For cutting short the life of a fellow Mexican Mafia member in a hail of bullets, a judge ruled Monday that Jose Luis Loza should spend the rest of his own in a federal prison.
Loza, from Whittier, was convicted of murder, racketeering and other crimes after an unusual trial in August, in which Loza himself testified for two days. It was an unprecedented departure, law enforcement officials say, from the Mexican Mafia’s historical refusal to acknowledge in the courtroom such an organization exists, let alone discuss its politics on the witness stand.
The Archive of Our Own (AO3), the Hugo-winning fanfiction website, is the latest casualty of Chinese censorship, amid a continued crackdown in the country on queer content, sexually explicit content, and websites based abroad.
Reports surfaced on February 29 that AO3 was no longer accessible through the national Chinese web, and the site appears to be blocked from view within the country, according to Comparitech, a service that allows users to check whether China has blocked a website. In a tweet confirming the ban, the Organization for Transformative Works, the non-profit group that runs AO3, seemed surprised. It’s unclear whether the OTW was contacted by Chinese authorities before the site was blocked. (Vox has reached out to the OTW for comment.)
Unlike the vigilantes he played in his movies, Steven Seagal is not above the law — at least according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Seagal, the former action-movie star turned would-be musician, will pay more than $300,000 to settle charges that he failed to disclose he was being paid to promote a cryptocurrency investment, the SEC said Thursday.
Seagal, 67, did not tell his millions of social media followers that Bitcoiin2Gen had promised him $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of its tokens before promoting its initial coin offering on Twitter and Facebook, according to the SEC. Under the settlement, Seagal agreed to pay the SEC more than $330,000 in penalties and interest, including $157,000 that Bitcoiin2Gen had already paid him.
Thousands mark the second anniversary of the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova.
Bratislava, Slovakia – Several thousand people gathered in central Bratislava on Friday evening to mark the second anniversary of the brutal murder of Jan Kuciak. The shooting of the journalist was a watershed for Slovakia – one that is now playing out ahead of elections on February 29.
It was a sombre crowd, estimated at around 8,000, that filled Namestie Slobody (Freedom Square) in the Slovak capital to honour Kuciak and his fiance, Martina Kusnirova, who were gunned down in their home on a cold February night.
Before July of this year, the Supreme Court will hand down decisions in three separate cases that together will determine what a “right” is in federal civil-rights laws. The Court will be deciding whether such laws are legal measures based on intention and the definitions of words or open-ended legislative measures designed to ensure outcomes and re-arrange society. Two of the three cases concern federal employment law, and the third deals with the making of contracts. Thus, their subjects are work and commerce, a fundamental basis of current American culture and society.
