Tesla Reportedly Ordered by German Court to Reimburse Customer for Autopilot Issues

A Munich court has ordered Tesla to reimburse a customer for most of the EUR 112,000 (roughly Rs. 90,00,000) she paid for a Model X SUV because of problems with the Autopilot function, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.

A technical report showed the vehicle did not reliably recognise obstacles like the narrowing of a construction site and would at times activate the brakes unnecessarily.

This could cause a “massive hazard” in city centres and lead to collisions, the court ruled.

Tesla lawyers argued Autopilot was not designed for city traffic, according to Der Spiegel, to which the court said it was not feasible for drivers to switch the feature on and off manually in different settings as it would distract from driving.

Tesla was not immediately available for comment and declined to comment to Der Spiegel. The court was not immediately available for comment.

US safety regulators are investigating Tesla’s Autopilot function after reports of 16 crashes, including seven injury incidents and one death, involving Tesla vehicles in Autopilot that had struck stationary first-responder and road maintenance vehicles.

Tesla says Autopilot allows vehicles to brake and steer automatically within their lanes but does not make them capable of driving themselves.

Musk said in March that Tesla is likely to launch a test version of its new “Full Self-Driving” software in Europe later this year, depending on regulatory approval.

“It’s quite difficult to do full self-driving in Europe,” he told workers at the Berlin factory at the time, saying much work needs to be done to handle tricky driving situations in Europe where roads vary a lot by country.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Government May Soon Release Bill to Regulate Digital News Media Industry

The Government of India is all set to bring in legislation to regulate the Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill, 2019, which will include the Digital News Media industry for the first time.

Through this, the Cabinet proposes to bring digital news portals at par with newspapers.

Lok Sabha Secretariat, on Friday, released a list of Bills deemed to be introduced and passed in the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament.

Among them, the most crucial is The Press Registration Periodicals Bill, 2022.

The Bill seeks to replace the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) Act, 1867 which covers the ambit of newspapers and printing presses in India.

According to government sources, the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to approve this Bill soon.

The idea, when first mooted, drew a lot of criticism with assumptions that this Bill would try to curtail the Freedom of Speech and Expression on digital media. Detail consultations have already been held with various stakeholders regarding the Bill.

As of now, there is no such process to register digital news portals like newspapers but this Bill proposes to register them with the Press Registrar General, the equivalent of the prevalent Registrar of Newspapers in India.

Digital news publishers have to apply for registration within 90 days of the law coming into effect, which is being proposed.

This is the first time that digital media in India will have regulations. If the Bill is cleared, digital media will be regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

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Elon Musk Opposes Twitter’s Fast-Track Trial Request in Filed Motion, Urges Delay Till February 2023



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Bit2Me to onboard 100k blocked crypto investors from 2gether exchange

Following a recent agreement between the two crypto exchanges, Bit2Me announced plans to onboard 2gether’s 100,000 crypto investors, who were recently blocked from trading due to the exchange’s inability to operate amid unfavorable market conditions.

On July 10, Spanish cryptocurrency trading platform 2gether shut down its free trading services, citing its inability to justify its related operational costs due to crypto winter. Instead, the users were being charged 20 euros as maintenance fees.

Providing relief to the recently displaced crypto investors, Bit2Me reached an agreement with 2gether to onboard its users without imposing any fees — allowing users to move over their holdings and resume their trading activities. In addition, Bit2Me decided to reimburse the 20 euros back to the users following successful onboarding.

Reassuring his commitment to Spain’s crypto market, Leif Ferreira, CEO and co-founder of Bit2Me, stated: 

“The world of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology is and will be key to our present and future. For that reason, we want to be at the side of 2gether users who want to remain linked to the crypto ecosystem”

Related: Binance gets VASP registration for its Spanish subsidiary from the Bank of Spain

The Bank of Spain recently registered Binance’s Spanish subsidiary, Moon Tech Spain, as a virtual asset service provider (VASP), allowing the exchange to offer crypto trading services in the region.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao highlighted the importance of effective regulation for the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies, adding:

“We have invested significantly in compliance and introduced AMLD 5 and 6 compliant tools and policies to ensure that our platform remains the safest and most trustworthy in the industry.”



