A pretty concerning statistic for Americans is that 17% of kids in the US are obese. The solutions to reduce that figure range from getting kids to eat better school lunches to eliminating various kinds of advertising aimed at getting kids to equate food with fun. There are a few other crazy ideas to keep people from getting fat, without trying to eat less or exercise more. Here are just a sampling of such suggestions.

• There's a chance that the bacteria in our intestines have some influence on obesity. From a preliminary study, morbidly obese people were found to have different bacterial communities in their intestines, but it's not clear if the different flora are a cause (or a result) of obesity. If there is a causal relationship, maybe there will be an effective treatment that involves cultivating different intestinal microbes. [url]
• "The Parasite Diet" isn't a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, some people used tapeworms to lose weight (before modern medicine convinced people this was a very bad idea). But genetically modified tapeworms that are benign to people could be a reality someday. [url]
• Freakonomics has yet another podcast on obesity called "100 Ways to Fight Obesity" that covers some interesting proposals to prevent overweight adults and children. Some suggestions, such as smelling a vial of vomit to curb an appetite, are not so pleasant -- and not really guaranteed to work that well, either. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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New, mutant strain of patent trolling on the rise

Patent trolls are bad enough on their own. But increasingly, companies that otherwise develop technology and sell products have begun outsourcing their patent portfolios to patent trolls as a strategic weapon against their competitors, and that can be even worse.…

Pink car a fine ride for King Google

Picture Google's cyborg tzar Sergey Brin has been spotted tooling around Silicon Valley in a heavily-customized Tesla Model S, sending reverberations through the tech world at the ad-slingers auto ambitions.…

Full ITC panel to decide in August if Sammy's kit should be banned

The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has handed Apple a preliminary victory in one of its many disputes with Samsung, ruling that the Korean electronics giant did, indeed, infringe upon a patent relating to text selection.…

Cross-posted from
Animals are cool. People are a-holes. Any bill that prevents people from senselessly harming animals is a good thing.

The natural enemy of the family dog is the local cop. Some of the stories we hear about cops shooting dogs, man, it’s like they don’t even try to deal with the animal reasonably. They shoot first and put the leash on later. I get that some people are just irrationally afraid of dogs, but cops are armed and in stressful situations. And since “dog murder” isn’t really a thing, there’s no incentive for cops to hold their fire.

We’ve reported in the past about how jury awards are going up when cops are found to recklessly kill family pets. But money cannot replace the companionship of a best friend.

Now, one state is trying to take more decisive action by requiring cops to learn how to deal with “short, hairy children”….

The Denver Post (gavel bang: ABA Journal) reports that a bill called the “Don’t Shoot My Dog” law is making its way through the Colorado State Senate.

The bill would require police officers to undergo training on how to deal with dogs. And it has bipartisan support:

“The reason I think it is important is dogs are not just property to most people, they are their short, hairy children,” [said Jennifer Edwards of The Animal Law Center]. “They are a part of the family, and it is absolutely devastating to lose an animal and to lose an animal so wrongfully when it could be solved by better training and better understanding of dog behavior.”

The bill’s sponsors, Democrat Lucia Guzman and Republican David Balmer, point out that “landscaping companies [and] delivery companies” deal with dogs all the time, without shooting them.

Some of the stories about police brutality to dogs are disgusting:

Among those expected to testify in favor of their bill is Gary Branson of Pueblo, whose 4-year-old labrador mix was shot multiple times by a Commerce City police officer after the pet escaped a relative’s home.

In Branson’s case, the 58-year-old left Chloe with a relative while visiting his brother in California last November. The dog got out through an open garage door and was running around the neighborhood.

Commerce City police said the dog was aggressive and continued to behave that way after being restrained with an animal-control noose. Chloe was shocked with a Taser and then shot multiple times.

What kind of sick person Tasers and shoots a family lab that has already been restrained?

Dogs are not people and shouldn’t be treated as such under the law. But they’re not mere property either. We need to carve out a legal space for our furry companions that at least respects our rights to keep them alive.

Senate panel OKs “Don’t Shoot My Dog” bill after emotional testimony [Denver Post]
‘Don’t Shoot My Dog’ bill moves forward, would require more police training [ABA Journal]

More stories from Above The Law

• Administration FREAKS OUT Students With Reports Of Possible Death Threat Before Realizing It Was Just Homework
• This Is Perhaps the Wittiest Response to a Pissy Law Student Email Ever
• Beware Greek Organizations Bearing Insurance Coverage

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First time accepted submitter Dawn Kawamoto writes "Employers stampeding into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to get their H-1B petitions filed before the cap is reached are getting the door slammed in their face today. The cap was hit in near record time of 5 days, compared to the 10 weeks it took last year to have more than enough petitions to fulfill the combined cap of 85,000 statutory and advanced degree H-1B petitions. While U.S. tech workers scream that they're losing out on jobs as H-1B workers are hired, employers are countering that the talent pool is lacking and they need to increase the cap. Of course, Congress is wrangling in on this one as to whether it's time to raise the bar."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Technology and courtrooms have clashed before. Whether it's tweeting from court, judges connecting with lawyers via social media, or juries using the pesky interwebz during a trial, concern over how modern technology can trouble legal proceedings is nothing new. That said, what you will tend to find in examples like the above is, regardless of your thoughts on their impacts, that they usually stem from mostly innocuous intentions by all concerned.

