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The legal battle over Moore's execution took shape amid Nebraska's efforts to carry out an execution that would be its first in 21 years. During that time, executions and death sentences have both declined nationwide. Nebraska lawmakers abolished the practice entirely in 2015, overriding a veto from Gov. Pete Ricketts,...
State officials are planning to execute Moore -- who has lived more than half his life under sentence of death -- on Tuesday in Lincoln, the state capital. Relatives of the victims in his case -- Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland, both killed in 1979 -- have said they are ready to be done with decades of waiting. Mo...
Whether Moore will be executed as planned was thrown into question this week when the drug company Fresenius Kabi filed a federal lawsuit accusing Nebraska of improperly -- and possibly illegally -- obtaining its products to use in the execution. In its lawsuit, the company said it restricts the use of certain drugs to...
"While Fresenius Kabi takes no position on capital punishment, Fresenius Kabi opposes the use of its products for this purpose and therefore does not sell certain drugs to correctional facilities," the company said in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska.
The company said it sells these restricted drugs to wholesalers and distributors under conditions that are meant to keep the products from being sold to prisons, penitentiaries or jails. According to the lawsuit, though, Fresenius Kabi thinks that it manufactured two of the four drugs Nebraska intends to use next week.
One of the drugs, potassium chloride, is intended to stop Moore's heart. Another drug, cisatracurium besylate, would paralyze his muscles. The other two drugs Nebraska intends to use are diazepam, a sedative better known as Valium; and fentanyl, the powerful, synthetic painkiller that has helped fuel the country's opio...
The company says its drugs could only have been attained "through improper or illegal means" because of the restrictions they put into place regarding their products, and it asked for the courts to bar Nebraska from using its drugs and to order the state to return them.
The office of Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson responded to the lawsuit with a one-sentence statement: "Nebraska's lethal injection drugs were purchased lawfully and pursuant to the State of Nebraska's duty to carry out lawful capital sentences."
In court filings, Peterson's office pushed back against the company's arguments, saying it obtained the drugs from a licensed pharmacy and not through "any fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." Nebraska officials also pushed back against the company's arguments that it would "suffer great reputational injury" if its dru...
Peterson's office also argued that they were facing a ticking clock to carry out Moore's execution, saying that the ongoing shortage of available drugs leaves them unable to know when or if they could get more.
"Lethal substances used in a lethal injection execution are difficult, if nearly impossible, to obtain," Scott Frakes, director of Nebraska's Department of Correctional Services, said in an affidavit filed in federal court. "This problem is not limited solely to Nebraska, but exists in other death penalty states."
States that seek to execute inmates have struggled to find the drugs for lethal injections, a situation fueled by objections drug companies have to their products being used for capital punishment. In response, states have turned to a series of new, untested drug combinations. Both Nebraska and Nevada planned to use fe...
Edwards said the Attorney General hasn't attempted to work with his office on the issue.
Supporters of capital punishment argue that opponents have forced states to pursue inferior options because of what Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito once called "a guerrilla war against the death penalty."
Frakes said he contacted at least 40 potential suppliers and half a dozen other states while searching for lethal injection drugs, but only one supplier - which he did not identify beyond calling it "a licensed pharmacy" - was willing to provide them. That same supplier will not provide more substances, Frakes said, ad...
With one of the drugs in question - potassium chloride - expiring at the end of August, Frakes said, any court order blocking Nebraska from using any of the drugs would keep them from being able to execute Moore and essentially change his "final death sentence into a de facto sentence of life in prison."
On Friday, Richard Kopf, senior U.S. district judge, rebuffed the drug company's request to block Nebraska officials from using the drugs in question. Kopf said in an order that there was no evidence that the cisatracurium Nebraska will use was manufactured or distributed by the company, nor did he think the company wo...
Kopf, who called it "a very strange suit," noted that lawmakers in Nebraska "decided to kill the death penalty, and after that, and very recently, the people decided to resurrect it." As such, he explained, the public interest sided with the state officials seeking to carry out Moore's death sentence.
The drug company is "disappointed" in the judge's order, emphasizing that its "main purpose is to provide lifesaving medicines to people who care for patients," Matthew Kuhn, a spokesperson, said Friday.
Spokespeople for Nebraska's governor and attorney general did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling and the company's move to appeal. An attorney for Moore declined to comment.
Danielle Conrad, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, said in a statement after Kopf's order that the group "commends Fresenius Kabi for taking action to ensure their products were not obtained illegally or used for illicit purposes."
