SALACIOUS SUNDAY POST

Retired Kansas judge’s X-rated case inspires thesis linking Orwell, Snowden and Austin Powers
Tim Carpenter,

 Kansas Reflector
January 30, 2022

Fembots from "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery"

 (NewLine Cinema)


TOPEKA — Magistrate Judge Marty Clark’s posting of X-rated pictures of himself to a couples’ dating website and erotic communication with a married woman triggered an ethics complaint that resulted in a Kansas Supreme Court sanction of public censure.

Outcome of his case was more or less a foregone conclusion, but the concurring opinion authored by Justice Caleb Stegall framed the scandal in terms of a scholarly debate weaving court precedent and Bible scripture with ideas embodied by dystopian author George Orwell, surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden and movie character Austin Powers.

“While Judge Marty K. Clark’s behavior was embarrassing, foolish and grossly immoral, it was not a violation of any of our rules governing judicial conduct,” Stegall wrote. “The behavior we are talking about consists entirely of the lawful, private, consensual sexual practices of Judge Clark.”

Surveillance of all kinds, including the self-surveillance favored by Clark, with high-powered video and audio devices and assisted by the ease of digital-media publication has led to substantial increase in government and employer intrusion into private lives of individuals, he said.

“Wisdom councils that Big Brother himself is not obliged to act on every scrap of tittle-tattle that comes his way from ill-meaning Little Brother,” Stegall said.

Clark posted to the Club Foreplay website nude and partially nude photographs of himself, including one image of him standing in water with his penis exposed. He shared images and interacted via text and email with a Missouri woman he met during 2019 at the Lake of the Ozarks. He did so during weekday work hours, but it’s not clear he was on the clock. The woman’s disgruntled husband eventually filed an ethics complaint against the judge.

Clark served Russell County for 23 years before retiring days ahead of a judicial review panel’s recommendation of public censure in May 2021. He didn’t challenge fundamental conclusions of wrongdoing during Supreme Court oral arguments in October. On Friday, the high court said Clark warranted public censure for conduct undermining confidence in the judiciary.

Blackmail, intimidation

Chris Joseph, an attorney representing Clark, said the Supreme Court ought to focus on behavior of judges directly connected to their legal responsibilities. He said the justices were essentially “regulating the bedroom” by weighing in on private conduct of a sexual nature. It mirrors disdain exhibited by some people of judges who were in homosexual relationships or consumed alcoholic beverages, he said.

“It’s my position the court shouldn’t venture into that realm,” Joseph said.

Todd Thompson, an attorney serving as judicial examiner in the Clark case, said it was an ethical breach for a judge to massage his private organ for purposes of posting photographs to a website for swingers. He used a phony name on the website, Thompson said, suggesting he was aware of the impropriety.

Clark sent salacious texts to the married Missouri woman discussing details of a potential sexual encounter in his judicial chambers in Russell County, Thompson said.

“The judge is subjecting himself, when he engages in this type of conduct, to the possibility of being intimidated or blackmailed by people who have these photographs,” Thompson said.

The Supreme Court decided public censure, accomplished by publishing a statement declaring Clark’s misconduct, was sufficient. Clark isn’t an attorney, so he won’t be practicing law. The lower-level court sanction didn’t preclude him from seeking election as a magistrate judge in the future.

Clark’s retirement message, released by the judicial branch, didn’t mention his disciplinary case. He said he appreciated the chance given him at a young age to serve Russell County.

“I became a judge because I wanted the opportunity to help people,” he said. “Working with child-in-need-of-care cases and adoptions is the most satisfying part of the job.”
‘Unforgiveable sin’

Half of the 27-page decision comprised the concurring opinion from Stegall, one of the court’s conservatives who was appointed by Gov. Sam Brownback. Stegall said Clark shouldn’t remain on the bench, but the proper approach for addressing moral qualms about a judge’s private behavior would be for voters to oust him or her at the next election or to initiate impeachment proceedings.

“Judge Clark’s actions did not have any real, factual connection to his role as a judge,” wrote Stegall in the opinion joined by Justice Keynen Wall. “So, what is really going on? In short, Judge Clark has embarrassed us — the examiner, the commission, this court, the judiciary and the wider legal community. And, this may be the unforgivable sin of our day.

“The complex and ubiquitous shaming and shunning rituals our society has concocted and enacted in recent decades may best be understood as an elaborate response to collective embarrassment. Scapegoating and ‘cancelling’ the most embarrassing among us becomes a quasi-religious way of purging collective shame and guilt.”

