Supreme Court strikes federal marriage provision

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In significant but incomplete victories for gay rights, the Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a provision of a federal law denying federal benefits to married gay couples and cleared the way for the resumption of same-sex marriage in California.

The justices issued two 5-4 rulings in their final session of the term. One decision wiped away part of a federal anti-gay marriage law that has kept legally married same-sex couples from receiving tax, health and pension benefits.

The other was a technical legal ruling that said nothing at all about same-sex marriage, but left in place a trial court's declaration that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. That outcome probably will allow state officials to order the resumption of same-sex weddings in the nation's most populous state in about a month.

The high court said nothing about the validity of gay marriage bans in California and roughly three dozen other states.

The outcome was not along ideological lines.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Antonin Scalia.

"We have no authority to decide this case on the merits, and neither did the 9th Circuit," Roberts said, referring to the federal appeals court that also struck down Proposition 8.

In the case involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court's liberal justices.

"Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways," Kennedy said.

"DOMA's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal," he said.

Some in the crowd outside the court hugged and others jumped up and down just after 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday when the DOMA decision was announced. Many people were on their cell phones monitoring Twitter, news sites and blogs for word of the decision. And there were cheers as runners came down the steps with the decision in hand and turned them over to reporters who quickly flipped through the decisions.

Chants of "Thank you" and "USA" came from the crowd as plaintiffs in the cases descended the court's marbled steps

Kennedy was joined by the court's four liberal justices.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, and Scalia dissented.

Same-sex marriage has been adopted by 12 states and the District of Columbia. Another 18,000 couples were married in California during a brief period when same-sex unions were legal there.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-strikes-federal-marriage-provision-145436126.html

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Op-Ed | Going 'Net Native' - BoF - The Business of Fashion

NEW YORK, United States ? By and large, the entrepreneurs behind the first wave of fashion e-commerce companies started off with a simple goal: prove the industry wrong by showing that consumers would actually buy clothing and accessories online. Out of their contrarian beliefs and dogged tenacity emerged companies like Net-a-Porter and Yoox, both of which now rank amongst the world?s most successful fashion retail businesses, online or off. But if this first wave of fashion e-commerce was largely about bringing offline shopping online and leveraging the web?s phenomenal distribution opportunities, the next wave is all about the rise of ?net native? models.

?Taking the offline model for something and porting it to the web is not often the best way to build a business online,? explains Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures. ?What we have seen over and over again is that taking a model that was optimised for the analogue world and porting it to the Internet is almost always suboptimal. And that the person or team that finds the optimal model for the Internet is almost always the one who ends up with the big win.?

In search of web-optimal models, a growing number of companies are rethinking e-commerce from the ground up in ways that were physically impossible in the offline world. For these companies, the Internet is no longer just a channel, it?s a fully fledged medium. And indeed, they understand that today?s fashion consumers, who have seen net native models transform industries like travel and music, are hungry for better ways to shop.

Farfetch, for example, is an online marketplace that offers consumers access to many of the world?s top fashion boutiques, all under one roof, something that is inconceivable in the physical world. My own company Lyst does a similar thing for brands and department stores.

Another emerging net native model is personalisation, which is something that Lyst offers as well. Much like Twitter allows users to create a personalised newsfeed, Lyst allows consumers to create their own shopping feed by following their favourite fashion brands, stores and people. Just imagine every single customer in the world being able to walk into their very own personalised brick-and-mortar store. Again, impossible. As is the idea of magazines that contain shops. Yet the commerce-meets-content model first pioneered by Net-a-Porter and picked up by the likes of Refinery29 and Harper?s Bazaar does just that.

If the first phase of fashion e-commerce was to change the mindset of a generation and bring online shopping to the mass market, today, the challenge is how to harness the web to rethink the shopping experience around the most effective and engaging ways to discover and buy, free from the constraints of the offline world.

Jeff Bezos, the far-seeing founder of Amazon, is fond of constantly reminding shareholders that it?s still ?day one? for both his company and e-commerce at large. If that?s true for Amazon and ?commodity e-commerce,? then it?s certainly true for the kind of ?emotional commerce? that?s finally taking root in the far less mature online fashion space.

Net native concepts can emerge in-house at established fashion companies with innovation in their DNA, like Net-a-Porter, for example. Many fashion retailers may find it hard to develop net native models themselves, however, in which case, acquisitions and partnerships can be an effective route.

What?s abundantly clear is that, as e-commerce becomes untethered from the legacy of the physical store, the inevitable shift to net native models will fundamentally change the way people shop. And, as is often the case with major disruptions, those slow to adopt new models are not going to make it. However, those who make it a priority to develop new net native models, will, as Wilson says, end up with the big win.

