Apple is always rumored to be thinking about dipping its toe into different industries, but this newest one might make some degree of sense given the services Apple already offers. As an extension of Apple Pay, Apple is reportedly looking to break into the peer-to-peer payment systems. This would put Apple in a position to compete with existing services like … Continue reading
Today we’re going to discuss how a person could create a clear-backed Samsung Galaxy S8. Creating one’s own Samsung Galaxy S8 Clear Edition – unofficial name, of course – means a lot of risk. Taking that sort of risk is something generally only a person who profits from extreme risks with high priced hardware can take. As it were, there … Continue reading
Uber’s self-driving car lead has been put on the back-burner for LIDAR development, amid accusations from Alphabet’s Waymo that he stole secrets about the technology. Anthony Levandowski has been head of the Advanced Technologies group at the ride-sharing firm since his startup Otto was acquired by Uber in July 2016. However, his time there hasn’t been straightforward. Uber was accused … Continue reading
Honda has teamed up with Japan’s Kyoto University to help spur the development of artificial intelligence. This effort will see the two entities researching and developing such technologies, and doing so with particular goals in mind. Honda envisions a future were AI can collaborate with humans, being integrated into everyday life in a way that is beneficial and able to … Continue reading
Alphabet’s Q1 2017 earnings report showed that their “Other Bets” category was doing better than this same time last year in revenue. The same chart also showed that Other Bets was doing worse than this time last year – in operating loss. It might seem on the surface like a losing strategy to push more money into parts of the … Continue reading
Moms rely on a hell of a lot of grace and strength to get through long days juggling their children’s needs with, well, life. And their kiddos’ sweet cuddles and giggles definitely help, too.
But you know what else keeps moms going? Coffee. And wine. So here are 15 cute and cheeky Mother’s Day gifts for all the thirsty mamas out there.
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AUSTIN, Texas ― The Texas House of Representatives approved a bill on Thursday that would put a statewide ban on “sanctuary” policies aimed at forcing local law enforcement to cooperate with deportation efforts by threatening officials with jail time, fines and losing their jobs. If the House version becomes law, it would also allow police to question the immigration status of anyone they stop ― even children.
The bill will have to be reconciled with a version passed by the Senate in February before it goes to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, where it is almost certain to get a signature.
The bill seeks to ban “sanctuary” policies by requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This would mean sharing information and detaining people police would otherwise release upon the agency’s request.
If the bill goes into law, jurisdictions that don’t comply will lose state funds and officials ― both within law enforcement and outside it ― could be charged with a misdemeanor. They could also be subject to fines and removed from office. That includes campus police, despite the fact that Texas also has a law on the books allowing undocumented immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition.
Democratic legislators ― who have staunchly fought efforts like these for years ― wore orange ribbons on their lapels to show their opposition and delayed the vote for some 16 hours on Wednesday by filing a flurry of more than 100 amendments. But as the debate creeped into the early morning hours, Republican lawmakers passed a motion to kill dozens of adjustments that had yet to be discussed.
They were unable to block amendments that made the bill harsher than the one passed out of committee. One change was the provision allowing local police to ask people their immigration status, even during routine traffic stops, drawing comparisons from opponents to Arizona’s controversial SB1070. This would also include children ― Republicans voted down an amendment to apply the law only to adults.
If your goal was to use immigrants for political gain, you have succeeded
Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchia
“Sanctuary” policies vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the term is most often applies to jurisdictions that decline to hold people for ICE if it would otherwise release them because their charges were dropped or they were granted bond.
They have a variety of reasons: it costs money to detain people for extra time, hurts police-community relations and risks legal challenges because some courts have ruled holding people on ICE detainers alone is unconstitutional. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order also meant to force “sanctuary cities” to work with ICE, ruling it was likely unconstitutional.
The only Texas jurisdiction with a formal sanctuary policy limiting ICE detainers is Travis County, which includes the state capital city of Austin. Officials there dispute that they’re breaking the law, but Gov. Abbott stripped the county of some $1.5 million in state funds in retaliation. Other jurisdictions would likely be at risk as well; Houston, for example, bars its officers from asking about immigration status because officials say it improves their ability to work with the community.
Immigrant rights advocates, many undocumented themselves, flooded the Texas Capitol Wednesday to show their opposition to the bill. They carried voter registration applications with them, vowing to make Republicans suffer at the ballot box if they pass the bill. Austin City Councilman Greg Casar derided the bill as a “racist” attack on Hispanics and immigrants and said opponents will immediately challenge the law in the courts. “This fight is not over,” Casar told a crowd gathered for a vigil under the capitol rotunda.
A 9-year-old girl, who had testified against the bill when it was debated in committee, told the same crowd that it was ridiculous that children should be pressed into lobbying on behalf of her undocumented parents. “Be ashamed of yourselves,” she said of the Texas conservatives who pushed the law.
But Republican legislators here have repeatedly ignored the entreaties of both immigrant rights groups and some of the state’s top law enforcement officials to abandon the bill. During committee hearings, sheriffs and police chiefs from several of the state’s largest cities told lawmakers that the bill would make their jobs harder and increase criminal activity by making immigrant communities distrustful of local police.