Stegall said the state’s examiner and the disciplinary panel that recommended public censure acted as “grand inquisitors on behalf of an allegedly scandalized public.”

“Who has really been scandalized?” Stegall asked. “As with the excessive rhetoric, the legal justifications given by the examiner and panel in this case are thin cover for the naked embarrassment and the accompanying need to close ranks and restore a facade of judicial superiority.”

Stegall wrote it was absurd for judges to be held up as a class of rulers who must be obeyed because they possessed moral or intellectual superiority.

“I may be an unexpected defender of ‘consensually non-monogamous’ judges — and I have no difficulty condemning adultery as morally destructive — but above all else, the rule of law condemns the arbitrary and unaccountable power of the state to pick winners and losers, reward friends and punish enemies, and protect its own interests above the public’s. Such abuses and the hypocrisy they reveal are the real threat to the legitimacy and integrity of the judiciary,” Stegall said.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

BOURGEOIS INDIVIDUALISM

FAKE LIBERTARIANS

Unvaccinated convoy protesters are selfish, plain and simple. Please, just get the jab

The choice not to get vaccinated has meant hospitals and their intensive care units are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, Althia Raj writes.

By Althia Raj

National Columnist

TORONTO STAR

Sat., Jan. 29, 2022

Please, just get vaccinated.

I have no idea if I speak for a majority or a minority of Canadians but my principal thought watching the demonstration unfold on Parliament Hill Saturday is just how selfish the unvaccinated are.

I’m sorry. Yes, I feel the need to apologize for feeling this way, but it is selfish to decide not to get vaccinated when you have no medical reason not to. Vaccines have been shown to be overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines save lives. Your life, and the lives of others.

We live in a society where we, as a group, have decided to invest in and support one another. I don’t have children, but my taxes go to educate my neighbours’ children and I’m happy about that. Our taxes go to pay for the roads and bridges we drive on, the parks we play in, the health-care services we all use.

Unless you’re living off the grid, hunting your own food, treating yourself when you’re sick, and choosing not to partake in society, I think protesting because you’re fed up with vaccine mandates that prevent you from doing certain jobs or going to a restaurant is selfish.

The choice not to get vaccinated has meant hospitals and their intensive care units are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases. Vaccination, unfortunately, hasn’t prevented transmission, and there are too many vaccinated Canadians in hospital, but proportionally there are vastly more unvaccinated patients. Because we all share that hospital capacity, many Canadians have gone without surgeries, diagnostic tests or treatments. That’s unfair. As a group, we should do everything we can to ensure this doesn’t happen, and that means, please, get vaccinated.

Vaccinated protesters on the hill say they are tired of restrictions. I am also tired of the restrictions. We all are. I think often of the single parents with school-age children and how they’ve managed, or the small-business owners who worry about their life savings sunk in a business that may be unable to recover. I can’t wait for things to return to normal, to feel safe going about everyday activities, and not worry about my 82-year-old father catching COVID-19.

The sooner everyone gets vaccinated, the sooner this can happen.

I know some feel there’s no point to vaccination; we’re now on dose three and dose four may not be far behind. So many people have already caught COVID-19, what’s the point, the argument goes. Many people who recently got sick with the Omicron variant had mild symptoms, they note. True, and most were vaccinated. As long as people travel and there isn’t vaccine equity around the world, the virus will mutate, and we’ll be rolling up our sleeves for new jabs.

The alternative is we continue to live in a see-saw of lockdowns, or we accept that tens of thousands will die as the cost of keeping our society open.

I don’t like either of these scenarios. Please, just get vaccinated.

We are incredibly privileged to live in Canada, to have ample access to free vaccines. The few visible minorities on the hill reminded me how so many around the world would love to be in our position.

We are fortunate to live in a country where we can safely protest. I was relieved to see, as I write this, that the demonstration was non-violent. It was loud, full of profanity directed at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and reports of people urinating on the street. More troubling were the Confederate flags, swastikas, the use of the War Memorial as a parking lot, protesters dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the appropriation of a statue of Terry Fox. The demands from the convoy’s organizer, Canada Unity, which have garnered more than 250,000 signatures, are also concerning. Their memorandum of understanding reads like a civics essay from a flunking Grade 9 student. The Senate and the governor general cannot instruct any level of government to waive COVID-related fines or reinstate dismissed employees. Furthermore, the “people of Canada” are already represented in Ottawa, by members of Parliament who were just recently selected in a free and fair election, not by this self-appointed group of minority truckers and their supporters.

