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Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Judge tosses Sidney Powell's counterclaims in Dominion defamation case - Reuters

  • Dominion's defamation lawsuit not an "abuse of process," judge said
  • Trump ally Powell being sued for $1.3 billion over election fraud claims

(Reuters) - A Washington, D.C., federal judge on Wednesday dismissed claims by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell that Dominion Voting Systems Inc abused the legal system by bringing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against her.

Dominion sued Powell in January 2021, alleging she falsely claimed the voting machine company rigged the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump. Powell countersued last year, claiming Dominion filed the lawsuit "to punish and make an example" of her.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols threw out Powell's claims in a brief order. He said that filing a lawsuit alone is not an "abuse of process," as Powell asserted.

Powell and her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We are pleased to see this process moving forward to hold Sidney Powell accountable," a Dominion spokesperson told Reuters.

Nichols last year rejected efforts by Powell and fellow Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell to dismiss Dominion's defamation claims. Each of them is named in separate Dominion lawsuits.

Dominion has also sued Fox News Network and other conservative news outlets, alleging they gave a platform to false statements about its role in the 2020 election. Fox News is fighting the lawsuit and has called the claims "baseless."

Powell is separately facing ethics charges from legal regulators in Texas, who allege that lawsuits she filed seeking to overturn the 2020 election results were "frivolous."

The case is US Dominion Inc v. Powell, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 21-cv-00040.

For Dominion: Thomas Clare of Clare & Locke; and Stephen Shackelford of Susman Godfrey

For Powell: Marc Casarino of Kennedys Law

Read more:

Trump allies including Giuliani lose bid to dismiss Dominion vote machine lawsuits

Fox News parent must face defamation lawsuit over election coverage

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Jacqueline Thomsen, based in Washington, D.C., covers legal news related to policy, the courts and the legal profession. Follow her on Twitter at @jacq_thomsen and email her at jacqueline.thomsen@thomsonreuters.com.

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Second Probable Case of West Nile Virus Detected in Camden County - Camden County, NJ

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(Gloucester Township, NJ) – The Camden County Health Department detected the second probable case of West Nile Virus in a Haddon Township resident. Today, laboratory test results were positive for West Nile Virus (WNV) and have been reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (CCDHHS) and an investigation was initiated.

“Now that summer has come to end and cooler weather has started to set in we aren’t immune from mosquitoes and the diseases they can carry,” said Commissioner Virginia Betteridge, liaison to the Health Department. “The Health Department is continuing to work with the Mosquito Control Commission to ensure that additional spraying and testing will be conducted in the area.”

Symptoms of WNV include, but are not limited to, fever, headache, altered mental status, and other neurologic dysfunctions. WNV is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States, though 4 out of 5 who are infected do not feel symptoms. Only 1 in 50 develop serious illness.

The best way to protect yourself from mosquitoes is to use insect repellent. Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents with one of the active ingredients below. When used as directed, EPA-registered insect repellents are proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

  • DEET
  • Picaridin (known as KBR 3023 and icaridin outside the US)
  • IR3535
  • Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE)
  • Para-menthane-diol (PMD)
  • 2-undecanone

During the summer and fall months the Camden County Mosquito Commission schedules spraying on an as-needed basis based upon the results of their surveillance efforts and input from the public. The simple act of removing standing water from your property can help reduce the pest population in your neighborhood and assist the efforts of the commission.

For more information about West Nile Virus, please visit the CDC’s information webpage here.

For more information, or to report a problem, contact the Camden County Mosquito Commission at (856) 566-2945 or skeeters@camdencounty.com.

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Texas court confirms the attorney general can't unilaterally prosecute election cases - The Texas Tribune

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Tuesday, September 27, 2022

New AirPods Pro Charging Case's Lanyard Loop Potentially Doubles as Antenna - MacRumors

Lumafield today shared CT scan images of the second-generation AirPods Pro charging case, providing a look at internal changes to the case.

AirPods Pro 2 Charging Case CT 1
While the basic layout of the case appears to be similar to the original, Lumafield discovered that the newly added "lanyard loop" is internally connected to the Lightning connector, which interfaces with the logic board, leading the company to speculate that the metal insert might double as an antenna for the U1 chip or serve some other additional purpose.

There's a new metal eyelet on the side of the case. Apple says it's for a lanyard, but it seems to serve an additional purpose: it's 4 mm deep and 18 mm long, with a hidden tail that's connected to a metal pad around the Lightning port. Perhaps it's an antenna to support improved "Find My" tracking.

The U1 chip enables Find My support, allowing users to track the location of the charging case in the Find My app on their iPhone or on iCloud.com. The case features a new built-in speaker that can emit a chime to help with finding it.

