This year, the National Park Service is celebrating their 100th anniversary by granting free admission for everyone during National Park Week, April 16-24th. That means it’s a great time to get outside and explore our national lands, parks, and monuments.
Two weeks ago I paid to have lasers fired into my eyes. The next day I woke up like Peter Parker, post-spider bite. I couldn’t climb walls, but I could see so well I felt like a superhero. For the first time since I was a kid I could open my eyes and just see. My laser eye surgery story isn’t quite comic book-worthy, but here’s everything that happened, in case you want those powers too.
If you’re a news hound, there are plenty of apps and services out there to help you keep tabs on what’s going on around the world . Heatmap News does just that, with an added bonus: it maps out exactly where that news is happening.
There aren’t many drawbacks to automating your finances, but one you occasionally encounter is having to update all of your bills when you get a new credit or debit card. To make it easier, finance writer J.Money suggests making a list of every account linked to your cards.
Your microwave can be just as good at cooking as your stove , but it takes getting familiar with your power settings . You have to adjust them according to what you’re cooking, and that means knowing your wattage. If you’re not sure what your microwave’s wattage is, boil a cup of water to find out.
As medical marijuana becomes increasingly prevalent, it can be confusing for those of us with little more than a cursory familiarity with recreational use to understand how the drug can be utilized for medical purposes. Here today to offer some guidance is Dr. Rachna Patel, a medical marijuana doctor in the Bay Area.
WASHINGTON — Attorneys for a former Prince George’s County teachers aide indicted on federal charges that he sexually exploited children to produce pornography say the evidence against their client should be thrown out.
Attorneys for Deonte Carraway say he has an IQ of 63 and didn’t have the capacity to understand the circumstances when he waived his rights and made his confession, which police say was voluntary.
Carraway’s public defenders filed four motions in defense of the 22-year-old school volunteer. A federal grand jury indicted Carraway in late February.
The former teacher’s aide at Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary School is charged with coercing kids between 9 and 12 years old into performing sex acts on him and each other and videotaping them.
Carraway’s defense team also wants to throw out evidence taken from two cellphones. They say police collected the evidence, including videos, photos and chat messages, without a warrant and without probable cause to justify a search.
According to court documents, videos of children taken on those phones serve as the basis for the charges against Carraway. Investigators obtained a search warrant to search one of the phones; Carraway gave them permission to search the other.
Carraway filmed some of the videos at the elementary school — one of multiple locations where he had volunteered or had contact with children.
Carraway was also indicted on multiple child sex offense charges In Prince George’s County.
The post Attorneys seek to toss evidence against former Md. teachers aide appeared first on WTOP.
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — A man who shot and killed a Prince George’s County firefighter and wounded another has been released from custody but could eventually face charges.
The man’s brother, who had summoned the firefighters, was outside the house with them and was also shot. Two other firefighters were injured.
The man’s family said the shooting was a tragic mistake.
Prosecutors say it’s early in the investigation and the goal is to determine whether the shooter’s actions were reasonable.
“What we have to assess is what’s reasonable, given what his belief was about whether danger existed or not,” said Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks.
“Once we have all of the facts in the case, we’ll have a better opportunity to assess it — to understand what he believed at the time that this occurred and whether his belief was reasonable in the mind of an ordinary person.”
Police say the weapon used was a handgun. Still, a number of questions remain unanswered, and detectives have yet to interview Swain and the man’s brother.
“Circumstantially how this incident played out inside the home,” said Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski. “Who was in what position, what was the position of the door, how many shots were fired to a certainty. Those are the kind of questions that we have to have answers to.”
It’s not unusual for firefighters to force their way into homes in emergencies, when there is no response from inside.
“From the preliminary information I’ve looked at, our folks did everything they were trained to do,” said Prince George’s County Fire Chief Marc Bashoor. “They did exactly what they were trained to do. They did all of the right things.”
Bashoor said the 911 call to the fire department indicated that the man was potentially suffering from a diabetic crisis.
Alsobrooks promises a thorough investigation, which she says is likely to be brought to a grand jury.
Swain, who suffered four gunshot wounds, is improving, but Bashoor said “he has a long road ahead.” Bashoor planned an afternoon meeting with Ulmschneider’s family.
The visitation for Ulmschneider is scheduled for Tuesday evening at St John’s Parish in Hollywood, Maryland. The funeral mass is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at St. John’s with a private family burial to follow.
Two other firefighters were also hurt in Friday’s incident and are being called heroes for their actions when the gunfire erupted.
A male and female firefighter from the Morningside Volunteer Fire Department, who have not yet been publicly named, dragged Swain to safety.
“They were in the process of dragging one of our folks back and in that process they were injured, in the process of dragging and falling and pulling back,” Bashoor said.
Both Bashoor and Stawinski point out that firefighters aren’t trained to confront gunfire.
“For those firefighters and EMT’s and paramedics to face gunfire and be able to think about rescuing their own and pulling their own … it’s nothing short of valiant,” Bashoor said.