These legal fights have drawn the attention of attorneys general in more than a dozen other states, including active death-penalty states Florida, Texas, Georgia and Alabama.
Alabama is the third state to authorize executions by nitrogen hypoxia but there's no protocol for how to do it.
In a brief filed by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and signed by 13 other attorneys general, they argued that the lawsuit in Nebraska is part of "the latest nationwide campaign being waged by anti-death-penalty activists to deny states access to drugs necessary to carry out lawful executions." Most of these ...
Rutledge highlighted her own experience Friday with a drug firm seeking to block a product from being used in executions. McKesson, the drug distributor, sought to stop Arkansas last year from using vecuronium bromide it had sold, accusing the state of acquiring it under false pretenses. An Arkansas judge sided with th...
In a statement, Rutledge accused the pharmaceutical firms of "trying to circumvent the rule of law by using eleventh-hour litigation tactics to stall these lawful executions" and pledged to "continue to fight for justice."
IMAGINE if the US military could send combat vehicles like tanks into battle with enemies - but without a single soldier on the battlefield?
Sounds wildly far-fetched - robot tanks conducting battles, invisible to the enemy, with armour that reacts to incoming fire, driven remotely by soldiers safely within bases on home soil.
But this is not the stuff of the future - it is the innovation of now. The US Army aims to have a Robotic Combat Vehicle demonstrator ready by 2021.
One exciting contender was BAE Systems' CV90 MkIV tank-like vehicle - a self-driving and self-fighting combat vehicle. And a potentially "invisible" one at that.
It has a "man-optional" combat mode and potentially allows the military to take humans out of the battle physically by operating the vehicle remotely.
BAE's ADAPTIV program provides camouflage that renders the vehicle essentially "invisible" to enemy forces using "active multi-spectral cloaking".
Human crews can operate from inside the vehicle, but it can also be controlled remotely - from anywhere in the world.
The vehicle's weaponry can be tailored to requirements and there's quite a range of options - including weapons that can hit enemy aircraft and tanks.
In the near future, the army will have the option of sending both manned and unmanned ground combat vehicles into battle.
The speedy Van Exel, nicknamed Nick the Quick, was probably the Lakers’ best player in the mid-90s as the franchise transitioned between the retirement of Magic Johnson and the arrival of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Drafted in the second round out of Cincinnati in 1993, Van Exel made an immediate impact, averaging nearly 14 points a game, and was named to the all-rookie team. Though he was named to the All-Star team in 1998, Van Exel’s best season with the Lakers was probably his second, when he averaged about 17 points a game dur...
An excellent long-range shooter, he was the team’s all-time leader in three-pointers made until the mark was broken by Bryant.
Only 6 feet 1, Van Exel depended not only on quickness and touch but a ferocious drive that sometimes got the better of him. In 1996, after he used his forearm to shove referee Ron Garretson, Van Exel was fined $25,000 and suspended seven games.
The payment-processing company’s network is built to accommodate up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions, and to support new services from its business partners.
Visa has a long history of being secretive about its data center operations. And while the payment-processing giant remains wary about revealing the precise locations of its two data centers—for obvious security reasons—it is no longer maintaining a shroud of secrecy over the capabilities of its multi-faceted network.
"We want people to understand what you can do with this incredible network that we've built," says Matt Quinlan, Visa's chief technology officer, while seated at a small conference table in his office at the company's Foster City, Calif., headquarters. "We've positioned the network to drive innovation in the ecosystem....
Lots of companies say such things, but Visa appears to actually mean them. The company's two data centers, one on the East Coast and one located in the Midwest, both of which have opened in the last decade, power a network that is capable of routing up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions through multiple locations, inc...
Visa’s network has never come close to reaching its 30,000 simultaneous transactions ceiling, topping off at 12,000 transactions. That excess network capacity is not an accident. Rather, it's Visa's very specific design to ensure lightning-fast results, and to accommodate innovation from its merchant, issuer and consum...
The network’s excess capacity also allows Visa to produce its own innovative services, such as the launch earlier this year of a managed mobile money service built with technology the company acquired in its 2011 purchase of Fundamo. The new service enables merchants and banks to accept and process mobile-to-mobile SMS...
No matter how many data sources Visa's infrastructure is asked to accommodate, Quinlan says that the data can only move as far as the length of a thumb before the network craves more.
