May 14, 2019

Voting rights advocates sue over Tennessee crackdown on voter registration

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/442001-voting-rights-advocates-sue-over-tennessee-crackdown-on-voter

Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday, hours after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law a measure that would impose criminal charges and fines on voter registration groups over incomplete forms and missed deadlines.

Lee said the bill creates "elections with integrity," according to The Washington Post, but the coalition of voting rights groups argued that the measure's regulations violate the First Amendment.

Voter rights groups contend that the law is intended to prevent people, particularly African Americans and other minorities, from registering to vote in a state that has one of the lowest voter registration rates in the nation.


The lawsuit, filed by the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, Democracy Nashville-Democratic Communities, The Equity Alliance and The Andrew Goodman Foundation, argues that the law "violate[s] the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and [would] have a chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental First Amendment rights."

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is representing the groups in the lawsuit, said the law is an attempt to prevent people from voting.

“Tennessee’s law is one of the most restrictive voter suppression measures that we have seen this year. This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to discourage and deter people from helping others to register to vote,” she said in a statement.

May 14, 2019

billionaires arrested with pot plants

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7025071/Coca-Cola-heir-Alki-David-arrested-landing-St-Kitts-1-3m-worth-cannabis.html



Ergen was then arrested for drug possession days later and remains locked up, according to David who says the ketamine he was found with is his medication for bi polar


Greek Coca Cola heir Alki David is arrested with fellow billionaire business partner after landing in St Kitts on a private jet with actor pal Jonathan Rhys Meyers and '$1.3 million worth of cannabis' on board

David, 50, and Chase Ergen, heir to a satellite fortune, are said to have transported an estimated 5,000 cannabis plants as part of their new business

They had traveled with Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers and his family
But they were pulled aside by customs officials after landing and searched

David's family business owns the Coca-Cola Hellenic bottling plants
St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force confirmed David had been charged

David was released after paying bail of $30,000 and is due in court Tuesday

Ergen was then arrested for drug possession days later after being found with 'medicinal ketamine for bi polar', David claims
Cannabis Bill, 2019, is set to be passed in St Kitts and Nevis that will allow the use of cannabis for medicinal, religious and recreational purposes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7025071/Coca-Cola-heir-Alki-David-arrested-landing-St-Kitts-1-3m-worth-cannabis.html

May 12, 2019

The company behind the $16,000 AI-powered laundry-folding robot has filed for bankruptcy

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18512529/laundroid-laundry-folding-robot-seven-dreamers-bankrupt-ces

Seven Dreamers, the Japanese company behind the AI-powered laundry-folding robot Laundroid, has filed for bankruptcy. The company is now in the process of selling and transferring its business, it announced on its website today, which was spotted by Bloomberg editor Gearoid Reidy.



Backed by companies like Panasonic and Daiwa House, Laundroid had ambitious dreams to be the ultimate wardrobe organizer for the entire household. It had multiple cameras and robotic arms to scan a load of laundry, and used Wi-Fi to connect to a server that would analyze the clothing using AI to figure out the best way to fold it. A companion app was supposed to be able to track every piece of clothing that went through Laundroid, and categorize the clothes by household member. One load of laundry would take a couple hours to be folded, as each T-shirt took about five to ten minutes.

That’s how it was supposed to work in theory, anyway — when I tested it out at CES 2018 with my own T-shirt, the machine ate it up and Laundroid engineers had to work for about 15 minutes to pry it out. The explanation was that its cameras couldn’t recognize my black shirt, only the brightly colored demo shirts they’d prepared on hand.


I suspected something might be wrong when the company was conspicuously absent at this year’s CES. Meanwhile, rival laundry-folding robot company Foldimate was back for a second year, enjoying large crowds gathered around its prominent booth and giving nonstop demonstrations with a fully working prototype.

When I spoke to Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane at CES 2018, he told me that he hoped to eventually bring the $16,000 product down to under $2,000. But according to credit research agency Teikoku Databank, the company racked up over $20 million in debt to 200 creditors while trying to get its product to market. It never actually shipped.

