13 STATES ALLOW CHILD MARRIAGE

Indiana woman allegedly sold her daughter, 13, to man, 27

Fri, November 19, 2021

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana woman allegedly sold her 13-year-old daughter to a 27-year-old man before she and her husband forced her to marry him and then celebrated the wedding with a party, authorities said.

The girl's mother was charged Thursday in Allen County with child selling where the defendant transfers or receives property for terminating the care of a dependent and neglect of a dependent, The Journal Gazette reported.

The 27-year-old man, Zee Kdee Ya, was also charged Thursday. He faces charges of child solicitation and neglect of a dependent.

Warrants were issued for the arrest of Ya and the girl's mother. Online court records did not list attorneys Friday who could speak on behalf of either of them.

Police got involved when a friend of the girl called Fort Wayne police on Dec. 20, 2020, to say that her friend was being forced to marry an adult that night, according to court documents.

Officers arrived at a party and saw a sign on the wall celebrating the marriage, court documents said. Adults there denied it was a marriage celebration, saying it was “only an engagement between the girl and Zee Kdee Ya,” according to court records.

But when police spoke privately to the girl, she said that seven days prior to the wedding celebration, her parents had signed paperwork in Burmese, arranging the marriage.

Court records allege that Ya gave the girl a gold bracelet, necklace and about $2,000 in cash, which she turned over to her parents. At that point, she was considered married and was moved in with Ya and had to share a bed with him, according to court documents.

When Ya allegedly tried to touch the girl on top of her clothes, she yelled at him to leave her alone, court records state.

He then quoted the Bible to her and told the girl: “I own you now. I can make you do what I want,” according to court documents, which also state that the girl said her parents told her she “needed to have sex with Ya because he was now her husband."

Ya allegedly told a police investigator the party was to celebrate the engagement and wedding. He admitted that the girl had moved in with him after they signed the paperwork but denied they stayed in the same bed, and said that the wedding was stopped by police and the Department of Child Services, according to court documents.

Ya told police he’d given money and gold to the girl and the girl told him she gave the cash to her father, court documents state.

The girl's mother told police her daughter “was only getting engaged and wouldn’t get married until she was 18 years old,” according to the records. She said she and her husband used the $2,000 from Ya to buy food for the party and makeup for their daughter, court documents said.

She allegedly said the girl's father was aware they used the money for the party. But the father, who has not been charged, told police he never received any money and “didn’t know anything about the money given to the victim,” court documents state.

Sean O’Brien Elected Teamsters President, Succeeding James P. Hoffa; Local 399’s Lindsay Dougherty Elected As A Western Region VP

David Robb
Fri, November 19, 2021, 


Sean O’Brien has been elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and his slate of reform-minded Teamsters United running mates will lead the 1.3 million-member union for the next five years. O’Brien succeeds James P. Hoffa, the son of infamous Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, who chose not to seek reelection after running the union since 1998.

O’Brien, a sharp critic of Hoffa, has vowed to get tougher at the bargaining table, saying during the campaign that “If we’re negotiating discounted contracts and we’re negotiating lousy deals, why would any member, anyone, want to join the Teamsters union?”

Crystal Hopkins Resigns As President Of IATSE Script Supervisors Local 871, Citing Personal Reasons & Dissatisfaction With Union’s New Contract

And for the first time ever, a member of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 will have a seat on the Teamsters’ General Executive Board. Lindsay Dougherty, Local 399’s recording secretary, business agent and organizer, and a member of O’Brien’s slate, has been elected as one of four Western Region vice presidents.

Teamsters Local 399 will soon be negotiating a new film and TV contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture Producers.

Here are all the newly elected IBT General Executive Board members:

General President: Sean O’Brien, President, Local 25, Boston, MA

General Secretary-Treasurer: Fred Zuckerman, President, Local 89, Louisville, KY

International Vice Presidents At-Large:
Juan Campos, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 705, Chicago, IL
Greg Floyd, President, Local Union 237, New York, NY
Tony Jones, President, Local 413, Columbus, OH
John Palmer, Local 657, San Antonio, TX
James Wright, President, Local 822, Norfolk, VA
Joan Corey, Business Agent, Local 25, Boston, MA
Chris Griswold, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 986, Los Angeles, CA

Western Region Vice Presidents:
Lindsay Dougherty, Recording Secretary, Local 399, Hollywood, CA
Mark Davison, President, Local 162, Portland, OR
Peter Finn, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 856, San Francisco, CA
Rick Hicks, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 174, Seattle, WA

Central Region Vice Presidents:
Danny Avelyn, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 554, Omaha, NE
Tom Erickson, President, Local 120, Minneapolis, MN
Avral Thompson, Vice President, Local Union 89, Louisville, KY

