Latest news with #Trace
The Star
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
Local flavours served with flair in KL rooftop cafe
A VIBRANT homage to local flavours served with a panoramic view of Kuala Lumpur's skyline is what awaits guests on level 40 of a city hotel. Called 'Locally-Tea Bites', this afternoon tea is being served at Trace Restaurant and Bar of Element Kuala Lumpur. A three-tiered basket presentation invites guests to uncover each handcrafted layer by unboxing the treats. The experience begins with a tray of 'Chilled Delights'. These include Salmon Gravlax with Cream Cheese Tart, Chicken Rendang and Cheese Brioche Bite, and Sicilian Grilled Prawn paired with Harum Manis Salsa and Lettuce. The 'Locally-Tea Bites' afternoon tea set at Trace Restaurant and Bar. The 'Warm and Comforting' layer continues the journey with bold familiar flavours such as Otak-Otak Mousse with Thai Green Curry Sauce, Deconstructed Chicken Drumette with Hot Sauce and Mini Vegetable Pot Pie. For the finale, the 'Sweet Temptation' tray presents an assortment of Raspberry Lychee Mousse, Chilled Coconut with Gula Melaka Pearls, Craquelin Jackfruit Puff, Bandung Layer Cake and Chocolate Indulgence Petite Tarts. The set is served alongside a pot of Dilmah's premium hot tea. The 'Locally-Tea Bites' afternoon tea set is priced at RM168nett for two persons. It is available daily, from 1pm to 5pm, until July. For reservations, call 03-2771 3351 or visit
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
We Analyzed Every Gun Case Since Bruen. The Result Is Horrifying.
This story was published in partnership with the Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletter here. On Jan. 29, in a federal courtroom in Mississippi, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves delivered a ruling that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable: He found the decades-old federal ban on machine guns unconstitutional. At the center of the case was a firearm that seemed designed to provoke: an AR-15-style rifle named the 'NFA Whore, Whore-16.' It had a switch that allowed its user to select between three modes of fire: 'MARY' for safe, 'SLUT' for semiautomatic, and 'WHORE' for fully automatic machine gun. The defendant was also accused of illegally possessing 20 Glock 'switches'—devices that convert pistols to automatic fire—and more than 400 rounds of ammunition. But Reeves made clear that his decision had little to do with the weapon's offensive branding or the intensifying public safety threat posed by automatic weapons. He said his hands were tied by the Supreme Court's landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which upended Second Amendment law. Bruen mandated that modern gun regulations align with historical firearms regulations. Suddenly, judges were less arbiters of modern safety and more reluctant antiquarians, tasked with finding 18th- or 19th-century parallels for today's gun laws. While the Justice Department is appealing Reeves' ruling, it is among a growing number of decisions striking down gun laws in the post-Bruen era. At least three rulings in the past year have invalidated federal restrictions on machine guns, once considered settled law. Bruen has also imperiled concealed carry laws, assault weapons bans, and a host of other gun restrictions. A Trace analysis of more than 2,000 challenges to gun laws since Bruen found that a case's outcome now hinges on conflicting interpretations of America's complex and often uncomfortable past. As judges, lawyers, and historians argue over what history counts and what it means, gun rights groups have capitalized on the confusion—with sweeping consequences for public safety. President Donald Trump's return to the White House has increased the chances of more gun restrictions being tossed out. The president has ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to reassess how the Justice Department handles legal challenges to federal gun laws—a move that could lead the administration to stop defending them altogether. In April, the Justice Department asked a court for more time to decide whether it would defend the ban on gun possession by illegal drug users. More recently, the department settled a lawsuit over forced-reset triggers, in the process allowing the sale of aftermarket devices that boost a semiautomatic rifle's rate of fire. Many judges have openly admitted they're not equipped to evaluate whether centuries-old statutes match modern-day restrictions. Eric Segall, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, said judges' lack of expertise is evident in their rulings. 'There are a thousand decisions going in all directions because history is not reliable in the hands of qualified historians, much less in the hands of unqualified historians,' Segall said. 'None of them should be doing history in any meaningful sense of the word.' Meanwhile, Bruen's real-world effects are becoming increasingly stark. In January, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a federal age restriction on handgun sales, allowing gun stores in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to sell pistols to teenagers with little fear of prosecution. At least two other appeals courts have thrown out age restrictions on guns in the past year. On April 21, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case concerning Minnesota's ban on 18- to 20-year-olds obtaining permits to carry concealed handguns in public. The move let stand an appeals court decision striking down the ban. Within days, the sheriff in Minnesota's most populous county, home to Minneapolis, opened concealed carry permit applications to 18-year-olds. Other courts have upheld similar laws. A 10th Circuit panel backed a Colorado age restriction last November, and earlier this year, the 11th Circuit upheld Florida's ban on gun sales to people under 21. In Reeves' courtroom, prosecutors argued that machine guns are not constitutionally protected because they are 'dangerous and unusual.' Reeves, concluding that Bruen had rendered such thinking 'obsolete,' ruled that prosecutors had failed to present a convincing historical analogue from the Founding era to justify banning the defendant from possessing a machine gun in his home. But in dismissing the charge, Reeves didn't hold back from criticizing the selective and superficial use of historical evidence under Bruen. 