ZZZ Obamacare 02 Focus

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An attempt to seize control of the board of British graphics chipmaker Imagination Technologies by an investor linked to the Chinese state has failed after intervention by the UK government.

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The House will accept electronic submissions when it holds pro forma sessions, as well as 15 minutes before and after each session. This week, the House will hold sessions this Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. and Friday at 9 a.m.
The House Clerk’s office will send members and staff detailed guidance on how to proceed with online submissions.
The temporary rules change will remain in effect through April 19, although Pelosi said that the House might extend those deadlines “if continued disruption of House operations remains necessary due to the pandemic.”
Pelosi said the House would resume normal practice for floor submissions “once the House returns full-time to the Capitol for regular business.”
More significantly, however, the temporary rules change could mark a turning point in the case good-government groups have built for allowing the House and Senate to vote remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.
Congress will reconvene on April 20, but Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told The Federal Drive with Tom Temin that it remains unclear how the House and Senate would go on with business as usual.

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At the heart of the debate is whether South Africa should retain its enumerated exceptions to copyright for uses like education and the broadcasting of public speeches, or move to a more flexible system that would be more like U.S. fair use.
Developing countries like South Africa have generally tended to see copyright as an import, not an export. At a parliamentary hearing on the bill, Universal Music South Africa managing director Sipho Dlamini disputed the “myth that international record labels make money in South Africa and then send all their money overseas, instead of reinvesting it into the market.” According to Dlamini, from 2014 to 2016, an average of 68% of revenue generated by international record labels remained in South Africa.
South Africa is one of many countries where creators and the media business are locked in a struggle with American technology companies and their supporters over how copyright law should apply online.

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In the letter, the signatories argue that their embrace of diversity and inclusion is better for their bottom lines, as well as being essential to recruiting and retaining top talent, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
They also argue that “inclusive business practices” lead to higher worker productivity, better on-the-job performance, and increased customer satisfaction — which, in turn, benefit the companies’ overall financial health and competitiveness.
“We are deeply concerned by the bills being introduced in state houses across the country that single out LGBTQ individuals — many specifically targeting transgender youth — for exclusion or differential treatment,” the letter reads.
“These bills would harm our team members and their families, stripping them of opportunities and making them feel unwelcome and at risk in their own communities,” the letter continues. “As such, it can be exceedingly difficult for us to recruit the most qualified candidates for jobs in states that pursue such laws, and these measures would place a substantial burden on the families of our employees who already reside in these states. Legislation promoting discrimination directly affects our businesses, whether or not it occurs in the workplace.”

Police can pull over a car when they know only that its owner’s license is invalid, even if they don’t know who’s behind the wheel, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.The court said in an 8-1 decision that unless there’s reason to believe otherwise, it’s common sense for an officer to think the car’s owner will be driving.“Empirical studies demonstrate what common experience readily reveals: Drivers with revoked licenses frequently continue to drive and therefore to pose safety risks to other motorists and pedestrians,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

Over 1,000 CEOs have stepped down during the first three quarters of 2019, according to a report published by staffing firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas – 1,160 executives, to be exact.
Departures within the first nine months of this year have already exceeded the number of CEOs who stepped down during the first three quarters of 2008 (1,132 CEOs), during the height of the recession.
This is also the year with the highest CEO turnover in the first three quarters that Challenger, Gray, and Christmas has seen since the firm began tracking departures in 2002.
The tech sector has the second-highest number of CEO departures at 154 executives – including the high-profile departures of Adam Neumann from WeWork and Kevin Burns from Juul.
Of the 1,160 CEOs who left their positions, 438 remained at their respective companies in different roles, 292 retired, and 103 moved to other companies, according to the report.

Small-business advocates say they are on the losing end of the $2 trillion coronavirus-rescue program, even as Trump touts it as the means by which the federal government will keep small business alive in the face of mass shutdowns.
The reality, they say, is far different. By one estimate, small businesses may need more than $1 trillion to replace lost revenue over the next three months. Yet the main pool of money allocated by Congress for hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hardware stores, theaters, dry cleaners, clothing stores, beauty salons and the like is just $349 billion in the form of forgivable loans over two months — as much as $10 million each, and only if certain conditions are met.
Another concern: Individual restaurants and hotels that are part of large, multinational chains or owned by private-equity firms will be able to take advantage of the program. They could squeeze out small businesses in the chase for the $349 billion pot of money, which will be allocated by community banks and other Small Business Administration lenders on a first-come, first-served basis beginning Friday.

As the coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, the Postal Service has struggled to maintain its crucial role in connecting the country, while also protecting its workers and customers. These challenges are not limited to disinfecting surfaces or social distancing, either: Many post offices have long been understaffed, and the coronavirus is poised to push an already overworked labor force to a breaking point. Without drastic action, the virus could soon threaten the Postal Service just when it’s needed most.
On Thursday, the National Association of Letter Carriers reported that Rakkhon Kim, a 50-year-old mail carrier in the Bronx had died of complications related to Covid-19. As of that same day, at least 85 postal workers were suspected to have the coronavirus, about quadruple the number that were thought to have it last week. These employees work in stations all around the country, from locked down areas like New York City and Westchester County to smaller towns like Howell, Georgia, and Troy, Michigan.

