Category: News Feeds

In 2018, Zimbabwe approved the production of marijuana for solely medicinal and scientific purposes after plenty of deliberation, thus becoming the second African country to legalize its use after Lesotho.

Last year, the government announced that 37 local and private investors had shown interest in cannabis farming, in addition to more than 150 foreign and local investors who had indicated interest.

“Following Cabinet’s decision and high-level meeting, a policy change enabling investors to hold 100 percent ownership of Medical Cannabis licenses were made in order to improve the competitiveness of the sector both regionally and globally,” Health Minister Obadiah Moyo said.

Part of the agreement at the meeting was that investors had the option to utilize private land for cannabis project. “In other to regularise the policy changes a draft Investment Stabilisation agreement is being reviewed by the Attorney General’s office. The finalization has been delayed somewhat due to the focus in controlling the global COVID-19 pandemic,” the minister said.

An investor for cannabis farming will be issued with a five-year renewal license. According to Moyo, amendment of the license would be required.

Prior to its legalization, production and possession of the plant were illegal and attracted a sentence of up to 12 years. With the recreational use or possession of the drug still illegal, the new approval calls for a proper and detailed study, experts say.

The need for assessment is not only because of the economic gains available to Zimbabwe, but also major concerns such as moral and religious reasons, drug abuse and trafficking. Mental Health Manager, Eneti Siyame notes that the main challenge in addressing the abuse of drugs in Zimbabwe was due to the easy access to the same drug, especially after rehabilitation.

The country has received criticism alongside several opinions from experts but the government is optimistic. At the planting ceremony, the Minister for Lands, Agriculture, Water, and Rural Resettlement Perrance Shiri said by supporting the planting of cannabis, the government is taking a leaf from progressive economies.

“We have big economies such as China who are the world’s leading producer of the crop. As a progressive nation, we also have taken a deliberate and conscious decision to venture into industrial cannabis production given the benefits that we can derive,” said Minister Shiri.

The African continent appears to be bringing back cannabis, with some countries already taking the bold step in reclaiming a plant that history records as part of their indigenous knowledge. Other countries in this category include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Eswatini, and Uganda.

Post published in: Agriculture

HARARE (IPS) – Shurugwi communal farmer, Elizabeth Siyapi (57) can no longer be scammed by unscrupulous middlemen to sell her crops cheaply. Nowadays, before she takes her produce to market she scours her mobile phone, which has become an essential digital agriculture data bank, for the best prices on the market.

“When my livestock are sick, instead of waiting for an extension officer to physically visit me for help, which may take days, I just consult my phone to look for information on what to do,” she told IPS.

Siyaphi is one of approximately 34,000 small holder farmers across the country collectively using two smart phone-based solutions, Kurima Mari and Agrishare, promoted by German development agency, Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, to find markets, extension services, weather information and hire agriculture equipment.

Tawanda Mthintwa Hove, the head of digital agriculture at Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, said farmers have been using Kurima Mari to learn good agricultural practices and link with markets since 2016.

“Kurima Mari is available offline which eliminates the need for buying data. An extension officer updates the application on a regular basis and the updates are shared using bluetooth making it costless to the farmer,” he told IPS. “Whilst Agrishare is an online-based solution, it enables farmers to secure the best equipment in their homes, which reduces mobility costs.”

Over the last three years Siyaphi has utilised digital agriculture to find good agricultural practices. And her maize yield has multiplied from two 50-kilogram bags of maize to over three and a half tonnes.

• Though during the current COVID-19 lockdown in this southern African nation, her yields have reduced because of water restrictions.
• She told IPS that while markets remain available through the app, mostly via farmer to farmer contacts, transporting her produce to market has become the biggest problem because of lockdown restrictions. The current lockdown is in place indefinitely, though reviewed every two weeks by government. 

Hove said that mobile digital technologies improve the quantity and quality of farmer’s harvests by giving them current information on production practices. They also facilitate linkages, weather advisory services, add efficiency to commodity systems, which in the long run help increase farmer’s yields and make them more profitable.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in the use of digital agriculture.