'The ultimate irony is that the version of history endorsed in these (and other) decisions has itself been deemed untrustworthy by actual historians,' he wrote. 'The experts don't think lawyers and judges have gotten it right.' When deciding whether a gun law passes muster under Bruen, judges must choose which historical period to compare it to. Is it the late 18th century, when the Second Amendment was ratified? Or the post–Civil War period, when the Bill of Rights was applied to the states? The Supreme Court offered little advice, and while lower courts have cited both, most judges have prioritized the Founding era. Gun rights groups frequently call on courts to exclude other time periods. That's because there were fewer regulations—at least regulations written down as statute—compared to the latter half of the 1800s, leaving fewer historical analogues to pick from. Focusing on the Founding era also ignores crucial legal developments in the intervening decades. Saul Cornell, a Fordham University history professor who has served as an expert in dozens of post-Bruen gun cases, said more people go through Times Square each day in 2025 than lived in the state of New York in 1791, the year the Second Amendment was ratified. 'It's not surprising they weren't much concerned about gun violence in the 18th century,' he said. The 19th century, on the other hand, marked a pivotal transformation in firearms technology, with the advent of guns that let users reliably fire multiple rounds without reloading and more affordable, dependable, and concealable pistols, famously exemplified by Samuel Colt's revolvers. The proliferation of these guns in American life, particularly from the 1830s onward, coincided with a rise in social problems and interpersonal violence. In response, states and localities enacted tougher regulations. 'There is a tradition of firearms regulation in the United States,' said Brian DeLay, a University of California, Berkeley, historian who has also been an expert witness in post-Bruen cases. 'And its basic dynamic is that when there is technological change that is robust and practical enough to actually generate social consequences, it is met with regulation. It happens over and over and over again.' Still, Bruen requires courts to compare regulations designed for a time of agrarian communities and muzzle-loading muskets to laws addressing densely populated metropolises and semiautomatic rifles. 'The founders did not inhabit a world where a disgruntled 18-year-old could go and kill a couple dozen people in six or seven minutes,' DeLay said. Beyond the era, judges must also decide what kinds of historical sources should carry weight. Are only state legislative statutes relevant? What about common law practices, local ordinances, and territorial laws? In upholding the gun ban on people convicted of felonies, one federal judge in Illinois pointed to 18th-century manuals that instructed constables to seize weapons from the 'dangerous' or 'disaffected.' Even though those manuals predate the Second Amendment—and weren't written down as statute—the judge concluded that they reflect a longstanding principle of keeping guns away from people the government considered untrustworthy. For lawyers and researchers, identifying and verifying sources is difficult and time-consuming, requiring expertise and access to expensive legal databases that, while extensive, don't necessarily include all of the historical state statutes. As a result, governments defending gun laws are sometimes forced to start from scratch, hiring historians to build records on issues that haven't been deeply researched. 'There's tons of stuff that we haven't figured out yet,' DeLay said. Governments that forego hiring historians often end up relying on statutes born of bias. In an Illinois case in 2025, prosecutors defending the gun ban on people with felony convictions pointed to Founding era laws disarming Catholics who refused loyalty oaths, Colonial and Antebellum statutes barring enslaved and free Black people from owning guns, and 18th-century punishments for felonies that ranged from estate forfeiture to execution. 'Undoubtedly, today the disarmament of religious minorities would be understood as abhorrent, reprehensible, and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause—as would the categorical disarmament of Blacks and Native Americans, another practice pervasive in our country's historical tradition,' the prosecutors wrote. 'But, considered solely for the limited purpose of the historical inquiry required by Bruen, these laws nonetheless 'reveal conclusively the scope of governmental power that was understood to exist at the time the Second Amendment was adopted.' ' The Trace's review of post-Bruen challenges found more than 1,000 rulings in which judges compared a modern gun law to statutes from the past. Of those, nearly a third—more than 300—featured federal, state, and local governments citing discriminatory statutes. (The other cases we reviewed didn't include a historical analysis because the judges relied on precedent to make their decisions or otherwise determined that an analysis was unnecessary.) Governments that rely on discriminatory statutes are often successful. In 2023, a U.S. district judge in Illinois, Franklin Valderrama, upheld the gun ban on people with felony convictions even as he acknowledged the moral discomfort he felt by relying on such invidious parallels. 