Eastern Region Vice Presidents:
Rocco Calo, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 1150, Stratford, CT
Bill Hamilton, President, Local Union 107, Philadelphia, PA
Matt Taibi, President, Local 251, Providence, RI

Southern Region Vice Presidents:
Thor Johnson, Vice President, Local 79, Tampa, FL
Brent Taylor, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 745, Dallas, TX

Canadian Region Vice Presidents:
François LaPorte, President, Teamsters Canada, Laval, QC
Stan Hennessy, President, Local Union 31, Delta, BC
Craig McInnes, President, Local Union 938, Mississauga, ON

International Trustees:
Willie Ford, President, Local 71, Charlotte, NC
Dan Kane, Jr., President, Local 202, New York, NY
Vinnie Perrone, President, Local 804, New York, NY

America’s biggest pension fund CalPERS votes to reshuffle allocations, add leverage, in bid to combat low returns

by Editor
November 18, 2021


America’s largest public pension plan that serves California state and local workers is going to make riskier investments.

On Monday, the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, voted to make changes to its portfolio in the face of what are expected to be lower returns in future years, even as it also decided to keep constant its expected rate of return.

Earlier coverage: With lower returns on the horizon, public pensions will turn to riskier assets, Moody’s says

Public pension systems take in contributions from governmental employers and employees, and invest their portfolios in ways that aim to maximize returns, while also protecting the existing assets. That is always a tricky balance to strike, but after a blockbuster few years, most public pension systems are bracing for what many assume can only be an era of lower returns in the future.

“The portfolio we’ve selected incorporates a diverse mix of assets to help us achieve our investment return target,” CalPERS said in a statement. “By adding 5% leverage over time, we’ll better diversify the fund to protect against the impact of a serious drawdown during economic downturns.”

The fund has long had extensive allocations to alternative assets — on its website, it calls itself “one of the largest private-equity investors in the world” — but has never added leverage to its portfolio. An allocation to private debt is also new.


Source: California Public Employees’ Retirement System

The investment staff already has the ability to take active leverage up to 20%, the CIO said at the board meeting, as reported by Pensions & Investments Magazine.

CalPERS serves approximately 2 million members and has $495 billion in its portfolio. It assumes it will achieve a 6.8% return on its investments. In the fiscal year ending June, 2021, it actually retuned 21.3% – but in the year ending 2020, only 4.7%.

As previously reported, the “assumed rate of return” for a public pension can be controversial. Lowering the target investment return means raising the amount governments — and by extension, taxpayers — and workers need to pay in.

And paying more to the pension obligations can mean crowding out what can feel like more immediate budget needs such as education, road repair, and other municipal services.

Pension accounting assumes that all the inputs — contributions from employers and employees, and investment returns — leave the portfolio well-funded enough to pay all obligations for the next 30 years. But some observers have recently argued that the strain of coming up with that much money, which will likely never be needed all at one time, is too burdensome for state and local governments.

See: Public pensions don’t have to be fully funded to be sustainable, paper finds

Guest View: Legalize drugs for everyone's sake


Charles H. Jones
Sat, November 20, 2021

It would be easy to read the article on Measure 110 (Oct 29) and think that drug criminalization was related to drug addiction. Let’s look at history to see if this is the case. In particular, let’s consider the science, or lack thereof, behind the implementation of drug laws.

A common argument for drug laws is that someone knows somebody who is grateful they were arrested and forced into rehabilitation. Well, I know a former addict that is grateful they were not arrested because a record would have significantly reduced the chances of them having the professional career they had. But such tit-for-tat anecdotal stories don’t represent scientific data. Going deeper, the absurdity of (the church-group financed) "Reefer Madness" – which, among other things, implied marijuana would make you a murderer – illustrates the lack of science in the 1930s when drug laws were being put in place. Further, the government continues to ignore its own study by the Shafer Commission which recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972.

So, what was the motivation? In the 1930s Randolph Hearst and other publishers associated marijuana with supposedly crazy and dangerous Mexicans, while "Reefer Madness’" use of parties featuring jazz helped associate marijuana with Black Americans. And there is the interview with John Ehrlichman (Nixon’s domestic policy chief) published in Harper’s magazine, where he says, "[The war on drugs] was authored by President Nixon not for reasons of health or science, but rather simple prejudice … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities … Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

The consequences of this racist motivation have been huge. Studies consistently show that minorities have been disproportionately targeted and incarcerated for drug possession. A specific example was the longer sentences for crack (vs. powdered) cocaine possession in the 1980s. Incarceration contributes to multigenerational poverty. Not only does a person lose personal income by being incarcerated and paying related judicial costs, but also the entire family loses income and parental involvement.