Stawinski agrees.
“What they did is nothing short of heroic,” Stawinski added. “The steps that they took quickly and then not just steps but relay information to the responding officers so that we could make an apprehension of this individual, I can’t say enough about the good work that they did on that day.”
The female firefighter suffered a dislocated jaw. Both were treated and released following Friday’s shooting.
The post Man who shot firefighters could eventually face charges appeared first on WTOP.
Google Play Music Podcasts in action. (credit: Google)
Google Play Music Podcasts has finally launched. Back in October, Google announced that it was jumping back into podcast distribution and began accepting RSS feeds to build a podcast store. In what was seemingly an accident, the feature briefly went live for some users in February. But today, Google says the feature will officially go live on the Web and roll out to Android devices. There's no mention of an iOS launch, but it can't be far behind.
Google Play Music Podcasts sticks a podcast store right in the Google Play Music interface. You can search for and subscribe to your favorite shows and then play them everywhere Play Music works. Play Music will occasionally check for new episodes and download them automatically. To start, the store is only live in the US and Canada.
The addition of podcasts makes the Google Play Music app an even busier place. The app is now home to podcasts, an online music locker, a Pandora-style radio system, hand-curated playlists from Google's Songza acquisition, an à la carte music store, and an all-you-can-eat music subscription service. This is also the first non-music content offered in an app called Google Play Music. Mashing everything into a single catch-all audio app means it should be easy to get podcasts to work on Android TV, Android Wear, and Android Auto, but it makes the interface a bit more complicated.
While we live in a fast food world that’s been moving steadily toward healthier menu options, you better believe that if someone puts unlimited French fries on the table, people are going to react. That’s where a McDonald’s franchisee in Missouri with his big “McDonald’s of the future” idea comes in. In his version of the future, we will all eat as many fries as we want.
The word has been spreading about the man’s idea for his new, 6,500-square-foot restaurant opening this July, which will also feature touches like “Earth tone” decor, lots of play space for kids, and self-service kiosks. The news really grabbing everyone by the stomachs, of course, is this crazy idea about fries.
It’s part of the customizable experience the franchisee is going for, he told the News-Press Gazette in St. Joseph, MO earlier this month, in a report that’s just now making the rounds on the internet.
The self-serve kiosks will allow customers to personalize their burger or chicken sandwich orders, which comes with the option for all-you-can-eat fries.
“There really are hundreds of different choices to build the burger of your dreams,” he told the paper. “Once you’ve placed your order, you can find your seat because we’ll bring it out to you.”
And if the burger of your dream is topped with an unending pile of fries that stretches into the heavens, well then, so be it.
McDonald’s of the future coming to St. Joseph [News-Press Gazette]
With the U.S. Department of Justice still attempting to compel Apple to unlock the iPhone of a drug suspect, the tech giant is asking the court why this is so important when the former owner of that iPhone has already pled guilty.
This is the case where the government originally sought a court order from a federal magistrate judge, seeking to require Apple assist in unlocking the suspect’s device under the All Writs Act — a piece of law that dates back to 1789 that allows a court compel a person or group to assist in the enforcement of a court order — but only if that assistance is both necessary and “agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”
In February, that magistrate judge shot down the government’s request, concluding that the prosecutors’ application of the All Writs Act went too far, and that Apple’s connection to the case was too tangential to force the company to aid in unlocking the iPhone.
But earlier this month, the DOJ notified the court that it “continues to require Apple’s assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant,” and asked a District Court judge to consider its All Writs Act request.
In a memorandum of law [PDF] filed on Friday by Apple, the company accuses the DOJ of ignoring the “inconvenient fact” of the magistrate judge’s clear rejection by asking the court to effectively start the entire process over again.
Apple contends that the odds are slim that unlocking the iPhone in this case will provide anything of evidentiary value “given that all defendants have pled guilty and the phone was seized and last used nearly two years ago.”
Even if the government does believe it still needs to access the information on the iPhone, Apple argues that the DOJ “utterly failed” to meet one of the All Writs Act requirements — that Apple’s assistance is necessary.
“The government has made no showing that it has exhausted alternative means for extracting data from the iPhone at issue here,” writes Apple. “Indeed, the government has gone so far as to claim that it has no obligation to do so,” even though there are reportedly third parties that can provide work-around solutions for iPhones running the older version of iOS on the suspect’s device.
Apple also argues that the government is misrepresenting the All Writs Act and what it allows the court to do. The DOJ has previously claimed that its application of the law to iPhones and other devices was within the scope of the law because Congress had not yet explicitly said otherwise.
But Apple counters that “It simply is not the case that federal courts can issue any order the executive branch dreams up unless and until Congress expressly prohibits it… If the government’s view is correct, Congress would never need to pass permissive legislation in the law enforcement context because everything would be on the table until explicitly prohibited. That may be what the government prefers, but it is not the legal system in which it operates.”
