June 30, 2017

Federal judge blocks California ban on high-capacity magazines

Source: The Sacramento Bee

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a voter-approved California law that would have forced gun owners to get rid of high-capacity ammunition magazines by this Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who is based in San Diego, issued a preliminary injunction Thursday that found the law was likely unconstitutional because it prevented people from using firearms that employed “whatever common magazine size he or she judges best suits the situation.” The law would have barred people from possessing magazines containing more than 10 bullets.

“The State of California’s desire to criminalize simple possession of a firearm magazine able to hold more than 10 rounds is precisely the type of policy choice that the Constitution takes off the table,” the injunction read.

Benitez added that “a final decision will take too long to offer relief, and because the statute will soon visit irrevocable harm on Plaintiffs and all those similarly situated a state-wide preliminary injunction is necessary and justified to maintain the status quo.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/article158965184.html

June 26, 2017

Seattles Minimum Wage Hike May Have Gone Too Far

Source: Five Thirty Eight

As cities across the country pushed their minimum wages to untested heights in recent years, some economists began to ask: How high is too high?

Seattle, with its highest-in-the-country minimum wage,1 may have hit that limit.

In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped from $11 an hour to $13 for large employers, the second big increase in less than a year. New research released Monday by a team of economists at the University of Washington suggests the wage hike may have come at a significant cost: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers, and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. Crucially, the negative impact of lost jobs and hours more than offset the benefits of higher wages — on average, low-wage workers earned $125 per month less because of the higher wage, a small but significant decline.

“The goal of this policy was to deliver higher incomes to people who were struggling to make ends meet in the city,” said Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington economist who was one of the study’s authors. “You’ve got to watch out because at some point you run the risk of harming the people you set out to help.”

Read more: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-hike-may-have-gone-too-far/

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This contradicts what I've heard anecdotally, but thought I'd post it here.

June 22, 2017

Harley-Davidson enters race to buy Italian rival Ducati: sources

Source: Reuters

U.S. motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson (HOG.N) is lining up a takeover bid for Italian rival Ducati, potentially bringing together two of the most famous names in motorcycling in a deal that could be worth up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.67 billion), sources told Reuters.

Indian motorcycle maker Bajaj Auto (BAJA.NS) and several buyout funds are also preparing bids for Ducati, which is being put up for sale by German carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE).

A deal with Harley-Davidson would bring together the maker of touring bikes like the Electra Glide that are symbolic of America with a leading European maker whose high-performance bikes have a distinguished racing heritage.

Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson has hired Goldman Sachs to work on the deal, one source familiar with the matter said, adding tentative bids were expected in July.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-ducati-m-a-idUSKBN19C1XX?il=0

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As a Ducati rider, I'm not super excited about this.

June 19, 2017

How Cats Used Humans to Conquer the World

Sounds about right.

From The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/cat-domination/530685/

Sometime around the invention of agriculture, the cats came crawling. It was mice and rats, probably, that attracted the wild felines. The rats came because of stores of grain, made possible by human agriculture. And so cats and humans began their millennia-long coexistence.

This relationship has been good for us of course—formerly because cats caught the disease-carrying pests stealing our food and presently because cleaning up their hairballs somehow gives purpose to our modern lives. But this relationship has been great for cats as species, too. From their native home in the Middle East, the first tamed cats followed humans out on ships and expeditions to take over the world—settling on six continents with even the occasional foray to Antarctica. Domestication has been a fantastically successful evolutionary strategy for cats.

June 17, 2017

Carrie Fisher Died From Sleep Apnea, Other Factors

Source: CBS Washington

LOS ANGELES — Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnea and a combination of other factors, but investigators were not able to pinpoint an exact cause, coroner’s officials said Friday.

Among the factors that contributed to Fisher’s death was buildup of fatty tissue in the walls of her arteries, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said in a news release late Friday. The release states that the “Star Wars” actress showed signs of having taken multiple drugs, but investigators could not determine whether they contributed to her death in December.