I fear the deepening polarization happening in this country. I worry about the hollowing out of the political middle, and political parties increasingly catering to their more radical wings. Our politicians should be united in calling out the misinformation that protesters are sharing, not catering to the group for political reasons.

Part of the problem is an erosion of trust. The pandemic response has been far from perfect. Official advice has not always been as transparent and honest as it could have been. Moreover, that advice shifted as science evolved. I can still hear Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, telling us in 2020 that quarantine is unnecessary and discouraging the use of masks. Politicians, meanwhile, too often chose to make politically popular decisions rather than be guided by science. I fear Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s decision to end proof of negative tests or proof of vaccination policy is the latest example.

But as I watch Phil Powers on the CBC, sitting in his truck stopped in front of Parliament Hill, urging people to do their “own research” and complaining that the “mandate season ... has gone on long enough, and it is just time for us to have our lives back,” I have only one message. Please, just get vaccinated.

Althia Raj is an Ottawa-based national politics columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @althiaraj

 

Chinese Satellite Reportedly Grappled, Moved Another Spacecraft Away From Orbit

© AP Photo

Kirill Kurevlev

Correspondent

All materialsWrite to the author

The event was discussed as part of a webinar on managing the risks of satellite close approaches in geostationary orbit, hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Secure World Foundation earlier this week.

Last week, China reportedly demonstrated yet another advancement in space-based technology and capabilities as an analytics firm claimed to have seen a satellite "grab" another one and yank it from its orbit.

According to a Breaking Defense report upon the event, China's Shijian-21 satellite, or SJ-21, vanished from view on January 22 and resurfaced while performing a "large maneuver" to approach a dead BeiDou Navigation System satellite. The SJ-21 then yanked the BeiDou from its orbit and deposited it in a "graveyard orbit" a few hundred kilometers away, where it is unlikely to interact with or collide with live satellites.

Graveyard orbit is typically classified as 300 kilometers above geostationary orbit, or around 36,000 kilometers above the ground.

The information was reportedly presented by Brian Flewelling, chief architect for space situational awareness (SSA) at ExoAnalytic Solutions, who showed footage from the event.

"We continue to track SJ-21 and monitor it for conjunctions with all known space objects. The ability to maintain custody of SJ-21 after this large daytime maneuver is an important and unique capability of Exo’s commercial SSA network," Flewelling is quoted as saying.

The latest tracking data acquired earlier this week from ExoAnalytic's telescopes shows the SJ-21 separating from the BeiDou, leaving the latter in the eccentric "super-graveyard drift orbit," Flewelling told the outlet after the event.

SJ-21 has now reportedly returned to a near-geostationary orbit.

“What we know for sure is what we can observe by its actions in space — the intent behind it and what China plans to do with this technology is a more subjective assessment,” he added.

The "gap" in observations was reportedly caused by the fact that it docked with the now-defunct satellite during the day when telescopes are unable to image.

According to the report, the SJ-21 maneuver is consistent with the US initiative of On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (OSAM) capabilities, which the US and Europe have also pursued. Such missions would reportedly come within Space Command's operations and might be a factor in future Artemis program launches.

"Artemis is about more than getting back to the Moon; it’s about sustained human presence on the Moon and the ultimate goal of going to Mars," Larry Huebner, NASA technical lead for OSAM-2 said at the event, per Fox News.

The SJ-21 was reportedly supposed to "test and verify space debris mitigation technologies," but the ability to shift satellites around signifies that China has alarming capabilities for orbital manipulation of other nations' satellites, according to US experts.

Also at the webinar, CSIS, the Secure World Foundation, and the University of Texas at Austin introduced a new web-based project to watch real-time and forecast movements of satellites and space debris, with the goal of improving transparency about close approaches in orbit.

An OSAM-capable vehicle may ultimately be equipped with a 3D printer to generate new pieces for production in space, allowing space vehicles to achieve remarkable capabilities. The US reportedly intends to launch a "servicer" satellite in 2025.

