Operation Surprise: leaked emails expose secret intelligence coup to install Boris JohnsonGrayzone
4 questions about long Covid experts wish they could answer Vox: “David Putrino, a rehabilitation and long Covid researcher at the Mount Sinai medical school in New York City, has watched mounting evidence that suggests between 4 and 36 percent of Americans infected with Covid have symptoms lasting at least six months. It makes him nervous, and not just for the patients dealing with the long-term symptoms. He’s nervous because as the pandemic outbreak continues, many more people will be put at risk for long-term disability as the virus continues to spread. Meanwhile, policymakers don’t seem to be accounting for the risk of long Covid in public health recommendations. The condition did not figure into the CDC’s guidance on removing or reinstating preventive measures — those were based on deaths and intensive care unit hospitalizations. “I don’t think that policy has been based on fact,” Putrino said, regarding the lifting of preventive measures nationwide. “I think that policy is being based on hope.” The potential stakes of long Covid are high. But there’s a key tension here: Much about the condition remains veiled in mystery. Basic questions — like what long Covid even is — remain unanswered. And those mysteries make it easier for policymakers to turn a blind eye to it. “Even in the most basic ways, we can’t agree on a definition of this,” said Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University who collaborates with Survivor Corps, a long Covid research group. There is no consensus among scientists on what exactly long Covid is, which makes it difficult to count the people affected by it and to understand its risk factors…”We
TIME: “Getting away with breaking the law in the digital age is tricky. Almost everything one does—whether it’s making a Google search for “how to clean up a crime scene,” purchasing suspicious items on Amazon, or merely having been in the proximity of a crime scene with a cell phone that had its location services turned on—can be discovered via court-issued warrant and lead to charges and convictions. If Roe v. Wade is overturned—as a draft of a Supreme Court opinion signaled it might be— soon having or helping procure an abortion could become a crime in some states. And that means individuals’ personal internet data could be collected and used against them if they seek or facilitate a pregnancy termination.
“Your geolocation data, apps for contraception, web searches, phone records—all of it is open season for generating data to weaponize the personal information of women across the country,” Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and longtime proponent of digital privacy reform, tells TIME. In states that not only outlaw but criminalize abortion—a move that Louisiana is considering adopting after a final decision from the Supreme Court—a pregnant woman’s digital search of abortion-inducing medication, online purchase of pregnancy tests, or email request for financial support to a pro-abortion resource group could be deployed against her in criminal proceedings.
In states that criminalize assisting in abortions, data revealing frequent trips to a reproductive health clinic could also be used. “Everything we do is traceable,” says Bennett Capers, a visiting criminal law professor at Yale University and full professor at Fordham’s law school. “Once getting an abortion is illegal, then attempting to get an abortion is also illegal.” In recent years, several Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation to bring America’s digital privacy laws into the 21st century and enshrine safeguards against the unfettered collection of individuals’ personal data by governments and companies for criminal surveillance and corporate profit.
Now, Wyden and his colleagues are pushing with renewed urgency to get those bills passed, hoping the leak of the draft opinion spurs Congress to action with the Supreme Court’s final decision anticipated to come down in the next two months. “A lot of privacy rules are from the Dark Ages,” Wyden says. “The SCOTUS prospects certainly drive home the real world consequences of the law not keeping up with the time.”…
Brooks: The International Tax System Is There To Achieve Justice
Recode: “We’re making these nurdles and basically spilling oil, just in a different form.” NEW ORLEANS — On an overcast day in April, on the edge of Chalmette Battlefield, a few miles outside the city, Liz Marchio examined a pile of broken twigs and tree branches on the bank of the Mississippi River. “Usually I try to look — oh, there’s one,” said Marchio, a research associate for the Vertebrate Museum at Southeastern Louisiana University.
Innovation Is Changing the Role of Law Librarians and They’re Ready for It
AALL Spectrum / May/June 2022 / Volume 26, Number 5 – “As AI and other innovative technologies continue to disrupt the practice of law, law librarians will continue to be at the forefront of adoption, training, and increasing productivity. Law librarianship has evolved over the last several decades. Gone are the days when law librarians were thought of as simply the gate-keepers of stacks of books—so long Federal Reporter! Law librarians have been embracing and driving innovation since at least the introduction of microfiche, which may not seem like a disruptive innovation today, but its history proves otherwise.
It’s no surprise then that the role of the law librarian has continued to evolve just as the technology used in law libraries has evolved. As evidenced by details in the 2021 AALL State of the Profession report, the role of law librarians now encompasses a wide range of responsibilities and impacts various groups within the organization—“84.8 percent of firm/corporate teams report that they are involved in partnerships and endeavors outside their department that utilize their research skills, technical knowledge and adaptability…”
Popular Science: “One of the benefits of using Google Chrome on every device is that it’ll keep track of your browsing history across platforms. So, if you need to get back to a page you saw earlier, last week, or last month, your history is just a click or tap away, and easily searchable.
Now Google has enhanced this functionality with a new feature called Journeys, which you’ll find in Chrome for Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS. With Journeys, you can access not just the sites you’ve previously visited, but details of how you got there too—hence the name…”
