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A federal rule banning fake online reviews is now in effect.

The Federal Trade Commission issued the rulein August banning the sale or purchase of online reviews. The rule, which went into effect Monday, allows the agency to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it.

“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said about the rule in August. She added that the rule will “protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive.”

A woman named Laura McCaskill used an Apple AirTag to track down her stolen Harris/Walz campaign sign, which led her to a home in Nixa, Missouri. When confronted, the young man's mother admitted that the signs in the trunk of the car belonged to her son, who she described as "just an idiot."

The incident involved the theft of around 60 signs from various homes in the neighborhood. McCaskill and other residents plan to file police reports, and McCaskill expressed concern about the entitlement and lack of accountability shown by the young man and his mother. The document also discusses the legal implications of stealing campaign signs, referencing Missouri Statute 115.637 which classifies such actions as a misdemeanor offense.

Rudy Giuliani must give control of his New York City apartment, a 1980s Mercedes-Benz once owned by Lauren Bacall, several luxury watches and many other assets to two Georgia election workers he defamed.

Lewis Liman, a US district judge in New York, appointed Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss as recipients of the property and gave the former New York mayor and Trump confidante seven days to turn over the assets.

A jury ruled that Giuliani owes them around $150m for spreading lies about them after the 2020 election though Giuliani is appealing the ruling. Liman authorized the two women to immediately begin selling the assets.

The CDC said an E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers has led to 10 hospitalizations and one death.

>Dozens of interviews with people deeply familiar or involved with the election process point to a clear consensus: Not only could Trump make a second attempt at overturning an election he loses, he and his allies are already laying the groundwork.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/8e3Ri

After a month of updating Floridians on hurricanes, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is now focusing his official office on fighting an abortion rights amendment, holding a campaign-like rally at state expense two weeks before the election.

DeSantis’ event Monday, which was capped with a prayer from the archbishop of Miami and the lieutenant governor asking people to not vote like atheists, came after the Department of Health’s top lawyer resigned over a letter he said the governor’s office forced him to send to television stations in an effort to stop a pro-Amendment 4 ad.

Tim Ballard, the anti-trafficking activist whose wildly exaggerated missions abroad were the basis of the hit 2023 film Sound of Freedom, is facing a new legal action from six women who last year sued him for sexual exploitation — leading Ballard to sue them for defamation earlier this month.

The latest complaint is the first federal suit targeting Ballard; it comes from accusers Celeste Borys, Mary Hall, Sasha Hightower, Krista Kacey, Kira Lynch, and Bree Righter. The filing names Ballard associates Matthew Cooper and Michael Porenta, as well as Ballard’s former organization, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), as defendants.

The women once again lay out a narrative of being recruited by Ballard and OUR to take part in rescue missions of trafficked individuals, only to then be “groomed” to become physically intimate with the married Ballard as part of what he called a “couples ruse,” intended to fool traffickers into believing they were romantically involved. They claim they were coerced into “performing sex, labor, and services for [Ballard’s] personal benefit and the benefit of OUR,” and sometimes endured violent sexual assault, or had sex with Ballard while Cooper was present, always with the assurance that it was “necessary to rescue children.” The plaintiffs further claim that Ballard and his associates laundered money in order to hire sex workers while on missions abroad, and that “OUR actively participated in the solicitation, recruitment, and exploitation” of female operatives.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/0c2mB

The politics writer Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine have parted ways just over a month after she was placed on leave following the disclosure that she had engaged in a “personal” relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr.

> Federal and state researchers said there might be five million to 19 million tons of lithium, more than enough to meet the world’s demand for the battery ingredient.

>On Jan. 6, 2021, an angry mob of Donald Trump supporters swarmed a CBC News crew working near Capitol Hill. Nearly four years later, reporter Katie Nicholson tracked down one of the people who surrounded her that day to find out what she’s thinking heading into another volatile U.S. presidential election.

Was worth the watch for the emotional contortions the supporter twists herself into when confronted by one of the people she threatened, her Democrat-voting husband dealing with it all, and that messed up Trump paraphernalia store.

The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.

In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.

In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

...

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

...

The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”)

“Noting that more than a thousand cultural sites had been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war, the Congress underlined that the targeting and looting of cultural sites appeared to reflect a systematic policy aimed at erasing Ukraine’s historical and cultural identity, consistent with a genocidal intent,” the Council said.

