Tag: NPR

Virginia Extends Voter Registration Deadline Until Oct. 15 After Website Outage : NPR

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Virginia’s online voter registration system went down on the worst day possible: the last day that residents are allowed to register to vote.

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Bill Smith/Flickr

A federal judge in Richmond has ruled that Virginia must extend online and in-person voter registration until 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 15.

The order comes after a construction project accidentally cut a fiber internet line yesterday that took down several state websites, including the Department of Elections website on the last day of voter registration.

U.S. Judge John A. Gibney Jr. made the ruling early Wednesday morning in a lawsuit brought by several voter rights groups.

“There’s really not a lot of harm to the Commonwealth and the state registrars by extending the period of registration in this case,” Gibney Jr. said in the teleconference hearing, “but there is tremendous harm to the people who want to register to vote and to the people who are helping people register to vote.”

Attorney General Mark Herring, who supported the lawsuit, announced the news on Twitter as well.

Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday to extend Virginia’s deadline.

“Eligible Virginia citizens should not have to pay the price for this technological failure. Unless the voter registration deadline is extended to October 15, 2020, Plaintiffs’ members and others will be deprived of their constitutional right to vote in the November 3, 2020, election,” reads the suit filed by the New Virginia Majority Education Fund, the Virginia Civic Engagement Table and the League of Women Voters of Virginia.

Problems erupted early Tuesday morning when voters noticed they could not access online registration. The

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15-Year-Old Computer Whiz Who Died In 2006 Could Become First Millennial Saint : NPR

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Cardinal Agostino Vallini, left, holds a relic of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis, an Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukemia, during his beatification ceremony celebrated in the St. Francis Basilica, in Assisi, Italy, on Saturday.

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Cardinal Agostino Vallini, left, holds a relic of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis, an Italian boy who died in 2006 of leukemia, during his beatification ceremony celebrated in the St. Francis Basilica, in Assisi, Italy, on Saturday.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

A teenage computer gamer and programmer from Italy who devoted the final years of his life to the church until his death in 2006 was beatified over the weekend, making him the first millennial to be put on the path to Catholic sainthood.

A portrait of Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia at age 15, was unveiled at the beatification ceremony at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. In it, he is wearing a red polo shirt and his curly hair is ringed by a faint halo of light.

Acutis has been called the “patron saint of the Internet.” He created a website to catalog miracles and managed sites for local Catholic organizations.

“Carlo used the internet in service of the Gospel, to reach as many people as possible,” Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the papal legate for the Assisi basilicas, said during his homily.

Vallini kissed the boy’s mask-wearing parents, Andrea Acutis and Antonia Salzano, after reading the proclamation decreed by Pope Francis.

Pope Francis Announces New Path To Sainthood

“He was considered a computer genius,” his mother told Vatican News. “But what did he do? He didn’t use [computers] to chat or have fun.”

She told an Italian newspaper that from age from age 3 her son would ask to visit churches the family passed in Milan.

”There was in him a natural predisposition for the

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Idaho TikTok Star Who Sent Fleetwood Mac Sales Soaring : NPR

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Nathan Apodaca, whose TikTok video longboarding to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” has catapulting him to viral fame. Here, he is standing in the pickup truck donated to him by Ocean Spray. In his video, Apodaca sips a bottle of Ocean Spray’s Cran-Raspberry juice.

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Ocean Spray

Nathan Apodaca, whose TikTok video longboarding to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” has catapulting him to viral fame. Here, he is standing in the pickup truck donated to him by Ocean Spray. In his video, Apodaca sips a bottle of Ocean Spray’s Cran-Raspberry juice.

Ocean Spray

Nathan Apodaca’s truck had already logged some 320,000 miles. One morning last month, it couldn’t go a mile more. The truck broke down on a highway in Idaho Falls, about two miles from the potato warehouse where he has worked for nearly two decades.

Luckily, he had a skateboard in his truck, along with a bottle of Ocean Spray’s Cran-Raspberry juice.

“I was just sitting there and I’m like, ‘OK I’m not gonna sit here and wait for nobody to pull some jumper cables,” Apodaco told NPR. “I’m not gonna flag anyone down.’ So I grab my juice, grab my longboard, started heading to work.”

The story could have ended there. As many know by now, it didn’t.

As Apodaca rolled down the hill, he casually turned on his TikTok account @420doggface208 and created a video that would make a cultural sensation of his fairly prosaic, if resourceful, commute to work.

“When I heard ‘Dreams,’ that’s when I figured, OK, this is it,” said Apodaca, a 37-year-old father two. After the video took off, that 1977 hit single “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac catapulted back on the charts, tripling in sales. The band also reported its best week ever on streaming.

This wasn’t Apodaca’s first TikTok video.

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Judge Orders Twitter To Unmask FBI Impersonator Who Set Off Seth Rich Conspiracy : NPR

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A federal judge has ordered Twitter to reveal account information related to an anonymous user who allegedly peddled a fake FBI report pertaining to the death of Democratic National Committee aide Seth Rich.

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A federal judge has ordered Twitter to reveal account information related to an anonymous user who allegedly peddled a fake FBI report pertaining to the death of Democratic National Committee aide Seth Rich.

Jeff Chiu/AP

Updated 8:50 p.m. ET Wednesday

A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated an FBI document to spread a conspiracy theory about the killing of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who died in 2016.

The ruling could lead to the identification of the person behind the Twitter name @whyspertech. Through that account, the user allegedly provided forged FBI materials to Fox News. The documents falsely linked Rich’s killing to the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic Party emails in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

While Twitter fought to keep the user’s identity secret, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered on Tuesday that the tech company must turn over the information to attorneys representing Rich’s family in a defamation suit by Oct. 20.

It is the latest twist in a years-long saga over a conspiracy theory that rocked Washington, caused a grieving family a great deal of pain and set off multiple legal battles.

In a now-retracted story, Fox News falsely claimed that Rich’s computer was connected to the leak of Democratic Party emails provided to WikiLeaks, and that Rich’s slaying was related to the purported leak. The theory was even debunked in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

The Washington Times later reported in 2018 that Rich’s brother, Aaron Rich,

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Magistrate Lets Uber Keep Driving In London : NPR

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A phone shows the Uber app in front of a taxi stand at Waterloo station in London on Monday. The ride-sharing service won its appeal after Transport for London denied a renewal of its operating license late last year.

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A phone shows the Uber app in front of a taxi stand at Waterloo station in London on Monday. The ride-sharing service won its appeal after Transport for London denied a renewal of its operating license late last year.

Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images

After nearly a year of uncertainty, a Westminster magistrate court said Monday that the ride-sharing service Uber can keep operating in London.

The decision comes after Uber’s U.K. division appealed a 2019 ruling by government regulators, who refused to renew its license after it found that some Uber drivers were operating illegally — some without insurance, and some even without a valid drivers license.

Transport for London (TfL), which regulates the city’s roads and rail lines, had said that Uber’s computer systems “allowed unauthorized drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts.”

Two dozen unauthorized drivers had logged into the app using other people’s credentials — uploaded their own photos — and then made more than 14,000 trips, putting passengers at risk, according to the ruling.

But since then, the company said it has tightened its policies to address the fraud. In Monday’s ruling, the magistrate judge agreed that Uber has fixed its processes.

The ride-sharing company “does not have a perfect record but it has been an improving picture,” Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram wrote. “I am satisfied that they are doing what a reasonable business in their sector could be expected to do, perhaps even more.”

It’s a big win for Uber

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