After more than a decade of legal back-and-forth, the issue of whether or not Google Books — which allows users to search the texts of millions of scanned books — violates copyright law has been settled (for now), as the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to hear an appeal from the nation’s largest trade group for professional writers.
This lawsuit goes back to the original Google Library project, which launched in 2004 as a series of partnerships between the search engine behemoth and several of the nation’s top research libraries. These institutions select books from their collections for Google to scan and make searchable — without permission from the authors involved.
While Google Library has resulted in the scanning of more than 20 million titles, many of these books are either out of print or in the public domain.
The real problem for some writers came with the launch of Google Books, which allows users to freely search for terms and phrases — just like a normal Google search, but one that turns up results from scanned books instead of websites.
The search results may pull up what Google describes as “snippets” — actual images from the scanned books — but which some critics believe cross the line into copyright violation, especially because it often brings in pages before and after the sought-after term.
For example, a search for “wherefore art thou romeo” on Google Books may lead you to Harold Bloom’s analysis of Romeo & Juliet, but the results don’t turn up the full book. However, because of the frequency of the use of the name “Romeo” in the book, much of this particular title is freely available to peruse.
To get around making an entire book available via search, Google “blacklists” certain portions of scanned titles so that these pages will not show up. Additionally, since 2005 Google has allowed authors to request the removal of snippets from Books search results. Additionally, if a single snippet is deemed acceptable to meet the needs of a search — say a dictionary or glossary entry — no neighboring pages are shown.
The lawsuit that made it all the way to SCOTUS consideration began back in Sept. 2005, when the Authors Guild — a professional organization representing thousands of professional writers — sued Google on behalf of its affected members.
Three years later, Google and the Guild reached a settlement that would have seen the search engine pay out around $125 million to copyright holders but which would also have allowed the company to continue scanning titles and make money from them by running ads against the results.
This settlement was ultimately rejected by the court in 2011 because it would give Google a “significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”
And so an amended class action complaint was filed in 2011, only to be dismissed in 2013 by a U.S. District Court judge. In dismissing the case, that judge declared that Google Books passes the 4-point sniff test for fair use.
• First, the program is transformative and non-commercial. It “digitizes books and transforms
expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers, and others find books.” It also “does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books.”
• Second, the scanned texts have all been previously published and made available to the public. Unpublished works present a higher bar for fair use considerations.
• The third factor in the fair use test involves how much of the original text is made available. While the judge acknowledged that Google puts limits on what can be seen, this factor “weighs slightly against a finding of fair use.”
• Finally, there’s the consideration of what sort of impact Google Books might have on the market value for the scanned texts.
The Guild had argued that the Google snippets could serve as a “market replacement” for the scanned books, and that freeloaders could use multiple search terms to eventually obtain all the pages of a book for free, but the judge found that these arguments didn’t make sense.
“Google does not sell its scans, and the scans do not replace the books,” read the dismissal. “While partner libraries have the ability to download a scan of a book from their collections, they owned the books already — they provided the original book to Google to scan. Nor is it likely that someone would take the time and energy to input countless searches to try and get enough snippets to comprise an entire book.”
The Guild then appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Second Circuit, located in New York City, the heart of the U.S. book publishing industry. And in Oct. 2015, the appeals court not only upheld the lower court ruling, but explicitly stated that Google Books constituted a protected “fair use” of the scanned materials.
“The purpose of Google’s copying of the original copyrighted books is to make available significant information about those books, permitting a searcher to identify those that contain a word or term of interest, as well as those that do not include reference to it,” explained the court. “In addition… Google allows readers to learn the frequency of usage of selected words in the aggregate corpus of published books in different historical periods,” thus satisfying the “transformative” portion of the fair use test.
Additionally, the court defended the importance of Google’s snippets, as they provide context for the search results. Without snippets, users only know “whether and how often the searched term appears in the book,” according to the ruling. Merely knowing a term exists in a book is not sufficient for evaluating that book’s value as a resource.
“Google’s division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest (without revealing so much as to threaten the author’s copyright interests),” explained the court.
The appeals court did acknowledge that the “snippet function can cause some loss of sales,” because once the searcher has found the information needed in that book, they may have no reason to purchase it. However, the court said this isn’t the same as producing an actual, competing substitute for the book.
Furthermore, most instances in which a search result would negate the need to buy a book involve the gathering of mere factual data — which is itself not copyrightable. If you’re looking to confirm the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt had polio, a search for “roosevelt polio” might turn up book snippets containing the relevant information. The researcher’s needs are fulfilled without buying the book or borrowing it from a library, but what was gleaned from the search were mere facts that aren’t protected by copyright.
The Authors Guild attempted to take its appeal to the Supreme Court, but this morning the nation’s highest court rejected the Guild’s petition without comment, meaning the 2015 appeals court ruling stands and Google Books can continue on without having to pay any royalties or make any further concessions to copyright holders.
