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The crafty feline forages in nearby bushes for rats, birds, insects and worms. As for the frail Tsiga, she sometimes goes for days without a solid meal, as Zimbabwe is ravaged by a combination of drought and deepening economic crisis.

Tsiga ate porridge the previous night, her first meal in two days, she said.

“I approached one of my neighbors who felt pity for me and gave me a bowl of mealie-meal and some sugar for the porridge,” she told The Associated Press, sitting outside her round, grass-thatched hut.

She used to get help from her three children, but they are battling to make ends meet because of Zimbabwe’s high unemployment.

“They all went to Harare (the capital) to look for jobs,” said Tsiga. “They are also struggling. So it’s just me and my cat here,” she said.

Zimbabwe is among the world’s most food insecure countries with more than half of the its 15 million people in need of food assistance, according to U.N.’s World Food Program.

A drought, described by experts as the most severe in decades and worsened by climate change, has seen large numbers of rural farmers unable to grow adequate food.

A debilitating economic crisis that has seen Zimbabwe’s annual inflation spike to 500% — second only to that in Venezuela — has worsened the situation and left millions of people desperate for survival.

In Mudzi, about 230 kilometers (143 miles) northeast of Harare, the situation is palpably dire and it has especially hit the elderly. Making up about 4% of Zimbabwe’s population, they are often neglected by family members, don’t get enough support from the government and must keep farming their small patches of land. Many are reliant upon international food aid.

Walking bent over with a cane, 89-year-old Sophia Chatundumura said she had to hike about 5 kilometers (3 miles) to reach the point where food aid was distributed because her grandchildren were away at school.

“I can’t ask for help from my neighbors because they also have nothing,” she said.

The international food assistance is targeting “the most vulnerable groups, the elderly whom we expect not to work in the fields or to get enough harvest to take them throughout the year,” said Never Chituwu, an official with World Vision, an international charity that participated in the food distribution. He added that many elderly are taking care of orphans.

Of the 134,000 people in Mudzi district, more than half are in urgent need of food assistance, said the local district administrator, Robert Mzezewa, adding that many younger people have resorted to the often violent small-scale gold mining to survive.

The World Food Program is assisting 3.5 million people across the once-prosperous nation with food until April when people are expected to harvest this year’s crop, said Claire Neville, a communications officer with the organization.

But that’s assuming there will be something to harvest.

Rains have been sparse this year and staple crops such as maize and sorghum are stunted and wilting across the district, a few kilometers (miles) from Mozambique, another country hard hit by the drought. Many people did not even plant due to the erratic rains and large swathes of land lie fallow.

“It is becoming difficult to depend on the rains these days. Mudzi had rains in December, followed by a sudden dry spell lasting 23 days. The rains returned briefly in January, but it was too late for the crops, and farmers,” said Godfrey Mboweni, a government agronomist.

“As climate change is intensifying, Zimbabwe and indeed all of southern Africa is a prime example of people suffering most from climate change,” said Neville, the WFP officer.

Many shops in the district were closed while those still operating had just a trickle of customers as few people have money to buy food items, even when they are available in shops.

The WFP says it wants to scale up assistance to reach more than 4 million people in Zimbabwe, although 7.7 million people are in need. The agency says it requires over $200 million for food assistance in Zimbabwe but so far has raised just half of that amount.

Nearly 1,000 people of all ages gathered at Nakiwa village in Mudzi, to receive monthly food rations. Before the distribution, people prayed and then recited slogans for smart agriculture strategies they learned in training workshops.

The elderly became the butt of friendly banter to lighten the mood among people sitting on stones and under the shade of small jatropha trees to escape the searing heat.

“This is not a modelling show, walk faster you girls,” shouted one woman to three grannies limping their way to the food distribution point. People burst out in laughter, before lining up behind the old women to collect rations of cow peas (black-eyed peas), maize meal and vegetable oil.

The elderly women also chuckled ruefully, masking their fatigue after walking several kilometers (miles).

“There is too much hunger here … I can no longer cope,” one of them, 61-year old Mavis Pawandiwa later told AP, breaking down several times and battling to contain her tears.

After receiving her food rations, Tsiga, the old woman with the cat, returned home to cook sadza, a stiff porridge made from ground maize that she had received. To go with it, she cooked leaves from the pigweed (amaranthus) and okra growing among a faltering pearl millet crop in her small field.

“It is not old age that will kill me, it is hunger,” said Tsiga, as her cat, seemingly on a full stomach, slept contentedly nearby.

Post published in: Agriculture

Musarara claimed that US$9 million of that amount had been given to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) as a loan to help them refurbish their silos, but the state grain reserve’s executives told the committee on Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement that they had never received the money.