The system needs a clean and simple way to protect homeowners, cover the payments they currently are unable to meet, and defer such unpaid amounts at 0% interest until they pay off their mortgages. Such a solution also needs to maintain the financial integrity of the servicing industry and the secondary mortgage market.
The CARES Act creates the opportunity for a fast, efficient, and cost-effective federal program that, in protecting servicers, protects America’s homeowners for the long term.
We envision a program that would create a Federal Reserve funding facility for single-family servicers of Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and state and local housing finance agency home mortgage portfolios. It would enable up to 6.75 million low- and moderate-income homeowners to avoid default on their mortgages despite layoffs and unemployment due to the pandemic.

As detailed recently at Just Security by Duke Law’s Jayne Huckerby and Columbia Law’s Sarah Knuckey, among other concerning statements, commissioners used the body’s public meetings to:
– demonstrate skepticism toward human rights treaties and institutions;
– assert the dubious claim that there are a proliferation of human rights; and
– advance the idea that human rights are in need of prioritization or being placed into a hierarchy, conceivably with freedom of religion trumping other rights.
The Commission’s meetings were equally noteworthy for what they didn’t include: namely, reference from the commissioners to the Trump administration’s steady human rights backsliding at home, coziness with dictatorships and authoritarians abroad, and assault on multilateral institutions that protect human rights and advance U.S. interests.

The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.
Over the past few weeks, investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices. In some cases, bankers received sharp rebukes from health care executives; in others, executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis.

Washington state adopted a Microsoft Corp.-backed law enshrining the most detailed regulations of facial recognition in the U.S., potentially serving as a model for other states as use of the technology grows.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed the law Tuesday allowing government agencies to use facial recognition, with restrictions designed to ensure it isn’t deployed for broad surveillance or tracking innocent people.

In Michigan, Ford Motor Company and General Electric will produce 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days to help fulfill the dire need for the life-saving device at hospitals across the country. The companies say they can produce 30,000 units per month as long as hospitals need them.
The announcement came as GE workers in Massachusetts staged a protest to demand the facility where they work — which normally manufactures jet engines — start producing ventilators and rehire thousands of recently laid-off workers. GE announced last week it was firing 10% of its domestic aviation workforce due to staggering losses experienced by the airline industry because of the coronavirus pandemic.

United Technologies Corp. and Raytheon Co. announced Monday they will close this week on their merger, creating Raytheon Technologies Corp. headquartered in Waltham, Mass.
UTC, an aviation giant based in Farmington, and Raytheon, a major defense contractor, say they expect to close the deal before the start of trading on the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning. Raytheon will stop trading Thursday and shares of the new company will trade under the ticker symbol RTX.

Google persuaded a federal appeals court on Wednesday to reject claims that YouTube illegally censors conservative content.
In a 3-0 decision that could apply to platforms such as Facebook, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle found that YouTube was not a public forum subject to First Amendment scrutiny by judges.
It upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Google and YouTube by Prager University, a conservative nonprofit run by radio talk show host Dennis Prager.

As the coronavirus outbreak led to a lockdown of Wuhan and its surrounding cities in late January, the Hong Kong posts were suddenly deleted. The account continued to post relentlessly in Chinese, but it now focused on the burgeoning epidemic. About a month later, her Twitter profile began to change in other ways. The reference to her college disappeared and her headshot was replaced by a generic photo of two people kissing. By the end of the week, her Twitter transformation was complete. @Kalenkayyy was now a Chinese propaganda-posting zombie account belonging to someone purportedly named Kalun Tang.

The Rice lab of materials theorist Boris Yakobson has now calculated the impact of curvature of semiconducting double-wall carbon nanotubes on their flexoelectric voltage, a measure of electrical imbalance between the nanotube’s inner and outer walls.
This affects how suitable nested nanotube pairs may be for nanoelectronics applications, especially photovoltaics……
Across the country, college students are finishing their semester online from home. Many unable to live in the dorms and eat the cafeteria meals they’ve already paid for.
“Now the university has forced them off-campus, and students have said, ‘Well, I paid for four and half, five months of housing. I only lived there for three months. Do I get my money back for the final two months,’” said Cabot Phillips, the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform.
Conservative watchdog group campus reform is calling on colleges and universities to give refunds for things like meals and housing.
Some students are banding together to make demands. Thousands at UC Irvine have signed this online petition to get some of their money back.

This story is part of a series, “I See You Man,” about depictions of manhood and masculinity running through the month of November, which is Men’s Health Awareness month.
Porter wore clothing traditionally deemed for women and each time, the overwhelming public reception was either yaaas bitch! or casual nonchalance. Porter’s sudden ubiquity and mainstream acceptance could give some people the false impression that there were always opportunities for him to be the global superstar he is now. But no, this is all very new for Porter.

As the government considers stimulus going forward from this pause, it should see an opportunity to stimulate the growth of a cleaner, greener, more just economy. Workers should return to find jobs opened up in cleaner industries, with paid medical and family leave, better union protections, and a seat on corporate boards. (Yes, as I said, I am aware Republicans do not think this way.)