Rising settler violence against Palestinians in Burqa reignites struggle over land

Residents of the West Bank village have been fighting to reclaim their land since 1978 when Israel confiscated it to establish the Homesh settlement

Mushir Seif, a Palestinian resident of Burqa, has been for decades denied access to his land which is only 10 minutes away by foot (MEE/Atef Daglas)

By Atef Daglas in Nablus, 

Occupied Palestine
Published date: 29 January 2022

Perched atop the roof of his home in Burqa village north of Nablus in the occupied West Bank stands Mushir Seif, gazing across the Mount of al-Zuhur at his land, now swallowed up by the Israeli settlement of Homesh.

The land is only 800 meters away from him, and 10 minutes away by foot, yet for over four decades he’s been denied access to it.

Seif and his 6,000 fellow Burqa residents have not been able to reclaim or plant anywhere in the 45 dunams (45,000 square metres) of their land that have been confiscated by Israel since 1978 when Homesh was established.

Israel uses settler violence as 'tool' to take Palestinian land: B'Tselem

Read More »

With a mixture of sadness and bitterness, Seif told Middle East Eye of the pain he and his fellow villagers have felt for decades due to the settler presence on the land - with the tacit support of the Israeli army - and the persistent feeling of insecurity caused by settler violence.

“It was an ambush by the settlers,” Seif told MEE about one near-fatal attack that he and other villagers came under last November.

“The army was conspicuously absent and did not come even after the attack,” he added.

The incident Seif referred to happened on 15 November when a group of Burqa residents was on their way to visit their stolen land. When they arrived, Homesh settlers shot at them, assaulted them with sharp objects, and destroyed Seif’s car. At least six farmers were seriously injured.

The November assault was not an isolated incident. Palestinians in Burqa fear that settlers are ramping up violence to create a new reality on the ground and force the government to give them the land.

Attacks increased particularly after the killing of an Israeli settler by Palestinian gunmen in December near Homesh, bringing the decade-long fight over land in Burqa back into the spotlight.

Struggle through the generations

The plight of Palestinians in Burqa started in 1978 when Israel confiscated 1,050 dunams from Mounts al-Zuhur and al-Qubaybat in the village to establish a military base.

The military outpost was soon transformed into what is known as the Homesh settlement, whose radius of control extends to 4,000 dunams.

In 2005, the Israeli government under Ariel Sharon evacuated settlers from Homesh, along with settlers in the Gaza Strip and five other settlements and military bases near Jenin, as part of its unilateral disengagement plan.

Since then, the army has closed off the area for the Palestinians that owned the land while settlers continued to come back to maintain their presence, establishing a makeshift yeshiva, or religious seminary, in contravention of Israeli law.


From 1978 up to the present day, the tussle between settlers and the Palestinians who own the land has been ongoing, a struggle passed down from grandparents to grandchildren.

Such is the case of the family of Yousef Hajji, known as Abu Saleh, who was expelled by the army while tilling the land 44 years ago. Abu Saleh passed away in 2005 aged 91 before he could return to his property.

His son Fathallah, 72, faced a similar situation a few years ago when he tried to plant trees on the land and was expelled by Israel. Now, the same fate has befallen his grandson, Nasser, who was wounded in the settler attack in November.

Standing beside his son, Nasser, as he received treatment for his wounds at the Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus, Fathallah told MEE that Nasser had gone with dozens of his fellow villagers to visit and plant the land.

The visit was arranged to comply with a request by the Israeli High Court, which asked for proof that demonstrates the villagers' inability to access the land due to settler attacks.

'When we were ambushed, the settlers attacked us from behind and from the front, and the army was nowhere to be found' - Munir Qadus, Yesh Din

Settlers and the army had testified in front of the court saying farmers do not ever visit the land and hence cannot lay claim to it.

The attack was not the first of its kind in Burqa, Fathallah said, but it was the most violent.

About 50 settlers had been lying in wait for them and attacked them with sharp objects once they approached the land.

Munir Qadus, a field researcher with the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, was one of those assaulted on the day when his phone was broken and his glasses were lost.

“We waited for over 15 minutes for the army to arrive to secure the entrance of the farmers to their lands, despite the security coordination from the side of the Palestinian Authority (PA),” Qadus told MEE.

“When we were ambushed, the settlers attacked us from behind and from the front, and the army was nowhere to be found.”

About 50 similar settler attacks were documented in 2020 alone, Qadus said, which included beatings, attacks on homes, and stone-throwing against Palestinians passing by in their cars.

Court orders ignored

In 2013, after many lawsuits filed by the farmers, the Israeli High Court ruled that Homesh was a private Palestinian landholding belonging to its farmers and that an Israeli presence there was not permissible.

In breach of the court order, settlers maintained a de facto outpost on the lands.