Authors Guild president Roxana Robinson says this morning’s news is a “colossal loss,” and “further proof that we’re witnessing a vast redistribution of wealth from the creative sector to the tech sector, not only with books, but across the spectrum of the arts.”
“Blinded by the public benefit arguments, the Second Circuit’s ruling tells us that Google, not authors, deserves to profit from the digitization of their books,” said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild. “The Second Circuit misunderstood the importance of emerging online markets for books and book excerpts. It failed to comprehend the very real potential harm to authors resulting from its decision.”
The Guild’s general counsel says the organization will monitor Google Books to make sure that it continues to operate under the fair use principals outlined by the appeals court.
With the dust just beginning to settle surrounding the bankruptcy and 140-store closure of sporting goods retailer Sports Authority, another, albeit smaller, outdoor gear retailer is following suit. Vestis Retail Group, the operator of brand Eastern Mountain Sports, Bob’s Stores, and Sport Chalet, officially filed bankruptcy papers today, outlining a restructuring plan that focuses on closing 56 stores.
Bloomberg reports that Vestis Retail Group, owned by private equity firm Versa Capital Management LLC, is citing consumers’ changing shopping preferences and its failure to properly respond as reasons for the filing.
“The continuing shift in consumer behavior away from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and toward online-only stores, together with increased competition from big-box and specialty sporting goods retailers, have contributed to an industrywide weakness,” Mark Walsh, chief executive officer of Vestis, said in a court filing.
The three retail stores focused on specific segments of the outdoor world, with Eastern Mountain selling camping equipment and gear for hiking, skiing and adventure sports; Bob’s centered on family clothing and footwear in the northeastern U.S.; and Sport Chalet operating as a general sporting good chain in the western U.S.
The retail group also noted that the recent demise of Sports Authority contributed to the company’s eventual downfall.
“Ongoing store-closing sales at certain Sports Authority locations have created unusual competition,” Walsh said in court papers, which also cited unusually warm weather in the northeastern U.S. last year that hurt winter-gear sales and trouble converting to a new software platform as contributing factors.
Under the company’s restructuring plan it will close all 47 Sport Chalet stores, as well as one Bob’s store in Oregon and eight Eastern Mountain Sports stores around the country.
According to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, Vestis Retail has as much as $500 million in liabilities and less than $50,000 of assets.
The company’s assets will reportedly remain with the Versa family, with Vestis BSI Funding II agreeing to buy nearly all of the remaining assets.
Vestis will seek approval of a court-supervised auction process with the BSI offer as the opening bid, Bloomberg reports.
Eastern Mountain in Bankruptcy as Shopping Habits Change [Bloomberg]
Realizing that the business of selling consoles and physical copies of new and used games in malls won’t last forever, GameStop has been working to diversify its business, acquiring related businesses ranging from third-party Apple store chain Simply Mac to pop culture purveyor ThinkGeek. The company is now starting a new venture even more closely related to its core business: GameTrust, which will publish games from outside developers, and distribute them to its customers.
They’re not starting a game studio, which would develop new titles from the ground up, but partnering with game studios that will take care of the creative and technical side of developing new games while GameStop distributes them. They’ll sell the new studio’s games in their stores and online, and they’ll be available for PCs, consoles, and on physical media and downloads.
The first game that will come from the deal will be the Song of the Deep from Insomniac Studios, scheduled for release sometime this summer. So far, GameTrust has also made deals with Ready at Dawn Studios, Tequila Works, and Frozenbyte to publish games yet to be announced.
GameTrust [Official Site]
The nation’s three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — are also three of the four most-complained-about companies to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with 77% of those complaints involving incorrect information on consumers’ credit reports. But when a consumer attempts to dispute a debt on their report, what legal obligation do these agencies have to actually investigate?
A Colorado man is currently trying to sue TransUnion for allegedly failing to look into a forged automobile lease extension that resulted in thousands of dollars being incorrectly listed on his credit report for more than a year.
The man and his then-girlfriend had purchased the vehicle in 2009, with financing via Toyota’s auto-loan division, TMCC. The couple subsequently split, with the ex-girlfriend keeping the car. When it came time for the lease to expire, the ex signed an extension under her name and forging his signature:
He says he had no idea any of this was going on until after the lease payments went unmade and his TransUnion credit report was stained with upwards of $9,000 in lease debt.
After some investigation on his own, he was able to obtain a copy of the lease extension, bearing a signature that looks little like the one he’d affixed to the original lease.
The man provided this information, along with other documentation intended to clearly show a problem with the signatures, to TransUnion, but rather than fully investigate the dispute, he says the agency only sent an automated consumer dispute verification (ACDV) form to Toyota to simply confirm that the debt in question was legitimate.
Federal law does not specify the depths to which a bureau must look into a disputed debt, other than to say it must “conduct a reasonable reinvestigation to determine whether the disputed information is inaccurate.”