• Other digital agriculture innovations include the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) and Econet Wireless championed, Ecofarmer Combo programme, which delivers weather-based insurance, real time location-based weather information and farming tips to over 80,000 communal farmers.
• Started by the churches in 2019, Turning Matabeleland Green, is another digital agriculture programme that uses satellite technology to send weather information and farming advice to over 2,000 farmers via the short message service.

Paul Zakariya, ZFU executive director, told IPS that mobile technology has enabled farmers to get farming advice in real-time, make online payments for inputs and services and access extension services from the tap of a phone, services that were previously available only through pamphlets and meetings.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)  and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), “Precision farming and new digital tools can help, enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of farming, while improving yields”.

But Charles Dhewa, the chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa, an indigenous systems company that operates eMkambo, another digital agriculture solution, said mobile applications were not yet directly benefitting smallholder farmers here.

“A few elite farmers with appropriate android phones could be benefitting here and there. That is why we have not positioned eMkambo Nest as a lead solution in our eMkambo platform,” he told IPS. 

Dhewa stated that although content was important, many farmers and traders don’t have time and bandwidth to toy with many of the available mobile and digital farming applications. The channels have reached their limits and are disintegrated, in addition to causing information asymmetry amongst farmers.

Digital literacy and the high cost of mobile communication is also reversing gains that could have been made by digital technology.

“The high cost of mobile money is worsening the situation, rendering mobile technology more of a luxury than a necessity,” he said. “Paying for agricultural commodities through mobile money is now more expensive.” 

Zakariya said despite an increased deployment of digital technologies in agriculture, farmers were using ICTs much less to improve agri-business. Beyond mobile applications, the country has been slow in adopting other appropriate technologies and innovations crucial in commercialising the country’s agriculture, which remains mostly subsistence. 

There is little use of high-end technologies with potential to enhance production and value chain competitiveness such as crop protection technology, soil and moisture sensors, drones, precision farming, molecular technology, use of global positioning systems and geographic information systems (GIS).

Zakariya said the uptake of modern, sophisticated technologies was capital intensive for most farmers while many more farmers lacked knowledge on the use and efficacy of the newer technologies.

Dhewa said that GIS has a better future in agriculture than mobile applications sharing information.

• The Digitalisation of the African Agriculture Report 2018-19 said there has been a significant growth in digitalisation for agriculture across the continent during the past 10 years.
• The report, authored by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, said by 2019, there were about 390 distinct, active digitalisation for agriculture solutions, where 33 million small holder farmers were registered.
• But despite the impressive growth figures, only 42 percent of the registered farmers and pastoralists are using the solutions with any frequency.

According to Hove, it is rural farmers that have been hit hard by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and prohibitive data costs, as such many can’t move their produce easily and have been deprived of income. This has forced some farmers to resort to middlemen.

Still, Hove said, some rural farmers have been able to find markets through the contact list (farmer to farmer) on the app as opposed to using the real-time markets list.

Meanwhile Siyapi said that she and other farmers struggle to buy data. As a lead and successful farmer, she requires about $16 a month in data but says other farmers can make do with $2.20 to download updates and peruse the marketplace.

Post published in: Agriculture

Flatten the Research Curve

Flatten the Research Curve

Wolters Kluwer

Flatten the Research Curve

Flatten the Research Curve

Wolters Kluwer

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to data collected by ALM for their 2020 Am Law 200 ranking, which firm saw the largest percentage increase in gross revenue?

Hint: This firm, founded in 1905 and operating primarily in the Southeast U.S., went up an insane 31.2 percent in gross revenue. 

See the answer on the next page.

We really appreciate the difficulties that people are going through and that people may take a less than optimal job because they have financial concerns. No one holds your job against you particularly at the early part of your career.

— David Muraskin, a 2009 graduate of Stanford Law School, offering advice to 2020 law school graduates who may unexpectedly find themselves out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Muraskin currently works as the Food Project litigation director at Public Justice and teaches at George Washington University Law School and Vermont Law School.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne has had it with California Congressman Devin Nunes and his wacko libelslander lawyer Stephen Biss. Twice on the same day, Judge Payne told Nunes to take his nonsensical lawsuit against the media to a jurisdiction which bears some actual relation to the case and quit gumming up the works in Virginia’s Eastern District.