Not so in the case of Alpha Walker, a man accused of attempting to extort ivory-tickler Stevie Wonder. Walker is bringing a lawsuit against TMZ, claiming the tabloid secretly placed hidden microphones in the courtroom at strategic locations to allow them to both hear conversations that would otherwise be inaudible as well as stream those recordings directly back to the company. During the proceedings, Walker's attorneys objected to the presence of media in the courtroom and then the discussion evolved to the illicit microphones that were placed on the judge's bench and behind books on both sides of counsel table. According to the complaint, which asks for a permanent injunction, "It was then learned that these privileged communications were instantaneously transferred to the headquarters of TMZ Enterprises." While I'm generally less concerned with the use of technology in courtrooms than some, this is likely to create some fairly large problems for TMZ if true. Judge Ray Jurado is understandably less than pleased and he's stated that he was unaware of the hidden mics and that this would absolutely not happen again. It seems clear that TMZ would know that this move was wrong, assuming it's true, given that they don't appear to have requested placement of their microphones. Fortunately, Judge Jurado has reviewed the recordings and stated that they don't contain any "discernible voices", but that doesn't mean that enhancements couldn't change that. TMZ, for their part, has declined to state that they would destroy the recordings.

Not surprisingly, this has opened up questions from Walker about his faith in the judicial process. Walker says that as a result of TMZ's conduct, he has experienced "tremendous fear and distrust of the judicial system" and is suing for wiretapping, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and eavesdropping on confidential communication. He's seeking $100,000 in actual damages and more in punitive damages.

The complaint also asserts that TMZ's "conduct is ongoing" and violates attorney-client privilege. Asking for a permanent injunction over TMZ's alleged conduct, the plaintiff says "its threat to the public interest is tremendous. No matter who the alleged victim in a case is, there can be no lawful justification." And it's hard to dismiss those claims. While I'm hard-pressed to think that this revelation has any material impact on Walker's case, I can certainly understand a degree of paranoia. Part of what makes for a fair trial is the setting of the court and its rules. If court security can't, you know, secure the court, and if there's even the slightest chance that hidden mics could pick up privileged information in a trial, it's a problem. In the future, any media member that wants to utilize technology in courtrooms needs to do so above board. The judicial process is simply too important to kneecap.

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Steuerlich hat Gérard Depardieu seinem Heimatland längst den Rücken gekehrt. Aber auch juristisch will der Kinostar offenbar nicht mehr viel mit Frankreich zu schaffen haben. Schon zum zweiten Mal schwänzte er jetzt einen Gerichtstermin in Paris.

KRunner Translator 0.3.3
(KDE Improvement)
This runner translates any text using google translate. You can specify a source and a target language or just specigy the target language and use autodetect. For more information read the help dialog, README or have a look at the provided screenshots.

A list of all supported languages you can find here:
https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/using_rest?hl=de#language-params


Example: de house

this will translate "house" into german (de)

Example: fr-en maison

this will translate the french word "maison" into english

Simple, isn't it? :-)

Thanks for your feedback and kudos!
If you find this runner usefull you may also be interested in KRunner Synonyms: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KRunner+Synonyms?content=157137

changelog:
0.3.3
--------------------
• bugfix

0.3.2
--------------------
• minor bugfix release, relevance was not set correctly in some cases

0.3.1
--------------------
• make translation of sentences work again

0.3
--------------------
• additional syntax: source language can be specified if autodetect fails
• order results by relevance
• add part of speech to subtext
• now supports all languages supported by Google Translate
• ported from QHttp (deprecated) to QNetworkAccessManager

0.2.2
--------------------
• fixed bug that prevents some languages (like arabic) from working

0.2.1
--------------------
• correct some copyright notices
• update help and about dialog
• speed improvements

0.2
--------------------
• runner now uses autodetect
• simplified syntax

0.1
--------------------
• Forked googletranslaterunner 0.0.1 by Javier Goday
• Fixed json parsing.
• Fixed language detection, so it will not query when term is not complete.
• Results now splitted to krunner rows.

[read more]

job recommendations:
[more jobs]

Banges Warten auf Nachricht von den Geiseln: Im Norden Syriens sind offenbar vier italienische Reporter entführt worden. Das Außenministerium in Rom hat einen Krisenstab eingesetzt.