However, in 1994 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals outlined a two-factor test for determining the extent to which a credit reporting agency must reinvestigate disputed debts: First, the consumer must have alerted the agency to the possibility that the source of that debt may be unreliable, and second whether the cost to the agency of verifying the disputed information outweighs the “possible harm inaccurately reported information may cause the consumer.”
In its response to the forged lease extension lawsuit, TransUnion argued that the agency could not have resolved this particular dispute by means of a reasonable investigation, and that its only duty was to ask Toyota to verify the validity of the debt.
And in Dec. 2015, a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin dismissed the lawsuit against TransUnion, ruling [PDF] that expecting the credit agency to investigate the handwriting samples provided by the plaintiff would be “quite costly and unnecessary,” and that the underlying issue of the consumer’s dispute — the forgery on the lease extension — was a matter to be resolved through the legal system, not by a credit bureau.
“In this case, even if Trans Union were to have performed its own handwriting analysis
and decided that it believed [the plaintiff]’s explanation, Trans Union had no authority to cancel TMCC’s lease or otherwise to relieve [the plaintiff] of his obligation to TMCC.”
Thus, according to the court, without a “proper tribunal” having ruled on the forgery issue, TransUnion was “accurately” reporting the debt on the man’s credit report.
In filing the lawsuit, the plaintiff had cited a number of cases wherein courts ruled that simply having a creditor check off a box on an ACDV as not sufficient enough to verify the validity of the debt. There was the credit agency that failed to communicate that the consumer appeared to have been the victim of identity theft, or the case of a consumer whose report data had been mingled with someone of the same name.
“In each of these cases, the credit reporting agency had the means to correct the inaccuracies at issue by providing more complete information to the creditor or by acting more quickly,” wrote the court, noting that in this plaintiff’s case, TransUnion “did not have a duty to reinvestigate because it did not have the authority to determine whether the credit agreement was valid or the signature was a forgery.”
With the assistance of attorneys from Public Citizen, the plaintiff filed an appeal [PDF], arguing that TransUnion’s inability to modify the debt does not negate its obligation to provide accurate information.
The appeals brief filed today contends that the District Court judge took as a given the notion that the only way TransUnion could have investigated the disputed signatures would be to hire an expensive handwriting analysis. Instead, argues the brief, it could have been as simple as speaking to the employees involved in executing the lease extension.
The brief also questions the District Court’s decision to dismiss the case without letting a jury hear any of the facts or make a determination regarding what TransUnion should have done.
“Here, a jury could easily find that Trans Union did not conduct a reasonable reinvestigation in this case and therefore violated the [Fair Credit Reporting Act],” reads the brief, which adds that the plaintiff also “has a strong case to make to a jury that his real signature on the 2009 lease and the phony signature on the 2013 extension are so dissimilar on their face that Trans Union could have resolved the dispute without incurring any cost at all: All it needed to do was look at the documents.”
In dismissing the case, the District Court had framed the dispute as a legal matter, but the appeal contends that it is a simple dispute of an easily provable fact — Did he sign the document or was his signature forged?
“If correcting errors arising from obvious forgeries is beyond the reach of the dispute process, then the rights provided by the FCRA would mean very little and the consumer reporting agency’s role would be reduced to that of a scribe,” argues the brief.
Just to lighten things up, let’s all watch John Oliver’s recent takedown of TransUnion and its cohorts:
A man at a Menards store in Michigan was caught carrying 19 boxes of K9 Advantix, a flea and tick preventive medication for dogs, past all of the cash registers, and security staff swooped in. Security staff accused him of shoplifting and contacted the police, but the suspect decided that he would rather go to the hospital instead.
According to the police report, he was confined to a separate room because security staff believed that he may have a knife. While waiting for the cops to show up, be began opening and drinking the flea medication: which, we should emphasize, is a topical medication meant for dogs. No one should drink it, even if they do have fleas.
He also had an unidentified white pill, which the security staff couldn’t prevent him from swallowing once they saw him put it in his mouth. That earned him the trip to the hospital that he wanted.
The 19 boxes of flea medicine were valued at $239.90. The man said that he planned to sell him to pay his rent.
Alleged shoplifter ‘ticks’ off security [Michigan City News-Dispatch]
FAIRFAX, Va.— The former Fairfax County police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
Adam Torres was set to go on trial Monday for murder in the 2013 death of John Geer, 46, of Springfield, Virginia.
Now, Torres has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors have said that Geer had his hands up when Torres fired one round into his chest during a 40-minute standoff.
Torres is the only Fairfax County police officer ever charged with a shooting in the department’s history.
Prosecutors have said Torres was angry over the breakup of his marriage and unfit for duty after fighting with his wife when he was called to Geer’s home.
Torres previously said he thought Geer was dropping his hands and might be reaching for a nearby handgun.
The long delay in bringing charges against Torres prompted accusations that the county was stonewalling prosecutors’ investigation.
WTOP’s Jaime Forzato, Neal Augenstein and Colleen Kelleher contributed to this article.
The post Fairfax Co. officer pleads guilty in shooting of John Geer appeared first on WTOP.