We need better ways of helping people with addiction, but within the context of drug laws, addiction is a red herring misdirecting attention from much greater harm. Addiction also is used as a red herring for the unhoused (addiction is a symptom, not a cause). It’s harder to afford housing when you can’t get a job because of a drug arrest. Another red herring is violence. From Prohibition to drug cartels, the vast majority of drug-related violence is due to the illegality of drugs, not their use.

Mental health is another victim of drug demonization. In addition to the trauma of homelessness and incarceration (individually and to families) the understanding of the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin and similar drugs was delayed by decades because of the Reefer Madness hysteria around LSD in the 1960s.

Here are some questions relevant to Measure 110 and decriminalizing drugs. How many people will get jobs that they would not otherwise have gotten because of a drug arrest? How many more people will be able to afford higher education because their parents got those jobs? How many more people will be able to afford housing because of a decrease in stigma associated with drug use and arrest? Since many people can’t afford time off of work, what role does this cost in time and money play in people not showing up to court? Even though overprescription of opioids has increased addiction, not every user of opioids (or other drugs) is an addict. What role does this play in people not calling drug hotlines when cited for possession?

The harm from drug criminalization has accumulated over nearly a century. Undoing this harm by decriminalizing – or legalizing – drugs will take generations, not months. But the mere fact that fewer people are developing rap sheets or being harassed on the streets for harmless drug possession is already a positive step towards changing social and economic inequity.

It is unfortunate that even many proponents of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs are unaware of, or unwilling to acknowledge, the racist origins of the war on drugs or the far-ranging harm these laws have caused.

The evidence supports legalizing drugs for everyone’s sake.

Charles H. Jones, PhD is a retired mathematician. He organizes the Eugene Atheist Pub Social on Meetup.com and writes the Starting From Doubt blog.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Guest View: Legalize drugs for everyone's sake

Japanese, Korean and Turkish languages originated from farmers in northeast China, study reveals



Carl Samson
Fri, November 19, 2021

Five languages — Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tungusic and Turkish — belonging to the Transeurasian family are claimed to have emerged from a common ancestor who farmed northeast China some 9,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Key findings: Using linguistic, archeological and genetic evidence, an international team of researchers from Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S. found that the languages can be traced back to the beginning of millet cultivation in China’s West Liao River. Over time, these millet farmers — who belong to the Amur gene pool — migrated to neighboring regions and left their descendants admixing with other populations.

Whether the five languages descended from one common ancestor has long been a subject of debate. However, recent studies have shown “a reliable core of evidence” supporting the theory, the researchers said.

The spread of the languages reportedly involved two major phases. The first phase, which occurred in the early to middle Neolithic Ages, saw the spread of Amur-related millet farmers in the West Liao River to contiguous regions. The second phase, which occurred in the late Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, saw the mixture of their descendants with Yellow River, western Eurasian and Jomon people. During this period, they also started farming rice and western Eurasian crops in addition to raising livestock.

A qualitative analysis using data from 250 vocabulary concepts in 98 Transeurasian languages allowed the researchers to identify which words emerged in particular regions at a particular time. For instance, ancestral languages that separated during the Neolithic Age -- the final division of the Stone Age -- used words related to millets but not other crops.

Aside from linguistic analysis, the researchers studied data from 255 archaeological sites in northern China, Japan, Korea and the Primorye in Far East Russia. They also conducted genome analyses of 19 ancient individuals from Korea, Kyushu, the Amur and the Ryukyus and combined them with existing data on those who lived in north and east Asia between 9,500 and 300 years ago.

Why this matters: The study, published in the science journal Nature, reflects how agriculture after the Ice Age fueled the dispersal of Transeurasian languages, one of the world’s major language families. It also highlights the complexity of a shared origin of cultures regarded as unique from each other today.

“Accepting that the roots of one's language — and to an extent one's culture — lie beyond present national boundaries can require a kind of reorientation of identity, and this is not always an easy step for people to take,” lead researcher Martine Robbeets said in a statement. “But the science of human history shows us that the history of all languages, cultures, and peoples is one of extended interaction and mixture.”

Robbeets, who heads the Archaeolinguistic Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, added that merging linguistics, archeology and genetics allowed the team to gain “a more balanced and richer understanding” of Transeurasian migration. In their paper, the researchers said such a process of triangulation specifically supported their farming hypothesis and concluded that agriculture had driven the early spread of Transeurasian speakers.

Still, the researchers believe further study is needed to deepen the knowledge on human migrations in Neolithic Northeast Asia. They also recognized the need to understand the influence of succeeding pastoralist population movements.

