The San Diego Superior Court has revealed plans to stop using court reporters in family law matters. The cut, which will take effect on Sept. 5, will include cases such as domestic violence restraining orders, divorce, and child custody.

For many, this move is very concerning. Court reporters provide a valuable service, keeping a clear record of everything spoken during the court case. To do this, court reporters work at speeds of up to 225 words per minute thanks to their special stenotype machines.

Now, individuals who would like to have a record of their court case will need to hire their own service, which can be quite expensive. One woman, who spoke to KUSI News anonymously, said that she has had to pay nearly $3,000 over the course of the past two months in order to ensure a court reporter is present.

“You need to have that record to prove later on, here’s what I’ve tried, this is what I said, this is what this other person said, especially if they’re writing one thing in a declaration, but they’re saying something else in the court,” the anonymous woman said.

State officials say that this is part of a larger reduction of services in the San Diego Superior Court. Other measures have included closing courtrooms, reducing staff, and even consolidating departments. These steps are being taken to address what is expected to be a minimum $6 million budget cut, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. Officials also note that $6 million is a conservative figure.

Several factors have been highlighted as contributing to the budget cuts. Among them are pension responsibilities and a reduced revenue for court. But the biggest factor has been a restructuring of the way California funds courts across the state. The plan was meant to create a more equitable funding but has proven troublesome for larger courthouses.

Many in the community are worried about the effects the cuts will have on the communities being served by the court house. After all, 41% of first marriages end in divorce, many of which are contentious.

“These changes impact some of the most vulnerable people we serve, including families in crisis,” Judge Jeffrey Barton, who serves on the San Diego Superior Court, recently told KUSI.

He noted that many of the judges oppose the reduction of services across the board, although he noted that there was little he or his fellow judges could do.

“The judges of the San Diego Superior Court do not want to make these service reductions,” Barton said. “Unfortunately, we have no choice.”

Approximately 32% of Americans looking to buy a new home are first time home buyers. And like many other first time home buyers, Akisha Everett of Minneapolis has been looking for her dream home for months. Unfortunately, being continuously outbid has kept her from getting the keys.

“I am holding my breath,” Everett told StarTribune while she was still house hunting.

Everett is one of the many African Americans struggling in the midst of the housing market. Approximately 13.3% of the U.S. population is African American, but only 47.5% of black Americans owned homes as of 2008. In contrast, nearly 61.3% of the American population is non-Hispanic white. Up to 74.9% of white Americans owned homes in 2008.

In recent years, this disparity between races in the housing market has only grown. According to a new analysis of Census Bureau data, the Twin Cities, where Everett calls home, have the lowest rate of black homeownership out of 80 American cities. The Hispanic rate of homeownership in the Twin Cities has also fallen, but white homeownership has remained one of the highest in the country.

One of the reasons for the disparity includes a comparison of salaries between races. The average income for white households in Minnesota in 2015 was $67,000 in comparison to black Americans whose households totaled $30,300. For Hispanics, the average income was $43,400.

“Homeownership is the central vehicle Americans use to store wealth,” said Catherine Ruetschlin to Forbes. Ruetschlin is the co-author of a recent study entitled The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters. “So homeownership and access to homeownership are at the heart of that widening wealth gap.”

Aside from income, the disparity also stems from the redlining of black neighborhoods. Since the 1934 National Housing Act, African American neighborhoods have been marked as credit risks. The effects of this redlining continue into the modern housing market where homes in black neighborhoods are considered of lesser value than those in white neighborhoods.

Discrimination in lending is another large factor. People of color, because of their lower incomes, are more likely to need a loan in order to pay the mortgage on their house. However, lenders have been known to overcharge black and Hispanic/Latinx households by giving them loans with higher interest rates as recently as 2012.

These high-interest loans helped to fuel the recent foreclosure crisis. In 2013, one out of every 96 homes filed for foreclosure. And between 2007 and 2008, Minneapolis’ black and Hispanic neighborhoods became the center of this crisis.

Now the Twin Cities housing market is up again, but still at the disadvantage of minority buyers. Lenders have made it more difficult to qualify for mortgages to reduce the risk of another foreclosure crisis. Therefore, minority buyers who have little to no credit must take yet another step in order to become advantaged enough to make an offer on a home.

“I have always dreamed of owning my own home,” said Everett to StarTribune. “I think it is important to start to create generational wealth for my children.”

After eight months of searching and visiting over 50 homes, Everett has now moved into a $190,000, three-bedroom house in north Minneapolis with her two sons.

