Hasta La Gadget!

Singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed last Saturday while signing autographs, has been laid to rest in her New Jersey hometown.

The funeral service was an “intimate gathering for her family and close friends,” a source told People. It was paid for by Grimmie’s former “Voice” coach, Adam Levine, who expressed his shock and grief on Twitter after the tragedy.

A public memorial will be held at the Fellowship Alliance Chapel in Medford, New Jersey, on Friday from 3-8 p.m. EST, followed by a memorial service which will begin at 8 p.m.

On Monday, Grimmie’s hometown held a candlelight vigil for the late singer, where the mayor, Grimmie’s close friends and her brother, Marcus, all spoke in her memory.

“She loved this town, she loved this state, she loved singing, she loved the Lord and she loved me, and she was my baby sister,” Marcus Grimmie said at the vigil. He expressed his disbelief over the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, that occurred just one day after his sister’s death, but also his gratitude for the personal tributes many celebrities have given her.

“Adam Levine paid for Christina’s funeral. Selena [Gomez] is singing a song and crying [during her concert]. These people didn’t have that and we are blessed to. She’s in a better place …Thank you to everyone once again,” he said. 

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Dozens of Republican convention delegates are hatching a new plan to block Donald Trump at this summer’s party meetings, in what has become the most organized effort so far to stop the businessman from becoming the GOP nominee.

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Sheila Watt-Cloutier is one of the toughest, most influential Inuit activists in Canada. Her perspective on the effects of toxic chemicals and climate change on the Arctic have transformed the issues of science, politics and economics into those of human rights.

OTTAWA, CANADA: Speaking at WWF-Canada’s Ocean Summit held in Ottawa last week, longtime Inuit activist and former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council Sheila Watt-Cloutier argued that the fate of the Arctic transcends the political, economic and scientific spheres, and should be fought at the legal level, with the language of human rights.

“Knowing that the Arctic is the air conditioner of our planet, and that it is breaking down at an unprecedented speed, it seems to me that it would be the business of the world to keep us alive,” said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, whose active involvement as a voice of the Inuit people led her to receive multiple honorary degrees, awards and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2007.

An Inuk from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, in Northern Quebec, Watt-Cloutier was the first to link human rights to climate change. “I spent the first 10 years of my life travelling in dogsled, fishing for food,” she said. In a matter of a few decades, that livelihood has dramatically changed. The presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the fish and animals they eat and melting ice and snow threaten Inuit health, safety and security.

Recent and ongoing changes in the Arctic are profound and challenge Inuit cultural and environmental human rights – the “right to be cold,” as she states in the title of her book. “We are a hunting, gathering, fishing people, and with the melting of the ice, it has become increasingly difficult to gather food and practice our culture,” she said.

A few hours before Watt-Cloutier walked on stage, Shell Canada announced it had relinquished its oil and gas exploration permits near Lancaster Sound in the eastern Arctic. “This is astounding,” said Watt-Cloutier, breaking away from her prepared speech. “I never thought I would ever say something like this but, I commend Shell for that.”

Inuit have fought since the early 1970s to protect the zone as a National Marine Conservation Area. Although the news doesn’t guarantee that the once-permitted zone will be included in the boundaries of the conservation area, Inuit leaders perceive it as a good step forward.

“Nothing focuses the mind more than litigation,” said Paul Crowley, VP-Arctic with the WWF-Canada, which filed a lawsuit in April demanding Shell’s permits be invalidated. “The Inuit community had been asking since 1971 that the area be protected. It was traumatizing to them and to the land that it wasn’t for all this time, and we are still evaluating the impact of that,” said Crowley.

The first successful campaign that involved Inuit, in the 1980s, led to the Stockholm Convention on POPs, which banned 12 persistent organic pollutants referred to as the “dirty dozen,” including DDT and PCBs. The U.N. treaty was signed quickly, ratified and enforced due to Inuit’s role, said Watt-Cloutier.

Although Inuit continue to feel the impact of POPs, because these substances remain in the environment, Watt-Cloutier sees the treaty as a tremendous victory – and one to build upon. “We [Inuit people] did it with pollutants in the 1980s. We are able to move mountains,” she said. “We should lead the world on the climate change battle.”

“There are 155,000 Inuit living north of the 66th parallel. It is incredible that they were heard at the international level despite their small population,” said Crowley, who credits the leadership of Inuit women, including Watt-Cloutier. “They speak with a voice of integrity. That is what distinguishes them.”