May 12, 2019

Author faces backlash for reporting black Metro employee for eating on train; book deal halted

A D.C. author shamed a Metro worker for eating on the train. Now her book deal is in jeopardy.
The backlash was swift, with many accusing the woman, Natasha Tynes, of trying to get the employee fired.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/05/11/dc-pundit-shamed-metro-worker-eating-train-now-her-book-deal-is-jeopardy/?utm_term=.7b885876401e

Author Natasha Tynes has ignited a firestorm on social media, where she criticized a black Metro employee for eating on the train and reported the woman to transit officials.

Tynes, a Jordanian-American writer and World Bank employee in Washington, tweeted a photo of the woman Friday, showing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee in uniform, eating on the Red Line. Tynes tagged the WMATA account, reporting that when she confronted the woman for breaking Metro rules, the woman told her to “worry about yourself.”

“When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train,” Tynes tweeted. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds."



The backlash was swift on Twitter, where people have been calling out the self-described “minority writer” for shaming a black woman and attempting to get her into trouble. Amid the uproar, Tynes apologized, saying she was “truly sorry” for the tweet, which she acknowledged had been deleted. By early Saturday morning, she had also set her account to private.


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Barry Hobson, the chief of staff for the Metro workers union — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 — said in a statement the Metro employee was taking her meal break while in transit from one assignment to another. The statement notes operators have "an average of 20 minutes to consume a meal and get to their next access point to ensure all buses and trains are on time, safe, and ready to serve the riding public.”

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Rare Birds Books, a publishing house that was set to distribute Tynes’s upcoming novel, “They Called Me Wyatt,” has since decided not to do so.

The company said in a statement Friday that it had learned that the author “did something truly horrible today in tweeting a picture of a metro worker eating her breakfast on the train this morning and drawing attention to her employer. Black women face a constant barrage of this kind of inappropriate behavior directed toward them and a constant policing of their bodies.

May 11, 2019

IVANKA TRUMP TWEETS, THEN DELETES, PHOTO WITH 'NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY' DOCUMENT

https://www.newsweek.com/ivanka-trump-tweets-then-deletes-photo-national-security-strategy-document-1422335

irst daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump tweeted a photo of herself with World Bank President David Malpass, with the cover of a document titled “National Security Strategy” visible in the image. She subsequently deleted and then reposted the photograph with that document cropped out, raising questions about why she did that.

Trump on Sunday night tweeted the photo showing her and Malpass, full body, with the cover of the national security strategy document on a small table in the foreground.

“Great catching up with my friend @WorldBank President David Malpass and discussing the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi),” she wrote in the tweet.

On Thursday afternoon, journalist Luke O’Neil noted on Twitter that Trump had since deleted the post. O’Neil shared screenshots of the post before the first daughter deleted it, including one zoomed in on the national security strategy document.

May 11, 2019

worst cop ever arrested

https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending-now/cop-charged-after-videos-show-her-mocking-mentally-ill-recording-suspects-genitals/932438479

A former Las Vegas police officer was arrested last week following an internal investigation into alleged misconduct including making a mentally ill man dance for her, force-feeding a handcuffed man gummy bears, filming another man’s genitals and using racial and homophobic epithets.

Each of the incidents was recorded on Rachel Sorkow’s personal cellphone, authorities said.

Sorkow, 29, is charged with five felony counts of misconduct of a police officer and two misdemeanor charges, indecent exposure and capturing the image of the private area of another person, according to a news release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. At the time of the incidents, she was assigned to the department’s Community Policing Division.

A former Las Vegas police officer was arrested last week following an internal investigation into alleged misconduct including making a mentally ill man dance for her, force-feeding a handcuffed man gummy bears, filming another man’s genitals and using racial and homophobic epithets.

Each of the incidents was recorded on Rachel Sorkow’s personal cellphone, authorities said.