Burqa residents have been able to enter their lands at times since 2018, but only fleetingly and without planting anything.

On the rare occasion that they could plant certain trees on the lands through aid and charitable organisations, settlers would promptly uproot them and fill the water-wells with rocks.

Settlers in Homesh pictured in November, the same month a group of Palestinians were ambushed and assaulted (Provided/Munir Qadus)

Jehad Salah, former head of the Burqa Village Council, told MEE that the only reasonable explanation for the settlers’ continuing presence in Homesh is the implicit approval of the army and government.

Qadus accuses the government and the army of negligence in implementing the law, asserting that neither the settlers nor the army abide by the court order, which is the highest legal body in Israel.

“They think that all of the land is Israeli land,” Qadus said.

Israel: Settler attacks on Palestinian olive harvest 'most dangerous in years'

Read More »

Settler attacks on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have seen an “alarming” rise in 2021, UN human rights experts said in a statement last year.

“We are witnessing the highest recorded levels of violence in recent years and more severe incidents,” the statement said.

According to UN figures, 370 settler attacks led to damage to property in 2021 and a further 126 assaults caused casualties.

At the same time, settlement building has tripled from the previous year, with the approval of the construction of 4,000 new units, according to Khalil al-Tafkaji, Palestinian expert on settlement and director of the map unit at the Centre for Arab Studies in Jerusalem.

Both authorised and unauthorised Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are considered illegal under international law.
'We will not leave the mountain'

Following the shooting near Homesh that left one settler dead and two wounded on 16 December, settlers unleashed a wave of attacks that have affected most of the village’s residents.

Dozens of houses have been assaulted and their windows and doors broken, threatening the lives of many villagers. Gravestones were not spared the onslaught and many of them were vandalised and defaced.

Saddam Salah, an anti-settlement activist in Burqa who regularly documents the violations on his camera, says at least 30 houses in Burqa were attacked in the three weeks after the December shooting. Settlers also used live bullets while attacking Palestinian homes, he said.

The situation has been exacerbated by the army’s crackdown on the village.

Military checkpoints have been erected around Burqa and its entrances have been blocked, leaving some neighbourhoods completely sectioned off and isolated.

A resurgence of popular resistance has emerged in Burqa in recent weeks and there have been protests against the deplorable conditions perpetrated by the army and the settlers.

Palestinians in Burqa are rising up against the attacks and incursions by the army and the settlers

 (MEE/Atef Daglas)

At least eight Palestinians have been injured by live bullets in demonstrations against the Israeli assaults, and hundreds more by rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas.

Despite the soaring tensions in Homesh, the settlers continue their calls to “climb the mountain [of Homesh],” refusing to give up their position, citing religious reasons.

But the people of Burqa, the rightful owners of the land, promise that they will not remain silent.

With their oft-repeated slogan, “we will not leave the mountain,” they have created a counter popular resistance movement, alongside nearby villages of Beita and Kufr Qaddum, promising to protect their land and push back against turning Homesh into an Israeli settlement once more.

 

Surging Fertilizer Prices Set to Exacerbate African Food Crisis

Mumbi Gitau, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- A surge in global fertilizer prices is adding to worries about food security across sub-Saharan Africa, where small-scale farmers depend largely on imports -- if they even use additional nutrients at all.

With prices tripling over the past 18 months, many farmers are considering whether to forgo purchases of fertilizers this year. That leaves a market long touted for its growth potential set to shrink by almost a third, according to Sebastian Nduva, program manager at researcher group AfricaFertilizer.Org. That could potentially curb cereals output by 30 million tons, enough to feed 100 million people, he said.

“We are likely to see a scenario where yields are depressed and this will mean that either the government will have to readjust their budgets and import food, or there will be food shortages,” Nduva said.

Sub-Saharan Africa already has the world’s lowest fertilizer application rates, averaging 12 kilograms per hectare compared with a global average of 110 kilograms. With usage set to fall as input costs rise, the threat to regional food security and political stability is growing, according to Alain Sy Traoré, director of agriculture and rural development at the ECOWAS Commission. 

That will increase the region’s dependence on imports at a time when food prices are near a record high. More than 20 million people across sub-Saharan Africa are already on the brink of famine, according to the World Food Programme. 

Soaring gas prices helped drive fertilizers higher last year, squeezing supply as increasing costs shuttered plants while producers introduced export restrictions. 

