News release: “The Pentagon has updated its Law of War manual to clarify that journalists are generally protected as civilians under international law. The changes, announced last week, came after media groups expressed concern that some language in the original version could put reporters at risk of being considered spies or combatants. The manual, first released in 2015, is the Department of Defense’s guide to international law as it applies to the U.S. military. The original manual drew criticism for saying that although journalists are usually civilians, they can sometimes be “unprivileged belligerents” — a category that includes guerrillas and spies. Because unprivileged belligerents do not have the same legal protections as either combatants or civilians, some media organizations argued that the categorization could be used as an excuse to indefinitely detain journalists without charges…”
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Daily Archives: August 31, 2016
Report – State Revenues From Gambling
“Readers of the Rockefeller Institute’s fiscal reports know that recovery in state and local revenues has been slow since the deep drops in 2009. And though the national economy has shown fairly consistent rates of growth in jobs, economic out-put, and home prices in recent years, the strength of the recovery has varied greatly across… Continue Reading
24/7 Wall Street – review of actual median salaries for college grads
“24/7 Wall St. reviewed the median annual wage for jobs classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as typically requiring a bachelor’s degree. Even the lowest paying jobs among them tend to be relatively high paying. The median annual salaries of the 14 jobs on this list are all less than $50,000. In all but… Continue Reading
Infographic – Felony Disenfranchisement State by State
Via Good: “Today, the Sentencing Project reports that about 5.8 million Americans have lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction. And 2.2 million of them are black. According to the project’s findings, it’s a discrepancy that’s likely to grow given our rates of incarceration: “People of color make up 37 percent of the U.S. population but 67 percent of the prison… Continue Reading
Paper – Human identification using WiFi signal
Full text only available to subscribers, but the abstract alone will illuminate the extensive power of Wi-Fi sensing technology: “WiFi devices are now pervasive in our environment. Recent research has demonstrated that it is possible to sense the perturbations created by human motion in the WiFi spectrum to identify basic activities, gestures and even keystrokes.… Continue Reading
Kaiser – Baltimore Draws 10-Year Blueprint To Cut Racial Health Disparities
Kaiser Health News: “Baltimore officials presented a 10-year plan Tuesday that sharply highlights the poor health status of African-Americans and aims to bring black rates of lead poisoning, heart disease, obesity, smoking and overdoses more in line with those of whites…Violence last year following the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after… Continue Reading
Google tests search live coverage carousel
Via Google – “As a publisher, you can participate in the Search live coverage carousel pilot to notify Google when your breaking content is available. Google can then surface content more quickly than is currently possible with a standard crawl on your website. With the Search live coverage carousel, users can find content about live… Continue Reading
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the FTC
Via Andrea Arias at the FTC: “…The Framework provides organizations with a risk-based compilation of guidelines that can help them identify, implement, and improve cybersecurity practices. The Framework does not introduce new standards or concepts; rather, it leverages and integrates cybersecurity practices that have been developed by organizations like NIST and the International Standardization Organization… Continue Reading
Extra Perk – Free stories delivered to NYC subway riders on lines with Free Transit WirelessWiFi
NYT- Subway Reads: Free E-Books, Timed for Your Commute – Sponsored by Penguin Random House – “On Sunday, Subway Reads started delivering novellas, short stories or excerpts from full-length books to passengers’ cellphones or tablets. The idea is for riders to download a short story or a chapter and read it on the train. Subway… Continue Reading
LC – Chronicling America through historic newspapers
“Chronicling America is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of… Continue Reading