Tampabay.com |
Swiftmud dropped gun club lawsuit one day after lawmaker sent NRA-crafted dismissal plan, records show Tampabay.com By early this year, the Florida agency that oversees water quality in the Tampa Bay area seemed to have the upper hand in an acrimonious legal fight with the Skyway Trap & Skeet Club. Related News/Archive. Lawmakers advance bill that opponents say will ... About the TraceThe Trace all 2 news articles » |
WASHINGTON — Soon, billions of bugs — that’s billions with a “B” — will invade the East Coast, but this time the D.C. area is off the hook.
“We’re not going to have cicadas this year,” said Mike Raupp, the bug guy at the University of Maryland College Park.
He was talking about the brood 5 cicadas, commonly known as 17-year cicadas after the amount of time they’ve been living in the ground. They’ll emerge soon — by the end of May, depending on weather conditions.
“Parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia — it is going to be spectacular,” Raupp said.
He says you will have to travel a little farther west of D.C. to enjoy cicadas this year.
“I know — how disappointing (that) we are off the hook, in this area,” Rupp said. “I guess this is good news for cicada-phobes. But sorely disappointing for cicada-philes.”
But come 2021, he says, look out. “That’s the big brood, brood 10,” he said. “We’ll all be treated to that, even in the D.C.-metro area. This is the largest mass emergence of cicadas anywhere on the planet.”
Northern Virginia faced brood 2 back in 2014.
“These are kind of fun bugs,” he said. “They’re not going to hurt you or your pets.”
The post D.C. area spared from 17-year cicada invasion — for now appeared first on WTOP.
WASHINGTON — Subway trains are no longer running on a single track on Metrorail’s Orange and Blue Lines between Arlington Cemetery and Foggy Bottom after an insulator fire Monday morning.
Arlington Fire tweets that a fire on Metrorail tracks was due to an insulator and is out. No one was injured.
ACFD units working a fire on the trackebed @RosslynVA metro. More to follow. pic.twitter.com/IpoRSajftt
— Arlington Fire (@ACFDPIO) April 18, 2016
Metro tweets that in addition to the Orange and Blue Lines, Silver Line trains had been only operating between Wiehle-Reston East and Ballston only. Metro tweeted just before 7 a.m. that service had resumed between Wiehle-Reston East and Largo Town Center.
The post Insulator fire on Metro put out appeared first on WTOP.
What "The other NRA" is trying to shoot down CBS News In the battle over raising the minimum wage, both employers and workers have plenty of skin in the game, although one industry is facing extra heat: restaurants. No one may have more at stake than what's known as "the other NRA" -- the National ... |
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — As four men sat in prison for a murder they didn’t commit, records show that state investigators sent proof of their innocence to a North Carolina prosecutor, but he never revealed it to the convicted men.
He didn’t have to. Nothing in North Carolina’s legal standards requires a prosecutor to turn over evidence of innocence after a conviction.
The four, along with a fifth who also was convicted, were eventually cleared through the work of a commission that investigates innocence — but not until they’d served years in prison, including several years when a judge says the prosecutor and sheriff “did nothing to follow up on” another man’s confession.
Some people now are calling for change.
“If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,” said attorney Brad Bannon, of the North Carolina Bar’s ethics committee.
He wants North Carolina to adopt a rule recommended by the American Bar Association, requiring prosecutors to come forward if they find “new, credible and material evidence” that an innocent person is serving time. Thirteen states have adopted the post-conviction rule. North Carolina isn’t among them.
The State Bar rejected the rule several years ago but recently appointed a committee to reconsider.
Advocates call the Buncombe County case a prime example of why North Carolina needs the rule. The innocent men say the district attorney at the time, Ron Moore, could have helped but didn’t. Some of them had pleaded guilty to avoid the threat of the death penalty in a home invasion murder in 2000.
“There were so many things he could have done to make this right, and he continued not to do that,” one of the men, Larry Williams Jr., 32, said in an Associated Press interview.
Another man confessed in 2003 and implicated an accomplice whose DNA was eventually found on masks and bandanas near the scene. A judge last year wrote that the sheriff’s office and district attorney “did nothing to follow up on” the confession.
Two of the men were exonerated in 2011 through the work of the state’s Innocence Inquiry Commission. A judge, citing the commission’s work, declared two others innocent last year — along with a fifth co-defendant, sentenced in 2003, who served less time than the others — and the county agreed to pay the five a total of nearly $8 million.
The co-defendant sentenced in 2003 had been informed about the confession before he pleaded guilty but the others, already convicted, were left out in the cold.
“There is no evidence in the file that any action was taken in regards to this confession other than providing it in discovery” to the one man, the commission wrote in its brief.
“It’s about as egregious a situation in post-conviction as I can imagine,” said attorney David Rudolf, who represented one of the men in a lawsuit. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”
Moore, who lost a primary bid for re-election in 2014, didn’t return messages from the AP.