After Trump implemented harsher deportation policies, Houston saw a decline in Latinos reporting rape and domestic abuse, Police Chief Art Acevedo said earlier this month.
Texas Rep. Mary González (D-Clint) fell to tears during a speech to the House floor, as she told her colleagues the bill would make it harder for survivors of sexual assault like her to seek help from the police.
“If you ever had any friendship with me,” González said, according to The Texas Tribune, “this is the vote that measures that friendship.”
Before final passage, Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchia (D) told colleagues that he had trouble even looking at them after they moved forward with the bill the day before.
“If your goal was to use immigrants for political gain, you have succeeded,” Anchia said.
“If your goal was to strike terror in the hearts of immigrants so they go home, you succeeded. And if your goal was to win yesterday at all costs, you succeeded. As the vanquished in yesterday’s battle, I say congratulations, and I hope you’re satisfied.”
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A Colorado community is in shock after an animal sanctuary battling housing problems resorted to euthanizing all 11 of its exotic animals, despite the county planning commission claiming other facilities had offered to take them in.
Lion’s Gate Animal Sanctuary in Agate announced in a statement last week that it had euthanized five bears, three lions and three tigers. The statement blamed the deaths on the Elbert County’s planning commission for refusing the sanctuary’s request to move to another site because of flooding.
“The flooding and resulting damage prevents us from reasonably continuing our operation and caring for our animals safely,” the organization had said in an earlier online petition for their move.
Facility owners Peter Winney and Joan Laub reasoned in their statement last week that they wouldn’t have had to euthanize the animals if the local government officials had not denied their request to move. They identified the animals killed as “Victims of Elbert County Commissioners.”
(Story continues below slideshow.)
County Chairman Danny Wilcox, who was one of the three voting commissioners, said the new location the group chose was in a more urban and populated area, making the conditions unsafe for the general public. The animal sanctuary also never told the commissioners that they’d resort to killing the animals, he said.
“We were shocked,” he told HuffPost on Thursday of the sanctuary’s actions, which he said have resulted in people threatening him, the other commissioners and even his grandchildren.
Jennifer Churchill, a spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, described the sanctuary’s decision as unprecedented.
“This has never happened before in our state,” she told HuffPost.
Wilcox said the board pointedly asked the owners what would happen to the animals if their request to move was denied, and they said they’d “continue to operate as they had for the last 10 years.”
“They believe that we made them euthanize the animals. That’s the story that’s evidently being told and we did not do that,” he said. “In fact, we verified that the animals would continue to live.”
He added that two sanctuaries, which he declined to identify, contacted the county and offered to take in the animals if they could not be moved.
But in a press release, the county identified one of those facilities as the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Kennesburg, about 70 miles north of Lion’s Gate.
Pat Craig, who runs that sanctuary, said they “could have easily taken them.”
“Eleven is pretty small,” he told HuffPost Wednesday of the number of bears, tigers and lions that needed homes. “They could have easily called.”
Craig’s 720-acre facility, whose website boasts that it hosts more than 400 animals, including tigers, bears, lions, leopards and wolves, it has taken in from around the world.
In February, the group took in five big cats and two bears from a zoo in Argentina. Craig said they also recently received 27 animals from South Dakota.
An attempt to reach the Lion’s Gate owners for comment was not successful.
A statement published to Lion’s Gate’s Facebook page on Thursday argued that the animals could not be moved because they were “too old and many had disabilities and special needs.” The sanctuary denied that they resorted to killing the animals because of the county commissioners, even though they had previously described the animals as the county’s victims.
Instead, they said they euthanized the animals because they were old and “many had disabilities and special needs” that prevented them from being moved. It was no longer safe for the animals or for the public for them to be at their current location, they wrote.
Cathy Bosier, who said she has volunteered at Lion’s Gate Sanctuary for the last year and a half, said the owners are no longer talking to the media, but described them as devastated by the animals’ deaths, which she called a “last resort.”
“They felt their hands were forced. They were backed into a corner and their hands were forced,” she told HuffPost on Wednesday. “Everything else was tried and this was the last thing.”
Asked if the commissioners knew that euthanasia was their last resort, she answered: “Yeah, pretty much.”
Bosier said the facility reached out to a neighboring sanctuary for help but the animals’ old age prevented their move. She described the animals as around 20 years of age.
“The move to a larger sanctuary would have killed them,” she said.
Addressing Craig’s facility, she said: “There’s no way they’re equipped to care for these animals with special needs.”
Craig denied this claim.
“We locate older animals,” he said. “The age has no factor.”
Craig suggested that the reasons behind the animals’ euthanasia are deeper than they appear.
A 2006 report by the Denver Post highlighted Winney’s previous legal trouble involving wild animals, including “allegations of smuggling cats” and other documentation and licensing issues. Craig said the owners’ inability to get additional licenses for their sanctuary prohibited them from acquiring additional means of funding.
“It severely restricted what they could do,” he said.