“I remember when Sheila first brought up the question of human rights at a meeting in Milan in early 2000. The meeting was very dry and technical. She started talking about people and how the changing climate was affecting her people. It was like an oasis in the desert,” said Crowley.

“Before Sheila’s leadership on this issue, even the human rights community was not convinced until it was finally adopted in COP21 (Conference of the Parties) last December,” said Crowley, who was her legal counsel before he joined WWF-Canada.

“Our success is due to effective collaborative work with other indigenous peoples,” said Okalik Eegeesiak, the current chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). She is also quick to praise Watt-Cloutier for her leading role. “Her influence is huge. Where do I start? The human rights argument is her initiative.”

It took 15 years of campaigning and lobbying governments to finally have the survival and livelihood of the Indigenous peoples linked to climate change and included in the final texts of the COP21. “COP21 could have been stronger and more explicit detailing our implication, but it is a step forward,” said Eegeesiak.

“What Sheila did is to put a human face of the issues that we are confronted with,” said ICC Canada president, Nancy Karetak-Lindell. “It is very easy to forget when drafting policies in Ottawa that there are human tragedies linked to the changing climate of the Arctic.”

Despite her success, Watt-Cloutier can also be be critical.“We have too many institutions that overlap. There is a danger to that,” she said. In order to pursue a successful campaign on the international level, these institutions have to become more coordinated and efficient, she said.

It is a sentiment echoed by her successor, Karetak-Lindell: “The way we have been doing things in the past no longer works. We have to move forward by embracing alternative energies, for instance.”

This article originally appeared on Arctic Deeply. For weekly updates about Arctic geopolitics, economy, and ecology, you can sign up to the Arctic Deeply email list.

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Mother knows best? Not on gran’pa Victor Muriel’s watch. 

The charming Puerto Rican grandfather lends his voice to HBO Latino’s web series “Gran’Pa Knows Best,” which was inspired by the hilarious and long-winded voicemails Muriel would leave his grandson, William D. Caballero.

In the heartfelt comedy, Caballero fuses together real audio from his gran’pa’s voicemails, giving advice on everything from junk food to rap, and brings them to life using a 4-inch 3D printed likeness of the soon to be 88-year-old Muriel. The series is interactive, with viewers sending in questions or topics for gran’pa to tackle. 

“Gran’pa Knows Best,” which debuted in 2015, is releasing its second season on Friday via HBO Latino, HBO Go and HBO Now. In the 15 new episodes, the audience will get a better sense of who Muriel is through anecdotes like how gran’pa gets out of a traffic ticket and an explanation of how gran’pa went blind. 

Caballero, who thinks of himself as a “multimedia storyteller who tells big stories using small figures,” explained how the web series comes together in a recent interview with The Huffington Post.

Read our interview with the creator of “Gran’pa Knows Best” below:

What was it about the voicemails your grandfather sent you that made you want to turn them into a web series? 

Since I moved back to New York City for college, my grandfather, who still lives in North Carolina, has left me a ton of hilarious voicemail messages. I knew for a long time that I wanted to do something creative with them, and the answer came to me in 2013, with the discovery of 3D modeling/printing. It provided the perfect aesthetic for Gran’pa’s authentic audio.

Was your gran’pa, Victor, always on board with participating in the series? Do you think he understood the magnitude of HBO?  

My gran’pa has always been there to support me in my projects and creative endeavors. He used to drive me to the library when I was very young, and would wait in the car. He’s very stoic and has always been a bit underwhelmed [by] things, even when hearing good news. When I told him about his show airing on HBO, his immediately reaction was, “Oh… that’s nice… did you walk the dogs today?”

Gran’pa has a lot of great advice, but what’s the most important thing he’s taught you personally?

My gran’pa has always taught me to “never forget about the family.” There’s only one other college-educated person in my family, so when I visit home, I sometimes feel like an outsider that can’t really relate to my cousins or aunts. I remember and cherish his advice, because it shows me that while we are different, we all share a unique bond with each other. 

What impact do you hope his advice has on your audience?

I hope Gran’pa makes everyone aware of their own special bonds with their grandparents. I love it when white, black, Asian, etc. viewers tell me, “Wow! Your grandfather reminds me of MY grandfather!” It’s perhaps the best compliment I could possibly receive.

“Gran’pa Knows Best” is special not only because it features your grandpa but because of how you illustrate it with 3D printed miniatures of Gran’pa. Can you tell us a little bit how you produce the series?