It’s not the first time Russia's war in Ukraine has been designated a genocide by international authorities. Multiple European national parliaments have already done so with the Council of Europe deeming Russia’s forced transfer of children as an act of genocide in 2023.

>Smith’s case, known as Hamm v. Smith, first arrived on the Court’s doorstep in August 2023. Since then, the justices have met more than two dozen times to decide what to do about the case, and each time they’ve put the decision off until a future meeting. > >No one outside of the Court can know for sure why the justices keep delaying, but if you follow the Court’s Eighth Amendment cases closely, it’s easy to see how the Hamm case could open up all kinds of internal rifts among the justices. > >The Eighth Amendment, which has a vague ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” is at the center of the Hamm case because, for decades, the Court has held this amendment forbids executions of intellectually disabled offenders (and offenders who commit a crime while they are juveniles). The idea is that both groups have diminished mental capacity, at least as compared to non-disabled adults, and thus bear less moral responsibility even for homicide crimes. > >That idea, however, has long been contested by the Court’s various ideological factions, and the Hamm case potentially reopens up all of the Court’s issues with the amendment at once. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario for criminal defendants, the justices could potentially overrule more than 60 years of precedents protecting against excessive punishments.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/SU1Ce

"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.

"And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls."

> The teenager, a 15-year-old boy, was scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday after two adults and three juveniles were found dead at a home near Seattle.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ujics

Outcry in Montgomery county as Linda Coombs’ book on European colonization of Native American land reclassified

Anti-censorship advocates have joined book publisher Penguin Random House in condemning a Texas county that reclassified an account of European settlers’ colonization of Indigenous Americans as fiction.

The furor in Montgomery county – near Houston – follows the decision by a citizens review panel, at the behest of rightwing activists, to place Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by Linda Coombs in the fiction section of children’s libraries.

The book aims to present young readers with a historic look from the perspective of Native people of the colonization of New England, according to PEN America, the nonprofit advocacy group for free expression in literature.

...

"To claim this book is fiction dismisses our perspective and history," said a statement from Debbie Reese, founder of American Indians in Children's Literature.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21686260

> October 22, 2024 > > [For anyone who cares about Palestine, this article is very hard to read.] >

>McAlpin, who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, was immediately grabbed and repeatedly punched and shocked with a Taser by the two officers — one of whom can be heard in body cam footage complaining that he broke his hand throwing punches. > >McAlpin was then charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault and one felony count of resisting arrest — he spent 24 days in jail because he could not afford the $7,500 bond. > >This incident comes just months after the Department of Justice released its report finding that Phoenix police discriminate against minorities and routinely use excessive force — including unjustified deadly force.

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sgoXj

On the morning of Jan. 22, 2024, Elmer De León Pérez descended deep into the bowels of a ship that he was helping to build in Houma, Louisiana. Pérez was a welder, working to construct one of the U.S. government’s most sophisticated ships, an $89 million vessel for tracking hurricanes and conducting oceanographic research. It was funded by President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation.

When emergency workers found his body, Pérez was already showing signs of rigor mortis. A coroner’s report would note that he was wearing a red hoodie, plaid pajama pants and brown steel-toed boots, and that a “copious amount of clear fluid was noted to the mouth and nose,” as well as on the sleeve of his shirt. The coroner concluded that Pérez “died as a result of bilateral severe pulmonary consolidation and edema” — fluid in the lungs — and “copper and nickel intoxication.” (The ship, like many, used copper-nickel alloys as a coating because they resist corrosion from salt water.)

But Pérez wasn’t working directly for Thoma-Sea; he was employed by a contractor. So when he died, Thoma-Sea paid nothing. Not to his family, including the partner that survived him. Not to his toddler son. Not even to help send Pérez’s body home to Guatemala. Instead, his family borrowed money and desperately tried to raise the rest online. Family members said they haven’t heard anything from Thoma-Sea since Pérez died.

Mel Nichols, a 37-year-old bartender in Phoenix, Arizona, takes home anywhere from $30 to $50 an hour with tips included. But the uncertainty of how much she’s going to make on a daily basis is a constant source of stress.

“For every good day, there’s three bad days,” said Nichols, who has been in the service industry since she was a teenager. “You have no security when it comes to knowing how much you’re going to make.”

The amount tipped workers make varies by state. Fourteen states pay the federal minimum, or just above $2 an hour for tipped workers and $7 an hour for non-tipped workers.