But in a December 2014 deposition, Moore said he didn’t believe the 2003 confession.
” … I felt like the right people had pled guilty or been charged at that point,” he said.
He said he didn’t learn of the DNA match — obtained in 2007 — until an Innocence Inquiry Commission investigator told him about it in 2011. However, the commission report states the SBI issued the report Oct. 1, 2007, and copied it to Moore.
“There is no indication in the SBI files, the sheriff’s office files or the DA’s files that any further action was taken” on the DNA match, the report says.
Robert Wilcoxson, who got a 15-year sentence in the case, said a prosecutor should turn over such evidence, even if it’s not required.
“It’s your professional duty to correct a wrong when you’ve got the power to do it,” he said. “Your standard has got to be higher than the average person.”
When the Conference of District Attorneys in North Carolina opposed the rule in 2009, its members said it was too broad and burdensome.
People who think the rule makes common sense may be imagining cases with clear-cut evidence such as DNA, said Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall. More typical are phone calls from people saying they heard from a friend that a witness says he or she lied on the stand, Woodall said.
“It can be very hard for a prosecutor, even the person who handled the case, to filter through,” he said.
In addition to North Carolina, Michigan has rejected the model post-conviction rule, the ABA said. Two states approved it; 11 approved a modified version.
An ex-federal prosecutor who drafted the rule, Bruce Green, said that in some states “prosecutors argue the world will come to an end if we have these provisions.”
But there’s no evidence it’s caused harm, he said. “I think over time other states will do the same thing,” he said.
While no one knows how often post-conviction evidence of innocence remains buried, advocates say any preventable cases are too many.
“There’s no number that’s acceptable if there are things we can do to avoid it,” said Chris Mumma, executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, a nonprofit that identifies, investigates and advances credible claims of innocence. “Innocence should be an issue supported by prosecutors and defense attorneys. If prosecutors would step out of their adversarial roles and into their roles as ministers of justice, there wouldn’t be any question about this.”
A prosecutor in one of two states that adopted the rule as written said he doesn’t understand any opposition.
“I don’t want anybody in prison who didn’t do what they were convicted of,” said Philip Morrison, director of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute. “That flies in the face of everything we were brought up to believe in.”
Meanwhile, the Buncombe County defendants are trying to remake their lives.
Williams said he pleaded guilty under pressure from his attorney and his mother. At 16, he was too young to be threatened with the death penalty but could have faced life without parole.
“She didn’t know what to believe,” he said of his mother. “I’m telling her I’m innocent and it’s like, she wants to believe me, but these professional people in suits and ties are telling her something different so now she believes them. … It was devastating.”
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Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/martha-waggoner
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A $58 million plan to equip nearly every Los Angeles police officer with body cameras by the end of the year has been delayed by concerns over the price tag.
Mayor Eric Garcetti had pledged to have the cameras on thousands of officers by the end of 2016. But the department doesn’t expect to outfit 7,000 officers until the fall of 2017 at the earliest, the Los Angeles Times reported, (http://lat.ms/1XBkECF ).
Councilman Mitch Englander told the newspaper that he wants the department to start the bidding process over and plans to introduce a formal proposal next week.
“This is too big to get wrong,” said Erlander, who heads the council’s public safety committee. “It’s more important that we get it right and not just do it quickly.”
Board of Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff, a longtime advocate of the cameras, said city lawmakers are “horribly underestimating the ramifications” of delaying the program for what could be years.
“This is an unequivocal disaster for public safety in Los Angeles,” Soboroff said.
City Hall has been scrutinizing the camera plan over the costs, with one council member saying he was experiencing “sticker shock” over the price tag of $57.6 million over five years.
Technology companies complained that they were unfairly left out the police department’s selection process, which in part relied on a separate search for body cameras for a much smaller nearby sheriff’s department.
Garcetti said through a spokesman that he hoped the council would act as quickly as possible.
The police department has about 860 cameras, bought through private donations.
Last year, the department negotiated a contract with Scottsdale, Arizona-based Taser International to provide thousands more, as well as replacement equipment, digital storage of the recordings and thousands of Tasers.
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/
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WASHINGTON — Drone racing is a small but growing sport. Now, the high-tech and very fast-paced sporting competition is heading to ESPN.
The sports network announced Wednesday that it has signed a multi-year contract with the International Drone Racing Association to televise the sport on ESPN3 this summer starting with the U.S. National Drone Racing Championships.
The race will take place in New York City from Aug. 5 to Aug. 7, according to ESPN’s press release. Pilots will fly multi-propeller unmanned aerial vehicles at high speeds up to 120 miles an hour around a race course, and the winner will be crowned the fastest drone pilot in America.
Nick Horbaczewski, the Drone Racing League CEO and founder, told Wired Magazine that drone racing offers the audience more than just a thrill of the race.
Horbaczewski says the cameras mounted on the drones make viewers feel like they are in the pilot’s seat with the help of real-time video feeds.
