Hasta La Gadget!

Although Huawei’s top honchos were reportedly mystified by the purpose and utility of smartwatches, it still put out a new Huawei Watch 2. Motorola, however, isn’t as impressed and isn’t willing to take another commercial, not to mention financial, risk. The Android Wear pioneer’s withdrawal from the smartwatch market has some worried about getting the latest Android Wear 2.0 on … Continue reading

Donald Trump’s comments on the campaign trail often were light on detail, especially when it came to environmental policy. But one regular refrain was the promise to destroy the Clean Water Rule.

The president is trying to make good on that pledge. Nearly two months ago, Trump signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to “review and reconsider” the Obama-era regulation that was widely celebrated by environmentalists and panned by industry groups and politicians in some states.

But Trump’s attempt to trash the measure, also known as the “waters of the U.S. rule,” has hit roadblocks that could snarl his promise for months or years.

The Supreme Court this month denied the administration’s request to delay a case intended to sort out which court should handle litigation over the rule. Environmental advocates said they plan further efforts to challenge Trump’s efforts.

The Clean Water Rule, imposed by the Obama administration in 2015, clarifies which types of waterways are subject to federal protection under the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 law that protects the nation’s water resources from pollution. Republican-led states challenged the rule in court as an overreach of executive authority, and implementation was halted while the case proceeds.

Trump’s administration is preparing to repeal the rule and replace it with a weaker version, according to a recent Energy & Environment News report, which cited EPA officials. That would require two cumbersome federal rule-making processes. EPA officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The rule-making process would likely happen before the Supreme Court decides which court should handle litigation, which isn’t expected until the end of the year, according to Mark Ryan, an attorney who co-authored the Clean Water Rule during his 24 years at the EPA. He said rule-making will further complicate efforts to get rid of the Clean Water Rule.

“If they’re going to repeal it, they’re going to have to say why they’re repealing it. You can’t just say, ‘We’re doing it because we feel like it,’” Ryan told HuffPost.

The Trump administration’s rationale for repeal would come up against the lengthy scientific record that the rule is based on. Ryan said that record won’t easily be refuted. Further, he said, repeal efforts will likely face public backlash and legal challenges from environmental groups.

The EPA’s request for comments on the rule received more than 1 million responses. A rewrite, Ryan said, would likely receive just as many or more.

“It’s going to be a huge task simply to go through the rule-making process to withdraw it,” Ryan explained. “So they’ll run into roadblocks trying to repeal the rule and even bigger ones to replace it.”

Trump’s EPA appears primed to move forward regardless.

The rule specifically protects smaller bodies of water — like streams and wetlands — along with lakes and rivers. The Trump administration appears to be aiming for a much narrower definition of protected waters.

A leaked draft of the administration’s proposed rewrite of the rule would essentially mirror an opinion authored by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2006 Rapanos v. United States case. Scalia, joined by three other justices, wrote that federal protections under the Clean Water Act should only apply to larger, navigable bodies of water.

But lower courts — as well as the EPA under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations — have adhered to the interpretation of Justice Anthony Kennedy in his swing vote in the Rapanos case. Kennedy wrote that protected waters should include any waterways that have a “significant nexus” to navigable waters — a definition that has invited confusion, but is clearly more comprehensive than Scalia’s interpretation.

A shift to Scalia’s narrower interpretation of the Clean Water Act would threaten protection for streams and headwaters that are drinking sources for an estimated 117 million Americans — one-third of the U.S. population, Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted.

“That interpretation was rejected by five of the Supreme Court justices and has never been applied by the courts or the EPA,” Gisler said. “It wouldn’t have a scientific basis and would have an enormous impact. At a minimum, this would send us back to an era of uncertainty. At worse, we could lose protections for a lot of what we hold dear now.”

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, noted for his close ties with industry interests during his tenure as Oklahoma attorney general, is considering a plan to hire private lawyers, instead of EPA employees, for the agency’s rewrite of the rule, Politico reported this week.

Industry groups, including the National Mining Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, have been some of the most vocal opponents of the rule, criticizing it as a “federal land grab” that “results in unnecessary hurdles for U.S. businesses.”

Pruitt himself has also been a vocal critic of the rule. As Oklahoma’s top attorney, he sued the EPA over the rule in 2015. Since he was confirmed at the EPA, he has reiterated his vow to repeal the regulation.

