HIDE-Listed Premises Ordered To Close Immediately; Bazaars In MCO Areas To Cease Starting Monday

 

Senior Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yakoob earlier announced that all premises including Ramadhan bazaars that are listed under the Hotspot Identification for Dynamic Engagement (HIDE) system will be ordered to close for three days, effective immediately.  The system’s list of high-risk locations, which serves as an preventive measure to prevent further spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, was released to the public earlier today via various sources, including the National Security Council’s (MKN) Telegram channel and the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) Twitter account.

Enforcement activities for all premises will be monitored by police, armed forces, the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry as well as local authorities, he added. The minister also revealed that all Ramadhan and Aidilfitri bazaars in areas under the Movement Control Order (MCO) will be closed from Monday.

In addition, Ismail Sabri noted that individual sport and recreational activities, as well as non-contact sports with compliance to physical distancing of at least 1.5 metres in open spaces are still allowed for health purposes. “At the moment, the government is studying the standard operating procedures (SOP) and if the daily cases continue to rise, the government will obtain the advice as well as risk assessment of the Health Ministry to enable the SOP to be tightened,” he said.

As a quick recap, locations listed under MCO includes the entire state of Kelantan, the areas of Gali and Tras in Pahang, the areas of Hulu Langat, Petaling, Gombak, Klang, Kuala Langat and Sepang in Selangor, and also Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile, the locations under CMCO currently includes the areas of Kuala Selangor, Sabak Bernam and Hulu Selangor in the state of Selangor, Raub in Pahang, and the entire states of Penang, Johor, Sarawak and Sabah. Those under RMCO are the other areas within the state of Pahang, and the entire states of Kedah, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, Perak, Perlis, Terengganu, as well as the federal territories of Putrajaya and Labuan.

Uber Ordered To Pay US$1.1 Million After Blind Woman And Her Dog Were Refused Rides

Uber has been ordered by an independent arbitrator to pay US$1.1 million (~RM4.6 million) to an American blind woman seeking redress for the fact that Uber drivers refused to transport her and her guide dog on multiple occasions. According to the BBC, the arbitrator found that drivers illegally discriminated against the woman based on her blindness, and tossed out Uber’s argument that it wasn’t liable in this case.

Like Grab in Malaysia (and elsewhere), Uber officially maintains that its drivers aren’t employees, but third-party contractors. That changed last month in the UK at least when a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court prodded the company to reclassify its drivers as workers.

The woman, Lisa Irving, asserted that she was verbally abused by some of the drivers over her guide dog. She also claimed that ride cancellations led to her arriving late to work, which contributed to her subsequent termination. A representative of Irving reportedly said that under American law, “a guide dog should be able to go anywhere that a blind person can go.”

In the US, Uber was previously sued by the blind community over its policy on guide dogs. The company opted to settle the lawsuit in 2017, agreeing to inform its drivers that they cannot deny service to people with guide dogs.

Google Ordered By US Court To Face Lawsuit Over Incognito Mode Tracking Accusation

Google was dealt a blow in the US recently, when a judge in the state of California ruled that the search engine must face a class-action lawsuit accusing it of collecting data of users on the down-low via Chrome, even when they were all using the browser’s Incognito mode.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, initially tried to have the lawsuit thrown out of court, but Federal judge Lucy Koh denied the request, ruling that Google had no choice but to deal with the matter. As it had failed to notify its users about its alleged data collection while in a “private browsing mode”. All in all, the plaintiffs of the lawsuit are seeking US$5 billion (~RM20.6 billion) in compensation.

To no one’s surprise, Google’s defense in the lawsuit is that the word “Incognito” doesn’t mean that users are invisible and that user’s activity in that mode may still be visible to the website they visit, especially to 3rd party analytics or ads services.

Google also released an official press statement to the lawsuit. It states that it will “defend ourselves vigorously” against its accusers, saying that the above statement is made clear every time they open a new incognito tab.

As we’ve said many times before, Google is no stranger to being accosted by lawsuits; at the end of last year, the search engine found itself the subject of two back-to-back lawsuits. Both lawsuits pertained to the company’s alleged anti-competitive stance, as well as its monopolistic behaviour.

Intel Ordered To Pay US$2.18 Billion To Previously Inactive Company In Patent Lawsuit

A US court has ordered Intel to pay US$2.18 billion (~RM8.83 billion) to VLSI Technology for infringing two chip-related patents owned by the latter, Bloomberg said. In a strange twist, VLSI was previously inactive for 20 years from 1999, and then seemingly emerged again in 2019 just to sue Intel, The Verge noted.

Indeed, Intel lawyer William Lee told the court that VLSI didn’t have products and that the lawsuit was its only source of potential revenue. VLSI “took two patents off the shelf that hadn’t been used for 10 years and said, ‘We’d like $2 billion,’” Lee said, according to Bloomberg.

Lee called VLSI’s demand “outrageous” and argued that it didn’t deserve more than US$2.2 million (~RM8.9 million). The jury obviously disagreed, resulting in one of the largest patent-damages award in US history – equivalent to half of Intel’s fourth quarter profit.

Intel said it would appeal the court’s decision.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Electronics giant Philips bought VLSI in 1999. Later, VLSI assets find their way into NXP, a Philips spinoff company that makes chips.

A company named Freescale Semiconductor used to hold one of the patents in question, and SigmaTel the other. Freescale eventually acquired SigmaTel and then was itself acquired by NXP in 2015. Bloomberg Law said the two patents were transferred to VLSI in 2019.