While fertilizer prices in the U.S. have eased, prices in Europe and the Middle East, the top suppliers to Africa, are yet to find any relief -- a gauge of western European prices for ammonia remains at a record. Tensions over Ukraine have also been pushing up natural gas prices this month and any escalation could drive fertilizer prices even higher.

The high costs have curbed output at some of the more than 100 fertilizer blending plants in sub-Saharan Africa, which largely depend on imports of the nutrient, Nduva said. Stockpiles of the nutrients are now dwindling after governments and traders delayed procurements in the hope that prices would fall.

Small scale farmers, who account for more than 70% of fertilizer consumption in the region, are hardest hit. Most lack access to finance that could help them withstand the spiking prices.

“Corn, rice, sorghum and millet growers are most vulnerable because they do not have such buffers and will be forced do without any nutrients when planting,” said Patrice Annequin, senior fertilizer market specialist at IFDC, which promotes affordable nutrient technologies. 

Yao Nabotena, a cotton farmer in Kokaha village in Ivory Coast, used just 33 bags of fertilizer this season, half the amount required on his seven-hectare plantation. 

Some sectors are in a stronger position to weather the market turmoil. Gains in cocoa and cotton will cushion some farmers in West Africa from the higher input costs, said Annequin.

African nations have also begun or are expanding production of fertilizer as part of plans to reduce reliance on imports from Europe and North America, which are sometimes unsuitable for the region’s soils. Investors from Morocco’s OCP Group to Africa’s richest person Aliko Dangote and Fertiplant East Africa are investing in operations to produce or improve delivery of fertilizer in countries including Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Fertilizer demand in the region should bounce back in 2023 as prices come down. Still, even before the current squeeze, sub-Saharan Africa had barely reached half its consumption potential, according to AfricaFertilizer.Org. Higher application rates and better use of arable land could transform the market.

“Meeting any of these parameters could double the region’s fertilizer consumption,” Nduva said.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Waymo sues California DMV to keep robotaxi safety details secret

Sandeen said a distinction should be made between trade secrets and plain secrecy.

A Waymo self-driving test vehicle in Mountain View, California.

 (Yichuan Cao / TNS)

Russ Mitchell
Los Angeles Times

Jan. 28, 2022 

Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, can hide from the public safety-related information by designating it as a trade secret.

The topics Waymo wants to keep hidden include how it plans to handle driverless car emergencies, what it would do if a robot taxi started driving itself where it wasn’t supposed to go, and what constraints there are on the car’s ability to traverse San Francisco’s tunnels, tight curves and steep hills. Waymo also wants to keep secret descriptions of crashes involving its driverless cars.

That’s among the information the DMV requires to determine whether to issue permits to deploy robot vehicles on public roads.

The permit was issued last year. Waymo is focusing on San Francisco, where, for the time being, its robotaxis operate under the supervision of trained human drivers.

The wider issue: how to handle the explosion in trade secret claims in an age of artificial intelligence, robot technology, the Internet of Things and pervasive data collection.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 21, contends that Waymo would lose out against other driverless car companies if full permit information were shared with the public.

The suit stems from a public records request to the DMV from an unidentified individual or entity seeking Waymo’s driverless deployment application — the basic filled-out form, attachments of additional material, and responses to follow-up questions from the DMV.

Before releasing the material, the DMV invited Waymo to censor sections the company believed would reveal trade secrets. The DMV sent the package to the requester with major portions blacked out, including full concealment of some of the DMV’s own questions.

Whoever asked for the material then challenged the blackouts. According to the lawsuit, the DMV contacted Waymo and invited the company to sue the agency.

“Every autonomous vehicle company has an obligation to demonstrate the safety of its technology, which is why we’ve transparently and consistently shared data on our safety readiness with the public,” Waymo spokesperson Nicholas Smith said via email when asked about the suit. “We will continue to work with the CA DMV to determine what is appropriate for us to share publicly and hope to find a resolution soon.”

Where the DMV stands on the issue remains unclear. The agency has yet to file a response to the suit and told The Los Angeles Times it won’t discuss ongoing legal matters.

In effect, the DMV is shifting responsibility to the court to determine what’s a trade secret, what’s not, and what balance should be struck between corporate claims and public interest. It can take years to resolve such lawsuits. Therefore, if any of the redacted material is made public, it probably won’t be soon.

