Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: December 27, 2017

Beyond Blue Passports: UK/EU immigration after Brexit

Professor Steve Peers, University of EssexEU Law Analysis. Expert insight into EU law developments: “In the last few days, there has been much debate about the UK government’s intention to ‘return’ to blue British passports after Brexit. It’s unfortunate that there have been false statements on both sides of the argument – that the change in passports will cost extra money (the contract was due for renewal anyway) and that the EU forced the UK to apply the burgundy colour (there’s only a non-binding Resolution on this issue). Some prefer the idea of a change in colour due to Brexit, but the issue isn’t about ‘sneering’ at people who might prefer one passport colour to another. In fact, aesthetically I prefer my previous UK passport colour (which was black, not blue). But a passport should be judged not by the colour of its cover but by the content of the rights it confers…”

NYT – Cities Sue Over Pentagon’s Failure to Report Crimes to Gun Database

Cities Sue Over Pentagon’s Failure to Report Crimes to Gun Database “Three major cities have filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department for its failure to report many criminal convictions in the military justice system to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its national gun background-check database. The Pentagon has for years run afoul of… Continue Reading

DC guide on how to pre-pay property taxes in 2017

“After Congress passed tax reform legislation, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Chief Financial Officer Jeff DeWitt announced that District property owners can pre-pay their property taxes in preparation for the upcoming tax year. The tax reform legislation limits the amount of state and local income and real property taxes that individuals may… Continue Reading

Germany – Facebook’s collection and use of data from third-party sources is abusive

Preliminary assessment in Facebook proceeding: Facebook’s collection and use of data from third-party sources is abusive. Date of issue: 19.12.2017 “The Bundeskartellamt has informed the company Facebook in writing of its preliminary legal assessment in the abuse of dominance proceeding which the authority is conducting against Facebook. Based on the current stage of the proceedings,… Continue Reading

Study – deploying solar energy dev across non traditional sites

Land-Sparing Opportunities for Solar Energy Development in Agricultural Landscapes: A Case Study of the Great Central Valley, CA, United States. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2017, 51 (24), pp 14472–14482. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b05110. Publication Date (Web): December 19, 2017. “Land-cover change from energy development, including solar energy, presents trade-offs for land used for the production of food and… Continue Reading

Bloomberg – world’s 500 wealthiest people got $1 trillion richer in 2017

“The richest people on earth became $1 trillion richer in 2017, more than four times last year’s gain, as stock markets shrugged off economic, social and political divisions to reach record highs. The 23 percent increase on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, compares with an almost 20… Continue Reading

Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress

“In 2010, the Library of Congress announced an exciting and groundbreaking acquisition—a gift from Twitter of the entire archive of public tweet text beginning with the first tweets of 2006 through 2010, and continuing with all public tweet text going forward. The Library took this step for the same reason it collects other materials –… Continue Reading