MicroWave

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to world in Havana syndrome: Report links mystery illness to Russian intelligence unit

It wasn’t me!

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago to news in Oregon city can't limit church's homeless meal services, federal judge rules

Kudos for doing additional research and sharing it with sources!

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to news in Supreme Court signals it is likely to reject a challenge to abortion pill access

Standing is a specific legal term that defines whether a party is allowed to sue, and injury is also a legal term in this case. Cornell Law School has a great intro on the legal requirements to establish standing using a 3-part test:

• The plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact,” meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent
• There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court
• It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury.

In this case, seems to be the Supreme Court is skeptical that these doctors have satisfied this 3-part standing test, especially the injury in fact one. If SCOTUS decides that these doctors don’t have standing, then the lawsuit is dismissed.

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to world in Senior doctors in South Korea submit resignations, deepening dispute over medical school plan

Agreed. Here’s some more context:

Korea has the second-lowest number of physicians among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, leading to some of the highest doctors’ wages among surveyed member nations.

Doctors in Korea earn the most among 28 member countries that provided related data. Following Korea, the highest earners are in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The US was among the countries for which data was not provided.

Measured by PPP, which takes into account local living costs, salaried specialists earned an average of $192,749 annually in 2020, According to the 2023 OECD Health Statistics report. That was 60 percent more than the OECD average. Korean GP salaries ranked sixth.

… The country also ranked low in the number of medical school graduates – 7.3 per 100,000 people, which is the third-lowest after Israel and Japan, and nearly half the OCED average of 14 graduates for every 100,000 people.

www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230730000088

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to world in Senior doctors in South Korea submit resignations, deepening dispute over medical school plan

These doctors are not telling the whole story. More context from the article:

Public surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, and critics say that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to a rise in the number of doctors.

Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also likely result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.

MicroWave OP , 2 months ago to news in Consumers can start ordering Opill online today

From the article:

No states have made such proposals or actions on restricting access to Opill, but the concern stems from the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which reversed Roe v. Wade and overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

and:

But these examples have not set a precedent for what type of authority states may have to restrict access to an FDA-approved medication, Gupta said.

When it comes to Opill, “many states also allow pharmacists to refuse to participate in ‘health care’ that they find morally objectionable. This could include providing individuals with Opill even though it is OTC,” she said. “Legal approval and actual access are two distinct issues, with the latter influenced by a broader set of factors including state policies, healthcare practices, and socio-economic determinants of health.”

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in States Are Lining Up to Outlaw Lab-Grown Meat

And I appreciate your kind words!

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in The 6% commission on buying or selling a home is gone after Realtors association agrees to seismic settlement

The CNN article just updated to remove the part about the required 6% and I’ve updated the summary to match.

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to news in The 6% commission on buying or selling a home is gone after Realtors association agrees to seismic settlement

You may be right it’s negotiable, but this lawsuit happened because sellers felt they didn’t have a choice:

The NAR had required homesellers to include the compensation for agents when placing a listing on a multiple listing service. Although NAR has long said commissions are negotiable and that the structure helped making housing more affordable for buyers, critics have long argued that the fees were expected and homesellers felt they would lose buyers if they didn’t offer them.

…

Individual sellers often feel powerless to negotiate a better deal for themselves, given the risk that offering lower commissions could cause brokers to steer buyers to other properties, said Robert Braun, a partner in Cohen Milstein’s antitrust practice.

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in The 6% commission on buying or selling a home is gone after Realtors association agrees to seismic settlement

Can you elaborate? NY Times and Washington Post are reporting the same:

American homeowners could see a significant drop in the cost of selling their homes after a real estate trade group agreed to a landmark deal that will eliminate a bedrock of the industry, the standard 6 percent sales commission.

nytimes.com/…/national-association-realtors-commi…

The real estate group, which represents 1.5 million real estate agents around the country, said it will pay $418 million over four years to settle several cases, along with agreements to change the rules that plaintiffs alleged supported 5 to 6 percent commissions paid by home sellers. The association said it continues to deny wrongdoing.

washingtonpost.com/…/nar-real-estate-commissions-…

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in States Are Lining Up to Outlaw Lab-Grown Meat

You just made my day. Thanks @ptz!

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in The IRS launches Direct File, a pilot program for free online tax filing available in 12 states

Oh yeah for sure. It was sued by the FTC for deceptive advertising of its free tax filing and had to pay a $141 million settlement in 2022.

ProPublica also had an article last month about its deceptive “free” service: propublica.org/…/ftc-intuit-turbotax-cease-decept…

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago to news in The IRS launches Direct File, a pilot program for free online tax filing available in 12 states

Hilarious. He said it, therefore he said it.

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to news in Republicans will no longer get to handpick their judges when they sue Biden

It’s more of a loophole in certain jurisdictions. Judges are usually assigned randomly, but some districts have divisions with only one sitting judge.

The federal judiciary is divided into 94 different geographic districts, which normally encompass either all or part of a state. In many districts, newly filed cases are assigned randomly. So, for example, if a plaintiff files a lawsuit in a district with three Democratic appointees and three Republican appointees, they would have an equal chance of drawing a judge from either party (although some judges are partially retired and have a lighter caseload).

Some districts, however, have used different rules to assign cases — and one very notable example is the United States District Court of the Northern District of Texas. That district, like some others, is subdivided into multiple “divisions,” some of which only have one sitting judge. Any civil case filed in one of these Northern District of Texas divisions was automatically assigned to one judge: Kacsmaryk.

So this new rule will try to close that loophole.

MicroWave OP , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to news in China could use TikTok to influence US elections, spy chief says

It’s more of an issue because it’s a foreign company. For example, companies like Facebook (Meta) and Cambridge Analytica can be investigated and regulated by US agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But they have no sway over TikTok’s developer ByteDance because it’s located outside of the US.

That’s what this bill is trying to do: force ByteDance to divest.