Punting to the courts is understandable, said Sharon Sandeen, a law professor and director of the Intellectual Property Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

For government agencies subject to public records laws, “the default rule is supposed to be to disclose, unless there’s a clear exception,” said Sandeen, who researches the intersection of AI and trade secrets. But laws regarding public records and trade secrets are anything but clear, she said. Ambiguous court rulings and lack of legislative clarity have caused agencies to fear that unless they “abide by everything the company wants,” they risk being sued themselves for intellectual property theft.

Trade secrets aren’t automatically protected from public disclosure in matters that call for government regulation, she said. She points to the lengthy, detailed financial documents companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Companies presumably would prefer not to do so, she said, but they must if they’re to sell shares to the general public.

Sandeen said she is in no way opposed to protecting true trade secrets. Few lawyers dispute the idea that a legitimate trade secret should be protected by law. But trade-secret cases have mushroomed even as companies collect enormous amounts of data on the public, information they consider their own business property, leading critics to ask whether their trade-secret claims are overbroad and intentionally exaggerated.

“Corporate and government actors have pushed to transform the law of trade secrecy into one of the most — if not the most — powerful tools to ensure concealment of information,” law professors Charles Graves and Sonia Katyal wrote in an article published in the Georgetown Law Journal in June.

“The irony is that this has happened at the very same time that the opaque nature of algorithmic decision making, coupled with the new interplay between government agencies and private technologies, has created a crisis regarding access to information by journalists, regulators and others working in the public interest.”

Sandeen said a distinction should be made between trade secrets and plain secrecy.

“There needs to be leadership at the legislative and executive level that says this is the type of information we need for the public interest,” she said.

The matter will remain contentious.

In its lawsuit, Waymo says revelation of the safety information at issue would cause “a chilling effect across the industry.”

Sandeen said, “The goal of having cars moving around publicly funded streets without a driver is a real important public interest, and they shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind trade secrets to avoid scrutiny.”

Russ Mitchell

Appeals court upholds California’s net neutrality law

The court ruled 3-0 that the state law isn’t preempted at the federal level

By Kim Lyons@SocialKimLy Jan 28, 2022,

 Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that California’s net neutrality law can remain in place, upholding a lower court decision. California’s 2018 law is the toughest in the country, and was signed into law a year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the federal Open Internet Order. That 2015 order put into place strict net neutrality rules barring internet providers from blocking or throttling legal apps and websites. It also banned prioritization of paid content by ISPs.

California’s law also bars throttling and speed lanes, and not long after the law was passed, the Department of Justice under former President Trump sued the state, arguing that the law was pre-empted by the FCC’s 2017 repeal of the federal law. That lawsuit and other legal challenges prevented the California law from taking effect, but last year the DOJ dropped its lawsuit.

Industry groups, including wireless trade association CTIA, and internet providers AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast also sued to block the California law from taking effect, but a district court judge rejected their challenge, which argued that the FCC decision should preempt the state law.

On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 3-0 to uphold the lower court ruling, saying the FCC “no longer has the authority” to regulate broadband internet services since the agency had reclassified them as information services, rather than telecommunications services. “The agency, therefore, cannot preempt state action,” the court wrote in its ruling, adding that the power to control access could potentially “open the door for anticompetitive, discriminatory behavior that could disadvantage important segments of society.”

The industry groups said in a statement Friday that the “piecemeal approach” to the issue “is untenable, and Congress should codify national rules for an open Internet once and for all.”

At the moment, the FCC can’t reinstate net neutrality at the federal level, because it doesn’t have a majority; it has four members, two Democrats and two Republicans. Gigi Sohn, President Biden’s nominee to replace former FCC chairman Ajit Pai, is still awaiting Senate approval.

AMERICAN JUNKIES

Study: Older adults, Medicare, Medicaid beneficiaries at higher risk for opioid overdose

Older adults and those on Medicare and Medicaid are at higher risk for opioid overdoses than others, according to a new study. Photo by LizM/Pixabay

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Adults age 75 years and older prescribed opioid medications for pain conditions are about three times more likely to overdose on the drugs than younger adults, based on a study related to Oregon and published Friday by JAMA Network Open.

This figure includes people who accidentally take more than the prescribed amount of the medication and those who intentionally overdose in an attempt to self-harm, the researchers said.

Compared with those covered by private healthcare insurance, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries are up to four times more likely to overdose on prescribed opioids, the data showed.

In addition, those with mental health disorders, such as depression and substance use disorder, are at higher risk for overdose with these drugs, according to the researchers.