“There was far more to the creation of the Transeurasian language family, as an ultimate whole, than just one primary Neolithic pulse of migration,” said Mark Hudson, a co-author from the Archaeolinguistic Research Group. “There is still so much to learn.”

UN-backed floating city built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes is headed to South Korea


Aria Bendix
Fri, November 19, 2021

A rendering of OCEANIX's floating city.Oceanix

South Korea agreed to host a UN-backed floating city prototype on Thursday.


The project's designers envision a flood-proof city that produces its own food and water.


They expect to fully construct the prototype in Busan, a large port city, in 2025.

More than two years ago, a group of builders, engineers, and architects crowded around a table at the United Nations to discuss an ambitious concept: a floating city that could withstand natural disasters, including floods, tsunamis, and Category 5 hurricanes.

The idea wasn't entirely novel: Designers and developers have fantasized for decades about building artificial islands and metropolises on water. Even Homer envisioned a mythical floating city roughly 13 centuries ago.

But those visions were notoriously hard to advance — often because local governments wouldn't sign off on the proposals, citing concerns that there were better uses for the land.

The UN-backed project cleared that hurdle Thursday, when the city of Busan, South Korea, agreed to host a floating city in collaboration with the project's designer, OCEANIX, and the UN Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat). Like many coastal cities, Busan is threatened by rising sea levels.

"It just happened that Bhutan is the best place for us to deploy this prototype," Itai Madamombe, co-founder of OCEANIX, told Insider. "But this is something that we hope will be useful to all coastal cities around the world, and all coastal communities who are facing the challenge of sea level rise."

The flood-proof city could be completed by 2025

OCEANIX's floating city is essentially a collection of hexagonal platforms perched atop the water.

Hexagons are widely considered among the most efficient architectural shapes: They allow builders to conserve both space and material. Picture the orderly inside of a beehive — essentially a web of interlocked hexagons.

The city's platforms would be bolstered by a limestone coating two to three times harder than concrete, but still buoyant. The material is created by exposing underwater minerals to an electric current. In the presence of that current, it becomes stronger with time and can repair itself, allowing it to withstand harsh weather conditions.

OCEANIX's rendering of "ocean farming" underneath the platforms.Oceanix

The goal is to develop a flood-proof city that rises with the sea and produces its own food, energy, and fresh water. Cages underneath the platforms could be used to house scallops, kelp, or other forms of seafood. And aquaponic systems could use waste from fish to fertilize plants.

But the design isn't set in stone — and OCEANIX hasn't determined the size of the city yet.

Madamombe said her team will collaborate with local designers in South Korea to tailor the prototype to the local environment. OCEANIX will unveil the results of those efforts at a second UN roundtable in April, she said. From there, the team will start engineering the platforms and securing approval for construction.

The cost, subject to change depending on final design and materials, is an estimated $200 million.

"All together, it will take a total of three years," Madamombe said. "So we anticipate that by 2025, we'll see this prototype in water."

Busan is vulnerable to flooding from typhoons

A mockup of the platforms floating on water.Oceanix

Busan, a city of 3.4 million people, is home to one the world's busiest ports, so local builders and engineers have experience building along the water, Madamombe said.

The development would ultimately serve as a model for future floating cities around the world.

Both hurricanes and floods are becoming more frequent and intense as global temperatures continue to climb. A recent study from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group, found that in the worst-case scenario — 4 degrees of warming — at least 50 major cities would lose most of their populated areas over the next 200 to 2,000 years because of rising sea levels.

Coastal cities like Busan are particularly vulnerable.

Though the water surrounding Busan is mostly calm, the city has also been hard hit by typhoons in the last decade, including Typhoon Chaba, which flooded the city in 2016, and Typhoon Kong-rey, which resulted in 55,000 power outages in Busan in 2018.

Madamombe said UN-Habitat will collect data on how the Busan development fares. Her team hopes to apply those lessons to its next project: OCEANIX is in talks with at least 10 other governments about building more floating cities, Madamombe said.

These 5 Trader Joe's Products Tested Off-the-Charts for Lead, Lawsuit Alleges



Caroline Delbert
Fri, November 19, 2021, 12:31 PM·4 min read

Five popular Trader Joe's foods tested off-the-charts for lead.


The tests followed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protocol and used mass spectrometry to measure lead levels.

An attorney who has filed a lawsuit against the popular food chain says he wants to see these products pulled from the shelves or labeled to indicate high lead levels.

A Los Angeles–based environmental attorney has filed a lawsuit against the massive Trader Joe's grocery chain in the state of California, alleging that some of the company's products contain high levels of lead.

During standard testing for heavy metals, as established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, an independent lab found up to 50 times the legal daily limit for lead consumption in five popular Trader Joe's food products, according to the complaint. The results raise questions about the safety of prepared food products as well as the testing itself.