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Jan. 6 Panel Issues Subpoena to Secret Service in Hunt for Text Messages

WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to the Secret Service late Friday seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that were said to have been erased, as well as any after-action reports.

In a statement, the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said the panel was seeking records from “any and all divisions” of the Secret Service “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”

The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, met with the panel and told lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6.

The Secret Service has disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying that data on some phones had been “lost” as part of a planned three-month “system migration” in January 2021, but none pertinent to the inquiry.

The agency said that the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general to preserve its data and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, said the panel wants to hear more from the Secret Service to try to understand what happened.

“The committee is absolutely determined to get to the bottom of this and to find all of the missing texts,” Mr. Raskin told reporters on Capitol Hill. “They are missing, but in the age of high technology, we should not give up.”

The subpoena comes as the committee continues to barrel ahead in its investigation even as it prepares for what could be the final hearing of its summer schedule: a prime-time session on Thursday focused on former President Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of inaction as a mob of his supporters assaulted Congress.

Mr. Byrne was present at what was perhaps the most dramatic meeting of the Trump presidency on Dec. 18, 2020, in which Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, the pro-Trump lawyer, pressed to seize voting machines and name Ms. Powell as a special counsel to work to overturn the election.

Mr. Thompson said the panel also has been discussing what to do about some more high-profile potential witnesses.

Virginia Thomas, a political activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is “still on the committee’s list” of witnesses to call, even though she has rebuffed attempts to interview her, Mr. Thompson said.

Mr. Thompson also told reporters the panel was continuing to discuss — as members have for months — whether it should try to summon Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence to testify, but lawmakers have not reached a conclusion about how to proceed.

The panel believes both men would probably fight attempts to get them to testify, and some lawmakers worry a public battle over Mr. Trump’s compliance would distract from the actual work of fact finding.

Mr. Thompson has previously said the committee had ruled out a subpoena for Mr. Pence, citing “significant information” it had received from two of his aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.

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Elon Musk Opposes Twitter’s Fast-Track Trial Request in Filed Motion, Urges Delay Till February 2023

Elon Musk filed a motion on Friday opposing Twitter Inc’s request to fast-track a trial over his plan to terminate his $44 billion deal for the social media firm.

Musk‘s lawyers, in papers filed with the Delaware Chancery Court, said Twitter‘s “unjustifiable request” to rush the merger case to trial in two months should be rejected.

It is the latest move in what promises to be a major legal showdown between Twitter and Musk. The San Francisco-based company is seeking to resolve months of uncertainty for its business as Musk tries to walk away from the deal for what he says is Twitter’s “spam bot” problem.

Twitter sued Musk on Tuesday for violating the deal to buy the social media platform, asking a Delaware court to order the world’s richest person to complete the merger at the agreed price of $54.20 (roughly Rs. 4,500) per share.

The company requested the trial begin in September because the merger agreement with Musk terminates on Oct. 25.

“Twitter’s sudden request for warp speed after two months of foot-dragging and obfuscation is its latest tactic to shroud the truth about spam accounts long enough to railroad defendants into closing,” Musk’s filing said.

Musk’s lawyers argued the dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value and extremely fact- and expert-intensive. They said it would require substantial time for discovery and requested a trial date on or after February 13 next year.

The debt financing package committed by banks for Musk’s acquisition expires in April 2023. That means if the trial began in February and did not finish by April, the deal could collapse.

Twitter declined to comment on Musk’s latest motion.

Shares of Twitter were down about 1 percent in extended trading.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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A safe space for Venezuela’s indigenous women — Global Issues

Venezuela has suffered a widespread decline in public services, such as electricity, domestic gas supplies, and public transportation in recent years.

