Free Republic

Automated insulin delivery system will ease some of the burden of living with the condition "This first-of-its-kind technology can provide people with type 1 diabetes greater freedom to live their lives without having to consistently and manually monitor baseline glucose levels and administer insulin," Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in an agency news release. The device -- Medtronic's MiniMed 670G -- is what's known as a hybrid closed-loop system. That means it monitors blood sugar and then delivers necessary background (also known as basal) insulin doses. The device will also shut...

SACRAMENTO — A disability rights advocate drowned in a bizarre accident when she fell into the Sacramento River in her wheelchair after watching Fourth of July fireworks. Laurie Hoirup's husband, Jacob Hoirup, tells the Sacramento Bee (http://bit.ly/29mKqJs) the accident happened after she and several other people were getting off a pontoon at the Sacramento Marina Monday night after watching fireworks on the boat. He says the 60-year-old woman was on a ramp between the boat and dock when the boat shifted and caused the ramp to fall into the water, bringing her, her husband and some others down with it....

EXCLUSIVE: Florida’s top civil rights agency has again found that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts discriminated against several children living with autism and their families. In five separate rulings issued May 11, the Florida Commission on Human Relations says that an “unlawful practice occurred” when “Complainant and Complainant’s son were deprived of full enjoyment of the facility.” This comes as an attorney today filed a notice of appeal in a recently tossed federal lawsuit claiming Disney discriminated against families of children with autism and other developmental disorders in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Tennessee's rule factory is cranking at full tilt, and Nashville lawmakers want to tell Memphians how to pay for bike lanes, what monuments we can move, and whether or not we can own skunks (seriously). No gas tax for bike lanes A new bill would prohibit spending any gas tax revenues on bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, and "other non-vehicular facilities." Portions of the state gas tax are required to go to cities and counties. Those governments sometimes use the gas tax funds for matching dollars to get federal money for bike and pedestrian projects. The new bill says all of...

Blind woman learns to shoot Picture from concealed nation An Georgia television station raised a question about whether a person who is legally blind should be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights.  They asked if a person who is legally blind should be forbidden, by law, from carrying a weapon to protect themselves.  From newschannel9.com: Her father, Sheriff Warren Wethington, taught her how to shoot. He told Byfield he wants his daughter to be able to protect herself. "The people who express their opinions that my daughter's not safe with a gun most likely have never held one,...

Santa Rosa’s use of its $4 million Fountaingrove fire station has been delayed by questions about whether the new building is sufficiently accessible to people with disabilities. The 5,300-square-foot Newgate Court station was supposed to be ready for occupancy in April, but last minute inspections by city staff trained in the requirements of the Americans with Disability Act highlighted numerous potential violations. The discovery has perplexed many at City Hall, especially given that the city has spent about $6 million over the past 5 years improving the accessibility of existing buildings, parks and sidewalks under the watchful eye of the...

The justices heard arguments in a dispute over how San Francisco police in 2008 dealt with a woman with schizophrenia who had threatened to kill her social worker. Police ultimately forced their way into Teresa Sheehan's room at a group home, then shot her after she came at them with a knife. Sheehan survived and later sued the city, claiming police had a duty under the Americans with Disabilities Act to consider her mental illness and take more steps to avoid a violent confrontation. The case comes as police have been criticized for a series of high-profile incidents where suspects...

CINCINNATI, An Ohio teacher with a phobia of young children lost an appeal accusing her former district of failing to accommodate her disability. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati rejected the appeal from Maria Waltherr-Willard, 63, who had accused the Mariemont district of age discrimination and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Waltherr-Willard, a French and Spanish teacher, alleged the district knew she suffered from pedophobia, a fear of small children, when she was transferred in 2009 from Mariemont High School to the district's middle school. The teacher, who retired in January 2011...

(CNSNews.com) – The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed corporations to reduce their health care costs by rewarding employees for voluntarily participating in workplace “wellness” programs to help them lose weight or stop smoking. But now three of those programs are the target of discrimination lawsuits by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which says they are neither voluntary nor legal. EEOC recently filed its third wellness lawsuit, claiming that Honeywell International, Inc.’s ACA-approved wellness program violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Honeywell recently informed employees and their spouses who were enrolled in the company’s health benefits plan that...

