President Barack Obama is summoning top congressional Republicans and Democrats to a rare Sunday meeting at the White House to begin “hard bargaining” on a broad debt-reduction deal.
At the July 10 session Obama will make his latest bid to break a partisan impasse over whether to include cuts in entitlement programs and tax increases in an agreement. Both sides in the debate are signaling openness to compromise on each front.
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Will investors move out of their “safe haven” markets? In 2009, downgrades and debt auction failures in countries like the UK, Greece, Ireland and Spain were a stark reminder that unless advanced economies begin to put their fiscal houses in order, investors and rating agencies will likely turn from friends to foes. The severe recession, combined with a financial crisis during 2008-09, worsened the fiscal positions of developed countries due to stimulus spending, lower tax revenues and support to the financial sector. The impact was greater in countries that had a history of structural fiscal problems, maintained loose fiscal policies and ignored fiscal reforms during the boom years. Going forward, a weak economic recovery and an aging population is likely to increase the debt burden of many advanced economies, including the U.S., Britain, Japan and several eurozone countries.
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The White House will host a Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama on July 6. The president will answer questions submitted via Twitter, which limits messages to 140 characters. The town hall will focus on jobs and the economy, and a video feed of Obama’s answers will be streamed online.
See www.twitter.com/salaratrizadeh for more information.
Google, Inc. has temporarily shut down a search engine feature that allows users to find real-time updates from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other social networking sites.
See more on www.twitter.com/salaratrizadeh.
Hackers broke into Fox’s political Twitter account early Monday, posting updates saying President Barack Obama had been assassinated. A series of six tweets coming from the FoxNewsPolitics account reported that Obama had been shot to death in Iowa and the shooter was unknown.
See more on www.twitter.com/salaratrizadeh
California legislators approved collection of an online sales tax among their revenue efforts as they passed the state budget on Wednesday.
Sponsors estimate the tax could bring in $200 million a year by collecting taxes that consumers have been avoiding when they make online purchases.
Federal law says states can only tax companies with a physical presence in a state, but the new California law applies that to include companies such as Amazon.com Inc. of Seattle, that have “affiliates” in a state.
Civil Rights – Social networking website was not “place of public accommodation” within meaning of Title III of Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).
Plaintiff Karen Beth Young brings this action against Defendant Facebook, Inc., alleging violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq., the Unruh Civil Rights Act, Ca. Civ. Code § 51, et seq., the California Disabled Persons Act, Cal Civ. Code § 54, et seq., and state-law contract and negligence claims. Although Young’s amended complaint describes vividly her personal experience of losing access to her online social community and the challenges she faced attempting to obtain redress through Facebook’s automated customer care systems, it does not state a legal claim upon which relief may be granted. Accordingly, Facebook’s motion to dismiss will be granted.
Young opened a personal account with Facebook in February 2010.[1] She subsequently created additional Facebook pages for the “Cancer Forum,” “Cartesian Plane For The Cure,” “Karen Beth Young ,— Public Figure,” and “Join Karen Petition Facebook Say No to 5000 Friends.” Young sent “friendvites” to others she believed were interested in cancer-related issues and developed “genuine and heartfelt” relationships with those she met online. Young’s personal page grew to include approximately 4,300 “friends.”
Internet miners voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system’s biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.
Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to “.com” and “.net” with suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.
California Senate Does Not Pass Social Networking Privacy Bill.
On June 2, 2011 the California State Senate for the second time did not pass a Senate Bill that would require social media networks to adopt default settings restricting the display of their users’ personally identifiable information.
The bill, S.B. 242, known as the ,”Social Networking Privacy Act” was introduced by Senator Ellen Corbett earlier this year. The bill required social media networks to adopt default settings prohibiting the display of “personal identifying information”, such as address, telephone number, driver’s license, social security number, and credit card numbers. It also required the networks to advise users of their ability to change the settings for display of personal information in “plain language.” Finally, it required networks to remove personal identifying information “in a timely manner” upon request.
A former San Francisco computer engineer convicted of locking other city officials out of the city’s network has been ordered to pay nearly $1.5 million in restitution.
A judge also ordered 45-year-old Terry Childs on Tuesday to forfeit the $11,000 he had on him when he was arrested as a down payment toward the money he owes his former employer, San Francisco’s Department of Technology. A jury convicted Terry Childs last year of changing the passwords to the city government’s computer network in July 2008. Following a 12-day stalemate, Mr. Childs finally surrendered the new passwords to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom during a jailhouse visit.
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