Chang Kim, the 3D modeler, creates each Gran’pa pose in the computer. These are later 3D printed by Seth Burney, who also created the kitchen set. Then [Gran’pa is] hand painted by either myself, my wife Kate Keisel-Caballero or my friend Amy Yamashiro. Actually, EVERYONE seems to help in the painting of Gran’pa, including our producer Elaine Del Valle!

What is the 3-D printing process like? 

The figures are modeled on a computer, and then printed in polymer resin, which is a liquid that hardens. The poses each take about 5 hours to print. Then, each one is painted by hand using a variety of acrylic paints. All in all, each Gran’pa pose is the result of about 24 hours worth of manpower. 

Wow, how many poses do you have for Gran’pa?  

We have around 40 poses of Gran’pa in a variety of expressions. 

You once mentioned you’d be adding Gran’ma into the mix. Can we look forward to seeing her in 3-D figurine action soon? 

We’re currently working on a short film for festivals that features poses of Gran’ma alongside Gran’pa! 

What are you most excited about for season 2 of “Gran’pa Knows Best”? I’m most excited about what the fans’ reactions will be, as well as introducing the new fans to the project. I hope we get people to offer us more questions, because who knows, maybe there will be a Season 3? 

Watch an exclusive behind the scenes look at the making of “Gran’pa Knows Best” in the video above. 

Season 2 of “Gran’pa Knows Best” premieres on HBO Latino on Friday, June 17. 

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A former law student at the University of Virginia accused of sexual assault filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday, saying the federal government violated the law when it issued new guidance for how schools should handle sexual violence. 

Unlike most lawsuits from students accused of sexual assault, the case does not name UVA as a defendant and focuses solely on the Department of Education. 

The federal complaint claims that the Education Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act in 2011 when its Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter containing new guidance on adjudicating sexual assault and harassment claims. The letter was addressed to all colleges, universities and K-12 schools that receive federal funding.

Under the gender equity law Title IX, schools must address reports of sexual harassment and assault. Among other things, the OCR letter told schools to use a standard known as “preponderance of evidence” to determine an accused student’s guilt. In other words, the adjudicator must be at least 51 percent certain that an individual committed a violation to find the person guilty.  

Yet lawyers for the former UVA student say the government failed to give stakeholders a chance to respond to the federal guidelines — including the preponderance standard — before they were issued, as required by law. 

“Campus sexual assault is a serious problem, but OCR doesn’t get to break the law in order to solve it,” Justin Dillon, an attorney handling the case, said in a statement Thursday. “It needs to do what federal law requires — tell the American people what it wants to accomplish, ask them for their feedback, and only then make a decision.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the civil liberties group that orchestrated the lawsuit, has long objected to the Education Department letter. It’s the third lawsuit to challenge the 2011 guidance.

The two other suits were filed by a Colorado State University-Pueblo student who was suspended for an assault allegation, and by a Georgia lawmaker who doesn’t have any personal experience with university misconduct cases and who legal experts doubt has standing to sue.

Few details are available about the UVA plaintiff’s misconduct case. He was charged with sexual misconduct in May 2015, but had to wait until January 2016 for a hearing, the suit said. He was found responsible of sexual misconduct for not obtaining “effective consent” during an alcohol-induced encounter with a former girlfriend, and was banned from UVA and ordered to undergo counseling as a result, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff then passed the bar exam in Virginia and received his law degree in March. 

A retired judge who handled the former UVA student’s case said the preponderance standard was the “first and foremost” factor in deciding his guilt.

The plaintiff fears additional sanctions since UVA, his lawsuit notes, because the school was ordered to review all its sexual assault cases from the 2014-15 academic year after the Education Department found that the university had violated Title IX.

UVA declined to comment, citing privacy laws.

Education Department officials have said preponderance is the best standard for determining guilt in campus sexual misconduct cases because it’s also used in civil lawsuits and gives both the accused and accuser a relatively equal chance of prevailing. Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the department, has spoken to lawmakers multiple times in recent years about the basis of its Title IX guidance. 

FIRE maintains, however, that civil lawsuits offer plaintiffs more due process protections. 

But federal officials have also noted that FIRE’s own survey of 168 universities showed that 80 percent were using the preponderance standard prior to the Education Department’s 2011 letter. The department modeled its mandate for schools on existing employment civil rights caselaw, officials said. 

Dozens of male students accused of sexual assault have sued their colleges and universities for rights violations. Those who have claimed to be victims of gender discrimination in violation of Title IX have frequently lost. However, those who’ve said their constitutional or contractual rights were violated — including some of Dillon’s clients — have had more success. 

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