'As other district courts have pointed out, many of the historical laws cited by the Government are deplorable and certainly would not survive a constitutional challenge today,' he wrote. 'But, under Bruen, courts must examine historical analogues, and 'laws disarming enslaved people, religious minorities, and Native Americans—however repulsive to modern sensibilities—fit that bill.' ' Historians say the government may be relying on discriminatory statutes because its attorneys don't have a full understanding of the history. 'Those sources are relatively easy to find, that's one reason,' said Cornell, the Fordham University history professor. 'If states and localities don't hire historians, they go to those.' Gun statutes with discriminatory elements are more well-known, in part, because gun rights advocates have long pointed to them to argue that gun control is inherently racist, historians said. But research conducted by Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and a frequent expert in Bruen cases, found that race-based laws represent only a small minority of the thousands of gun laws enacted throughout American history. While important for understanding the role of firearms in racial politics, most historical gun laws did not explicitly address race or slavery but a wide range of issues, from public safety to militia regulation and commercial sales. 'You cannot dismiss old weapons laws by saying, 'Well, they were all based on race animus,' ' Spitzer told The Trace. 'It's just actually false.' Bruen has also created an asymmetric battlefield. Because the government bears the burden of justifying its restrictions—and good historical research is expensive—well-funded gun rights groups have a leg up. The Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the National Rifle Association, the National Association for Gun Rights, and the gun industry's trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have participated in at least 61 cases challenging gun laws under Bruen, the Trace found. Of those cases, nearly half—29—resulted in a ruling finding a gun restriction unconstitutional. Legal wins for gun rights groups used to be far less frequent. 'The gun industry has a clear interest in selling more firearms, which is easier and cheaper if there's deregulation,' said Esther Sanchez-Gomez, litigation director at the gun reform group Giffords. Since Bruen, it has become 'less burdensome for them to file all these cases all over the country and then basically point to the government to raise this heavy burden of historical presentation,' she said. The imbalance in resources often results in judges having to weigh competing interpretations of history—one produced by academics, and the other by gun rights groups' experts. In many cases, government-hired historians are forced to defend their methods under adversarial cross-examination. Judges are increasingly aware of the challenge. 'The inexorable result of such a methodology will likely be, in this and other cases, an analytical product consisting of the best guesswork of a judge-turned-amateur-historian,' U.S. District Judge Sarah Geraghty wrote in 2023, upholding an indictment against a Georgia man accused of illegal gun possession. The Supreme Court seemed to confront the limitations of a strict historical approach in United States v. Rahimi, last year's challenge to a federal law disarming people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. The 18th century offered no direct parallel to the law—domestic violence was hardly recognized as a crime then. The court, in an 8–1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the law anyway, deciding that judges should consider the principles behind a regulation rather than requiring exact matches from a bygone era. Some legal experts hoped the ruling would clean up the confusion surrounding Bruen. But Sanchez-Gomez said Rahimi spawned a whole new level of ambiguity. Even with the shift toward historical principles, lower courts must now wrestle with how broadly or narrowly to define those principles when comparing them to modern gun laws. The outcome has been conflicting rulings on similar laws across the country. Appeals courts continue to split on laws involving age restrictions, felons, and limits on specific types of firearms and accessories. Though the Supreme Court has turned down several gun cases this year, these divisions make it highly probable that the justices will eventually be forced to take up more Second Amendment cases. Given the court's 6–3 conservative majority, more gun laws are likely to be struck down. But some experts see a potential, albeit ironic, long-term benefit of Bruen. The act of forcing governments and legal teams to dig deep into the historical record is generating a wealth of new research on firearm regulation. DeLay, the Berkeley historian, believes this work may ultimately call the Supreme Court's historical reasoning in Bruen into question. 'This renewed emphasis on history, text, and tradition is ultimately going to undermine the current contemporary foundations of Second Amendment jurisprudence,' he said. The picture of the nation's regulatory tradition that is emerging, he said, 'is not friendly to the gun rights interpretation of this history.'