"The speed of light is no longer fast enough," says Quinlan, a possible indication that real-time transaction processing is the company’s near-future goal.
While the network’s excess capacity might sound technologically over the top, the performance enabled by so much extra capacity is critical when your company processes 80 billion transactions a year, as Visa does. With the business guarantees it provides to credit card issuers, merchants and consumers, Visa has no room...
"We have to deliver that through the technology," Quinlan says.
And that technology is steadily evolving toward a converged infrastructure in which all of the data center components—servers, storage and network—function as a single, manageable framework. That converged infrastructure setup is ideal for enabling things like pooling of resources, automated provisioning, and the abili...
If it sounds like Visa is more bullish than ever on digital payments, there's a reason for that.
"Our biggest competitors that we recognize are cash and checks," says Quinlan.
In many ways, that's always been the case; Visa has traditionally benefited from consumers choosing plastic over cash. But as the ability to pay for so many product and services in so many convenient ways—e-commerce, mobile commerce, PayPal, micropayments and more—continues to grow, the pressure to supplant cash and ch...
For that reason, Quinlan says Visa's network is increasingly configured to support as many different types of transactions as possible.
"At the heart of it, the network enables value exchange," he says. "Value can come in many forms. Today it's money. Tomorrow it could be loyalty points."
Whatever form value comes in, Visa wants the world to know two things: its network is ready, and it has no intention of being left out of the game.
Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burde...
In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.
1. Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-...
2. Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that's not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. "Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been wi...
3. An MGMA study indicates that 75% of ACA patients that had seen doctors had chosen plans with high deductibles. Given that most of the patients are low-income, doctors are concerned that the patients cannot meet the deductibles and they will get stuck with the bill.
4. HHS requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is the number one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Current...
So, Obamacare is asking doctors to take on sicker patients for less money, with the risk of not getting paid at all? No wonder doctors are running from these plans!
JiJiTechnologies Password Reset is a Web based system that allows users to reset their password. It supports Help Desk Delegation. JiJiTechnologies Password Reset Service can help your organization to reduce costs, improve security, and increase productivity. Overcomes the vulnerability in self service password reset w...
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has inaugurated a new session of parliament, praising the country's security forces in his speech.
Ghani made an address Saturday as parliament reconvened. He said insurgents who tried to take over several Afghan provinces had been defeated by soldiers and police officers.
Ghani also said that he soon will introduce more Cabinet nominees to the parliament for their approval. Some of Ghani's nominees for the 25 Cabinet positions already have been rejected by parliament, some voted down and others because they had dual citizenship or incomplete education documents.
The lack of ministers has caused problems throughout Ghani's government, slowing its work and upsetting many in the country. Ghani has pledged to resolve the Cabinet impasse soon.
If it seems like you’ve been hearing about suicide more and more lately, it’s not your imagination. Between 2000 and 2016, the rate of people aged 16 to 64 dying by suicide increased by 34 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In an attempt to break this statistic down further and better understand the...
Specifically, women working in art, design, entertainment, sports and the media had a suicide rate of 15.6 per 100,000 working people in 2015. The largest increase in the suicide rate for women based on profession was among those in food preparation and serving-related occupations, like chefs, restaurant managers and s...
The idea behind looking at suicide rates in terms of profession is to help put in place more effective workplace prevention strategies, the CDC notes in the report. On top of that, despite the fact that many adults spend a good chunk of their time at work, we don’t necessarily get the help we need there, making the wor...
The report also indicates that in addition to suicide-prevention resources, places of employment should focus on improving working conditions and reducing stress as a way of improving employees’ overall mental health.
As the CDC mentions, this occupation-specific information can help us develop better workplace prevention strategies and serve as a resource for communities and, ideally, save more lives.
Army and police officers block the road ahead of a protest by Crimean Tatars (visible in the background) at a Russia-Ukraine border checkpoint outside the town of Armyansk, Crimea on May 3, 2014.
Human rights protections in Crimea have been severely curtailed since Russia began its occupation of the peninsula in February 2014. In the past eight months, the de facto authorities in Crimea have limited free expression, restricted peaceful assembly, and intimidated and harassed those who have opposed Russia’s actio...
Following the signing of the Treaty on the Adoption of the Republic of Crimea into Russia between local Crimea authorities and Russia and the Russian Duma passing the law On the Acceptance of the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation and the Creation of New Federal Subjects on March 20, 2014, Russian and Crime...