Chris Morton is the founder and CEO of Lyst.

The views expressed in Op-Ed pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Business of Fashion.

How to submit an Op-Ed:?The Business of Fashion accepts opinion articles on a wide range of topics. The suggested length is 800 words, but submissions of any length will be considered. Submissions may be sent to?contributors@businessoffashion.com. Please include ?Op-Ed? in the subject line. Given the volume of submissions we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond in the event that an article is not selected for publication.

Source: http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/06/op-ed-going-net-native.html

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Will Immigration Break Boehner? (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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Six Libyan soldiers killed in ambush: army | Morocco World News

TRIPOLI, June 25, 2013 (AFP)

Unknown gunmen launched a dawn attack on Tuesday on a Libyan army checkpoint south of Sirte, the home town of former dictator Moamer Kadhafi, killing six soldiers, a military officer said.

?An attack at dawn Tuesday against a checkpoint of the army in the town of Khuchum al-Kheil, south of Sirte, killed six soldiers who were on guard duty,? local military officer Khaled al-Akari was quoted as saying by Lana news agency.

?Two vehicles were burned in the attack,? said the officer, adding that the ?area was cordoned off and a search was on to find the attackers?.

Sirte, the last bastion of Kadhafi to fall into rebel hands in the 2011 uprising, has been largely untouched by the wave of violence shaking the country since the former ruler?s regime fell.

Libya?s new authorities are battling to establish military and security institutions capable of restoring law and order and state authority in the face of armed militias who fought Kadhafi?s forces.

Source: http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/06/95548/six-libyan-soldiers-killed-in-ambush-army/

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Bitcoin losing shine after hitting the spotlight

bitcoin

Devin Coldewey NBC News

14 hours ago

Casascius

Casascius, a bitcoin enthusiast based in Utah, created these "physical bitcoins" as a proof of concept. Each has a unique code that can be used to retrieve a number of bitcoins online.

California regulators recently warned a nonprofit organization related to the online "crypto-currency" Bitcoin that it may face charges for unlicensed money transmission. Misunderstanding may lie at the core of the warning, but the bleeding-edge experimental money has seen no end of legal troubles since it started becoming more well-known.

In 2010, a Bitcoin user paid 10,000 Bitcoins for a pizza ? no doubt a gag purchase made with what were at the time essentially worthless online tokens. Today, those Bitcoins would be worth over $1 million. A sudden jump in value like that results in as many problems as opportunities. Bitcoin now struggles for legitimacy in the eyes of the law ? the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is considering whether the virtual currency should be subject to its rules ? while trying to build consumers' trust that it can scale to accommodate a global community.

The explosive growth of Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin "exchange" where users store and trade the currency, has led in the past few weeks to major downtime, hacker attacks and legal trouble. Other exchanges and services have simply shut down or gone out of business when faced with the unexpected liability and legal requirements of handling assets suddenly worth potentially millions of dollars.

Blockchain.info

The price of a Bitcoin in dollars jumped in early April and then settled at around $100, according to Bitcoin tracking service Blockchain.info.

The latest wave of bad news hit the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes and invests in Bitcoin services and companies. Jon Matonis, who sits on its board of directors, wrote in Forbes that he received a warning letter from California's Department of Financial Institutions accusing the foundation of unlicensed money transmission, a felony charge that could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Both Matonis and the Department of Financial Institutions declined to comment further on specifics. But Matonis wrote in an email to NBC News that the foundation is definitely not engaged in money transmission, and he viewed the case as "an opportunity to educate state regulators on issues related to the bitcoin industry."

Whatever happens with Bitcoin, it seems education is needed. "It's like the early days of the Internet," Tony Gallippi, CEO of Bitcoin-handling company BitPay, told NBC News recently. "Everything that's happened so far has been a learning experience."

Jon Matonis / Bitcoin Foundation

The warning letter sent to the Bitcoin Foundation regarding its alleged unlicensed money transmission business, which it denies exists.

Bart Chilton, head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission financial regulatory body, also thinks it's important to investigate new technologies early on. "I don't think we need to regulate everything," he told NBC News last month. "But we need to be more proactive in looking into things. It would be irresponsible of us not to look into it."

Six months ago, Bitcoin lacked visibility. Not only are the concept and inner workings too complex for the average Internet user to understand, but there wasn't really a reason to try. Unless they planned on buying drugs on the shady, anonymous "Silk Road" online store, there wasn't much a normal consumer could do with the currency.

It must have been a surprise for the users of this obscure system, then, when mainstream news media suddenly began covering the currency. The small community was thrust into the limelight, whether they liked it or not.