Trader Joe's did not immediately return Popular Mechanics' request for comment.

Trader Joe's is a Monrovia, California–based grocery chain with over 500 stores around the United States. The first dates back to 1967, but the chain has seen its most explosive growth in the last ten years. The stores specialize in house-branded products, with up to 80 percent of its merchandise bearing the Trader Joe's label.

All five items named in the lawsuit are Trader Joe's-brand products. The company keeps mum about the supply chain for its products, but people still speculate about which third-party manufacturers produce which items. If these products are actually made by other major brands, the company's alleged lead problem could be much more far-reaching than this single lawsuit suggests.

Here are the items that are named in the Trader Joe's lawsuit, along with their respective lead levels (the recommended daily maximum for ingested lead is 0.5 micrograms total):


Super Spinach Salad: 25.3 micrograms


Panak Paneer: 16.2 micrograms


Riced Cauliflower Stir Fry: 10.4 micrograms


Organic Pesto Tortellini: 10.0 micrograms


Vegetarian Spring Rolls: 4.4 micrograms

The items were tested using the FDA standard test, known colloquially as "EAM 4.7." EAM stands for Elemental Analysis Manual for Food and Related Products. "This resource serves as a reference, for analysts at the FDA and around the world, providing not only general analytical information and procedures and detailed laboratory methods, but also helpful notes from analysts' experiences using these methods," the FDA explains online.

EAM 4.7 is a specific chapter. Take a deep breath: "Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometric Determination of Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Lead, Mercury, and Other Elements in Food Using Microwave Assisted Digestion."

In the test, food is "digested" by applying acid to it and swirling the resulting mixture in a pressurized, heated digestion vessel. After that, an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer is used to interpret the chemical elements in the thermally-digested sample. The sample is turned into a spray aerosol, then charged plasma (full of ions) is used to help highlight the individual elements that make up the sample.

✅ How Do Heavy Metals Impact Your Health?

Heavy metals are a loosely defined as a category of metallic elements that we consider "heavy" due to their high atomic weights. In environmental testing, the term refers to elements like lead and mercury, which can do damage to plants and animals if they're present in large quantities.

Cadmium, lead, and mercury are all heavy metals with respective atomic weights of 112.4, 207.2, and 200.6. (While arsenic isn't technically a heavy metal, it's often found in compounds with lead, for example.) When these metals accumulate in large amounts in your body, they cause damage, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Even the heavy metals your body needs in very small amounts, like iron, can become harmful in high quantities.

The presence of foreign matter in your body is a risk factor for diseases like cancer, but it's also dangerous on its own as heavy metal poisoning. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) explains:

Toxicity can result from sudden, severe exposure, or from chronic exposure over time. Symptoms can vary depending on the metal involved, the amount absorbed, and the age of the person exposed. For example, young children are more susceptible to the effects of lead exposure because they absorb more compared with adults and their brains are still developing.

Attorney Vineet Dubey, of Custodio & Dubey—the plaintiff's law firm—confirmed to Popular Mechanics by email that these five products were the ones that contained the highest amounts of lead, according to the lab results, but they weren't the only products that contained lead: "Other items were tested, all of which had lead content, but not high enough to include in this lawsuit," he says.

"The immediate goal is to have these products pulled off the shelves and not sold again unless the lead is removed," Dubey explains. "The long-term goal is to force Trader Joe's to require stricter testing of any food products they sell to consumers to make sure they are not selling food tainted with lead."

SCREWS OAN WORKERS

OAN asks judge to drop the company's executives from Dominion's defamation lawsuit — but leave employees on the hook

Jacob Shamsian
Fri, November 19, 2021

Chanel Rion of One America News Network speak's to White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany during a White House press briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on November 20, 2020 in Washington, DC.Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

One America News filed a motion to dismiss Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.


The far-right news network asked the judge to drop executives Charles and Robert Herring as defendants.


Its lawyer said two OAN employees named in the suit could defend themselves in Colorado instead of DC.

The far-right media organization One America News (OAN) asked a judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over election conspiracy theories — or, failing that, to at least let the company's executives off the hook.

"The allegations related to OAN, Charles Herring, and Robert Herring, Sr. demonstrate that they have insufficient contacts with this jurisdiction to hale them into court here," Blaine C. Kimrey, an attorney representing all the defendants in the lawsuit, wrote in a motion filed to court Thursday night.

But the judge can leave two the OAN employees named in the lawsuit as defendants, Kimrey wrote. On-air talent Chanel Rion is already embroiled in a similar lawsuit in Colorado, he argued. Correspondent Christina Bobb would benefit from moving it to Colorado as well, Kimrey wrote, because courts there move faster than the ones in Washington, DC.