In particular, authorities in Crimea have used Russia’s vaguely worded and overly broad anti-extremism legislation to issue several “anti-extremist warnings” to the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar representative body, and have banned mass public gatherings by the Crimean Tatar community. Between August and October, authoriti...
The authorities have harassed pro-Ukraine and Crimean Tatar media outlets, searched their offices, shut down some, and threatened others with closure. The FSB and Crimea prosecutor’s office issued formal and informal warnings to leading Crimean Tatar media outlets against publishing “extremist materials” and invited ed...
This report documents the abuses outlined above. It is based on on-site research in Crimea in October 2014, during which a Human Rights Watch researcher met and spoke with journalists, activists, lawyers, civil society representatives, and members of the Crimean Tatar community, including the leadership of the Mejlis a...
On November 6, Human Rights Watch sent a letter summarizing our research findings to the Crimean authorities. We have not yet received a response.
Human Rights Watch considers that as a matter of international law Russia has been an occupying power in Crimea since at least late February 2014 and assesses its actions with respect to the law on occupation under international humanitarian law. Russia is an occupying power as it exercises effective control in Crimea ...
International human rights law also remains applicable to Crimea, including all treaties ratified by Russia, such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Under the law of occupation, Russia has an obligation to restore and ensure public order and safety a...
Russia cites the local Crimean authorities’ request to be part of Russia, later approved by the Russian parliament, to maintain that it is not an occupying power, even though the local authorities had no authority to make that request, that Crimea requested to be part of Russia, and that this request was approved by th...
In this report Human Rights Watch uses the term “authorities” to refer to those in Crimea who de facto exercise effective control on the peninsula and are de facto responsible for the governance and administration of Crimea, irrespective of the legal status of those agents under Ukrainian or Russian law.
Human Rights Watch, in accordance with its longstanding policy on laws of armed conflict, remains neutral on the decisions of parties to a conflict to use military force or to militarily occupy of another country or region. However, we seek to ensure that international law governing the conduct of war and occupation ar...
Ensure prompt, effective and impartial investigations into all allegations of human rights abuses by the police and other auxiliary forces that have been operating in the region since February 2014.
Disband all self-defense units; the regular police force should not incorporate into its ranks members of self-defense units who have been implicated in human rights abuses.
Cease all actions that target members of the Crimean Tatar community under the pretext of combating extremism.
Cease all unjustified interference with media freedoms and ensure that media can convey a plurality of views, even if they do not support Russia’s actions in Crimea; immediately cease and condemn all physical attacks and intimidation against journalists.
Ensure access to Crimea for human rights monitoring by independent groups and humanitarian and intergovernmental organizations without imposing undue restrictions based on point of entry.
Reverse the process whereby Ukrainian citizens were required to choose between Russian and Ukrainian citizenship; ensure that no Ukrainian citizen is pressured, directly or indirectly, into accepting Russian citizenship and that there are no adverse, including discriminatory, consequences for those who retain Ukrainian...
Ensure that all people can make fully informed choices about citizenship by ensuring availability of clear and accurate information regarding the requirements of Russian citizenship and regarding the consequences of choice of citizenship.
Take no action that would deprive Crimea residents who retain Ukrainian citizenship of rights they enjoyed prior to March 2014.
Press members of the UN Security Council to adopt a Chapter VI resolution urging for the full implementation of the recommendations regarding the situation in Crimea contained in the reports on Ukraine by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
The OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission, whose mandate coversall of Ukraine, should, without further delay, be granted access to establish a permanent presence in Crimea to operate and report freely.
Urge the Swiss OSCE chairman-in-office to organize a public discussion on Crimea during the December 4-5, 2014 OSCE Ministerial Council.
OSCE participating states should urgently consider organizing informal and open Permanent Council briefings on Crimea, inviting representatives from civil society and other international organizations to report on developments and discuss international responses.
Press for immediate and unfettered access to Crimea for other relevant human rights mechanisms of the OSCE, the UN, and the Council of Europe.
Raise concerns about the human rights violations documented in this report, as well as in regular reports by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and the October 2014 report by the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, and urge the de facto authorities of Crimea and the Russian Federation to pro...
Urge Ukraine to reconfirm its declaration under article 12(3) of the Rome Statue made on April 17, 2014 accepting jurisdiction for the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the territory of Ukraine but removing time constraints on the court’s jurisdiction, and move swiftly to ratify the Rome Statue including addressi...

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