Poisoned lottery winner's nephew says something wasn't right

Urooj Khan had just brought home his $425,000 lottery check when he unexpectedly died the following day. Now, certain members of Khan's family are speaking publicly about the mystery -- and his nephew told ABC News they knew something was not right.

"He was a healthy guy, you know?" said the nephew, Minhaj Khan. "He worked so hard. He was always going about his business and, the thing is: After he won the lottery and the next day later he passes away -- it's awkward. It raises some eyebrows."

The medical examiner initially ruled Urooj Khan, 46, an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, died July 20, 2012, of natural causes. But after a family member demanded more tests, authorities in November found a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood, turning the case into a homicide investigation.

"When we found out there was cyanide in his blood after the extensive toxicology reports, we had to believe that ... somebody had to kill him," Minhaj Khan said. "It had to happen, because where can you get cyanide?"

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Authorities could be one step closer to learning what happened to Urooj Khan. A judge Friday approved an order to exhume his body at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago as early as Thursday to perform further tests.

Moments after the court hearing, Urooj Khan's sister, Meraj Khan, remembered her brother as the kind of person who would've shared his jackpot with anyone. Speaking at the Cook County Courthouse, she hoped the exhumation would help the investigation.

"It's very hard because I wanted my brother to rest in peace, but then we have to have justice served," she said, according to ABC News station WLS in Chicago. "So if that's what it takes for him to bring justice and peace, then that's what needs to be done."

Khan reportedly did not have a will. With the investigation moving forward, his family is waging a legal fight against his widow, Shabana Ansari, 32, over more than $1 million, including Urooj Khan's lottery winnings, as well as his business and real estate holdings.

Khan's brother filed a petition Wednesday to a judge asking Citibank to release information about Khan's assets to "ultimately ensure" that [Khan's] minor daughter from a prior marriage "receives her proper share."

Ansari may have tried to cash the jackpot check after Khan's death, according to court documents, which also showed Urooj Khan's family is questioning if the couple was ever even legally married.

Ansari, Urooj Khan's second wife, who still works at the couple's dry cleaning business, has insisted they were married legally.

She has told reporters the night before her husband died, she cooked a traditional Indian meal for him and their family, including Khan's daughter and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the Chicago Sun-Times, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She said she called 911.

"It has been an incredibly hard time," she told ABC News earlier this week. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Ansari has not been named a suspect, but her attorney, Steven Kozicki, said investigators did question her for more than four hours.

"Absolutely, positively, you know, she had nothing to do with her husband's death," Kozicki said.

Despite the legal battle over the estate, Minhaj Khan said the family "can't really point fingers or we can't really speculate until a further investigation is done."

"When they are exhuming his body, I really hope the truth does come out, and our family finds some peace and we get to the bottom of this," he said. "Because everybody has to go one day, but the way that he died was not the way to go."

Urooj Khan won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June, though he elected to take the lump sum payout amounting to $425,000 after taxes. He said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.

Minhaj Khan remembered his uncle as that sort of giving person.

"He had a successful business, he was a great father, he was a great uncle to us and we knew him since the late '80s, since he came here [to the United States]," he said. "We lived with him. My kids used to play with him too, you know? I have two little girls. He was a really big family man and everybody loved him.

"He was the life of the party," he said, "always joking around, always joking with us and the family."

ABC News' Susanna Kim contributed to this report.

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Source: http://gma.yahoo.com/poisoned-lottery-winners-kin-were-suspicious-022459921--abc-news-topstories.html

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Court says Kansas must increase school funding, slams tax cuts

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (Reuters) - Kansas is unconstitutionally short-changing its students by underfunding education needs and must increase spending by about $400 million, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously on Friday.

The court said it was "illogical" for the state to argue that it could not adequately fund schools at the same time it slashed income taxes.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court victories for a group of public school districts, parents and students in Kansas who have demanded for years that the state provide more money for education.

A funding plan was devised for Kansas in 2006 through a settlement of a prior lawsuit but the groups filed suit again in 2010 when the state made an estimated $300 million in funding cuts. The state made even more cuts in 2011. There have been $511 million in cuts to the base funding between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal 2012.