Family camping trips are still one of the most popular vacation options for Americans, with the number of days spent camping totally an incredible 534.9 million days as of 2011. However, this summer there is a once-in-a-lifetime reason to head out camping, especially for those that have an interest in the stars and the sky.

The Great American Eclipse is coming soon, and most hotels and lodging along its path have been completely sold out for months. But while it might be impossible to find a cheap motel or hotel room along the path, there is still plenty of space to take advantage of.

Across the nation, from Oregon to South Carolina (the total path of the solar eclipse’s movement), there are hundreds of areas advertising spaces for tents and RV parking. Private ranches, farms, and vineyards are just a few places to name that are offering space, and some are so vast they’ll likely never sell out.

The fact is, there is still space to find during the event. Somewhere between 1.85 million and 7.4 million Americans plan to see the eclipse, and there is still space available for all of them.

But that doesn’t mean space for everything, and a lot of experts are predicting some troubles in areas on the path of the event. Interstates and major roadways may be flooded with individuals, and issues finding food or water or even a restroom could be a problem in many communities.

Some individuals, like Angela Speck, a researcher at the University of Missouri and a member of the American Astronomical Society’s Eclipse team, are reporting it could be quite crowded across the nation. Speck told Space.com that the event could, “resemble a zombie apocalypse.”

She went on to say that, “There will hopefully be less bloodshed, but zombies don’t need regular food, or sleep, or toilets.”

Which brings us back to the issue of the overcrowded cities and towns along the eclipse’s path, in which some city officials have warned residents to start getting their supplies now and avoid travel before and shortly after the event.

The Solar Eclipse is supposed to occur Monday, August 21, and it’s the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse to occur in nearly 100 years.

There are a lot of benefits to getting adhesive floor coatings for homes or businesses. They protect flooring from chemicals and other threats, something that makes them extremely popular for industrial uses. Which is why the market is expected to continue growing to a sizable $11.01 billion by 2022. These adhesives include items like epoxy floor coatings, a popular coating used in many industries, and a more niche product, polyaspartic, which has a much quicker coating time than the more popular epoxy.

According to a recent market report, the driving force for the market growth is the increasing demand for flooring adhesives by the industrial and residential sectors. Epoxy is, understandably, still holding the largest share of the market, but some polyurethane floorings are starting to catch up.

While these products are most commonly used in industrial settings, they’re also becoming more popular among property flippers.

And in recent years, home flipping has become more profitable than ever before.

Realtor Dave Kooistra, who has flipped and sold at least 10 properties in the last 15 years, recently purchased a mansion for $900,000 and then listed it for $1.9 million after doing a bit of work on the interior.

The mansion was built by a couple in the late 1990s and cost nearly $6 million when it was first constructed. The couple later passed away in the early part of the 2000s, and the home lingered on the market for several years as the asking price fell.

The mansion had only three bedrooms and a rather dated decor when Kooistra first purchased it.

“We hired six guys working full-time for eight days to remove the wallpaper,” says Kooistra.
In addition, boxes of angelic cherubs were removed from the cabinetry. The outdated kitchen and bathrooms were gutted and renovated, and he replaced all of the 144 halogen lamps in the ceiling canister fixtures.

Some of the work that was done in the house included resurfacing the entirety of the heated garage with a new epoxy coating, to prolong its lifespan by several years. He also refreshed the entire house with new paint and updated decor.

“Every square inch of this house has been repainted,” said Kooistra.

The realtor believes that the home is worth more than his asking price, but would be happy to see it go for it. The amount of work put into the home was substantial, and he would like to get a profit while he can.

Identity theft is one of the most common crimes in the United States. In 2016, approximately one out of every 16 Americans were the victims of identity theft. On Thursday, August 3, the Federal Bureau of Investigation brought justice to one of these thieves.

Daniel Adekunle Ojo, 33, was charged with identity theft and fraud after stealing tax information from teachers in Minnesota and Connecticut from his illegal home in Durham, North Carolina.

IRS agents and the FBI’s cyber-crime unit were able to identify Ojo via a series of phishing emails, which the Nigerian man used to collect fraudulent tax refunds from teachers in Connecticut school districts.

The FBI reported that in the case of Glastonbury, Minnesota, a school employee had received a request for W-2 tax information.

“I want you to compile and email W-2 copy of ‘All employees’ wage and tax statement for 2016,” read the phishing email. “Kindly prepare and attach the lists in PDF file type and email them to me for review as soon as possible.”

To appear legitimate, Ojo used the address DaltonK@Glastonburyus.org. “Kim Dalton is the executive assistant to Glastonbury’s assistant school superintendent,” reports the Hartford Courant. “The recipient replied with the tax information of about 1,600 employees.”