Nunes, who is on a mission to protect the First Amendment with a mountain of garbage suits against the “liberal media,” likes to file in Virginia state court, where the anti-SLAPP law is weak, or in the Eastern District of Virginia where the “rocket docket” is fast. It also happens to be the jurisdiction where Biss is barred. What a coincidence!

Nunes has sued both Twitter and his hometown paper the Sacramento Bee, via its parent company McClatchy, in Virginia, alleging that the ability to read the allegedly defamatory statements in Old Dominion is nexus enough. The argument over venue in the Twitter and McClatchy suits continues, but Judge Payne has now transferred another two of Nunes’s suits, this time against CNN and the Washington Post, to New York and DC respectively, citing lack of connection to his courtroom.

Nunes alleged he was defamed by CNN which ran a story in November citing Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, who claimed that Nunes met with disgraced Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in Vienna in 2018. According to Nunes’s histrionic complaint, the network knew that Parnas was not a credible source, but ran the story anyway because “CNN is the mother of fake news. It is the least trusted name. CNN is eroding the fabric of America, proselytizing, sowing distrust and disharmony. It must be held accountable.” He claims to have been damaged with his California constituents to the tune of $435,350,000, demands venue in the Eastern District of Virginia because CNN’s story could be read there, but insists that his case should be adjudicated under New York law. Because … sure, why not.

The suit against the Washington Post concerns a February 20, 2020 article about a House Intelligence Committee briefing on Russian interference to aid Donald Trump’s re-election, which infuriated the president and resulted in the dismissal of Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Nunes alleges that Shane Harris — but not Ellen Nakashima, Josh Dawsey, or Ann Gearan, the other authors of the piece — defamed Nunes by claiming that he told Trump about the briefing. According to the complaint, “Harris is well-known as a puppet of the FBI and CIA, employed to selectively leak talking points and classified information and to smear targets.” Nunes demands $250,350,000 for damage in the eyes of his California constituents, with venue in Virginia, but adjudicated under DC law. Because, again … sure, why not.

Well, apparently, Judge Payne can think of one or two reasons. In the Post ruling, he notes that the fact that the paper was physically printed in Virginia and could be read there is a “tenuous connection [] insufficient to give significant weight to Nunes’s choice of forum.” Nor was he impressed with the congressman’s argument that, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee he has oversight of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is located in Virginia. And His Honor was singularly unimpressed with the argument that transfer to DC, where Nunes actually works, “would accomplish absolutely nothing more than merely shifting the balance of inconvenience to [Nunes.]”

In the CNN ruling, Judge Payne was even more direct.

[T]he Court has significant concerns about forum shopping, especially given that Nunes works in Washington, D.C., not Virginia. As the Court has explained to Plaintiff’s counsel on numerous occasions, the ‘Court cannot stand as a willing repository for cases which have no real nexus to this district. The ‘rocket docket’ certainly attracts plaintiff(s), but the Court must ensure that this attraction does not dull the ability of the Court to continue to act in an expeditious manner.”

But before shoving them out the door, Judge Payne unsubtly reminded Nunes and Biss that frivolous, abusive motions may result in sanctions, both for the litigant and his counsel. In both rulings, the judge quoted an admonition issued to Biss in yet another inane SLAPP suit filed by Biss in EDVA, saying:

It is with chagrin that [the] Court must begin to address this motion by observing that . . . Plaitiff[] engages in ad hominin attacks against [CNN and others in the Amended Complaint,] which the Court cannot tolerate. . . . The Court reminds Counsel for Plaintiff[] that, as an officer of the Court, he may be sanctioned for engaging in conduct unbefitting of this Court.

AHEM.

