(California Court of Appeal) - Upheld a decision of the Contractors' State License Board finding that a large contracting company violated California law by failing to obtain a building permit before replacing a boiler. Affirmed the denial of the company's writ petition.

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversed and remanded. The trial court sustained the Defendant’s demurrer without leave to amend to Plaintiff’s third amended complaint. The appellate court held that Plaintiff made a sufficient showing for leave to amend and directed Plaintiff to amend their complaint consistent with this opinion.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed the denial of class certification in an action alleging wage and hour violations, finding substantial evidence that individual questions would predominate and also that the named plaintiff was not an adequate class representative.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Held that an engineering company could not proceed with a class action lawsuit alleging that its former concrete supplier unlawfully recorded cellular phone users' calls without their consent. Affirmed an order decertifying the class on the ground that the class representative lacked individual standing.

A compilation of the past three weeks of posts about contraception.

I've been interested in the topic of contraception and faith for quite some time, both in light of my own unwillingness to think about contraception in theological terms in the early years of my marriage (an unwillingness I have observed in others as well), and also in the way decisions about contraception spill into the public square. As the series comes to a close, I wanted to recap the series of posts that provide personal stories and comprehensive views on contraception

Are Christians Afraid to Talk about Contraception?

As I wrote in this introdution to this series, "I hope that this range of voices and perspectives will aid us in thinking through these decisions in a way that brings God into the conversation. I hope they will provoke civil disagreement and growth. I hope they will expose our fears and open us up to life-giving possibilities."

Contraception Saves Lives, Rachel Marie Stone

Here, Rachel's experiences as a doula in Malawi prompted her to take a second look at Margaret Sanger, and, more importantly, to consider the social good of providing contraception for women who want to be able to limit the number of children they conceive.

Questioning Margaret Sanger, Amy Julia Becker

Rachel's post set off a storm of internet disagreement. I responded to the storm with both an apology for the confusion the post provoked as well as a plea to consider the central claim that contraception can save lives.

A Doctor's View on Hormonal Contraception, Dr. Emily Gibson

Many Christians worry that hormonal contraceptive methods work as abortifacients. Dr. Emily Gibson considers the ethical and personal questions that arise with the advent of hormonal contraceptive methods.

Why I Have Seven Children, ...

Continue reading...

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that an employee who filed an administrative wage claim with the California Labor Commissioner could not be forced into arbitration, because his employment contract's arbitration clause was permeated with unconscionability. Affirmed the denial of a petition to compel arbitration.

You Read That Right, The Classic Hits From DJ Central Season 1 Are Now Available On Amazon Prime For Your Viewing Pleasure, And Season 6 Is In Production!

Charlotte Figi, the young Colorado Springs girl whose battle with Dravet syndrome inspired changes to medical marijuana laws, has died. She was 13 years old.

(US 4th Circuit) - No. 19-1888

(United States Third Circuit) - Held that it was not an abuse of discretion to deny a fee petition in its entirety when the amount requested was outrageously excessive. The Third Circuit formally endorsed the view that where a fee-shifting statute provides a court discretion to award attorney fees, such discretion includes the ability to deny a fee request altogether when, under the circumstances, the amount requested is outrageously excessive. The panel thus affirmed the denial of a fee award to a prevailing plaintiff in an insurance bad faith case.

(US 2nd Circuit) - 19-1058-cv

The divorce between the Delta-Montrose Electric Association and its wholesale power provide, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, is nearly final. All that's left is getting the OK from federal regulators. And a $62.5 million exit fee.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association's largest member is suing the wholesale power provider over what it claims is a scheme to hold it hostage to "an expensive and restrictive contract" that could result in millions of dollars of damages. The Colorado-based utility serves 43 members in four states.

The network is helping us all laugh during the pandemic.

Gotti's 'Untrapped' sets forth a new cognitive blueprint.

She’s joining an iconic family of trendsetters.

The actor/rapper knows loving from a distance isn't easy.

The NBA has since suspended all games.

Larsa married Scottie in 1997 and had four kids together.

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Legal Research Digest 16: Procurement of Airport Development and Planning Contracts provides guidance on how to determine which requirements apply to any given procurement process. The report also includes an overview of the consequences for noncompliance with procurement laws or regulations in order to help airports better understand the inherent risks associated with various funding sources.

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.

It's over, Amazon, we have the high ground (and all you had was a high price) says Redmond

Updated Amazon.com has filed a second, secret, appeal against the decision to award Microsoft the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.…

The sweetheart deal that Governor Malloy and his fellow Democrats in the General Assembly cut with state employee unions, the so-called SEBAC agreement, is protected by contract for a full decade —leaving meaningful reforms waaay down the road. The contract is the mother of all can-kicks. Continue reading →

Earlier this week I predicted the demise of conventional IT caused by the wide adoption of SD-WAN and SASE, accelerated by the emergency demands of everyone working from home. Now that Congress has passed a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 bail-out, let’s throw-in the implications of that legislation to see what effect it is all likely to have on what used to be IT. The short version is to expect an even bigger bloodbath as IT employees at all levels are let go forever. Please understand that some version of this bloodbath was going to happen anyway. What matters right now is how we respond to it. While my previous column was generally about turning lower-level IT nerds into Uber drivers, this one goes a little further […]






Digital Branding
Web Design
Marketing

PROESAH – asociación civil formada por un grupo de doctores, profesores y alumnos de la Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero-, anunció el día de hoy el lanzamiento de una aplicación llamada LUZi, que utiliza tecnología de Inteligencia Artificial (IA) de IBM para analizar el riesgo obstétrico. El objetivo del proyecto es reducir la mortalidad materna e infantil en las comunidades rurales de Guerrero, México.

