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NEW DELHI, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- India's foreign minister said Saturday the dispute over the arrest a diplomat in New York did not mean relations with the United States were in trouble.

Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid told reporters that the two nations would sort out their differences of opinion over the arrest of Devyani Khobragade on charges of visa fraud, Voice of America said.

Khobragade, 39, arrived in New Delhi late Friday after being kicked out of the United States. She was expelled after India increased her level of diplomatic immunity so she would not be prosecuted by New York authorities.

"Devyani Khobragade given G1 visa with full diplomatic immunity on 8 Jan 2014. Airborne on way back to India," Syed Akbarrudin, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said in a statement on social media, Britain's The Independent said

Khobragade was arrested last month for allegedly failing to pay her housekeeper minimum wage and lying about it when she applied for her visa to work as the deputy counsel-general for the Indian delegation to the United Nations.

India responded to Khobragade's arrest and her alleged treatment in jail with a protest and the expulsion of a U.S. diplomat stationed in India. Press Trust India said the ousted American, identified as Wayne May, had helped authorities develop their case against Khobragade

Despite Khobragade's increased level of immunity, the U.S. State Department said the charges would remain in effect and she faced arrest if she ever tried to return to the United States.

"We deeply regret that the Indian government felt it was necessary to expel one of our diplomatic personnel," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday.

"This has clearly been a challenging time in the U.S.-India relationship," Psaki added. "We expect and hope that this will now come to closure and the Indians will take significant steps with us to improve our relationship and return it to a more constructive place."

Originally posted here:
India, U.S. seek to mend fences after diplomat's ouster

Police took the car keys from a drunk driver only hours before the same car crashed through three fences and overturned in Thames early this morning, killing an 18-year-old man.

The rear-set passenger died and four other occupants suffered minor injuries when the allegedly unroadworthy car came off Pariwai Rd about 4.25am today.

Waikato police district commander Superintendent Win van der Velde said the police serious crash unit was still investigating.

"However, initial indications are the 37-year-old female driver of the Holden Commodore lost control of the vehicle and left the road, crashing through three fences."

The crash was particularly concerning because it came less than three hours after police had stopped the same car and caught its driver at the time, a 31-year-old man, over the legal breath alcohol limit.

Mr van der Velde said the car was also found to be unroadworthy when police stopped it about 1.30am.

"It was issued a non-operational order and the keys were taken by police so it should not have been on the road at all, let alone being driven at the time of the crash."

Waikato police and emergency services diverted traffic away from the crash scene this morning and had warned of delays. The residential road has since reopened.

The crash brings the number of deaths on Waikato roads this month to two - double the same period last year. It was the sixth fatal or serious injury crash in the region within a week.

Last night, four people were injured, one critically, in a head-on collision on State Highway 24, south of Matamata.

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Car in fatal crash was unroadworthy

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A Virginia court insists that seven people who posted anonymous reviews about a carpet cleaning company should be unmasked, because the company believes they were not real customers.

Thinking different?

I recently stayed in a hotel that was described by a Yelp reviewer like this:

I thought the hotel was lovely. Which was just another support for a thought I've had for some time: Why would anyone trust a Yelp reviewer?

But people seem to. So much so that companies' livelihoods can be affected by those who leave their whinings.

Now a court in Virginia has insisted that Yelp name seven reviewers who posted their dissatisfactions about a carpet cleaning company. As the Washington Times reports, the Virginia Court of Appeals declared that Yelp comments weren't covered by the First Amendment because the posters weren't customers of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning.

Yelp insists that Hadeed Carpet Cleaning hadn't justified its need to know the posters' identities. According to the Times, Yelp spokesman Vince Salitto said: "Other states require that plaintiffs lay out actual facts before such information is allowed to be obtained, and have adopted strong protections in order to prevent online speech from being stifled by those upset with what has been said. We continue to urge Virginia to do the same."

Virginia seems to have given that view one star. Raighne Delaney, representing Joe Hadeed, explained to the Times: "The Virginia statute makes the judge a gatekeeper to decide whether or not there's a common-sense reason for someone in our position to get this information."

When lawyers lurch to define common sense, we reach dangerous waters.

Hadeed's defense was that, in examining his database, he couldn't identify the reviewers as customers. Which allows for a certain possibility of, say, database error or, perish the idea, accidental erasure.

Originally posted here:
Court to Yelp: Reveal names of negative reviewers

The Benefits and Significance of Private Platform as a Service

A US Court of Appeals has ordered Yelp to identify anonymous reviewers who slammed a cleaning company.

In his ruling this week [PDF], Judge William G Petty, sitting in Virginia, told the review-sharing website to turn over personal information on seven of its users who had panned Hadeed Carpet Cleaning on Yelp.com.

The family-run cleaning biz had alleged those seven critics were not customers it says it has no record of the services the reviewers are complaining about. The cleaners believe the Yelp users deliberately posted negative reviews in order to harm the company.