"This is just a wonderful victory for these school kids in Kansas," said lawyer John Robb, whose firm represents the plaintiffs in the case, which was filed in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka, Kansas.

"The (state) constitution says they have rights to an adequately funded education," Robb said. "And the courts have said yes ... it means what it says."

Kansas is one of many U.S. states with Republican majority legislatures and governors who are arguing that tax cuts will encourage business and stimulate the economy while critics fear negative impacts on social services and education.

In the ruling, the court addressed that issue specifically, saying that it made no sense for the state to argue that its finances were tight and increasing education spending could have "disastrous consequences to the Kansas economy," while it was intentionally reducing revenues by cutting the state income tax.

"It seems completely illogical that the state can argue that a reduction in education funding was necessitated by the downturn in the economy and the state's diminishing resources and at the same time cut taxes further," the court said.

Governor Sam Brownback, a Republican who has advocated for the tax cuts, said he ruling was "disappointing but not unexpected."

He said school funding should be up to lawmakers, not courts.

"Through today's ruling, the courts are drastically increasing the property tax burden on every Kansan," Brownback said in a statement. "The legislative process is the appropriate venue for debating and resolving issues of taxation and spending."

Democrats have criticized Brownback for presiding over roughly $500 million in cuts to public education since 2011.

The ruling means that the state must provide at least $4,492 per pupil for the roughly 600,000 students, up from $3,838 per student.

Dave Trabert, president of the conservative public policy advocacy group Kansas Policy Institute, criticized the ruling, saying the increase ordered in funding will force a tax hike.

"It costs a lot of money to operate our schools, but it's how the money is spent that matters, not simply how much," Trabert said.

This week, the publication Education Week gave the state of Kansas a "C" grade for its education system, funding and achievement.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Greg McCune, Tim Dobbyn and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/court-says-kansas-must-increase-school-funding-slams-021735670.html

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Warner wins legal victory for control of Superman

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Superman belongs to Warner Bros., according to the latest legal victory granting the film and television studio complete commercial control of the lucrative Superman franchise.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals unanimously ruled Thursday that the heirs of Superman's co-creator Jerome Siegel must abide by a 2001 letter written by the family's attorney accepting Warner Bros.' offer for their 50 percent share of Superman. Though the five-page letter was never formalized into a contract, the appeals court said it was still binding.

"Statements from the attorneys for both parties establish that the parties had undertaken years of negotiations, that they had resolved the last outstanding point in the deal during a conversation on Oct. 15, 2001, and that the letter accurately reflected the material terms they had orally agreed to on that day," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the panel.

The ruling Thursday undoes a 2008 trial court decision ordering Warner Bros. to share an undetermined amount of money earned since 1999 with the heirs, and to give the family control of key components of the Superman story, including his costume. If that decision were to stand, the studio would have had to negotiate a new costly royalty agreement with the family.

"The court's decision paves the way for the Siegel finally to receive the compensation they negotiated for and which DC has been prepared to pay for over a decade," Warner Bros. said in a prepared statement, referring to its DC Comics division. "We are extremely pleased that Superman's adventures can continue to be enjoyed across all media platforms worldwide for generations to come."

The family's attorney, Marc Toberoff, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Toberoff said earlier that he would appeal another significant Warner Bros. victory won in October involving the family of Superman's other creator, Joseph Shuster, and their bid for half the commercial rights. Toberoff also represents the Shuster heirs, who lost their bid to retain a 50 percent share of Superman.

A federal judge in Los Angeles had ruled that Shuster's sister and brother relinquished any chance to reclaim Superman copyrights in exchange for annual pension payments from DC Comics. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright noted in that case that the families of both creators have been paid in excess of $4 million since 1978, plus undefined bonuses and medical benefits.

In April, the $412 check that DC Comics wrote in 1938 to acquire Superman and other creative works by Shuster and Siegel sold for $160,000 in an online auction.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/warner-wins-legal-victory-control-superman-004145010.html

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Who Owns What You Or Your Business Posts On Social ... - Name.com

WHO OWNS WHAT YOU OR YOUR BUSINESS POSTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

While it would seem intuitive that ownership of a tweet or blog entry should remain with its author, the truth is this is an undefined area of law at this time. The court system has fallen woefully behind in its duty to define ownership of electronic media, especially in terms of social networking.