AirPods Pro 2 Charging Case CT 2


Other improvements to the charging case include water resistance, support for the Apple Watch's magnetic charging puck, and longer battery life.

The new AirPods Pro launched last Friday and are priced at $249 in the United States.

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Navy engineer, wife plead guilty in submarine spy case — again - NavyTimes.com

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and his wife entered new guilty pleas Tuesday in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secrets about nuclear-powered warships, a month after their previous plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines were rejected.

Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.

U.S. District Judge Gina Groh last month rejected the couple’s initial pleas to the same charges, saying the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the case. The couple then immediately withdrew their initial guilty pleas and Groh set trial for January.

The previous sentencing range agreed to by lawyers for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a potential punishment between roughly 12 years and 17 years in prison. Prosecutors said Tuesday that such a sentence would be one of the most significant imposed in modern times under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Prosecutors also sought three years for Diana Toebbe.

Under the latest plea agreement entered Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Trumble, the couple would each face a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $100,000 fine, although prosecutors are asking for a sentence for Diana Toebbe at the lowest end of the guideline range.

If the court doesn’t accept the latest agreement, the defendants would again have the right to withdraw their guilty pleas.

Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe, 43, abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Diana Toebbe, 46, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations at which memory cards containing the secret information were left behind.

The memory cards were devices concealed in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested after he placed a memory card at a dead drop location in Jefferson County, West Virginia.

None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to previous testimony.

The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions to his supposed contact for how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.

That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering.

The country to which he was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.

Prosecutors said the government has recovered classified information that Jonathan Toebbe had saved on electronic devices along with a “substantial amount” of the cryptocurrency.

During a search of the couple’s home, FBI agents found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go-bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to court testimony last year.

Diana Toebbe’s lawyers at a December 2021 hearing denied prosecution assertions that cited 2019 messages exchanged by the couple in which she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest. Instead, the defense said it was contempt for then-President Donald Trump as the reason behind the couple’s emigration plans.

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Home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of S&P Case-Shiller Index - CNBC

A 'for sale' sign is displayed outside a single family home on September 22, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Allison Dinner | Getty Images

U.S. home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, according to a report released Tuesday.

Home prices in July were still higher than they were a year ago, but cooled significantly from June gains. Prices nationally rose 15.8% over July 2021, well below the 18.1% increase in the previous month, according to the report.

The 10-City composite, which tracks prices in major metropolitan areas such as New York and Boston, climbed 14.9% year over year, down from 17.4% in June. The 20-City composite, which adds regions such as the Seattle metro area and greater Detroit, gained 16.1%, down from 18.7% in the previous month. July's year-over-year gains were lower compared with June in each of the cities covered by the index.

"July's report reflects a forceful deceleration," wrote Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI in a release, noting the difference in the annual gains in June and July. The 2.3 percentage point "difference between those two monthly rates of gain is the largest deceleration in the history of the index."

Tampa, Florida, Miami and Dallas saw the highest annual gains among the 20 cities in July, with increases of 31.8%, 31.7% and 24.7%, respectively. Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and San Francisco saw the smallest gains, but were still well above year-ago levels.

Another recent report from the National Association of Realtors showed home prices softening dramatically from June to July. Prices usually fall during that time, due to the strong seasonality of the housing market, but the decline was three times the average decline historically.

The share of homes with price cuts reached about 20% in August, the same as in 2017, according to Realtor.com.

"For homeowners planning to list, today's market is significantly different than the one from even 3 weeks ago," said George Ratiu, senior economist and manager of economic research at Realtor.com.

Home prices are dropping because affordability has weakened dramatically due to fast-rising mortgage rates. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage started this year around 3%, but by June had briefly surpassed 6%. It remained in the high 5% range throughout July and is now edging toward 7%, making the average monthly payment about 70% higher than it was a year ago.

"As the Federal Reserve continues to move interest rates upward, mortgage financing has become more expensive, a process that continues to this day. Given the prospects for a more challenging macroeconomic environment, home prices may well continue to decelerate," Lazzara said.

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Steve Case’s Road Trips Across America Reveal the Promise of Startups for Cities - Skift Travel News

Steve Case is no stranger to starting up a company. In the early 1990s, he helped to co-found America Online, later renamed AOL, a service that for the first time allowed millions of people access to the the internet. It was a monumental shift for the world, one whose significance sometimes gets lost in today’s ubiquity of iPhones and binge streaming. Case went on to become chairman of AOL Time Warner after a tumultuous merger, but he eventually left Big Media behind and all its attendant cynicism to focus his energies on the optimism of startups — which brings us to his latest project.

