Link Roundup April 2023

[wepon]

Not a single police department in 20 largest US cities compliant with international rights laws, report finds

Researchers graded 20 police departments against international human rights standards, including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “the two fundamental international instruments protecting human rights, establish the rights to life, equality, liberty and security of person, freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and freedom from discrimination”, the report says. Law enforcement relies on the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, and a Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions on protection of the right to life during law enforcement, according to the report. But in a review of department policies from 20 American cities, the university survey found that none has a use-of-force policy that meets those standards.

A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline

Patriarch Daniel J. Beers, 60, lies at the center of the family network. He was a leading figure in a scheme in the 1990s involving a health care sharing ministry that fraudulently siphoned tens of millions of dollars from members, court records show. Two decades later, he played a key role in building Liberty into one of the nation’s largest sharing ministries, several of the nonprofit’s current and former employees told ProPublica. Four years after its launch in 2014, the ministry enrolled members in almost every state and collected $300 million in annual revenue. Liberty used the money to pay at least $140 million to businesses owned and operated by Beers family members and friends over a seven-year period, the investigation found. The family then funneled the money through a network of shell companies to buy a private airline in Ohio, more than $20 million in real estate holdings and scores of other businesses, including a winery in Oregon that they turned into a marijuana farm. The family calls this collection of enterprises “the conglomerate.”

'Horribly Unethical': Startup Experimented on Suicidal Teens on Social Media With Chatbot

When Motherboard used Koko’s peer support tool, one of the four options offered by the chatbot, it asked us if we needed help with "Dating, Friendships, Work, School, Family, Eating Disorders, LGBTQ+, Discrimination, or Other," then asked us to write down our problem and tag our "most negative thought" about it, then sent that information to someone else on the Koko platform. The advice that Koko gave about a non-communicative partner was, “You should just dump him if he’s not texting you. Just tell him he sucks.” Generally, people seeking help on the Koko platform are also asked anonymously give advice to other users on Koko. Immediately after asking for help ourselves, we were given the following conundrum to solve, posted by another user: "i feel so exhausted. im autoromantic and autosexual and struggling to cope. i keep going though periods of being comfortable with my sexuality and my relationship with myself, but right now im struggling. i feel disgusting and narcissistic for loving myself. only yesterday i was feeling happy that i knew i love myself and now im just tired and sad. ugh :(( I’m a loser."

Police are prosecuting​ abortion seekers using their digital data — and Facebook and Google help them do it

This spring, a woman named Jessica Burgess and her daughter will stand trial in Nebraska after being accused of performing an illegal abortion — with a key piece of evidence provided by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Prosecutors said Burgess helped her daughter find and take pills that would induce an abortion. The teenage Burgess also faces charges of illegally disposing of the fetal remains.

UK minister admits 200 asylum-seeking children have gone missing

NGOs have repeatedly raised concerns over children going missing from accommodation and have offered to help the Home Office keep them safe, but the government has rejected these offers. Philip Ishola, the chief executive of the anti-child trafficking organisation Love146, which has been warning of the risk of placing unaccompanied children in hotels since the Home Office started using them, said the Home Office rejected an offer from a group of organisations to assess a hotel in Brighton.

Revealed: UK’s missing child refugees put to work for Manchester gangs

Currently, 200 children are missing from hotels run by the Home Office. Where they might be is a topic of significant debate. The answer is further afield than most suspect. The Observer investigation reveals that some have even been found outside the UK.

Big Oil’s flagship plastic waste project sinks on the Ganges

Renew Oceans published targets on its website to collect 45 tonnes of plastic trash from the Ganges in 2019 and 450 tonnes in 2020. Neither the Alliance nor Renew Oceans has published any information on their progress in reaching those targets. Four people involved in the project told Reuters it collected less than one tonne of waste from the Ganges before it closed in March last year after less than six months in operation.

The Recycling Myth: Big Oil’s solution for plastic waste littered with failure

Renewlogy’s equipment could not process plastic “films” such as cling wrap, as promised, Boise’s Materials Management Program Manager Peter McCullough told Reuters. The city remains in the recycling program, he said, but its plastic now meets a low-tech end: It’s being trucked to a cement plant northeast of Salt Lake City that burns it for fuel. Renewlogy said in an emailed response to Reuters’ questions that it could recycle plastic films. The trouble, it said, was that Boise’s waste was contaminated with other garbage at 10 times the level it was told to expect. Boise spokesperson Colin Hickman said the city was not aware of any statements or assurances made to Renewlogy about specific levels of contamination.

Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

None of the 11 pairs of footwear donated by Reuters were turned into exercise paths or kids’ parks in Singapore. Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. The manager said his firm had been hired by a waste management company involved in the recycling program to retrieve shoes from the donation bins for delivery to that company’s local warehouse. But that’s not what happened to the shoes donated by Reuters. Ten pairs moved first from the donation bins to the exporter’s facility, then on to neighboring Indonesia, in some cases traveling hundreds of miles to different corners of the vast archipelago, the location trackers showed.

Twitter begins removing legacy verified check marks

In a response to a tweet that reported "some celebrities have been offered a complimentary Twitter Blue subscription on behalf of Musk," the CEO responded that he's "paying for a few personally." Musk later confirmed that he was paying for the verification of actor William Shatner, NBA star LeBron James and King.

Few speak Ojibwe as a first language. This 'nest' is teaching kids to in Cloquet

The “language nest” model of language revitalization began in New Zealand, where a movement to revive the Maori language began in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the government there began funding language nests, or Te Kōhanga Reo, which brought elders together with children and their parents.

How to apply for your share of Facebook’s $725 million settlement in privacy suit

People who had an active U.S. Facebook account between May 2007 and December 2022 have until Aug. 25 to enter a claim. Individual settlement payments haven’t yet been established because payouts depend on how many users submit claims and how long each user maintained a Facebook account.

French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge

A joint press release from Verso Books and Éditions la Fabrique condemned Moret’s treatment as “scandalous”. It said: “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”

As strike looms, The Bear, CSI: Vegas, and more TV writers tell us what it's really like behind the scenes

The “Writers Strike for Dummies” explanation of the current state of TV can be boiled down to this: profits are high and budgets are up, but writers are making less than ever. According to the WGA, half of all TV series writers are working for the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement rate, regardless of their level of experience in the industry. And that MBA hasn’t been adjusted for inflation.

'Mischievous Responders' Confound Research On Teens

"We were interested in the disparities between LGBT and non-LGBT youth in suicidal ideation, feelings of belonging, text-message bullying," he recalls. "One of our reviewers asked us, 'How do you know these kids are actually gay?' And giving some thought to it, we said, 'Let's figure out who those kids are.'" Robinson-Cimpian and his co-author came up with a clever test. They chose a set of answers on the survey — questions with responses that adolescents were likely to find funny, but ones that were statistically unlikely to be related to being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Their height, for example. The more of these way-off-base answers that someone gave on these questions, the researchers surmised, the more likely they were to be lying about being LGBT as well.