When a piece of text is created by an employee, ownership, at this moment, universally belongs to neither the creator nor company. The details of the ownership can only be discussed in terms of the contract signed by the employee at the time of hire. Several companies require their employees to sign documents that give complete and total control of all intellectual materials created by the individual during the term of employment to the company.

This means anything that is created by the individual, during work time OR ON PERSONAL TIME, belongs to the corporation. This would mean that any social media account that was created during the term of employment is, by legal rite, property of the company. While this is an extreme example, what it is meant to illustrate is that the ownership of social media accounts and individual posts fall under the jurisdiction of the corporate policy and individual contracts signed between corporations and employees. They do not fall under the standard intellectual property copyright laws. At least not yet.

According to Donna Ballman P.A., There are only a few cases that have delved into this murky new area of law. She states that these are:

1. Amway Global v. Woodward: A blog post was evidence of violation of a non-solicitation agreement.
2. Sasqua Group v. Courtney: The fact that the company?s customer info was available on LinkedIn and other public sources means it wasn?t a trade secret.
3. TEK Systems, Inc. v. Hammernick: Complaint in lawsuit alleges employee violated a non-solicitation agreement when the employee added contract employees to LinkedIn profile.

These types of cases are usually the result of an employee leaving a current company and entering into direct competition with it. The main crux is that the information contained in the social networking system allows the former employee to have an unfair advantage over the former employer. While there is a limited amount of litigation on the subject, what is important to note is that with the idea of ownership up in the air, it is important to have a clearly defined electronic and social media policy in place at your business.

Crafting an Electronic and Social Media Policy

When you first start building a social media policy, take into account that the courts have not yet ruled on the line between what constitutes personal vs. business communication and that is what this policy should be about. By clearly defining when, where and how social interaction take place in the electronic realm, you can delineate ownership of materials.

You probably already have some policies in place to prevent employees from jumping ship and going into business for themselves and poaching clients from you. These could include such things as a non-compete agreement, a non solicitation agreement, intellectual property agreements and confidentiality clauses. These are a good place to start with your social media policy.

If your employees sign a non-compete or non solicit agreement and then actively start friending former customers on Facebook, following competing companies on Twitter and sending out LinkedIn requests to others in the same area, you have the right to send them a cease and desist order because it?s not the method of delivery that is objectionable but the message itself. There is relatively little that you have to do to tweak this policy unless it is to mention electronic communication specifically.

The main area of tweaking should happen in the intellectual property portion of your employment agreement. Ownership for all materials should be made explicit. This means the time and place of creation can be used as a way to define whether a piece of material is corporate property or that of the individual. Some larger corporations can afford to ask their employees to give up all rights to any intellectual property completed during their employment. Smaller businesses are much more likely to keep only confidential and competition-based properties covered by this policy. It is a good policy to advise employees that communications with clients should be done through corporate systems and not over social media networks and that you may consider any company contact that is added to a personal social media account as a breach of the non-compete, non-solicitation agreement.

Do You Own Your Business Social Communications?

This is a very important issue being decided in the courts right now. If you post something on Twitter, you can't access it after two weeks, but Twitter can sell it to any marketing firm they want for an indefinite period.

Facebook and some other social sites have specialized phrases in their terms of use that give them rights that you may not know you have given up. While Facebook claims it?will only use your information to promote other Facebook products to you and others,?its?terms of service state otherwise:

?You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.?

So, they can do whatever they want with your content as long as it doesn?t violate your privacy settings. They can also retain archival copies of anything you post even after you delete your account. And if you don?t like what they are doing, you can engage in arbitration.

This policy can be extremely damaging to a corporate Facebook page. If a disgruntled employee were to post trade secrets on the site and remove all public blocks, it would be out there forever with little recourse but to go through arbitration to have it removed, and then it would still be available to programmers and archivists employed by Facebook.

