When the BBC decided to book some instant analysis of a major criminal verdict, it opened its contact list of willing experts on criminal law and dialed up a Harvard Law professor with decades of high-profile criminal defense representation. On paper this is a slam dunk of an interview! How could this go wrong?
It went very wrong.
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Dating back to his time watching The Jetsons as a child, New Jersey lawyer Richard Grungo Jr. has been fascinated by depictions of the role that new technologies may play in the way that we live our future lives.
In more recent years, his imagination has been captured by the possibilities offered by virtual reality, including the virtual universe featured in the 2018 film Ready Player One.
And with the continued growth of digital worlds featuring attributes of the real world, including 3D virtual spaces located in the so-called metaverse, Grungo thinks that the future is “really here now.”
As a result, Grungo Colarulo, based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and with offices also in Philadelphia; Medford, New Jersey; and Hamilton Square, New Jersey, recently launched an office in an online metaverse world known as Decentraland.
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Washington (CNN)The Biden administration has released a tranche of secret documents that some historians — and conspiracy theorists — hope might shed light on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The court’s move Monday follows a similar ruling in October in which a divided court left intact a vaccine requirement for Maine health care workers over a religious objection. That ruling also drew opposition from Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas.
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Both the Guardian and The New York Times report that a different, 36-page version of the PowerPoint circulating online is similar to the one received by the committee. Both include plans to declare a national emergency in order to delay the certification of the 2020 election and the outlines of a wild conspiracy that the country of Venezuela had taken over voting machines in a large number of important states, among other debunked and unverifiable allegations.
Though it remains unknown who first created the document, the Times notes it bears striking similarities to the theories of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, which the paper describes as a “Texas entrepreneur and self-described inventor.”
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The reactionary majority of the Supreme Court today ruled that the Texas law prohibiting abortion can remain in effect during the pendency of challenges in lower courts. See Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. The Texas law was drafted for the express purpose of evading Supreme Court precedent that recognized a fundamental constitutional right. The decision is nothing less than an affront to the authority of the Court and the supremacy of the Constitution. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion dissenting from the ruling,
The clear purpose and actual effect of S. B. 8 has been to nullify this Court’s rulings. It is, however, a basic principle that the Constitution is the “fundamental and paramount law of the nation,” and “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, (1803). Indeed, “[i]f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” United States v. Peters, 1809. The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Facing a winter surge in COVID-19 infections, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday that masks will be required in all indoor public places unless the businesses or venues implement a vaccine requirement.
Hochul said the decision to reinstitute a mask mandate was based on the rising number of cases and hospitalizations, which have been especially pronounced in parts of upstate New York.
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The state recorded more than 68,000 positive tests for the virus in the seven-day period that ended Wednesday. That’s the most in any seven-day stretch since the start of February. The surge is especially pronounced in some areas of upstate New York, which has accounted for nearly three-fourths of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in hospitals since August. Thirty-two upstate hospitals had to suspend performing nonessential elective surgeries starting Thursday because of capacity issues.
“We are heading upward in a direction that I no longer find sustainable,” Hochul said.
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LONDON — A British court ruled on Friday that Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face charges that could result in decades of jail time, reversing a lower-court decision in the long-running case against the embattled WikiLeaks founder.
The ruling was a victory, at least for now, for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Mr. Assange begun under the Trump administration. But Mr. Assange will seek to appeal the decision to Britain’s Supreme Court, according to his legal team.
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