“We have a term sheet which sets the basis upon which GMAZ would consider financing GMB for it to rehabilitate, repair and maintain its silos. The funds were deposited in a forex account with Metbank (account number 010733244). Only the Ministry of Finance had signing powers to the account. I confirm that we did deposit an amount of USD$9 million,” Musarara told the committee.

Musarara said as part of that agreement, GMB would sell maize to his association’s members at a subsidised price of US$240 per tonne, instead of US$270 per tonne charged on other buyers at the time.

GMB executives, also appearing before the committee, said millers had negotiated discounted prices, denying that this was connected to any loan.

Small millers who also appeared before the committee maintained that they were never made aware of the subsidised price which Musarara claimed was available to all GMAZ members.

“We financed silo repairs through grain sales,” GMB operations manager Clemence Guta told the committee chaired by Gokwe Nembudziya MP Justice Mayor Wadyajena (Zanu PF).

“Two reasons why we say we never got a loan from GMAZ are that firstly, according to the Public Finance Management Act we are supposed to get authority to borrow, which authority we never solicited for and we never got such authority,” he added.

Musarara claimed the decision to loan GMB the amount for their silo rehabilitation was made following a verbal request made by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2017, when he was still the vice president.

Mnangagwa, he told the committee, had told him that the government expected a bumper harvest from the controversial Command Agriculture scheme which he was spearheading but they might face a challenge of storage for the grain, with some GMB silos reportedly in a state of disrepair at the time.

It was not clear why Mnangagwa thought the GMAZ, a private association, was best positioned to refurbish state infrastructure.

For years, the central bank has been running an opaque scheme in which it allocated foreign currency to private companies at preferential rates as part of a subsidy system to keep prices of fuel, bread and maize meal down.

The GMAZ, led by Musarara who lost a Zanu PF primary election in 2018, is one of the groups to which millions of United States dollars were channelled at the preferential rate of 1:1 to the RTGS, even as the local currency was significantly worthless.

The RBZ told the parliamentary committee that it had released US$27 million to the GMAZ between 2017 and 2019. Musarara said it was, in fact, US$26.1 million.

The money was intended for the importation of wheat. Wadyajena told Musarara that the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) had no record of GMAZ importing wheat or any other grains.

“Just tell us where the money went, show the proof,” Wadyajena confronted Musarara.

“The wheat was brought by Holbud Limited through Drotsky (Private) Limited,” Musarara responded.

When Wadyajena asked Musarara “who’s Drotsky?”, the miller said it was his company which manufactures grinding mills.

“Thank you so much… Now you have confirmed GMAZ never imported a single grain of wheat,” Wadyajena quipped.

Some millers who appeared before the committee said they had not benefitted either from the GMB discounts nor had they been offered the foreign currency to import wheat.

In fact, the committee heard only two companies – National Foods Limited and one called Parrogate which is linked to Musarara – were the beneficiaries.

Musarara said “only companies who were liquid at the time” participated in the scheme.

Musarara appeared before the committee after summons were issued. He had refused to appear on at least four occasions, even writing to the Clerk of Parliament at one point requesting to appear before a different committee claiming Wadyajena was pursuing a personal vendetta.

Post published in: Agriculture

Joe and Kathryn chat with Lisa Prowse, Senior Vice President of Legal Services and Document Review at BIA, about the document review process and how it’s evolved over the years. From physically flipping through thousands of documents just to keep your job to developing a culture of attorneys that can provide results that help eDiscovery tools succeed, there’s a lot of psychology that goes into the discovery review process.

According to bar passage data release by the American Bar Association, the law school that had the lowest percentage of first-time test takers pass the July 2019 bar exam was Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. What percentage of the school’s first time test takers passed the bar exam?

Hint: Nationwide, the first-time test taker pass rate was 74.83 percent. Cooley’s rate was lower. Much lower.

See the answer on the next page.

Given the sheer breadth of the allegations variously lobbed at one another by retiring hedge fund manager Louis Bacon and his Bahamian neighbor, Canadian discount fashion mogul Peter Nygard, over the past decade-plus, it’s easy to the think there is hardly a crime or immorality alleged against one side or both left. After all, Bacon has accused Nygard of environmental degradation, defamation, a campaign of terror and physical violence, vandalism, breaking-and-entering, contempt of court, arson, buying off the Bahamian government and attempted murder, and Nygard has responded with allegations of Ku Klux Klan grand wizardry, deployment of military-grade speakers, narcotics dealing, insider-trading, weaponized journalism, arson, buying off the Bahamian government, attempted murder and actual murder.

The DC office of a top AmLaw firm asked Kinney Recruiting to seek out an associate with at least three years’ experience advising life sciences companies in the US and Europe with significant corporate transactions.

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Please apply to this posting by clicking this link or send your resume to jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com to learn more.