Wilcox, the county chairman, noted that this was the second time the facility had requested this move. The previous one, in 2006, was also denied.
This time around, Wilcox said, the owners cited flooding issues as a way to be considered for a special-use permit. He called the flooding concerns “questionable,” however.
“We went out to look at the site prior to the hearing. We went out and looked at all the issues surrounding it, looked at the fencing, looked at the topography,” he said. “The research that we did brought up a lot of issues and concerns.”
According to the Denver Post, residents around the current location had complained for years about safety and noise issues related to the facility.
One neighbor told local Denver station ABC 7 that when the lions roared the whole ground shook.
“It’s so loud,” Rick Blotter said, adding that he was sad about the news of the animals’ death. “I’m devastated, it’s terrible. But it’s their animals, they have to do what they can to make things meet and if they can’t make it work, I hope they tried to find a place for them.”
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Salma Hayek’s dogs won’t let anything get between them and their cake, not even a bride and groom.
The star stopped by “The Ellen Show” on Wednesday to discuss her new movie “How to Be a Latin Lover” and ended up revealing how her dogs’ love of cake has gotten her into trouble.
Hayek told host Ellen DeGeneres that one of the “worst” incidents took place at a very luxurious hotel in the Bahamas that didn’t want her to bring her dogs. The actress eventually convinced them to let her and two of her rescued dogs stay, but one night 17-year-old Lupe and her sister weren’t where she expected them to be.
“One day, I arrive and they’re not there,” Hayek said, referencing her dogs. “And then I hear this screaming and big commotion. And I have to tell you that Lupe loves cake more than anything in the world. You don’t know how many birthday parties were ruined … and I was like, ‘Oh, my god, this sounds like a cake.’”
After following the screams, Hayek found her dogs crashing a “beautiful wedding” and feasting on the cake.
“I see the beautiful wedding cake in a little table with two chairs for the bride and the groom,” she said. “Instead of the bride and the groom, there is Lupe and Angie sitting perfectly.”
Watch Hayek describe the scene and how she got her cake-loving dogs to behave in the clip above.
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A Virginia mom is speaking out after she was apparently chastised at church service for breastfeeding without a cover.
Annie Peguero, a personal trainer from Dumfries, Virginia, claims she was approached twice by workers at Springfield’s Summit Church this past Sunday while trying to feed her 19-month-old baby, Autumn.
Peguero, who often posts parenting and wellness tips to her Facebook page, said she was told breastfeeding without a cover could make men in the church, or newcomers, “feel uncomfortable.”
In a Facebook Live video posted on Monday, Peguero explained that she often breastfeeds without a cover, whenever and wherever her baby needs milk. She encouraged viewers who were comfortable breastfeeding in public to continue doing so in the way that makes sense for them and their babies ― no matter what other people think.
“Women should be breastfeeding their babies as they want to breastfeed their babies,” Peguero said in the video. “Society might view your breasts as sex objects, which they are absolutely not. They are there to feed your babies.”
The mom told The Washington Post that she had recently started attending Summit, and was drawn in by the community and the sermons. She started became concerned about the church’s policies this past Sunday, after attempting to drop Autumn off at the kids room at Summit. She said when the baby began to fuss, she decided to sit in the hallway and feed her child before handing her off to the nursery.
“Right away the church workers started kinda freaking out,” the mom said in the video.
The workers offered to get Peguero a cover, which she refused.
“Very uncomfortable for me as I’m trying to breastfeed my baby to have this stranger coming at me with this blanket, covering her up and touching my baby,” she said.
Later on, Peguero was called to get her baby from the nursery during the service. She returned to the sanctuary with Autumn in tow, and when the baby began to get agitated, the mom fed her again.
Peguero said that “right away,” a woman came over to her and told her she would need to go to the baby room to nurse her child.
But that’s not what this mom felt was right for her.
“I never go in, I never leave to go anywhere to feed my baby,” Peguero said. “I feel that it’s important to feed her wherever and whenever and give her milk.”
Peguero said that various members and staff told her after the incident that the church had a policy of directing women to a special room to feed their babies. One member explained that this prevents breastfeeding moms from appearing in the live-stream of the service, which appears online. It would also apparently prevent newcomers and men from feeling “uncomfortable.”
“I have breastfed in a few different countries, I’ve lived all over this country and I’ve breastfed Autumn all over the place and nobody has ever said anything to me about breastfeeding in the way that I do,” Peguero said.
HuffPost reached out to Peguero and to Summit Church for comment, but has not heard back.
Since 2015, the state of Virginia has legally protected mothers’ rights to breastfeed in public, wherever and whenever they choose ― including in privately owned public locations, such as coffee shops or gyms.
On Wednesday, Peguero announced on Facebook that she had decided to work with an attorney to make sure the church knows that religious institutions aren’t exempt for this law.
After her experience, Peguero said she doesn’t think she could ever attend Summit again.
“I’m upset because I loved this church and my very good friend brought me there, and I’m so afraid what it’s going to do to our relationship,” Peguero said. “But I have to stand up for breastfeeding moms and I have to stand up for my baby and my rights as a mother.”
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