Ownership of media on other social networks like Pinterest is even murkier. With the doctrine of ?fair use? being heralded by anyone and everyone who posts a copyrighted image, the question of ownership twists on whether the promotion on a social site is a positive or negative influence on the product or company pictured. There are no lawsuits on this particular issue but when someone finally goes too far and creates a public or corporate outrage, we?ll then see who actually owns social media.??

Reference:

http://www.monsterthinking.com/2011/03/12/who-owns-my-social-media-contacts/

Categories: startmybiz | Permalink

Source: http://www.name.com/blog/startmybiz/2013/01/who-owns-what-you-or-your-business-posts-on-social-media/

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Google Releases New 'Google Coordinate' App for iPhone

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Source: http://www.iclarified.com/26619/google-releases-new-google-coordinate-app-for-iphone

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VirnetX And Google? Will Apple Settle, Or Risk Going The Distance?

Disclosure: I am long VHC. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

On November 8, 2012, VirnetX (VHC) secured $368M in damages, awarded by a federal jury in east Texas, against Apple (AAPL) for infringing on VirnetX's secure communication/Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology in Apple's Facetime application. This jury verdict follows a $200M settlement with Microsoft (MSFT) in 2010, following a jury trial and decision in VirnetX's favor, and subsequent licensing deals with former defendants Aastra, Mitel (MITL), and NEC in 2012. VirnetX's asserted patents are battle hardened from two winning jury verdicts over Microsoft and Apple, including surviving a re-exam by the USPTO, fully intact, in 2010. For additional background and due diligence, please read this comprehensive "white paper" by J.P. Moreno. I have also written about this case here and here.

Now Benzinga is floating a rumor that Google (GOOG) may be interested in buying VirnetX for $50 per share (based on reading J.P. Moreno's white paper, I find the $50 per share rumor to be at least $50 short of a realistic valuation of VirnetX's technology). Whether this rumor has any legs or not, I don't know -- but if it is true, I believe this should cause Apple to re-evaluate its legal strategy against VirnetX and settle.

What are some of the current risk factors for Apple as it relates to VirnetX?

1) Injunction Against Apple - If the judge determines that a monetary judgment won't fully compensate VirnetX for the damages incurred from Apple's infringment, and that Apple's infringing of VirnetX's technology hinders VirnetX from marketing that technology, he could order an injunction against any Apple products that use the infringing technology (Facetime). The consumer blowback to this -- especially after the Apple Maps debacle in 2012 -- would be painful to Apple. Also, it is unlikely that Apple could design around VirnetX's technology without it being a considerable nuisance to the consumer. If Apple had an easy and cheap "design around," then why wouldn't it have employed it prior to all the legal wrangling?

2) Significant Forward Royalty - If Apple and VirnetX do not settle, then the judge will set the future royalties that Apple will have to pay VirnetX for all of the products that use the infringing technology. Does Apple really want to be at the mercy of the court regarding future royalties -- especially considering the shellacking that lead attorney Doug Cawley and the team at McKool Smith put on Apple's defense team?

3) Google buys VirnetX - This would really be a finger-in-the-eye. Can you imagine Google buying VirnetX, then developing a similar app to Facetime and charging Apple a licensing fee to use the technology they were proven to have been stealing from VirnetX?

In addition to the above, VirnetX has a trial date set for the beginning of March in 2013, in the same courtroom with the same judge, against Cisco (CSCO), Avaya, and Siemens (SI), for infringement. The case against Cisco is for "willful" infringement, which if proven, will triple any damages a jury awards.

VirnetX's CEO, Kendall Larsen, has likened VirnetX to the next Qualcomm:

"If I were to look at an analogous company, I can best draw a comparison to being the next Qualcomm. We believe our designs, our patents, and our overall impact on the marketplace are very similar to what Qualcomm looked at when they were undertaking, pursuing, licensing and implementing circuit- switched CDMA technologies with the equivalence in the Internet Protocol world and bringing next generation network technology to us."