"Rion is already litigating these same issues in Colorado and Bobb is an OAN employee who would benefit from the convenience afforded to OAN," Kimrey wrote. "Any minor convenience to Bobb is clearly outweighed by Colorado being the more convenient forum for all other parties."

Dominion filed the lawsuit against OAN in August, demanding $1.6 billion in damages and accusing the company of pushing damaging, false conspiracy theories about the election technology company's role in the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuit named Rion and Bobb as defendants; it also named Robert Herring, Sr. and Charles Herring, the father-son duo who founded OAN and serve as CEO and president, respectively.

Unlike Fox News and Newsmax, which Dominion later sued, OAN doubled down on election conspiracy theories in its programming in the wake of lawsuit threats — even as it quietly deleted stories from its website.

Dominion's lawsuit said the network "deputized" Rion "as an in-house spokesperson for all Dominion-related content." It also accused Bobb of "simultaneously and covertly moonlighting as a Trump Campaign advisor" as OAN "[raced] to the bottom with Fox [News] and other outlets such as Newsmax to spread false and manufactured stories about election fraud."
OAN wants the lawsuit moved to Colorado if it isn't dismissed

OAN's attorney argued that Dominion's lawsuit in DC should be moved to Colorado if it isn't dismissed. He pointed out that Dominion is based in Denver, and the lawsuit has factual similarities to a separate lawsuit filed by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion executive, in the state.

The defendants in Coomer's defamation case include Rion, One America News, and parent company Herring Networks.

"While not their home state, Colorado is much more convenient for California residents OAN, Charles Herring, and Robert Herring, Sr. than the District of Columbia (in part because OAN and Rion are already litigating these issues there)," Kimrey wrote.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is interviewed by the One America News Network during former U.S. president Donald Trump's rally at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio, U.S., June 26, 2021.Gaelen Morse/Reuters

Dominion's defamation lawsuit against OAN is one of many it and rival technology company Smartmatic has filed against election conspiracy theorists and media organizations they say perpetuated those false theories.

It filed most of those cases in federal court in DC because that's where it alleges the defamatory actions took place, including three against conspiracy theorists Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Lindell and his company MyPillow.

Days before Dominion filed its lawsuit against OAN, US District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who is overseeing the cases, ruled against all of their motions to dismiss and allowed the cases to proceed in DC federal court.

The same day Dominion sued OAN, it also sued Newsmax and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne filed a motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday, arguing his remarks about Dominion's role in the 2020 election were justified and didn't rise to the level of defamation. Newsmax hasn't yet filed a motion in response to the election technology company, but settled Coomer's lawsuit against the company earlier this year.

A judge in Delware state court is still weighing whether to accept Fox News' motion to dismiss Dominion's lawsuit against it.

Elon Musk reportedly asks Tesla managers who don't execute orders to 'resign immediately,' according to leaked emails

Emily Walsh
Sat, November 20, 2021

Tesla CEO Elon Musk.Pool

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has three options for managers if they get a request from him, according to emails obtained by CNBC.

The two leaked emails were sent by Musk to "everybody" at Tesla during the first week of October.

The emails discuss listening to music at work and what managers should do when they're sent directions by Musk.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tells managers who don't execute orders or explain why he's wrong that they will have to "resign immediately," according to leaked emails obtained by CNBC.

The two emails were sent by Musk to "everybody" at Tesla during the first week of October. During that time, Tesla announced it delivered a record 241,300 vehicles during the third quarter of 2021, and "Full Self Driving Beta" was launched and later put on hold after safety concerns. The company also lost a lawsuit against a former Tesla employee who said he was racially harassed while working as an agency staffer.

Musk's first email discusses factory employees listening to music while working. The CEO said that he supports "any little touches that make work more enjoyable" and that listening to music was allowed as long as employees had one earbud out for safety reasons.

His second email details the three steps managers should do when they're sent directions. Musk tells them to reply and explain why what he said was incorrect since he can occasionally be "plain wrong," to ask for clarification, or to execute the directions because "if none of the above are done, that manager will be asked to resign immediately."

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment on the leaked emails.

Musk, who is known for his alternative corporate communication style, has had emails leaked in the past. The CEO typically takes to Twitter to communicate his thoughts and the latest news associated with two of his major companies Tesla and SpaceX.

BRO CULTURE

Report: Activision Took Years To Fire Someone Who Signed Emails '1-800-ALLCOCK'


Ethan Gach
Fri, November 19, 2021


A California lawsuit earlier this year alleged sexual harassment, discrimination, and a pervasive “frat boy culture” at Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard. At least in one instance, that culture included an employee signing all of his work emails as “1-800-ALLCOCK.”