IBM has replaced Auckland University of Technology (AUT)’s core IT network as part of a new five year services contract. The new network, which went live in March, gives AUT great flexibility for deploying equipment to meet the changing needs of the university and enables it to capitalise on future enhancements in technology, such as video and data centres.

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.

El 67% de los usuarios en todo el mundo se siente actualmente cómodo utilizando tecnologías biométricas (lectura de huella dactilar, escaneado de retina y reconocimiento facial o de voz) para acceder a sus aplicaciones, según el estudio IBM Security Future of Identity elaborado por IBM.

IBM Security anunció hoy los resultados de su informe 2018 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, en donde se muestra que la cantidad de registros infringidos cayó casi un 25% en 2017 a medida que los cibercriminales cambiaron el enfoque en el lanzamiento de ransomware y ataques destructivos que buscaban retener o destruir información a menos que la víctima pagara algún rescate.

IBM today announced the signing of a new five-year infrastructure services agreement with The Westpac Group, which marks a key step in Westpac’s technology transformation program.

1. gaat voor een nieuw contract bij Antwerp - Voetbalnieuws  Voetbalkrant.com
2. 'Mbokani zorgt voor zeer onaangename transferverrassing bij Antwerp'  Voetbal24.be
3. Defour schenkt klare wijn over toekomst bij Antwerp  VoetbalNieuws.be
4. Steven Defour: “Er is wat interesse uit het buitenland, maar ik wil bij Antwerp blijven”  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. 'Sinan Bolat versiert fraaie toptransfer: Dit is zijn nieuwe club'  Voetbal24.be
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Relativistic length contraction is theoretically predicted but not directly tested, which lead to incorrect interpretation of the theory illustrated by Bell’s spaceship paradox and Ehrenfest paradox. But these paradoxes can help us designing experiments to test length contraction. Ideal direct experimental proof should contain the following steps: 1. Measure the tested object’s length at rest,...

Astrophysical jets are flows of matter that moves at relativistic speed. They are opportunity to see length contraction in action. An astrophysical jet is analyzed to explain the length contraction effect. Astrophysical jets are ejected from compact objects such as black holes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet#/media/File:M87_jet.jpg is a photograph of the jet ejected by the supermassive black hole...

Length contraction is used to explain Michelson–Morley experiment. A Michelson interferometer is formed by 2 perpendicular arms. The journey of light along the vertical arm gives the time dilation law. The journey of light along the horizontal arm gives the length contraction law. The derivation scheme of the length contraction law is: 1. The time...

On this week's show we have two guests for you. First up, Jason Shardlow-Wrest, a dispute resolution/litigation lawyer at Linklaters to chat about the difficult issue of player contracts. Some of them expire on June 30th, but proposals from FIFA to extend them are just guidelines right now. We chat about the implications on clubs, players and agents, wonder about what might happen loan players like Dani Ceballos, as well as the transfer market and players whose contracts expire next year that Arsenal might have wanted to sell this summer.

Then, for a lovely, long rambly-chat I'm joined by comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton. We talk about his brand new audiobook which is out now, podcasting, being nervous when interviewing famous people like Marc Maron, my anxiety dream ahead of this interview, doing silly voices, plus lockdown TV viewing – some of it quite saucy – and loads more besides.

LINKS

Read Jason's blog on contracts here - and the Linklaters sports blog here.

Adam's Audiobook is available from Audible – and you can find his podcast at acast.com/adambuxton or in all good podcast apps!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Please obey your watch… Photo courtesy of Joe Pace.

SANTA YNEZ, Calif. – Today, in Santa Ynez, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) met with federal and state agencies and leaders from the region’s agriculture and food production industries to make progress on on-farm composting.

LOS ÁNGELES – Hoy, la Agencia de Protección Ambiental (EPA, por sus siglas en inglés) y la Oficina de Comercio Internacional de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP) de los EE. UU.

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tributes paid to Alastair McDavid

An already-unlikely motive in the Ahmaud Arbery murder case became even more suspicious on Friday. The two Georgia men who were caught on video shooting the unarmed jogger to death in February claim they were chasing a suspect behind a series of burglaries in the area. But a local police official said the last break-in the neighborhood was reported nearly two months before the shooting.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials on Thursday announced plans to reopen a long-closed pair of entrances to the Nostrand Ave. station on the A and C lines by the end of 2020 — some 30 years after they were closed due to security concerns.

Two thousand workers from the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181 voted overwhelmingly to authorize the strike against their employer, which operates about 900 of the city’s more than 8,000 school bus routes.

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals and assistant principals, won a 7.5% raise over four years, paid parental leave, and a commitment to hire more assistant principals, officials said Thursday.

Union officials say school bus workers will be hit hard by the cuts.