The sky is the limit right now for VirnetX as it flawlessly continues to strengthen and waterproof its patent portfolio and implement its licensing strategy for 3G and 4G/LTE secure communications. This is an exciting time to be an investor in VirnetX.

Additional disclosure: This article is informational and intended to spur thought and discussion. This article is NOT a substitute for your own extensive due diligence and does NOT qualify as investment advice. DO NOT BUY OR SELL STOCKS BASED ON THIS ARTICLE. I do not short stocks nor do I invest in options.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1106531-virnetx-and-google-will-apple-settle-or-risk-going-the-distance?source=feed

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New U.S. food safety rules by FDA seek more accountability

(Reuters) - U.S. regulators proposed new food safety rules on Friday that aim to make food processors and farms more accountable for reducing food borne illnesses that kill or sicken thousands of Americans annually.

The rules, required by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that was signed into law two years ago, were announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday.

The agency has come under heavy criticism for failing to introduce new food safety rules faster, but many of those critics applauded FDA's announcement.

"These proposed regulations are a sign of progress," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who has been a critic of the FDA. "The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place."

Roughly one in six Americans suffers from a food borne illness each year, and about 3,000 die, the FDA said. The United States has had numerous outbreaks from food borne illnesses tied to salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

Food sickness has been linked to lettuce, cantaloupe, spinach, peppers and peanuts.

Under the new rules, facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold human food to be sold in the United States, whether produced at a foreign or domestic facility, would have to develop a formal plan for preventing their products from causing food borne illness.

The rule would also require them to have plans for correcting any problems that arise.

Companies will be required to document their plans and keep records to verify that they are preventing problems. Inspectors will be able to audit the program to enforce safety standards, which should "dramatically" improve the effectiveness of inspections, said Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine.

"We're taking a big step for food safety by proposing the standards that will help us prevent food safety problems rather than just reacting to them," said Taylor. "Though many food processors already have documented food safety plans, the new rule sets requirements for "all firms across all commodities," he said.

A second rule proposes safety standard requirements for farms that produce and harvest fruits and vegetables. Among the requirements, farms would have to meet national standards for the quality of water applied to their crops, as water is often a pathway for pathogens.

Certain small farms would be exempt from most of the requirements.

The FDA will allow 120 days for public comment on the proposals.

Full implementation of the rules across food processors and farms will take several years, Taylor said.

Implementing the new rules will add costs for some food companies and farms, and the FDA will need additional financial resources for retraining inspectors and implementation, Taylor said.

The Food Safety Modernization Act was the first food safety overhaul in over 70 years in the United States and was signed into law in January 2011.

The proposals followed a series of meetings between FDA officials and consumer groups, corporate interests, researchers, and others.

Critics have charged FDA with dragging its feet in implementing the requirements of the new law. Last August, the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, sued the FDA for missing several deadlines set under the law.

The standards for analyzing and documenting hazards were due last July, and the standards for safe production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables were due last January.

Within the next few months, FDA hopes to issue a proposed rule on preventative safety controls for animal feed as well as proposed regulations related to importer accountability for food safety.

The FDA is also setting requirements for the safe transport of food and hopes to have a proposal out later this year. It is also working to set standards to prevent intentional contamination of food.

"That is a very challenging area to figure out ... but we'll be working on that," Taylor said.

Congress also mandated FDA to improve the traceability of food and FDA is working with industry on a pilot study. FDA will issue a report on that work soon, Taylor said.

"There is plenty more in the pipeline," he said. "There will be more coming forward in 2013."

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents more than 300 food, beverage and consumer product companies, said it was pleased to see FDA moving forward on implementing the two-year-old food safety law.

And the Consumers Union praised the new rules for going to the "heart of the problems" the United States has had with food safety.

But Center for Food Safety senior attorney George Kimbrell said it was disheartening that the agency did not issue these proposed rules until after the center filed suit to spur action.

"They are taking some action. But there are still several rules outstanding that they are behind schedule on," said Kimbrell. "This is a small part of a larger problem that is ongoing. There is a still a lot of work the agency has to do to comply with Congress' mandate."

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Jim Marshall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-food-safety-rules-fda-seek-more-accountability-183835529.html

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