This crisis has driven some members of the indigenous communities on Venezuela’s western border with Colombia, including Río Negro, to make frequent border crossings to purchase basic goods, including food items. When their relative or partners leave on these essential trips, the women of the Wayúu indigenous community have found themselves vulnerable to gender-based violence.

Community gardens could be an answer to the problems of self-sufficiency, and safety. A garden created by a local women’s network, Jieyúú Kojutsuu (“Women of Value”) is supporting local women and their families, and helping them to meet their subsistence needs.

UNHCR/Diego Moreno

Young people from Rio Negro working in their plot.

There are currently twenty-six members of the community working together to grow corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, black beans, cantaloupe, and other vegetables and fruits in Río Negro.

They include many of the Wayúu indigenous community’s most vulnerable groups, including young people at risk of being recruited by armed groups, unemployed women at risk of gender-based violence, and elderly people who had resorted to begging and heavy work to survive.

“Can you imagine? There are more women than men working in the garden!”, says Guillermina Torres, one of the members. “We are going to harvest our own food without having to depend on our husbands’ income. And the young people who used to hang around in the streets have also joined this project”.

“Traditionally, agriculture was one of the main livelihoods in the region. Elderly people have been able to integrate themselves and share ancestral knowledge with younger members of the community,” says Diego Moreno, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Protection Assistant in Maracaibo, who has been monitoring this initiative.

“Women who were most at risk of gender-based violence while their relatives or partners undertook back-and-forth trips to Colombia now have a safe space where they gather every day to grow food that will later benefit their families”, he adds.

UNHCR/Diego Moreno

Member of the women’s network and participant in the garden preparing the soil for planting.

Sustainable solutions

With limited financial resources, the Wayúu indigenous community had to think of new innovative and sustainable ways to grow their crops. A positive side-effect has been a move towards sustainable agriculture, which is less harmful to the soil.

To support these efforts, UNHCR has donated agricultural tools, seeds, water tanks, and solar streetlights, helping to ensure that the community has a clean and sustainable source of energy and water irrigation.

In addition, the UN migration agency (IOM) has trained local families to make organic fertilizers and natural insect repellents, using ingredients—including animal waste—that are easily found in the community.

“We don’t have spend money buying chemicals that can also affect our crops and the environment. Instead, we learned to make our own 100 per cent natural fertilizers and repellents with ingredients we can find right here in our community”, says Ms. Torres.

“The replacement of chemical fertilizers with organic fertilizers and of agro-toxins with natural insecticides made of neem leaves, tobacco leaves, and vegetable ash, as well as the creation of seed banks, guarantees a sustainable and eco-efficient way of life, as well as a healthier diet for the families and the community as a whole,” explains Wolfgan Rangel, IOM’s Productive Projects Monitoring Officer in Maracaibo.

Hundreds of gardens supported

In total, more than 660 community garden projects have been supported in the states of Zulia, Táchira, and Barinas.

Both UNHCR and IOM have donated the necessary tools and resources to support communities through the development of sustainable small farming initiatives. In some of these communities, local markets have also been created to sell vegetables, helping generate alternative sources of income.

Given the remote location of the communities and the lack of public transportation, it is vital that the community garden projects continue to be scaled up. This way, more indigenous families will be able to take part in these subsistence farming initiatives and stop relying on trips to neighbouring countries to buy food.

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Opinion | After Abortion, Republicans Are Targeting the Right to Travel

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it did more than just supercharge the assault on the right to have an abortion. It also opened up a corresponding attack on the right to travel.

That attack is a straightforward consequence of giving states the power to ban abortion. An abortion ban in Ohio, for example, does not actually end abortion. It simply pushes it underground or, for those who have the means, out of state. This, in fact, is what happened with a 10-year-old rape victim, who was recently taken out of state to obtain an abortion after she was impregnated as a result of the assault.

It is important to say that the Supreme Court has recognized a right to travel between states on multiple occasions in cases stretching back to the 19th century.