Sorkow, 29, is charged with five felony counts of misconduct of a police officer and two misdemeanor charges, indecent exposure and capturing the image of the private area of another person, according to a news release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. At the time of the incidents, she was assigned to the department’s Community Policing Division

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n one case, she looked up information on another female officer’s ex-boyfriend, who the officer believed had stolen her car, KTNV in Las Vegas reported. The other officer used the data to find the man at his home and confront him.

Another piece of information she provided, this time to a civilian, was a nonredacted report in a child abuse case, the Sun reported. The report named the children involved.

Investigators, who say they found at least 19 instances in which Sorkow accessed law enforcement databases to illegally gather information, met with the officer in December to inform her of the criminal investigation into her alleged actions, the Sun said. At that time, they confiscated her cellphone.

A search of Sorkow’s phone turned up even more disturbing information, including incriminating text messages and seven videos involving four different citizens with whom she came into contact while on-duty, the arrest report obtained by the newspaper said. She also shared photos and screenshots of the incident report in a child neglect case, in which dead rats were found in the home where the neglect took place. .


https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending-now/cop-charged-after-videos-show-her-mocking-mentally-ill-recording-suspects-genitals/932438479


“Sorkow would order these individuals, some of which were handcuffed, all of which were in her control, to perform a wide variety of acts while video records them with her personal cellular phone,” the report said.

At least two of the people recorded were noticeably impaired, and Sorkow sent the videos to multiple friends and family members, including other Metro officers, the report said.

In a video taken in April 2017, she ordered a person who appeared to be a “mentally ill” man wearing a dress to dance for her, the report said. In a text message to another officer about the video, she called the person “shim,” a transphobic slur, the report said. The other officer had recorded the person walking and sent that video to Sorkow, the report said.

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'
After Sorkow was dispatched to a “potential domestic violence incident” in January 2018, she recorded a woman who appeared “heavily intoxicated,” and she commented on the woman’s weight and told her to expose her stomach, the report said.


Sorkow and a male officer were dispatched in May after a report of a man exposing himself. At the scene, Sorkow recorded the man, who was handcuffed and appeared intoxicated, telling him to kick a patrol vehicle and expose his genitals through a rip in his pants, the report said. At one point in the video she yells, “Do it again!” while “zooming in” on the man’s crotch, the report said.

She also recorded a conversation with him and used a racial slur, the report said.

“The only thing I remember is we thought that was funny, you know?” the male officer, whose name was redacted in the report, told investigators.

Sorkow admitted to investigators that she recorded the videos without “malice intent” because she “thought it was funny,” the report said. She said the people in the video were OK with her recording and sharing the videos.







https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/lawyer-las-vegas-officer-accused-of-misconduct-to-fight-charges-1617889/

May 11, 2019

Cop caught on video using N-word to young black men

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-cop-caught-on-tape-using-nword-20190510-jjldw7ox5bdf5i2a5fwj4d7deu-story.html



Cop caught on video using N-word to young black men (WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE)
Nelson Oliveira


Cop caught on video using N-word to young black men (WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE)

“Hey, you want to get out of here fast, right?” she’s heard saying. “So if you have more people, ya’ll n----s been trying to do something...” (Obtained by New York Daily News)

A Maryland police department has released body-cam footage of a white officer using the N-word toward a group of young black men after a video of the exchange went viral Thursday on social media.

The 12-minute video, which was not bleeped, shows several officers questioning four men outside a McDonald’s in Silver Spring when one of the cops, whose name has not been released, uses the slur at the group. Police were investigating a trespassing complaint.


“Hey, you want to get out of here fast, right?” she’s heard saying. “So if you have more people, ya’ll n----s been trying to do something...”


The Montgomery County Department of Police apologized for the incident and said the officers are under investigation. The agency released both the officer’s body-cam video as well as the Instagram video recorded by one of the young men.