Hadeed, based in Virginia, is seeking to sue the seven for defamation. Yelp has a contact email address, ZIP code and IP addresses from which the site was accessed on file for each account holder, all of which are crucial for the cleaning biz's litigation.

The legal battle started in 2012 when Hadeed subpoenaed Yelp for the identities of seven users who had posted the bad reviews. Yelp turned to the Court of Appeals to quash the subpoena, claiming the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and, in some cases, ensures the anonymity of those who post opinions and reviews on the internet.

According to Judge Petty, however, the rights of Hadeed to protect its reputation from defamatory statements overrides the protections of anonymity, and thus Yelp should be required to hand over identifying data on the seven reviewers.

"The freedom of speech and within this, the freedom to speak with anonymity is not absolute ... If we assume that the Yelp reviews of Hadeed are lawful, then the John Does may remain anonymous," the judge wrote in his decision.

"But if the reviews are unlawful in that they are defamatory, then the John Does veil of anonymity may be pierced, provided certain procedural safeguards are met. This is because defamatory speech is not entitled to constitutional protection."

Yelp, meanwhile, stood fast in its assertion that the case threatens the rights of its users to discuss their experiences honestly and freely. It will appeal to a higher court to scrub the subpoena.

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Judge orders Yelp.com to unmask anonymous critics who tore into biz

James Bornemeier

In a way we planned it. In a way we didnt.

I suppose there are many people who find themselves living exactly where they want to be after weighing this factor and that factor, absorbing the surprises life dishes out and building on thoughtful decisions. The fact that for the last decade we have divided our time between Manhattan and the Island can be partially explained by some of the classic determinants like jobs and family. But on this frigid day, watching the birds snack on suet and seed and hearing the wind howl as it does only at the front of the house and nowhere else, the wintry Island tableau outside the bay window contrasts so mightily with the mix of urban sights and sounds of two days ago that I could be living in a fantasy.

When an ornamental birdhouse awaits you under the Christmas tree in Queens or some falling ice hitting the Manhattan air conditioner 16 floors up sounds exactly like a window bird-strike in Island summer, you know your dual lives have blurred in ways you could never have predicted. Take Christmas tree-buying for instance. Two paths to ownership; neither superior to the other.

Around the block on Second Avenue awaited the woman from Quebec. She has sold us our last half-dozen trees and seems to remember us from year to year. We certainly remember her, with the French lilt, stocking cap, cheery country manner and sweater littered with evergreen parts. In the city, you tend to place undue importance on such human connections. How many people in Manhattan do you see annually for about 10 minutes over a six-year span whose reunion is inspired by the acquisition of a Douglas fir? It has become the official opening act of the city holiday season: exchanging friendly greetings with our Quebec amie; being shown a tree she had for us; and savoring the three-block trip to the apartment, tree hoisted on my shoulder, banking smiles and glances all along the way.

Breaking the spell, our favorite tree saleswoman didnt show this year. But we managed to find a handsome New York apartment tree, hiding behind some pushy Frasier firs, all by ourselves. Despite this minor hitch in our routine, this recently concluded city-based holiday endurance contest was the most stress-free in memory. Mostly, because we paced it well.

I corralled the music event by getting tickets to the choral concert at St. Barts, an Episcopalian cathedral in the Byzantine style noted for its occasionally thunderous pipe organ and chorus larded with professional singers. The sounds rising from the throats of the girls and boys choirs would have melted the heart of Putin had he attended. Although the concert program was, for my taste, too heavy with Handel, the opening O Come All Ye Faithful snuck up on me and stole my voice as I redeployed resources to deal with tear duct-control issues.

My wife looks forward every year to taking in the Rockefeller Center tree and somehow prevails on her son and daughter and their spouses and kids to join her. This quest is preceded by a meal at the apartment, a very snug affair that makes considerable demands on my personalitys better half. Or third. Or fourth. Over the years I have brokered a deal: I bail out on the tree visit in return for cleaning up. Seeing as how I clean up all meals, all the time, under all circumstances, this is a meager bargain indeed.

The gift exchange was held Christmas Eve with this same crew at the step-sons abode in Queens. Christmas Day was a rack of lamb and trimmings in the apartment. New Years Eve was crab cakes and the sound of renegade fireworks in our Upper East Side neighborhood. As usual I missed the ball-drop. A few days into the New Year we went with friends to Birdland, the venerable Midtown jazz club, to hear a very good big band. And that was our city Christmas.

Before the advent of grandchildren, who tend to pin us down in Manhattan, there was Island Christmas. I still like the AWOL Quebec woman, but nothing beats the North Fork Christmas tree-buying experience. You know the drill. Ferry to Greenport, take a right off Route 25 in Mattituck into (our favorite) Shamrock Christmas Tree Farm. Trooping through the designated field of trees dredges up distant memories from another life of searching for the perfect one in an unnamed forest in Vermont. With spousal accompaniment, selection can take a while; alone, my radar finds the right tree in minutes. One of the Shamrock guys fells it, trundles it to wrapping central, drills a hole for the stand, lashes it to your car and youre off.

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Weekend Edition: Christmas memories of there and here

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