That detail comes from the latest episode of The Wall Street Journal podcast which elaborates on some of its recent bombshell investigative report outlining new instances of misconduct and coverups, including by CEO Bobby Kotick.

“There was one example where an Activision employee had for years just signed his email signature 1-800-ALLCOCK,” reporter Kirsten Grind said in a transcript of the podcast. “So if you were a woman, you would get that email and that was just the normal course, right? Just guys being guys joking about it and you just sort of felt like that was what happened at Activision.”

Activision reportedly didn’t take action regarding the email signature until it received a complaint about it just this past summer, at which point it fired the employee after a month-long investigation. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The podcast episode also interviewed a former employee about her time at Sledgehammer Games, maker of the recently released Call of Duty: Vanguard. Ashley Mark, hired as a quality assurance analyst in 2016 during the production of Call of Duty: WWII, described the male-dominated workplace like this:

You’ve got people who want to...Basically are very nerdy, want to make a good game, and then you’ve got the gun-loving group because it’s Call of Duty so you’re going to attract people who love guns, and then you have got people who are really into fitness. There’s a lot of people who are into fitness at least at that time at Sledgehammer Games. So there were people who would go into groups and that you would go to the gym and they would just get pumped up. So it’s very masculine.

Mark recalled a 2017 studio anniversary party where one former Sledgehammer manager “put his arm around my female coworker almost like a choke hold” while hugging her and repeatedly saying her name. That former manager told The Wall Street Journal he didn’t remember the details of the evening in question because he was too drunk, but confirmed he was put on a two-week paid suspension before being moved to a different role.

Sledgehammer Games was also where one former female employee was reportedly raped twice, incidents that were not investigated until she sent a letter from her lawyer after she had already left the company. According to the new podcast episode, when she originally to her complaint to studio HR, a representative for the department tried to get her to down play what had happened and reframe it in a more positive light.

Until recently, most of the attention has been on allegations about past misconduct and discrimination at Blizzard. But these latest reports reinforce parts of the original California lawsuit which cited booze-filled offices and work events, and negligent HR departments, as recipes for mistreatment across the entire Activision Blizzard business.

This week, the heads of both PlayStation and Xbox spoke out about the latest revelations. Girls Who Code cut ties with the company. And some shareholders joined over 2,000 current Activision Blizzard employees in calling for Kotick to resign.

“It’s pretty clear that the only forces that can create change at Activision are its customers (whose money is the ultimate corporate goal), its investors and the employees whose talent makes Activision’s games worth buying,” Paul Reiche, former head of Activision Blizzard’s Skylanders studio, told Axios today. “If the new stories I have read are true, I can’t see how Activision can continue its success without new leadership”

Microsoft reportedly evaluating relationship with Activision amid CEO turmoil

Brett Molina, USA TODAY
Thu, November 18, 2021,

Activision Blizzard says it hired a law firm to help ensure a "respectful and inclusive" workplace.

Microsoft is reportedly evaluating its relationship with video game publisher Activision Blizzard following allegations CEO Bobby Kotick knew for years about sexual misconduct claims at the company.

Xbox head Phil Spencer sent an email to staff, according to Bloomberg, saying he is "evaluating all aspects of our relationship" with Activision Blizzard following a report from The Wall Street Journal claiming Kotick didn't inform the board of allegations of sexual misconduct at the publisher.

In a statement emailed to USA TODAY in response to the report, Spencer said he personally has strong values for a welcoming and inclusive environment for Xbox employees.

"This is not a destination but a journey that we will always be on," said Spencer. "The leadership at Xbox and Microsoft stand by our teams and support them in building a safer environment for all."

Activision told USA TODAY in an emailed statement it respects feedback from its partners and is engaging with them further.

Employees at Activision Blizzard staged a second walkout demanding Kotick be removed as CEO, NBC News reported. A Twitter account representing employees of the company shared a petition seeking Kotick's removal that has more than 1,000 signatures.



In a statement released Tuesday after the Journal report, Activision's board showed support for Kotick. "The Board remains confident that Bobby Kotick appropriately addressed workplace issues brought to his attention," it said.

Earlier this year, the state of California sued Activision Blizzard claiming the publisher fostered a sexist culture and paid women less than men despite doing more work.

The lawsuit prompted employees' initial walkout urging changes within the company's culture.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Activision Blizzard: Microsoft reportedly evaluating relationship

Xbox is re-evaluating its relationship with Activision Blizzard


Kris Holt
·Contributing Writer
Thu, November 18, 2021

Phil Spencer is reportedly reassessing Xbox's relationship with Activision Blizzard following new bombshell reports about the company and CEO Bobby Kotick. Spencer, who runs Microsoft's Xbox division, reportedly told employees in an email that he's “evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments,” in the wake of an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

In the memo, which was obtained by Bloomberg, Spencer said he and other leaders at Xbox are “disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions” that reportedly took place at Activision Blizzard. "This type of behavior has no place in our industry,” Spencer wrote.