Malaysian Reserve
23-05-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Trace Systems is now an Authorized Starlink Reseller
MCLEAN, Va., May 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Trace Systems Inc. is proud to announce its designation as an authorized reseller of Starlink high-speed internet for businesses, enterprises and government use. 'Working with Starlink represents a transformative step in advancing secure communications capabilities for our customers,' said Otto Hoernig III, CEO of Trace Systems. 'Integrating Starlink into our service portfolio enhances secure, high-bandwidth connectivity and enables scalable, real-time collaboration across enterprise and edge environments.' As a trusted satellite integrator for the Department of Defense, Trace brings decades of experience and an extensive portfolio of contract vehicles as well as industry and government partnerships. The company will now leverage Starlink's resilient global connectivity to bolster communications across multi-domain operations delivering greater capabilities to the bandwidth constrained operator — anywhere in the world. About Starlink Starlink delivers high-speed, low-latency internet to users all over the world. As the world's first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit, Starlink delivers broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more. Starlink is engineered and operated by SpaceX. As the world's leading provider of launch services, SpaceX is leveraging its deep experience with both spacecraft and on-orbit operations to deploy the world's most advanced broadband internet system. Learn more at Follow Starlink on X About Trace Systems Trace Systems delivers advanced information technology and communication systems and solutions to the U.S. Government, specializing in secure, mission-critical systems that enable global operations. With a proven track record of innovation and operational excellence, Trace provides the engineering expertise and technical leadership required to meet today's complex defense challenges. Learn more at For media inquiries, please contact: Email: mediarelations@ Phone: 703-414-3500
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trace Systems is now an Authorized Starlink Reseller
MCLEAN, Va., May 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Trace Systems Inc. is proud to announce its designation as an authorized reseller of Starlink high-speed internet for businesses, enterprises and government use. "Working with Starlink represents a transformative step in advancing secure communications capabilities for our customers," said Otto Hoernig III, CEO of Trace Systems. "Integrating Starlink into our service portfolio enhances secure, high-bandwidth connectivity and enables scalable, real-time collaboration across enterprise and edge environments." As a trusted satellite integrator for the Department of Defense, Trace brings decades of experience and an extensive portfolio of contract vehicles as well as industry and government partnerships. The company will now leverage Starlink's resilient global connectivity to bolster communications across multi-domain operations delivering greater capabilities to the bandwidth constrained operator — anywhere in the world. About Starlink Starlink delivers high-speed, low-latency internet to users all over the world. As the world's first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit, Starlink delivers broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more. Starlink is engineered and operated by SpaceX. As the world's leading provider of launch services, SpaceX is leveraging its deep experience with both spacecraft and on-orbit operations to deploy the world's most advanced broadband internet system. Learn more at Follow Starlink on X About Trace Systems Trace Systems delivers advanced information technology and communication systems and solutions to the U.S. Government, specializing in secure, mission-critical systems that enable global operations. With a proven track record of innovation and operational excellence, Trace provides the engineering expertise and technical leadership required to meet today's complex defense challenges. Learn more at For media inquiries, please contact: Email: mediarelations@ Phone: 703-414-3500 View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Trace Systems Inc Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Pembrokeshire Herald
14-05-2025
- Health
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Councillor urges men to get tested following stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis
Inquiry told failures in testing and tracing cost lives and left Wales unprepared THE UK Covid Inquiry has begun its latest public hearings with stark criticism of the UK and devolved governments' handling of testing, tracing and isolation strategies during the coronavirus pandemic. On the opening day of Module 7, which focuses on 'Test, Trace and Isolate' (TTI) systems, serious concerns were raised about the Welsh Government's effectiveness, coordination, and long-term preparedness. Covid pandemic: Council staff in Tenby in 2020 (Image: File) Sophie Cartwright KC, lead counsel to the Inquiry, laid out a damning picture of systemic disarray across the four nations, including Wales. She highlighted that despite early warnings and international advice, the Welsh Government did not fully roll out its Test, Trace, Protect strategy until mid-May 2020, by which time the virus had already swept through communities. The Inquiry heard that on 12 March 2020, all four UK nations, including Wales, stopped community testing and contact tracing—despite the World Health Organization's call to 'test, test, test.' Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, told a COBR meeting that day that mass testing and tracing would no longer be pursued, even as infections surged. The result was, as Cartwright put it, a 'disastrous blind spot' in surveillance and control. While countries like South Korea and Japan avoided national lockdowns through robust test-and-isolate systems, the UK suffered repeated waves. Professor Anthony Costello estimated that over 180,000 deaths might have been prevented had the UK adopted similar strategies. Emotional testimony: Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, who gave emotional evidence, represents Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru. She spoke on behalf of families in Wales who lost loved ones due to what they describe as 'avoidable government failings.' Her testimony underscored the human impact of delays in testing, isolation support and communication failures. Lack of preparedness and ignored lessons Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, representing Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, criticised the Welsh Government for failing to act on pandemic preparedness plans. She highlighted that Exercise Shipshape, a 2003 SARS simulation involving Wales, had already identified the importance of being able to test, trace and isolate effectively. Yet, none of those lessons were implemented. Marsh-Rees said there was a clear failure to build resilient infrastructure and no meaningful contingency planning, despite numerous simulations and warnings. Testing failures and wave two disaster Marsh-Rees gave a stark account of the absence of routine and repeat testing during the second wave of Covid-19 in Wales. She revealed that repeat testing of patients wasn't introduced until January 2021, and even then only every five days—compared to every three in England. Worse, healthcare workers were not regularly tested until February or March 2021, despite lateral flow tests being available from November 2020. She stated bluntly that this oversight contributed to Wales having the highest rate of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections in the UK, calling it one of the group's most heartbreaking concerns. A sense the Welsh Government didn't want to know In her closing remarks, Marsh-Rees accused the Welsh Government of appearing as though it did not want to know if people were testing positive, implying that awareness would have triggered obligations to act. She pointed out that 178 people had contracted Covid in Welsh hospitals just last week, five years into the pandemic. 'Testing has been forgotten—or proactively not undertaken,' she said. 'It's like a concerted effort not to find out.' Her testimony called for an internationally informed overhaul of public health strategy and an end to political point scoring in future pandemic response. Missed opportunities in Wales Wales launched its Test, Trace, Protect plan on 13 May 2020. Then Health Minister Vaughan Gething promised increased capacity and localised response. But the Inquiry was told that testing capacity remained limited, with many key functions outsourced to UK-wide services like Lighthouse Labs and delivery partners like Amazon, rather than utilising existing NHS and university laboratories in Wales. A submission from the Royal College of Pathologists noted that many NHS and academic labs in the UK were sidelined, despite offering higher quality and faster results than the private facilities that were favoured instead. The Microbiology Society echoed these concerns, saying the government did not properly engage with universities and local experts in Wales and elsewhere. The Inquiry heard that by mid-2020, Wales had access to six drive-through test centres, eight mobile units and a handful of community testing sites—but by then the damage had already been done. Support for isolating 'too little, too late' The Welsh Government's Self-Isolation Support Scheme, launched in November 2020, was described as well-intentioned but too slow in implementation. Earlier schemes in Northern Ireland and England had started months prior. Evidence submitted highlighted how economic necessity led many to avoid testing to avoid losing income. 'I remember people saying, 'I can't test because if I test and I'm positive, I can't work,'' one person told the Inquiry. Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, representing Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, will give impact evidence later this week, speaking on behalf of families in Wales who lost loved ones due to what they describe as 'avoidable government failings.' Infrastructure dismantled Lord Bethell, who had responsibility for TTI at UK level, warned that the UK is now less prepared than ever for a future pandemic, with testing labs dismantled, data systems shut down, and public health infrastructure 'weaker than ever.' The Inquiry continues this week with further evidence from bereaved families, scientists, and public health experts from across the UK. Lady Hallett opened the TTI hearings on Monday (Pic: Covid Inquiry)
