Advocates

A Russian lawmaker on Wednesday urged state institutions to stop using WhatsApp messenger and the industry ministry sought to promote domestically produced software as Russia tries to wean itself off Western technology.WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms was found guilty of "extremist activity" in Russia in March and later added to financial monitoring agency Rosfinmonitoring's list of "terrorists and extremists". Meta's lawyer in court has said Meta was not carrying out extremist activity and was against Russophobia.Russia…

Fire arms are seen at the Bobâs Little Sport Gun Shop in the town of Glassboro, New Jersey, United States on May 26, 2022. Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesGun law advocates are praising a decision to adopt a new sales code for transactions at gun stores, a move they had urged to help flag suspicious purchases.Last week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which sets standards for payment transactions, approved the special merchant code for credit and debit card transactions at U.S. gun…

WASHINGTON—Nutrition advocates and food-industry groups are revving up for a fight over whether an additional label should go on the front of many packaged-food items to more clearly indicate if they pose a health risk.A long-running debate over what those new labels should look like—and if they should be required—is heating up ahead of a White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health later this month. The Food and Drug Administration already requires most packaged foods to display a detailed nutritional label,…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain New research utilizing data from U.S. Supreme Court law clerk hiring decisions finds that female job applicants with recommendations from other highly tenured women have the strongest chance of getting a job offer. …

Come November, Colorado voters will be asked to decide whether to legalize psilocybin and psilocin, psychoactive compounds in magic mushrooms, as well as whether to establish healing centers where the public can access them in a therapeutic context. But some of the state’s foremost psychedelics advocates are not on board with the measure, known as the Natural Medicine Health Act, and are actively campaigning against it. That includes Melanie Rose Rodgers, who in 2019 was part of the team that convinced Denver voters to…

One of the big advantages of over other financial systems, according to many of its proponents, is that no particular company, central bank or government has control. That's not necessarily the case, though. Researchers who worked on commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency () found that there can be "unintended centralities" in these supposed decentralized systems. "It's been taken for granted that the blockchain is immutable and decentralized, because the community says so," said Dan Guido, CEO of…

WASHINGTON — A week after prominent technologists publicly slammed crypto for being too risky and unproven in a letter to Congress, human rights advocates from around the world have sent a rebuttal to U.S. lawmakers defending digital assets for the access they provide to people in countries where "local currencies are collapsing, broken, or cut off from the outside world."Some 21 human rights supporters from 20 different countries said in the letter that they've relied on bitcoin and stablecoins, which allow the trading…

By Maryclaire Dale and Jocelyn Noveck | Associated Press The call came Thursday, only a day after the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard verdict, to a free legal clinic for domestic violence victims in Athens, Georgia. The woman wanted to pursue her abuse claims, but she was worried. “The fear was that she’d be seen to be a liar like Amber Heard,” clinic director Christine Scartz said of the woman – the first caller to directly mention the verdict. “People do not want to give the most intimate details of their personal life and then…

Article content MONTREAL — A well-known Quebec lawyer is going before the Superior Court to prevent the cull of white-tailed deer living in a forest on Montreal’s South Shore. Article content Lawyer Anne-France Goldwater, who has previously voiced her opposition to the plan, has filed a court petition on behalf of herself, a wildlife rescue organization called Sauvetage Animal Rescue, and a local animal-rights activist. Goldwater is asking the court to prevent Quebec’s Wildlife Department and the City of Longueuil…

A federal investigation into whether China is getting around tariffs on solar panels has Colorado’s expanding solar energy industry warning of layoffs, soaring prices and lights out for new projects. In January, industry representatives and the U.S. Energy Information Administration were predicting 2022 would be a busy year for new solar power generation. Now, the Department of Commerce is looking into claims China is routing its panels through other countries to circumvent U.S. tariffs, which, if confirmed, could result…