Memorandum Opinion [Nunes v. WP Company, LLC, No 3:20-cv-00146-REP (E. D. Va. May 21, 2020)]
Memorandum Opinion [Nunes v. CNN, No. 3:19-cv-00889-REP (E. D. Va. May 21, 2020)]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Last year, on May 28, I got a weird phone call from my buddy Sergio. Weird for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that it was actually an incoming call from someone my own age rather than a text message.

“You hear about Matt?” Sergio said. I had not heard about Matt. Matt was dead.

I didn’t believe him, at first. Sergio didn’t know all the details, something about Matt having trouble breathing at work so they took him to the hospital. Matt was by no means a paragon of health, but the guy was only 31, and he could skate circles around me on the ice. It didn’t feel real. I’d certainly fallen for pranks (that were not always in good taste) at the hands of my friends before, repeatedly, like for multiple decades. I wouldn’t put it past them.

But six days later, I was looking at a little box that contained all that was left of my friend. I went over and tried to tell his mother what a difference her son had made in the lives of his friends. In my life. I worried I didn’t say the right things.

Matt and I were both in the trumpet section in the high school marching band, and we both liked Green Day. Years later, we’d get together in the Twin Cities with the boys and do cookouts all summer long. Matt liked to grill. He preferred salmon, although I usually got something much less expensive for myself, like brats, having become quite a cheapskate during law school. In the fall, I’d always cook a turkey for Matt and his roommates and whoever else showed up — my first employer after law school gave away turkeys at Thanksgiving, and that started a decade-long tradition for us. I got pretty good at making gravy.

Have you ever gotten drunk with your friends and rented kayaks? Try it — really fun (put on a lifejacket first). When Snapchat came out, Matt would use it to film people who’d be just rounding a corner at the house as he blew an airhorn. The end of every video would be him giggling like a schoolgirl. He was always a solid wingman on a double date. One time, we ran into a bachelorette party at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill, and that’s a great story I won’t tell right now, because people in his family might read this. Another time, we just went to an Applebee’s because there was nothing else to do and told dad jokes to each other for like three hours.

Q: What did Abraham Lincoln say before he went to Ford’s Theatre?

A: ‘I need to see this play like I need a hole in my head.’

*pause for effect* Too soon?

We’d watch the Vikings and him or his brother or I would blow a ringing note on the horn — literally a bull’s horn fitted with a mouthpiece — whenever there was a touchdown, and also just periodically from time to time for no reason at all. He’d get out his mandolin and strum it during the commercials. As Matt got older, he grew out his hair and beard and increasingly resembled a Viking himself. Half the time when I cruised up on my motorcycle, he’d be outside, and he always smiled when I pulled in.

That was far from the first time I’ve lost someone unexpectedly. And, unless I’m next, it won’t be the last. But this doesn’t get easier. You just carry it around with you.

As we approach 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. (we might actually hit that number on the anniversary of my friend’s death), I think of how random and cruel it was that Matt had to die. But while these deaths we’re now facing are certainly cruel, they’re not all so random. We know, generally, who’s most at risk. We are capable of tracing many of these cases back to a particular source. And while I’ve been as wont as anyone to voice frustration about all the pandemic restrictions, you know, I’ve been bearing them a little easier these days. Maybe just wearing a mask to the store could save someone like my friend. A little extra beard itch for a few months is a pretty small price to pay for that.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Grab some popcorn, pull up a chair, and watch the Georgia Supreme Court hold oral arguments by videoconference! The case? What happens when a sperm bank sells bad sperm? In this case, the sperm bank is alleged to have sold sperm provided by a donor who lied about his IQ, professional background, and criminal history. Even more, a child who was conceived with his donated sperm has genetic conditions allegedly passed down by the sperm donor.

While the justices asked the hard questions of the attorney for the parent plaintiffs, the justices really went for the jugular with the sperm bank’s attorney.

The case is styled Norman v. Xytex, and oral argument took place on May 21, 2020. Readers may recall this case, where hopeful parents chose sperm from Xytex Donor 9623, thanks to Xytex’s profile of a donor with stellar credentials: a clean health record, 160 IQ, PhD student, and proficiency in four languages. Impressive!