RELATED Opioid misuse is rising among Americans aged 55 and older

"Opioids are risky for anyone taking them," study co-author Dr. Scott Weiner told UPI in an email.

"Patients should be aware that they need to be especially careful with opioids, [particularly] older adults or those with public insurance," said Weiner, medical director of the Brigham Comprehensive Opioid Response and Education Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Although the use of prescription opioid medications in pain management has declined with increased understanding of the dangers associated with them, the United States saw more than 100,000 people die from overdoses in 2020 alone.

RELATED Opioid prescriptions dispensed at retail pharmacies decline, study finds

Research suggests that misuse of the medications among adults age 55 years and older is on the rise nationally.

Weiner and his colleagues analyzed insurance claims data for nearly 237,000 adults in Oregon who were prescribed opioid pain medications starting in 2015 and tracked their health through the end of 2018.

Of those included in the study, 667, or 0.3%, experienced an opioid overdose, the data showed.

RELATED More than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in one year in U.S., report says

Participants age 75 years and older had more than twice the rate of opioid overdoses per person per year than the next highest demographic group, those ages 18 to 24 years, and a four-fold higher rate than those ages 35 to 44 years, the researchers said.

"Prescribers should understand the longer-term risks of prescribing opioids to their patients for acute pain," Weiner said.

"This does not mean that opioids should be withheld because someone is in a higher risk group [but] that prescribers should use more caution when prescribing to them," he said.

Owners renovating old building in Washington State find century-old mural

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- A couple living in a small Washington town said they were renovating the future home of their new business when they found 60-foot murals underneath the plaster covering the walls.

Nick and Lisa Timm said the bought the building in Okanogan at the end of last year, and this week they were doing renovations at the 115-year-old former theater when they decided to peek behind the plaster on the walls.



"We were about 20 minutes from covering up the walls," Nick Timm told CNN. "I then was like 'Well, let's just look at what's behind all this plaster.'"

The Timms and their crew peeled back the plaster and discovered a 60-foot-long, 20-foot-tall landscape mural.

A crew member suggested there could be a matching mural on the opposite wall, and the theory was confirmed then the plaster was removed.

The Okanogan County Historical Society was able to dig up a 1915 newspaper clip with details about the original plans for the murals at what was then known as the Hub Theatre.

"The new improvements at the Hub include 120 feet of panoramic landscape scenery in light tans," the newspaper said.

The Timms said they want to have the murals restored, and have started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for that.

The couple said they are hoping to have their renovations finished by March so they can open the place as a bar and local meeting space called the Red Light Bar, in honor of the town's single traffic light. 

ETHIOPIAN WAR OF AGGRESSION
Report: Severe hunger affects 40% of Tigray region
By UPI Staff

An Ethiopian refugee woman with her child from Tigray region wait to receive aid.

 File Photo by Ala Kheir/EPA-EFE

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Severe hunger in the Tigray region -- which has been subject to constant conflict for 15 months -- affects almost 40% of all people who live there, a new assessment shows.

The United Nations World Food Program released figures on Friday stating that more than 9 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in northern Ethiopia.
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While 83% of people are food insecure -- meaning they could struggle to feed themselves or their families -- almost 40% are facing severe hunger in the region.

"Families are exhausting all means to feed themselves, with three-quarters of the population using extreme coping strategies to survive," WFP reported. "Diets are increasingly impoverished as food items become unavailable and families rely almost exclusively on cereals while limiting portion sizes and the number of meals they eat each day to make whatever food is available stretch further."

RELATED Biden cites Tigray civilian deaths in call with Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed

The Tigray Emergency Food Security Assessment also found that 13% of children under 5 years old, and half of all pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished.

The results: poor pregnancy outcomes, low-birth weights, stunting and maternal death.

"WFP is doing all it can to ensure our convoys with food and medicines make it through the frontlines," said Michael Dunford, WFP's Regional Director for Eastern Africa. "But if hostilities persist, we need all the parties to the conflict to agree to a humanitarian pause and formally agreed transport corridors, so that supplies can reach the millions besieged by hunger."

Prior to conflict between the Ethiopian government and rebels in the Tigray region in 2020, 93% of people said they hadn't experienced hunger.

Now, only about 45% can say the same.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden raised concerns over airstrikes carried out by the Ethiopian government that have caused civilian casualties. Tigray rebels claimed that more than 50 civilians were killed at the beginning of this month in an airstrike.

The United States has called for an end to the conflict and shown support for the continent with a five-day visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.