Bitcoin made for a great story: operating entirely online, near-impossible to game, with a seedy past and a mysterious genius of a creator. (Speculation is still rampant on the identity of the inventor, who goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.) But as we're finding out, it still has a ways to go before it can be a great tool.

The old, informal methods of using Bitcoin are dying out: Of the two largest "exchanges" where Bitcoins are bought and sold, one, Bitfloor, shut down in April following a major theft, and the other, Mt. Gox, is facing potential criminal charges after failing to properly disclose its financial practices to FinCEN, a U.S. regulatory body. FinCEN recently acknowledged "decentralized virtual currencies" like Bitcoin as being real money, prompting scrutiny of their systems and investment.

New firms are learning from predecessors, working with regulators and established financial players from the get-go, and structuring themselves in order to handle large amounts of money without meltdowns. Gallippi's BitPay is a relative newcomer that aims to use Bitcoin for serious, legal businesses, and the Winklevoss twins ? of Facebook and "Social Network" movie fame ? have launched a new exchange called BitInstant.

"Price increases tend to bring increased awareness, and then after the price volatility settles a bit, the ecosystem is left with the infrastructure builders," Jon Matonis wrote in an earlier email to NBC News. "It's a good thing," he said.

Gallippi, too, sees optimism with the maturing of the system. "Today, when you use the Internet, do you talk about IP addresses? Do you talk about HTTP, TCP/IP?" asked Gallippi. The nitty-gritty details of Bitcoin "mining," day-to-day price fluctuations, and yes, the occasional scam, shouldn't matter to users. For illustration, he alluded to the dollar: Do you worry about its strength versus the yen, or about the effect of counterfeiting and minting?

Regulation and oversight, too, will ultimately result in a stronger ecosystem, both Gallippi and Matonis suggested, but things need time to catch up. As Gallippi put it: "You can't apply the rules for the horse and buggy to an automobile."

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2dbc9a55/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cbitcoin0Elosing0Eshine0Eafter0Ehitting0Espotlight0E6C10A0A66339/story01.htm

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iOS 7 beta 2 released, brings its magic to iPad

We got to see quite a bit of iOS 7 back at WWDC 2013, but we only saw it working on an iPhone. Well, we've got some good news for big screen Apple devs, as a new iOS 7 beta's been released OTA and it now works on the iPad. Of course, the new beta also brings the usual nebulous "bug fixes and improvements" for all devices, and among those improvements is the addition of the Voice Memos app and Siri's new voices in English as well. It's available now, so if you're in the beta, you best get to downloading!

Filed under: Software, Apple

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/B5acrDiEbe0/

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Cameron calls for probe into new claims on racist murder

LONDON (Reuters) - David Cameron called on Monday for an investigation into claims that police spied on the family of a black teenager whose murder 20 years ago exposed what an inquiry called "institutional racism" in London's police force.

In one of Britain's highest-profile racial killings, Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death at a bus stop in southeast London in 1993. An inquest ruled it had been an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths.

Not until last year was anyone convicted for the murder.

Now a former undercover police office has said he was asked to infiltrate the Lawrence family's campaign for justice in the years following the murder.

Cameron's spokesman said in a statement: "The Prime Minister is deeply concerned by reports that the police wanted to smear Stephen Lawrence's family and would like the Metropolitan police to investigate immediately."

In the Guardian newspaper, former undercover officer Peter Francis said he spent four years posing as an anti-racist campaigner after his superiors tasked him with trying to uncover information that could be used against the 18-year old student's parents.

Francis said senior officers were afraid that anger at the failure to launch a more thorough investigation into the murder would spiral into disorder on the streets.

He monitored several campaigns, involving relatives of mostly black men who had died in suspicious circumstances in police custody.

He never met the Lawrence family but said he passed back "heresay" about them to his superiors.

He also said senior officers witheld his undercover role from Sir William Macpherson, who headed a public inquiry to examine the police investigation into the death.

Macpherson said in a damning 1999 report that that investigation had been "marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers."

The case still weighs on London's police, despite an overhaul of policies and an attempt to recruit more officers from ethnic minorities.

Francis' claims follow a joint investigation between the Guardian and Channel 4's Dispatches programme. A related programme is scheduled to be broadcast in Britain on Monday evening.

London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement that an investigation into its past use of undercover police was already under way.

"At some point it will fall upon this generation of police leaders to account for the activities of our predecessors, but for the moment we must focus on getting to the truth," it added.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Stephen Addison)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cameron-calls-probe-claims-racist-murder-093418727.html

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