Kotick is said to have known about instances of sexual misconduct at the company for years without reporting them to the board. He has also been accused of mistreating women on numerous occasions.

Spencer has joined Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan in expressing deep concern about the situation. In an internal memo, which also leaked earlier this week, Ryan wrote that he was "disheartened and frankly stunned to read” The Journal's report. He also criticized Activision's response to the allegations. Earlier this week, the company told Engadget that the report presented a “misleading view of Activision Blizzard and our CEO.”

More than 900 Activision Blizzard employees and contractors have now signed a petition demanding Kotick's removal. A shareholder group has also urged the board to remove Kotick and for the board's two longest-serving directors to retire by the end of the year. In addition, Polygon and Eurogamer both called for Kotick's resignation. Strongly worded statements from leaders at Microsoft and Sony, two of Activision Blizzard's most important business partners, will further crank up the pressure.

"We respect all feedback from our valued partners and are engaging with them further," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Engadget. "We have detailed important changes we have implemented in recent weeks, and we will continue to do so. We are committed to the work of ensuring our culture and workplace are safe, diverse, and inclusive. We know it will take time, but we will not stop until we have the best workplace for our team."

Activision Faces Internal Rifts in Bid to Blunt Uproar Over CEO



Jason Schreier
Wed, November 17, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Some employees at Activision Blizzard Inc. said they were let down by internal meetings that were held Wednesday morning to discuss the new revelations about the company and Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick.

The gatherings took place on video calls across the game publisher’s three primary organizations, Activision, Blizzard and King. Executives in charge of each division took questions and shared similar talking points after the Wall Street Journal reported detailed allegations that Kotick was aware of sexual misconduct at the company years before a California lawsuit made them public this summer and failed to report alleged instances of rape to the board.

Hours after the article was published on Tuesday, more than a hundred employees staged a walkout to demand Kotick’s resignation. The board said it’s standing by Kotick, but partners and shareholders have raised questions about his handling of the crisis. Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation chief Jim Ryan criticized Activision’s response in an email to staff Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. When asked for comment, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns more than a million shares in Activision, said in a statement that it recognizes that sexual harassment and misconduct incidents can result in “significant” risks to its portfolio holdings and that it continually monitors its holdings to address those risks.

The leaders said Kotick would be working to “regain trust” of employees throughout the company, according to partial transcripts from two of the meetings shared with Bloomberg. Activision president Rob Kostich told people in his group that Kotick wouldn’t be resigning, according to two attendees. Blizzard’s top executive, Mike Ybarra, told staff in what appeared to be pre-recorded remarks that he understood their frustrations and apologized for not being more active as a leader, according to two attendees.

Some employees of King, the makers of Candy Crush, asked whether a sudden announcement on Monday that they’d be getting bonus vacation days next week for Thanksgiving was meant to preempt the article. Activision Blizzard Chief Operating Officer Daniel Alegre denied that was the reason. In response to a question about whether Activision’s newly instituted “zero tolerance” policy on harassment, announced last month, would also apply to Kotick, Alegre said that his boss was “deeply and personally committed to doing the right things.”

Alegre also addressed the reported pay disparity between Ybarra and Jennifer Oneal, who were named co-leaders of Blizzard this summer following the lawsuit. Oneal, who resigned earlier this month, said she was paid less than Ybarra. Alegre said that Oneal was paid “differently” than Ybarra because of complications involving cash and equity and that “they were both offered the exact same compensation.”

But Oneal told Blizzard employees that she wasn’t offered compensation equal to Ybarra’s until she tendered her resignation, according to a Slack transcript reviewed by Bloomberg. Gaming website IGN earlier reported on the Slack exchange. Pay discrimination was one of the items listed in the California lawsuit.

The company also told staff that it’s banning alcohol in all offices. Many people were given the opportunity to take paid mental health days, which some staff said hadn’t mollified them. On video calls and in Slack channels across the company, calls for Kotick’s ousting continue. Many Activision Blizzard employees are even publicly demanding on their own personal Twitter feeds that the CEO be fired.

In an email to Blizzard staff on Tuesday reviewed by Bloomberg, Ybarra wrote that “if there’s a silver lining to the last few months, it’s that they’ve proven that Blizzard is full of incredible employees who are making progress every day to improve our culture, our game communities, and ourselves.” Ybarra added that “our best years are ahead of us.”

But with morale low and Kotick still in place, some employees are skeptical about that.