Case’s new book, “The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream” (Avid Reader Press), is out today.

The book threads together anecdotes from his visits to more than 40 U.S. cities that have been part of an initiative of the same name, The Rise of the Rest, launched in 2014 by Case’s company Revolution to identify and juice startups outside of Silicon Valley with seed funding from Revolution. Case traveled for years to these cities on a bus or in a recreational vehicle, often with his wife Jean. On each of these multiple bus tours, Case and his team visited five cities in five days and invested at least $500,000 in startups after pitch competitions. The initiative is still ongoing, evolving further into two $150 million seed funds backed by Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Sara Blakely, Tory Burch, Ray Dalio, Henry Kravis and others. 

The book’s premise is pretty simple: Shine a light on young companies working to transform cities in between the coasts, places like Chattanooga, Tulsa, York, Pennsylvania, Omaha, Green Bay, and Salt Lake City. Case wants you to know that talent is equally distributed but often opportunity is not. He devotes a chapter to the “Diversity Imperative.”

While Case’s road trips began well before Covid and continued after, the pandemic provides a whole new context for a book like this, one about startups driving local economies when many cities are using the two-year pause to rethink their futures in new ways. And, of course, the new allure of remote working is added into this mix.

Skift caught up with Case recently and, naturally, we wanted to know about what travel executives should take away from his book.

“I think travel executives should recognize that innovation is everywhere. With talent migrating across the country, the increase in remote work, and the growth of robust startup communities outside of Silicon Valley attracting large numbers of young, creative, tech talent, there is an opportunity for travel executives to reach new customers where they are,” Case told Skift.

“Additionally, and I think readers of your publication are clued into this, the travel industry is being disrupted at a rapid clip. Corporations need to be attackers, not defenders, finding ways to adopt new technologies, work with startups and leverage exciting new products and services to stay ahead of the disruption. Hospitality and transportation is an exciting space in which to invest—we are excited about and invested in companies like Mint House, Placemakr, Collective Retreats, and Hermeus to name just a few.”

During one of his trips, Case spent some time with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and writes about him in the book.

“When I mentioned my prediction that there would be dozens of tech hub cities in the United States, not just a few more,” Case writes, “Brian laughed. ‘I had in my head hundreds of cities, maybe, and I”m thinking around the world. So, I think it’s going to be extremely distributed. The place to be will be the internet. You can access it anywhere.'”

Chesky also offered this about how cities will need to compete: “The cities that will win will be the cities that most welcome talent. In a world with more mobility, it’s actually easier (to attract talent.)”

The new wave of distributed workers will help cities attract talent, and startups will find new sources of funding in these cities, whether it is through connections to universities and their hunger for research, or larger, incumbent companies in those places. And venture capital will follow to help create what Case calls “the ecosystem wheel” in those local communities. The spokes of that wheel are startups, investors, universities, government, startup support groups, and the local media.

Case points out that more than 1,400 new VC firms have been created in the past decade outside of traditional hubs in Silicon Valley and New York. Still, more work needs to be done, with 75 percent of VC funding still flowing to New York, California, and Massachusetts.

The Rise of the Rest bus pulling into Atlanta as part of Steve Case’s journey through America scouting the next great innovators. Source: Revolution.

Case said his goal was to make sure to end the cycle of money flowing to the same kinds of people, in the same places, for the same ideas. He writes about the former winners of the Atlanta pitch competition — Jewel Burks and Jason Crain, the Black co-founders of PartPic, which they created while working for a vehicle repair company. PartPic allowed repair professionals to save loads of time by using a technology to identify key parts using smartphone photos. It was later sold to Amazon.

In his first book, “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future,” published right before Donald Trump was elected president, Case sounded the warning that America could lose its status as the most entrepreneurial nation in the world. The new book builds on that reality by offering hope that the U.S. can stay on top by “practicing the art of the possibility.”

“Just as they helped build America in its first two centuries, entrepreneurs can once again help lead the way,” writes Case.

These days Case can no longer claim the mantle of that boyish visionary who changed the world forever with AOL. He turned 64 this summer. But Case has managed to maintain the same optimism of a kid entrepreneur with a killer idea. Asked what he hopes the larger message of the new book will be, Case admits to sounding a bit aspirational with his answer. Still, he offers that for those feeling left out and left behind, he hopes that the possibility of these new opportunities he was witnessed over the past decade, even in the farthest corners of the U.S., will “help pull together a divided nation.”

DISCLOSURE: Skift President Carolyn Kremins sits on the board of Exclusive Resorts, owned by Case’s company Revolution.

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