Too bad none of those were true. Instead, when 9623’s identity was accidentally revealed by the sperm bank, some quick research found him to actually be a felon and college drop-out suffering from bipolar disorder as well as schizophrenia. In fact, while 9623 checked “no” on Xytex’s questionnaire as to whether he had any history of mental health issues, he had been hospitalized multiple times for mental illness prior to first donating with Xytex. If the donor had been truthful, or if any of this information was known to potential recipients — as the justices point out — donor 9623 would not have been anyone’s choice source for donor sperm.

Not knowing any of this, the plaintiffs chose Donor 9623’s sperm, and conceived a son from his sperm. Their son has suffered severe mental health issues, and the plaintiffs are asking for the sperm bank to pay the costs related to their son’s mental health treatment.

Since bringing suit against Xytex, the plaintiffs have had a rough road. The trial court and the Georgia Court of Appeals both dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims, finding that they amounted to “wrongful birth” claims, which are barred in the state under an old Georgia Supreme Court case called Abelson. In Abelson, a doctor negligently failed to diagnosis the in utero condition of a fetus. When the parents brought suit, the court found it against public policy to award damages based on the missed opportunity to abort a human life. In Abelson, the parents conceded that the doctor’s failure didn’t affect the health of the child; the only difference was that if the doctor had not been negligent, the parents would have had the option to terminate the pregnancy.

Law Professors Weigh In.

An amicus brief was submitted on behalf of 38 law professors in support of the plaintiffs. In the brief, the professors argue that it would be mistake for the Georgia Supreme Court to apply Abelson in a case like this.

First, they point out that in Abelson, unlike here, the conception and the condition of the fetus existed prior to and regardless of the doctor’s negligence.  And in Abelson, the plaintiffs argued they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had been given an accurate diagnosis. Here, if the plaintiffs had full information as to the donor, they would not have terminated an existing pregnancy, but instead would have simply chosen a different donor.

Second, unlike in Abelson, the plaintiffs are not claiming that their injury is predicated on the birth or life of their child. The plaintiffs do not ask for the ordinary costs of raising a child, but for the extraordinary costs (mental health treatment for their son) relating to the defendants’ alleged wrongdoings. The law professors point out that Georgia courts routinely award compensation to parents for costs related to a child harmed by a defendant.

Plaintiffs Can At Least Recover The Cost Of The Sperm, Right?

The plaintiffs paid approximately $1,600 to Xytex for Donor 9623’s sperm. Forget the extraordinary costs issue for a second; at oral argument, the Georgia Supreme Court justices really wanted to understand why, if the plaintiffs indeed could prove wrongdoing by the defendants, Xytex wouldn’t at least be responsible for paying the $1,600 in fees back.

The sperm bank’s attorney, to the justices’ frustration, was not about to concede that a sperm bank would ever owe fees back — regardless of the various proposed alternative fact scenarios proposed by the justices. And while never wanting to concede, even on a minimal amount, is perhaps instinctual for an attorney; here, the failure to adequately respond to this point might have undermined the credibility of the defendant’s counsel.

As argued on the amicus brief, pure civil immunity in this context would be a strange result. It might also entail negative consequences for both public health and child welfare, if sperm banks could make knowingly false representations about the sperm they sell. One Supreme Court justice went so far as to tip his hand, by saying “that can’t be right” during the oral argument.

Professor Jody Madeira, one of the amici, was optimistic that we’ll see the Georgia Supreme Court reverse the lower courts’ opinions here. “Watching these oral arguments made me hopeful that, at last, it might be possible to hold gamete banks liable for the type of negligent behavior that in any other context would be slam-dunks for the plaintiffs.” After all, sperm banks are in a unique position in this context. Their negligence can have long-lasting consequences for both the children conceived with the sperm and their families. And sperm banks hold the power in any transaction. That’s partly because sperm is still frequently sold as anonymous, and clients are completely reliant on the sperm bank’s vetting of the donor. That’s why, like most other people or businesses, sperm banks, too, should be subject to appropriate liability when negligence — or worse — can be established.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.