Today is the first day of the February 2020 administration of the bar exam. Around the country, wannabe lawyers are sitting for what is likely the most important (and hopefully last) test of their professional lives. No pressure…

Passing the bar exam takes a lot of hard work, and a pinch of good luck — like the State Bar sharing the subject areas to be tested on the essay portion of the exam just days before the test — all coming together to get you into the legal profession. Don’t think it takes a little bit of luck to pass? Imagine if you weren’t fortunate enough to miss the biggest bar exam mishap ever (courtesy of ExamSoft), or you didn’t go into labor mid-exam even though you were heavily pregnant, or you avoided such extreme intestinal distress that proctors put your desk in the bathroom.

In case you weren’t feeling lucky enough, here are some more well wishes:

But here’s the important question: What was the craziest thing that happened during the February 2020 bar exam? If you survived or witnessed some horror story in action, let us know. You can email it to us (subject line: “Bar Exam Horror Story”) or text us (646-820-8477). Maybe your story will inspire others to persevere.

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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.

Sometimes even doing everything right gets something wrong. When it comes to video game development, this statement is right on point. It should come as no surprise to those in the video game development and publishing community that a host of considerations must be weighed when developing a video game. From the technical aspects of the program (such as graphics rendering and online multi-user handling) to the story line and gaming construct, developing and publishing a video game in this day and age is no easy task. What is becoming even more important, however, is the importance of the online gaming community to the ongoing success of any gaming franchise. Gone are the days of buying a video game and simply playing it to its conclusion — we are in the age of massively multiplayer online (or “MMO”) gaming platforms, and online gamers that record and monetize their online exploits. It is at this intersection of video gaming and entertainment that some interesting (and unintended) intellectual property issues arise, and like a good MMO game, they are getting some attention.

Video games have come a long way in just the past 10 years. Instead of just interacting with the game and playing against another friend or three present with you at the console, MMO gaming platforms allow large numbers of individual gamers worldwide to compete together in online gameplay from the comfort of a chair at home (or a mobile device for that matter). One of the better-known gaming platforms is Fortnite by Epic Games — an MMO platform that has players glide into a defined world and fight each other in playful combat using characters that they can clothe and customize through its online “shop.” One of the customizations includes the ability to exercise an “emote” — a series of dance moves usually accompanied by music that permits the players to express themselves and their feelings during gameplay. From the somewhat better known (like the “Electric Shuffle”) to the more obscure (“Hootenanny,” anyone?), there are a host of different ones to choose from to reflect the personality (and moods) of the player. As fun and expressive as they may be, the incorporation of such emotes and music have unlocked some issues that can cause some unintended missteps for the video game developer if they are not careful.

Recently, the “Never Gonna” emote was added to Fortnite. For those not in the know, this emote is based upon the 1987 hit Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The emote basically plays a portion of the song, with the player mimicking the dance moves performed by Rick Astley in his original music video for the song.  It also capitalizes on a popular online prank using a disguised hyperlink to the music video in a type of “bait and switch” from the purported content after the click, lovingly referred to as “rickrolling.” This is where things get problematic. First, the incorporation of dance moves comes with some risk — as I have written here a year ago, some artists have sued Epic Games for incorporating their signature dance moves (such as Chance the Rapper and Alfonso Ribiero and his “Carlton” dance). Some of these combinations of movements may (or may not) qualify for copyright protection, so a proper vetting prior to incorporation is prudent. To the extent such personalities have actually registered the copyrights to their dance moves before asserting copyright infringement (courtesy the SCOTUS holding in the Fourth Estate case), any videogame developer seeking to incorporate such dance moves needs to consider an appropriate license prior to doing so. Of course, the same goes for any associated music; however, this is where the law of unintended consequences comes into play.

The problem with emotes and their associate music is best illustrated by looking at the “Never Gonna” emote. Epic Games stepped up their game by licensing this content for incorporation into Fortnite, but in doing so they did not realize that they would be creating potential problems for their players.  How? Many online gamers stream their playing on other platforms (such as YouTube and Twitch). Some of these players have developed significant followings of subscribers who enjoy watching this content, which these players are able to monetize through the platforms depending upon the number of subscribers. Therein lies the rub — the license provided to Fortnite covers the public display and performance within the MMO gaming platform, but the streaming of such content (or recording of the gameplay for views on these platforms) rests outside the scope of these licenses. As a result, YouTube’s automated Content ID tool, used to identify potentially infringing content, is flagging such videos, and the content creators are losing the ad revenue generated from such content. In sum, Fortnite’s licensed incorporation of the emote has resulted in potentially unlicensed use by the very gamers who help propagate the popularity of the online MMO gaming platform.

So what is the solution? In the short term, it seems that Fortnite has created a patch that will permit such gamers (a.k.a. content creators) “playing on PC [to] mute licensed emote audio.” Obviously, that “fix” is helpful, but incomplete. Ultimately, the fix will be to account for such secondary streaming and recorded video in any future licensing. YouTube’s Content ID tool will then need to account for such licensing accordingly.