* Many CEOs are angry with the Obama administration thanks to three new cases challenging parts of his 'wellness program' * In order to participate in the 'wellness program' and receive a low health care rate under Obamacare, employees must take a physical * Now it is being argued in three cases that forcing someone to take a physical for work violates the Americans with Disabilities Act * The CEOs now have a number of ways they can undermine Obama because of this developmentLeading U.S. CEOs, angered by the Obama administration's challenge to certain 'workplace wellness' programs, are threatening to...

The Justice Department reached an agreement Monday with Peapod, a popular Internet grocer, to settle claims that the company’s website discriminated against people with disabilities.The agreement forces Peapod LLC and parent company Ahold USA to update www.peapod.com so assistive technologies like text-to-speech and Braille displays function with the site.The DOJ hailed the action as ensuring that anti-discrimination laws under the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to Internet businesses as well as brick and mortar stores.“This agreement ensures that people with disabilities will have an equal opportunity to independently and conveniently shop online for groceries,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita...

How should employers respond when they learn that an employee is planning a trip to West Africa to visit family? What if other employees refuse to come to work because they fear that the returning employee may have been exposed to Ebola Virus Disease? How can employers prepare in advance for such situations? Based on extensive news media coverage of the spread of Ebola in West Africa, and the recent transmission of the virus in the United States, many employers are scrambling to answer these questions. The right response depends on several factors and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However,...

Alfredo Garcia is an illegal alien with a long list of felonies on his arrest record. Garcia also fell out of an avocado tree while high on cocaine and sustained a spinal injury 18 years ago. Since the injury, Garcia uses the Federal ADA laws to pilfer money from honest hard-working American business owners. In addition to extorting money from American businesses, Garcia claims to be poor so that the American taxpayer will pick up the tab for his legal expenses. Estimated law suit settlements total at least $1.2 million, and legal fees paid by the taxpayer approximately $213,502. The...

IRONSIDES is an authoritative/recursive DNS server pair that is provably invulnerable to many of the problems that plague other servers. It achieves this property through the use of formal methods in its design, in particular the language Ada and the SPARK formal methods tool set. Code validated in this way is provably exception-free, contains no data flow errors, and terminates only in the ways that its programmers explicitly say that it can. These are very desirable properties from a computer security perspective. IRONSIDES is not a complete implementation of DNS. In particular, it does not support zone transfers or all...

A new set of seating is being torn down outside the Plymouth Wildcats varsity boys’ baseball field, not long before the season begins, because the fields for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal. […] (A)fter a complaint, the U.S Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights investigated the new addition and says it must be torn down. It says the facility was no longer equal to the girls’ softball field next door, which has old bleachers and an old scoreboard. …

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will soon have to answer a personal question from the boss: Are you disabled? U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing Co., Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc., T among some 40,000 others—ask their employees if they have a disability. Those that don't employ a minimum of 7% disabled workers, or can't prove they are taking steps to achieve that goal, could face penalties and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of their contracts, according to a government official. The target...

SQUID: Suite of Quality Unified Integrated Development This project is to develop the basis for an Ada 2012 Integrated Development Environment more akin to the `80s/`90s idea of a Programming Support Environment (complete with project-management tools) -- to start, this kickstareter project is for me to: Design the underlying DB structure, and Create a website for the Open-Source project This will allow me to have this kickstarter as a minimalistic goal, allowing for some collaboration with others in the open-source community, as the preliminary calculations have 25 weeks and nearly $37k allocated for the development of the specifications for...

Still adjusting to his life as an amputee, doctors discovered Mr Baer had bone cancer after a non-combat related injury in Iraq in 2009. His left leg had to be amputated from the knee down and was given a physical service dog, Beanz, through a national organization called Canine Companions for Independence. However, as soon as he walked through the door of the coffee chain, the trouble started. A Starbucks employee approached him as he entered with Beanz, his service dog. 'You can't have dogs in here,' the worker yelled at him. It was in your face, loud and bold....

After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating. Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond. But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis...

The US Justice Department is intervening in a private lawsuit against H&R Block for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. H&R Block is a large provider of American tax services and informational services for tax payers.