By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer

Roomba maker iRobot has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but says that it doesn’t expect any disruptions to devices as the more than 30-year-old company is taken private under a restructuring process.

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IRobot, which became well known for its robotic vacuums, has struggled of late, dealing with increased competition, layoffs and a declining stock price. In 2022 Amazon announced that it had agreed to buy iRobot for about $1.7 billion, but that deal was called off last year. Amazon blamed “undue and disproportionate regulatory hurdles” after the European Union signaled its objection to the transaction.

Amazon said at the time that it would pay iRobot a previously agreed termination fee of $94 million and iRobot said that it would undergo a restructuring to help stabilize the company.

iRobot said Sunday that it is now being acquired by Picea through a court-supervised process. Picea, or Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., Ltd., is iRobot’s primary contract manufacturer.. With facilities in China and Vietnam, Picea has built and sold more than 20 million robotic vacuum cleaners.

“The transaction will strengthen our financial position and will help deliver continuity for our consumers, customers, and partners,” iRobot CEO Gary Cohen said in a statement.

iRobot said it will continue to operate as normal during the Chapter 11 process and doesn’t expect any disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.

The Bedford, Massachusetts-based anticipates completing the prepackaged chapter 11 process by February.

In premarket trading, iRobot shares slid nearly 70% to $1.31.

Desde el 2020, según denuncias y reportes policiales en 14 estados, cientos de inmigrantes dicen haber sido víctimas de estafas relacionadas con los servicios de inmigración, perdiendo un monto total de al menos $800.000 dólares.

Formularios de inmigración. (ICE)

Cientos de miles de dólares han perdido los inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos por estafas en trámites migratorios realizados por notarios públicos y otros que dicen tener conexiones dentro de las agencias de migración del país, revela una investigación de South Side Weekly y Type Investigations.

Desde el 2020, según denuncias y reportes policiales en 14 estados, cientos de inmigrantes dicen haber sido víctimas de estafas relacionadas con los servicios de inmigración, perdiendo un monto total de al menos $800.000 dólares.

Muchas de las quejas vienen de negocios que se dedican a preparar impuestos o de los llamados notarios públicos, que se aprovechan de la gente que cree que quienes dirigen los servicios notariales son abogados —aunque no lo son—, y tergiversan los servicios que pueden ofrecer legalmente a los inmigrantes, y pasan a hablar sobre opciones de inmigración, cuando en realidad no tienen licencia para ofrecer asesoramiento legal.

Este tipo de fraude es bastante común, en parte porque mucha gente cree que los notarios en los Estados Unidos son abogados, como pasa en muchos países latinoamericanos, pero ese no es el caso.

En Nueva York, por ejemplo, los notarios públicos sólo pueden hacer cuatro cosas: autenticar documentos, traducir formularios, mecanografiar solicitudes y ayudar a reunir los documentos migratorios. 

Si bien los notarios son los más conocidos, no son los únicos culpables de las estafas. Hay otros que dicen que saben navegar el sistema migratorio y piden dinero. Envían recibos falsos y números de seguimiento que parecen del Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de los Estados Unidos, para que las estafas parezcan más reales.  

Desde el 2015, solo en Illinois, decenas de personas han denunciado que las estafaron con casos de inmigración ante el fiscal general del estado, alegando , con pérdidas que llegan casi a los $200.000 dólares.

Así que para hablar de estas estafas en servicios migratorios, invitamos a Alma Campos, reportera principal y editora de proyectos para la cobertura de temas de inmigración para South Side Weekly, y coautora del reportaje con Max Blaisdell.

Más detalles en nuestra conversación a continuación.

Ciudad Sin Límites, el proyecto en español de City Limits, y El Diario de Nueva York se han unido para crear el pódcast “El Diario Sin Límites” para hablar sobre latinos y política. Para no perderse ningún episodio de nuestro pódcast “El Diario Sin Límites” síguenos en Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Pódcast y Stitcher. Todos los episodios están allí. ¡Suscríbete!

The post PODCAST: ¿Cómo estafan los notarios públicos a inmigrantes que necesitan asesoría legal? appeared first on City Limits.

By MARCIA DUNN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A stray comet from another star swings past Earth this week in one last hurrah before racing back toward interstellar space.

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Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas will pass within 167 million miles of our planet on Friday, the closest it gets on its grand tour of the solar system.

NASA continues to aim its space telescopes at the visiting ice ball, estimated to be between 1,444 feet and 3.5 miles in size. But it’s fading as it exits, so now’s the time for backyard astronomers to catch it in the night sky with their telescopes.

The comet will come much closer to Jupiter in March, zipping within 33 million miles. It will be the mid-2030s before it reaches interstellar space, never to return, said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

It’s the third known interstellar object to cut through our solar system. Interstellar comets like 3I/Atlas originate in star systems elsewhere in the Milky Way, while home-grown comets like Halley’s hail from the icy fringes of our solar system.

A telescope in Hawaii discovered the first confirmed interstellar visitor in 2017. Two years later, an interstellar comet was spotted by a Crimean amateur astronomer. NASA’s sky-surveying Atlas telescope in Chile spotted comet 3I/Atlas in July while prowling for potentially dangerous asteroids.

Scientists believe the latest interloping comet, also harmless, may have originated in a star system much older than ours, making it a tantalizing target.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the appeal of a Black death row inmate from Mississippi whose case was handled by a prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons.

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A federal judge had previously overturned the murder conviction of the inmate, Terry Pitchford, but an appeals court reversed that ruling.

The justices stepped into the case involving the same prosecutor, former District Attorney Doug Evans, who was at the center of a high court case that resulted in a 2019 decision that overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers.

The case will be argued in the spring.

U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills held that the judge who oversaw Pitchford’s trial didn’t give the man’s lawyer enough chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.

Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in prior cases.

Pitchford was sentenced to death for his role in the 2004 killing of Reuben Britt, the owner of the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada in northern Mississippi.

In Pitchford’s case, judges and lawyers whittled down the original jury pool of 61 white and 35 Black members to a pool with 36 white and five Black members, in part because so many Black jurors objected to sentencing Pitchford to death. Then prosecutors struck four more Black jurors, leaving only one Black person on the final jury.

The Supreme Court tried to stamp out discrimination in the composition of juries in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled then that jurors couldn’t be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Flowers, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that Evans had engaged in a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.”

Flowers was tried six times in the shooting deaths of four people. He was released from prison in 2019 and the state dropped the charges against him the following year, after Evans turned the case over to state officials.