The lesson here is that the videogame developer did not account for the essential part of its gaming community — its creator base. Fortnite’s popularity is due in no small part to the millions of subscribers who view streaming and recorded gameplay by such content creators. Any video gaming developer seeking to incorporate choreography or music should take heed of Fortnite’s experience (and its lead) — avoid stepping on the toes of both licensors and content creators alike by taking the appropriate steps to ensure that the appropriate intellectual property rights are licensed. Such steps will have the respective gaming communities dancing to the right tunes and contributing to a healthy bottom line for the company.

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Tom Kulik is an Intellectual Property & Information Technology Partner at the Dallas-based law firm of Scheef & Stone, LLP. In private practice for over 20 years, Tom is a sought-after technology lawyer who uses his industry experience as a former computer systems engineer to creatively counsel and help his clients navigate the complexities of law and technology in their business. News outlets reach out to Tom for his insight, and he has been quoted by national media organizations. Get in touch with Tom on Twitter (@LegalIntangibls) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/technologylawyer), or contact him directly at tom.kulik@solidcounsel.com.

As we start 2020, many would (reasonably) argue that the tech disruption of the legal industry is well underway. The pessimists among us, however, will argue that change has been relatively incremental. At a macro level, they would argue that law continues to be practiced in much the same manner as it always has been in the modern era. Where, they would question, is the dramatic change? Where are Tomorrow’s Lawyers? Certainly in a market that seems to sustain ongoing rate increases, one can question not only the impetus for change, but also whether that change is actually occurring at all.

Personally, I think that we get far too caught up with expectations of revolutionary change instead of evolutionary change. Stanford scientist Roy Amara is reputed to have said, “We overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run.” The ubiquitous internet gives us a great example of this phenomenon. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) built the beginnings of the internet starting in 1966. The omnipresent connectivity (and associated productivity) that we take for granted took many, many years to infiltrate its way into our lives, but now it’s hard to conceive of life without the internet.

Innovation blogger and author Ralph-Christian Ohr defines evolution as ongoing and incremental innovations, as compared to revolution, defined by radical and discontinuous leaps to completely new offerings. The internet in this model would represent an evolutionary example of evolution, whereas the smartphone could be argued to be revolutionary. When talking about the legal industry, I would make the argument that we are experiencing and will continue to experience evolutionary changes. Legal technology that addresses specific use cases (e.g. document review) is reaching higher rates of adoption and becoming more common, which in turn opens the door to more innovation in the future.

To take another contemporary example, consider the concept of the self-driving car. The reality is that a vehicle with full automation will look very different than the car you have today: there won’t be a need for a steering wheel, mirrors, or other safety features made to prevent accidents caused by human error. While cars made today still have all of those features and are not purely self-driving vehicles, they do have many features that are necessary for a self-driving car: self-correcting navigation, automatic braking, parallel-parking capabilities, and adjusting for traffic in cruise control. These features are all AI-driven capabilities and are aspects of the self-driving car that are materializing right in front of us.

My suspicion is that few of us are ready to get into an automated car with no driver controls at this point, but the incremental changes that we’re experiencing in automotive technology right now will help to make that transition to a fully automatic vehicle much easier, whenever or wherever that moment arrives. I would argue that the same logic can apply to legal practitioners. Incremental adoption of foundational technology will make the process of adoption enabling and even transformational technology much easier in the long run.

Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer survey backs this theory up with some data. The survey found that the adoption of foundational technologies delivers benefits today and sets the stage for integrating more advanced technologies on an ongoing basis. With this argument in mind, I have a couple of recommendations for those interested in driving innovation incrementally, or those looking for the next steps in implementing a higher rate of tech adoption within their organizations.

Adoption today will pave the way for better understanding of new technology tomorrow. Many of us have seen or experienced how a lack of understanding of technology can stand in the way of innovation. There is a reason why the Future Ready Lawyer indicated that technology leading organizations are more likely to overcome this challenge — having experience in adopting tech solutions can open the door for adopting newer, more complex tech solutions as they move toward maturation and become more widely available in the market.

Innovation should foster even more innovation. The legal industry is changing fast, and we no longer live in a world in which having one tech tool makes you innovative. Onboarding one type of technology successfully shouldn’t be the end goal of adoption — rather, it should be the case study in the argument for onboarding future solutions that address specific pain points and use cases for an organization.

We are all interested to see what the future brings us in the legal industry –- and it’s safe to say that no one is certain of how much different it will be in a few years. What we can ascertain is that those who are already using impactful technologies to increase efficiencies and achieve better outcomes are far more likely to benefit from the advantages that technology delivers.

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