According to ESPN, drone racing is seeing an unprecedented rise in popularity and could become the next major racing sport alongside NASCAR and Formula 1 racing.
The post The next sport coming to ESPN is … drone racing appeared first on WTOP.
Prince William County community calendar Washington Post Bluebell Festival The event includes naturalist-led tours through the bluebells to Cedar Run, lectures and demonstrations. Wear long pants and sturdy, waterproof shoes. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Merrimac Farm Stone House Visitor Center, 15014 Deepwood Lane, ... and more » |
WASHINGTON — A student won’t be returning to class at a Potomac preparatory school after he is seen in an online video using racial slurs.
It was last weekend that a video was posted to twitter, which appeared to show the Bullis school student using the derogatory language. Shortly after it was posted, the video gained attention and caused outrage on social media and even led to a protest on campus.
In a statement to NBC4 the student said that while working on a project on the civil right project, he began reciting words from a video mocking the movie “Django Unchained.” He says he was unknowingly filmed and regrets using the “derogatory words.”
The student’s name isn’t being used because he hasn’t been charged with a crime.
“My words were taken out of context and in no way did I intend for them to be perceived in the way that they were,” the student wrote.
Head of School Dr. Gerald Boarman said the situation has been hurtful but he hopes students will help bring about change on campus.
“We have student-led organizations that are developing focus groups, opportunities for the students to express themselves,” Boarman told NBC 4.
Moving forward the school plans to hold focus groups and discussions for parents and students on the topic of racism.
The student in the video will have the opportunity to appeal his dismissal.
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WASHINGTON — The man who police say shot multiple people — including a Prince George’s County firefighter who died from his injuries — during a welfare check was released from police custody on Saturday.
Prince George’s County police said Saturday that the man has not been charged. Police have not released his name.
Police are trying to determine what may have caused the man to open fire on the firefighters who responding to a call for help at his residence in Temple Hills, Maryland.
Firefighter and paramedic John Ulmschneider, 39, died from injuries suffered during the shooting.
They had gone to the residence after the brother of the man who lived there told authorities he was concerned about the man’s safety, said Mark Brady, spokesman for the fire department. The man said his brother had trouble controlling his blood sugar and recently blacked out. He told authorities he was worried because his brother wasn’t answering the phone or the door and his car was parked in the driveway, Brady said.
Crews arrived at the home at around 7:30 p.m., Prince George’s County police Chief Hank Stawinski III said. But the resident didn’t respond when the firefighters arrived, so the firefighters opted to enter the home — at which point the resident opened fire.
Police said the person inside fired several rounds, striking two firefighters and his brother, authorities said. Police said that once officers got into the home, the gunfire stopped.
There were no police officers present when the firefighters decided to enter the home, Prince George’s County Police Department spokeswoman Julie Parker.
Brady said that’s something firefighters do fairly routinely when there’s a concern about someone’s safety. He said anytime there is an incident such as this, the department will review its protocols and possibly make changes.
“The firefighters, medics made a correct decision,” Brady said. “Time was of the essence. If this gentleman was experiencing a medical emergency we needed to get to him as quick as possible and we were attempting to do that.”
Ulmschneider succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. He had been with the fire department for 13 years and leaves behind a 2-year-old, according to Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan ordered the state’s flag to be flown at half-staff in Ulmschneider’s memory.
“His legacy as a husband, father and firefighter, and his commitment to protecting others, will not soon be forgotten by his loved ones, the community, or Maryland,” Hogan said in a statement.
A volunteer firefighter, Kevin Swain, 19, was shot four times and was flown to shock trauma center in Baltimore. A press release Saturday indicates that Swain is a member of the Sykesville-Freedom District and Morningside Volunteer Fire Departments. Swain, who is from Sykesville, was surrounded by members of the firefighting community when he taken into surgery Friday.
As of Saturday, he was expected to be OK.
Two other firefighters with the Morningside Volunteer Fire Department suffered minor injuries while seeking cover after the shooting. He says one firefighter injured a knee and the other injured her jaw. The two were treated at the hospital and released Saturday.
Police said the man’s brother, who responded with firefighters, also was shot but was not seriously injured.
The shooting comes less than a month after a Prince George’s County police officer was killed during an unprovoked attack on a district police station in Landover, Maryland.
Memorial services in honor of Ulmschneider will begin on Tuesday, April 19. Visitation hours will be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. John’s Parish in Hollywood, Md. The funeral Mass will be held on Wednesday, April 20, at 1 p.m. at St. John’s Parish as well.
The Associated Press and WTOP’s Dick Ulaino contributed to this report.
The post Police: Man who shot firefighters released from custody appeared first on WTOP.
Washington Post |
Semper K9 trains rescue dogs to help disabled veterans Washington Post Christopher and Amanda Causey Baity are in the saving business. The Prince William County couple have other, paying jobs — she works with a local magazine, and he is employed with a security company — but much of their time is devoted to saving the ... |
New York Times |
272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? New York Times The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times. 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe and more » |
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