DAYLIGHT TIME (CDT)...SUBTRACT 5 HOURS FROM Z TIME
 
 WIND SPEED PROBABILITY TABLE FOR SPECIFIC LOCATIONS
 
 CHANCES OF SUSTAINED (1-MINUTE AVERAGE) WIND SPEEDS OF AT LEAST
    ...34 KT (39 MPH... 63 KM/H)...
    ...50 KT (58 MPH... 93 KM/H)...
    ...64 KT (74 MPH...119 KM/H)...
 FOR LOCATIONS AND TIME PERIODS DURING THE NEXT 5 DAYS
 
 PROBABILITIES FOR LOCATIONS ARE GIVEN AS OP(CP) WHERE
     OP  IS THE PROBABILITY OF THE EVENT BEGINNING DURING
         AN INDIVIDUAL TIME PERIOD (ONSET PROBABILITY)
    (CP) IS THE PROBABILITY OF THE EVENT OCCURRING BETWEEN
         00Z MON AND THE FORECAST HOUR (CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY)
 
 PROBABILITIES ARE GIVEN IN PERCENT
 X INDICATES PROBABILITIES LESS THAN 1 PERCENT
 PROBABILITIES FOR 34 KT AND 50 KT ARE SHOWN AT A GIVEN LOCATION WHEN
 THE 5-DAY CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY IS AT LEAST 3 PERCENT.
 PROBABILITIES FOR 34...50...64 KT SHOWN WHEN THE 5-DAY
 64-KT CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY IS AT LEAST 1 PERCENT.
 
 
   - - - - WIND SPEED PROBABILITIES FOR SELECTED LOCATIONS - - - -
 
                FROM    FROM    FROM    FROM    FROM    FROM    FROM
   TIME       00Z MON 12Z MON 00Z TUE 12Z TUE 00Z WED 00Z THU 00Z FRI
 PERIODS         TO      TO      TO      TO      TO      TO      TO
              12Z MON 00Z TUE 12Z TUE 00Z WED 00Z THU 00Z FRI 00Z SAT
 
 FORECAST HOUR    (12)   (24)    (36)    (48)    (72)    (96)   (120)
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 LOCATION       KT
 
 SANTA CRUZ AZO 34 99   X(99)   X(99)   X(99)   X(99)   X(99)   X(99)
 
 PONTA DELGADA  34  5   X( 5)   X( 5)   X( 5)   X( 5)   X( 5)   X( 5)
 
 $$
 FORECASTER LATTO
 

000
WTPZ21 KNHC 262034
TCMEP1

POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE ONE-E FORECAST/ADVISORY NUMBER 6
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL EP012020
2100 UTC SUN APR 26 2020

THERE ARE NO COASTAL WATCHES OR WARNINGS IN EFFECT.

POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE CENTER LOCATED NEAR 16.2N 119.4W AT 26/2100Z
POSITION ACCURATE WITHIN 30 NM

PRESENT MOVEMENT TOWARD THE NORTHWEST OR 305 DEGREES AT 8 KT

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE 1007 MB
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 35 KT.
WINDS AND SEAS VARY GREATLY IN EACH QUADRANT. RADII IN NAUTICAL
MILES ARE THE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THAT QUADRANT.

REPEAT...CENTER LOCATED NEAR 16.2N 119.4W AT 26/2100Z
AT 26/1800Z CENTER WAS LOCATED NEAR 16.1N 119.1W

FORECAST VALID 27/0600Z 16.7N 120.9W...POST-TROP/REMNT LOW
MAX WIND 20 KT...GUSTS 30 KT.

FORECAST VALID 27/1800Z 17.1N 122.9W...POST-TROP/REMNT LOW
MAX WIND 20 KT...GUSTS 30 KT.

FORECAST VALID 28/0600Z 17.3N 125.1W...POST-TROP/REMNT LOW
MAX WIND 20 KT...GUSTS 30 KT.

FORECAST VALID 28/1800Z...DISSIPATED

REQUEST FOR 3 HOURLY SHIP REPORTS WITHIN 300 MILES OF 16.2N 119.4W

THIS IS THE LAST FORECAST/ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE
CENTER ON THIS SYSTEM. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE REMNANT
LOW...PLEASE SEE HIGH SEAS FORECASTS ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL WEATHER
SERVICE...UNDER AWIPS HEADER NFDHSFEPI AND WMO HEADER FZPN02 KWBC.

$$
FORECASTER STEWART