May 11, 2019

Putin scores 8 goals then faceplants during the victory lap

When Russian President Vladimir Putin plays hockey, he tends to do quite well. Last year, he scored five goals during a televised exhibition game.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/10/putins-great-day-ice-winds-up-with-face-plant/?utm_term=.d5639ab0ef10

This year, he scored 10, according to Russian state media. (The Associated Press reported that he scored only eight.)

But regardless of the final count, things took a turn for the worse after his stellar performance on Friday when the 66-year-old took a spin around the rink after the game to wave to his fans — and missed a red carpet that had been laid out on the ice. When his skates hit it, he tripped and fell flat on his face in front of a crowd of spectators.

Luckily, with the help of a teammate, Putin made a quick recovery.

The Russian leader, as he has the past few years, played with a team known as “Legends” on Friday. The squad’s lineup includes a number of former NHL players and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who scored three goals this year. They faced off against a team of Russian politicians and business executives.

May 11, 2019

Pakistan had all but eliminated polio. Then things went badly wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistan-had-all-but-eliminated-polio-then-things-went-badly-wrong/2019/05/10/87f328e8-711c-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_pakpolio-847pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

Pakistan had all but eliminated polio. Then things went badly wrong.




Nobody saw it coming.

The virus was so close to being wiped out. Millions of young children had been repeatedly inoculated, and in March older ones were added in a final nationwide vaccine push to ensure that Pakistan — one of only three countries where polio remains endemic — could be officially declared polio-free.

But another danger was lurking, in the same communities where vaccination efforts had long been underway. It was fear and suspicion, and it was so visceral — and so fast-moving in the digital age — that a single rumor of vaccinated children falling sick in a village school last month triggered panic and violence nationwide.

Since then, the anti-polio drive has been suspended until July while officials scramble to regroup. Half a dozen vaccinators or their guards have been killed, and new cases of children with numb or paralyzed limbs are being reported every week, setting back years of effort to eliminate the virus, health workers say.

“We blundered badly. We wanted to achieve a technical and operational success, a data-driven masterpiece. But we forgot that for a father and mother, the most sensitive thing is their child,” said Babar bin Atta, the government’s top anti-polio official. Despite intensive efforts to educate the public about the benefits and safety of the vaccine, he said, “we underestimated the degree of community resistance.”

At a time when fear and rejection of vaccines are rising globally and measles cases are spiking, polio is seeing at least a momentary resurgence in Pakistan. Between 1994 and last year, the number of infected children in Pakistan plunged from 20,000 to just 12. But 15 new cases have been reported this year. Unless the vaccination drive starts up again soon, some health experts fear that new cases could exceed 50 this year.

May 11, 2019

The Frankfurt Kitchen Changed How We Cook--and Live

You might not have heard of the Frankfurt Kitchen, but if you have neatly organized cabinets, an easy-to-clean tiled backsplash, and a colorful countertop, in a sense, you already cook in one.

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Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) was the first Austrian woman ever to qualify as an architect. Following World War I, she was tasked with the design of standard kitchens for a new housing project by city planner and architect Ernst May. The Great War left rubble and a desperate housing shortage in its wake, but it also opened the way for new ideas and new designs.

There was a pervasive sense among Europe’s leading designers, from Le Corbusier in France to Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus in Germany, that the need to rebuild in the 1920s, though rooted in tragedy, offered a society fresh start, and a chance to leave behind the class distinctions that were baked into 18th- and 19th-century architecture while they were at it. Very much in this mold, Ernst May was a utopian thinker, and his International Style design for the Frankfurt project, known as New Frankfurt, featured egalitarian amenities for the community like schools, playgrounds, and theaters, along with access to fresh air, light, and green space.

For her part, though she was a career woman herself, Schütte-Lihotzky believed that housework was a profession and deserved to be treated seriously as such. This counted as feminism in the 1920s, and although we might find it essentializing or insulting today, making housework easier was considered a form of emancipation for women.

https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/05/modern-kitchen-history-design-ideas-domestic-architecture/586345/