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, the IRS deposited approximately $37,000 into various bank accounts and processed up to six of the fraudulent tax reforms.

In March 2017, Ojo sent a nearly identical phishing email to teachers at the Groton school district. The teacher who received the email replied with the information of nearly 1,300 employees. However, when the IRS received the information they alerted the FBI of the suspicious behavior.

The FBI was able to find Ojo through an examination of the email address and an SMS number. The SMS number was listed on a six-month visa application for Ojo from December 2015, which he’d obtained to visit family in New York state. Ojo had filed for immigration status earlier that year, listing his Durham address on each of the four petitions.

Ojo is now being held in Greensboro, North Carolina where he was presented in federal court. He will later be transferred for prosecution in Connecticut.

Today, about 68% of funds lost as a result of a cyber attack are unrecoverable, and in a world of increasing reliance on the internet for day-to-day life, cyber threats are more dangerous than ever.

That’s something two U.S. lawmakers are making clear in their most recent proposals. They believe that the internet itself is the problem.

Last year hackers took advantage of smart home devices to shut down access to major websites like Spotify and Twitter. They did so by using what is termed the Internet of Things, a sort of all encompassing phrase for all web-connected devices. Simply put, hackers were able to corrupt smart washing machines, refrigerators, and other web-connected appliances to attack important online sites.

Because of this attack, a group of lawmakers in Congress is now getting to work to have the U.S. government build strong digital defense. Sen. Mark Warner from Virginia and Sen. Cory Gardner from Colorado are the two strongest voices. They’ve recently pushed out a bill titled “The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017.”

The bill is an attempt to force companies that sell web-connected tools to federal agencies to follow new security standards, ones that are separate from lax consumer standards. This is so that a tablet sold to, say, the FBI is not the same as a tablet sold to a family of four.

“With cybersecurity,” Warner told said, “You’ve got to constantly be upgrading your game. And what we’re saying with Internet of Things devices is, if you’ve got hard-coded passwords or they’re not able to be patched, because they’re cheaper or smaller devices, that can’t be standard protocol.”

The Senators have noted that the Internet of Things is growing rapidly, and that worries them due to the widespread availability and use of malware.

“If we turn around and there are 20 billion [IoT] devices in a couple years, and the federal has ‘x’ million of these devices, and they all have these characteristics, then, you know, I think we’re going to make a big mistake,” said Warner.

And as much as consumers love devices that connect to the internet, so too does the U.S. government. Federal agencies spent somewhere around $5 billion on sensors and data collectors from 2011 to 2015, all of which connect to the internet.

Sen. Warner admits that, as of this moment, “there’s actually no full, comprehensive accounting of the IoT (Internet of Things) devices that the U.S. government owns or operates.”

Botox is a massive market, with an annual revenue of more than $2 billion and growing. However, despite the drug’s reputation as a balm for middle age, Botox has an unlikely new customer: teenagers.

That’s right, many teenagers are now interested in Botox, specifically those teens under the age of 18, and that’s raising a lot of questions among some Botox providers. It’s no real secret that the millenial generation is going under the knife for an injection of “youth” just like Gen X-ers and Baby Boomers before them.

However, the surge of interest in Botox from teenagers has inspired some rarely seen introspection from the pharmaceutical industry. Now, with the number of teenage Botox patients rising, Allergen is considering whether this particular growth market is healthy.

Allergan’s biggest selling product is the Botox, which brings in billions of dollars each year. Last year, about $730 million of that came from the cosmetic uses of the product, but Botox also has a number of non-cosmetic uses. However, despite this, Allergan CEO Brent Saunders is considering limiting the drug’s growth.

He’s calling for all stakeholders in the medical aesthetics field to come together with him and talk about managing the demand from the teenage population. He wants to know what can be done to better counsel young patients in the future.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2016 report, nearly 230,000 teenagers between 13 and 19 had a cosmetic procedure last year.

“Regardless of whether you agree with me, it’s clear that we need to begin a dialogue about this issue before it becomes a major challenge. Unless we do something to address this issue directly, we risk harming a vulnerable part of our society,” Saunders said.

The CEO has been no stranger to controversy, especially for his opinions concerning the medical industry. He has been outspoken about the growing issues of drug pricing and its out of control future. He has not gained a lot of friends in the pharmaceutical industry for his progressive statements.

Saunders suggests that “at a minimum, these patients should consult and rely on the judgment of a trained and licensed healthcare professional and obtain parental consent prior to receiving any medical aesthetic procedure.”