In Crandall v. State of Nevada, decided in the late 1860s, the court invalidated a Nevada law that imposed a $1 tax “upon every person leaving the state by any railroad, stage coach or other vehicle engaged or employed in the business of transporting passengers for hire.” Americans, wrote Justice Samuel Miller in his majority opinion, have a right to movement that is “in its nature independent of the will of any state over whose soil he must pass in the exercise of it.”

The court affirmed this right a second time in Williams v. Fears in 1900. “Undoubtedly,” wrote Chief Justice Melville Fuller, “the right of locomotion, the right to remove from one place to another according to inclination, is an attribute of personal liberty, and the right, ordinarily, of free transit from and through the territory of any state is a right secured by the 14th Amendment and by other provisions of the Constitution.”

More recently, in Saenz v. Roe in 1999, a majority of the court recognized that, as Justice William Brennan put it in 1969, “the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.” The right to travel, wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in his majority opinion, quoting Justice Potter Stewart, “is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.”

There is nothing in the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that would explicitly threaten the right to travel between states. In his concurrence with the majority’s ruling, Justice Brett Kavanaugh even says that in his view a state may not “bar a resident of that state from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion.”

But that’s exactly where some Republican-led states want to take the law.

Missouri lawmakers have introduced a “bounty” bill similar to the one now in operation in Texas, which would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident obtain an abortion out of state. Another bill would apply Missouri’s laws to abortions that occur in other states.

Speaking of Texas, a group of State House lawmakers who call themselves the Texas Freedom Caucus hope to “impose additional civil and criminal sanctions on law firms that pay for abortions or abortion travel,” regardless of where the abortion occurs.

According to The Washington Post, an anti-abortion organization led by Republican state lawmakers has been exploring “model legislation that would restrict people from crossing state lines for abortions.”

“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” Peter Breen, vice president of the Thomas More Society, told The Post. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.”

And in Washington, congressional Republicans have rejected an effort to affirm the right to travel. “Does the child in the womb have the right to travel in their future?” asked Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, objecting to a Democratic bill that would bar restrictions on women traveling to another state to get a legal abortion.

There are few, if any, modern precedents for laws that limit the right of Americans to travel between states. To the extent that there is a history here, it lies in the legal conflicts over both fugitive slaves and free Black individuals in the decades before the Civil War.

“As the North began emancipating those slaves whom slaveholders brought into free jurisdictions, slave states strove to strengthen a slaveholding power structure thought to be under Northern attack,” the historian Edlie L. Wong writes in “Neither Fugitive Nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel.” Slave states, she writes, enacted increasingly punitive restrictions “that prohibited free Blacks from traveling into slave jurisdictions.”

On the other side, slaveholders sought to use the legal system to restrict the movement of enslaved Americans out of the South. If the Northern state governments would not recognize the existence of slave property, then federal courts would.

The federal government was also reluctant to grant free Northern Black people the documents necessary to secure their freedom beyond the states in which they lived. The result was a world in which Black Americans were deprived of freedom of movement. This was true even after the Civil War when, in the wake of Reconstruction, “redeemed” Southern states put limits on the right of Black Americans to use public transportation and other forms of transit.

As Wong notes, the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 — which affirmed Jim Crow segregation — was “fought over equal access to the technologies of intrastate railway travel.” In his famous lone dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan reminded the court that “‘personal liberty’ as it has been well said, ‘consists in the power of locomotion, of changing station, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint.’”

There is no direct parallel between the travel rights of women, girls and others who can give birth under anti-abortion laws and the travel rights of Black Americans under various forms of legalized unfreedom. But there is an echo of a question that relates to both situations: What happens to the rights of citizens when their bodies become property under the law?

And make no mistake: When a state claims the right to limit your travel on account of your body — when it claims one of the most fundamental aspects of your personal liberty in order to take control of your reproductive health — then that state has rendered you little more than another form of property.