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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food, water, agriculture and our climate. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

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Memory speed isn’t always something that one would pay attention to when buying a smartphone, or at least you’d expect the latest flagships to come with the fastest options available at the time, but it turns out that this isn’t necessarily true. Rec…

There are several ways to permanently obtain a hero in Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm MOBA. You can win games and in-game currency which you can then use to purchase heroes. Alternatively you could just use real-life money which will probably be quicker, but definitely more expensive.

Now if neither option appeals to you, you might be pleased to learn that Blizzard will be giving away 20 heroes in the game. This is in celebration of Heroes of the Storm 2.0 and according to Blizzard, “All players who log in to Heroes of the Storm during that timeframe will automatically receive 100 Gems, which can be used to permanently unlock one (1) Mega Bundle of their choosing.”

There will be four Mega Bundles to choose from: Assassin, which contains heroes that are primarily damage dealers; Tanks & Bruisers which are heroes meant to withstand a lot of damage and hold the front lines; Support & Specialist which contains heroes that can help their teammates escape, heal them, and so on; and Flex which is a mix of everything mentioned above.

This is actually a pretty sweet deal because it will no doubt save players a ton of money. Note that this offer is limited and Blizzard says, “Mega Bundles will be available following the launch of Heroes of the Storm 2.0 in your region, lasting until May 22, 2017.” To claim your gems and Mega Bundles, just log into the game between now and 22nd of May and you should be good to go.

Blizzard Giving Away 20 Heroes In Heroes Of The Storm , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Five civil rights and civic engagement groups have filed suit against Georgia and its secretary of state for attempting to block registered voters from participating in a closely watched runoff election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

On Thursday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a complaint in the federal district court in Atlanta, arguing that the state is violating the National Voter Registration Act. That law sets 30 days before a federal election as the earliest permissible deadline for voter registration.

Georgia complied with the provision for the special congressional election held this past Tuesday. But because no candidate won 50 percent of the vote, there will be a second election on June 20 ― a runoff between the top two finishers, Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel.

Georgia election officials contend that the June runoff is simply a continuation of the special election this week, so they don’t have to allow newly registered voters to participate. The registration deadline for Tuesday’s election was March 20, and officials say anybody who registers after that day is not eligible to vote in the June runoff.

Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee, argues that under the federal law, Georgia can’t set the registration deadline for the June 20 runoff any earlier than 30 days before that election ― that is, May 22.

“The case is actually a very, very simple case,” Rosenberg told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “Federal law specifically defines elections as including runoff elections.”

The National Voter Registration Act, passed in 1993, defines the word “election” based on the Federal Election Campaign Act. That 1971 statute defines an election as “a general, special, primary, or runoff election.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Georgia NAACP, Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, ProGeorgia State Table, Third Sector Development and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. The groups are asking the federal court to order the state to let people vote on June 20 if they’re registered by May 22 ― and to publicize that extension of the deadline.

Speaking on the press call, Francys Johnson, president of the Georgia NAACP, called the decision to block people from voting “par for the course” for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R). “The tactics that the secretary of state and the state of Georgia are employing are anything but special. They are typical,” Johnson said.

Their goal, Johnson argued, “is to make voting difficult, to make voting something that all Georgians cannot participate in. Any time there is a need to interpret federal law, [Kemp] always interprets federal law to close opportunities for Georgians to be able to exercise the right to vote.”

Stephanie Cho, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, added that Georgia’s decision was already causing considerable confusion. She noted that people who had moved to the 6th District or turned 18 since March 20 would not be able to vote in the upcoming runoff.

The Lawyers’ Committee already knows of more than 100 voters affected by the state’s excessively early deadline, according to spokesman Derrick Robinson.

But Georgia law requires that individuals who vote in a runoff election must be registered to vote in the initial election, Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce said in an email. She also noted that the U.S. Constitution allows states to set additional qualifications for voters in federal elections that don’t exceed the qualifications for state elections.

Ira Feinberg, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, essentially responded to that argument on the conference call when he said that the National Voter Registration Act “clearly pre-empts state law.” Hogan Lovells is assisting on the case.

Broce claimed that allowing new voters to register would undermine the integrity of the runoff.

“The election system, which includes the voter registration database and electronic poll books, was set up in such a way that it necessarily depends on the runoff being connected to the underlying election,” she said. “Attempting to make a change to the election system this late in the process could result in serious complications to normal election operations.”

Ossoff performed far stronger than expected in Tuesday’s election for the congressional seat recently vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. It’s a seat long held by Republicans. The race has drawn national attention because some see it as an early indicator that dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump could turn into political gains for Democrats.

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