Her manner of death would be listed as undetermined, the agency said.



Read more: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2017/06/17/carrie-fisher-sleep-apnea/

June 16, 2017

Officer who shot Philando Castile found not guilty

Source: CNN

Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop last year, was found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter Friday.

He also was acquitted of two counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety.

A Minnesota jury has reached a verdict in the manslaughter trial of Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop last year.

Yanez is on trial for one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety because Castile's girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter were also in the car.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/philando-castile-trial-verdict/index.html

June 15, 2017

Germany and Austria warn US over expanded Russia sanctions

Source: Politico

Germany and Austria on Thursday hit back at proposed U.S. sanctions that would threaten European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, accusing the U.S. of politicizing its economic interest in selling natural gas to Europe.

“Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not for the United States of America,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria’s Federal Chancellor Christian Kern said in a joint statement.

U.S. senators on Wednesday supported extending and expanding sanctions against Moscow.

The two politicians warned that it wouldn’t “only be highly regrettable, but also damaging” to their countries’ cooperation on the Ukraine crisis if “irrelevant considerations such as U.S. economic interest in exporting gas were to gain the upper hand.” At the heart of their push-back is the planned expansion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

Read more: http://www.politico.eu/article/germany-and-austria-warn-u-s-over-expanded-russia-sanctions/

June 9, 2017

'Cereal' offender shoots man with Rice Krispies filled bullet

Source: NY Post

A flake allegedly stuffed a shotgun shell full of Rice Krispies and blasted it at another man, according to reports.

Cops busted Timothy Glass Jr., 29, on Wednesday after they say the Eureka, Calif. man use a flare gun to fire the breakfast-stuffed bullet at the victim’s hand, then flee on a bike, according to KRCR News.

Police caught up with Glass, but he put up a fight and hurt one of the officers in the process, the channel reports.

His first victim was rushed to hospital with non-life threatening wounds to his hand but told cops he doesn’t want to pursue charges.

Read more: http://nypost.com/2017/06/09/cereal-offender-shoots-man-with-rice-krispies-filled-bullet/

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This one made me laugh, Something we all need from time to time. I wonder what posssessed him to put cereal in a shotgun shell, and put said shotgun shell into a flare gun. And it actually worked.

June 7, 2017

Justice Department ends practice of using settlements to fund outside groups

Source: The Hill

The Justice Department will end an Obama-era practice of allowing settlements won in federal legal cases to be donated to community organizations or other third-party groups, declaring that settlements must now be directed towards those directly harmed by wrongdoing, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.

The Justice Department's policy on settlements was a hallmark of the legal proceedings following the U.S. housing market collapse. From 2013 to 2016, the Obama Justice Department directed $46 billion in settlements to outside groups that focused on housing aid and other issues.

The move from Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the latest in the Trump administration's efforts to undo Obama-era policies long criticized by conservatives.

"In recent years the Department of Justice has sometimes required or encouraged defendants to make these payments to third parties as a condition of settlement," Sessions said in a statement. "We are ending this practice and ensuring that settlement funds are only used to compensate victims, redress harm, and punish and deter unlawful conduct."

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/336701-justice-department-ends-practice-of-using-settlements-to-fund-outside

June 5, 2017

Supreme Court agrees to decide major privacy case on cellphone data

Source: Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a major case on privacy rights in the digital age that will determine whether police officers need warrants to access past cellphone location information kept by wireless carriers.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal brought by a man who was arrested in 2011 as part of an investigation into a string of armed robberies at Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in the Detroit area over the preceding months. Police helped establish that the man, Timothy Carpenter, was near the scene of the crimes by securing cell site location information from his cellphone carrier.

At issue is whether failing to obtain a warrant violates a defendant's right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

The information that law enforcement agencies can obtain from wireless carriers shows which local cellphone towers users connect to at the time they make calls. Police can use historical data to determine if a suspect was in the vicinity of a crime scene or real-time data to track a suspect.

Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN18W1RY