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Comedian and Bust Down Co-Creator Jak Knight Dead at 28

The comedy world has lost a bright star.

Jak Knight, the co-creator of Peacock’s Bust Down and a stand-up comedian, passed away in Los Angeles on July 14, his family said in a statement to NBC News. He was 28.

A cause of death was not given and, in their statement, Knight’s loved ones requested that “their privacy please be respected during this extremely difficult time.”

During the course of his career, Knight held credits in both writing and acting. Not only did he co-create Bust Down, but he also starred in the series alongside Chris Redd, Sam Jay and Langston Kerman. In addition, the comic voiced the character of Devon on the Netflix’s Big Mouth, as well as served as a writer in five seasons of the animated show.

As a writer, he worked on Lucas Bros Moving Co., Black-ish and Immoral Compass.

Back in 2018, Knight reflected on his involvement with Big Mouth. “Being a writer is amazing,” he noted in an interview with RESPECT. Magazine, “and just being in the room with some of the most brilliant people alive and I get to sit across the table with people like Jordan Peele and Maya Rudolph it’s surreal but it’s a lot of work, work.”

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NFL insider predicts 3 teams that could lure Sean Payton out of retirement

Former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton retired, but could these three teams lure him back into coaching?

Could Sean Payton ever return to coaching? He has publicly said he wanted to take 2022 away from coaching, but does that mean he will do it forever?

According to Barry Jackson’s column on the Miami Herald, he believes that there are three teams that could want Payton as their head coach.

The Dolphins allegedly were ready to hire him, but that didn’t happen, and Miami hired Mike McDaniel. Dallas and the LA Chargers are the other two teams that Jackson mentions in his article, and all three could benefit if they were able to lure him in as their coach.

Payton is an excellent football coach that made the Saints a team that opponents feared to play, so why wouldn’t he be able to do the same in other franchises?

Could Sean Payton come out of retirement to coach in Dallas, LA or Miami?

While the Dolphins’ fans should be excited about McDaniel, we all know how the NFL works. If a coach doesn’t find success right away, a team could look elsewhere, and Payton would be the first guy to call.

Payton wouldn’t go anywhere if he came out of retirement. He would go to a place with a good roster that could compete right away or someone that would allow him to put a squad together without hesitation.

Dallas would be the best fit for Payton among the three teams that Jackson included. The quarterback situation is reasonable, they have a lot of playmakers, and after Jerry Jones showed their NFL Draft selection, someone like Payton could help him step away from that role and allow the coach to do work.

However, will Jones and the other front office people be willing to give up that kind of control? Maybe if they are desperate enough to begin winning again.

As for Miami and the Chargers, if neither of their coaches work out, they would give that control to them. In my opinion, the Chargers would take a little more work, and while Miami has some playmakers, it would also take a little time.

Dallas has a solid roster who could compete, which they already showed last year. Adding Payton to the equation would elevate that franchise to success. He is 152-89 overall and only 58, so the Cowboys could invest in a long-term situation with him.

Payton is an excellent coach, and he doesn’t need to stay away from football, so the Cowboys should jump as soon as he decides to come back into coaching or convince him to come out of retirement.

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Girlfriend of Oregon Football Player Spencer Webb Mourns His Death

Kelly Kay, the girlfriend of late Oregon Ducks tight end Spencer Webb, is remembering the college athlete in the wake of his passing.

“My best friend my twin flame the love of my life,” she began in a July 14 post on Instagram. “I’ve never loved anything as much as i love you. You were my everything, you gave me purpose, you showed me what it’s like to be cherished and valued and seen for me.”

The 22-year-old football player passed away on July 13 after suffering an accidental fall. In a statement from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, police noted that Spencer was located about 100 yards down a steep trail after he “fell and struck his head.” There is no evidence of foul play and the manner of his death “appears to be accidental,” per authorities.

In her tribute, which featured photos of Kelly and Spencer throughout their relationship, she noted that she and the Sacramento-native had “so many big plans.”



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