U.S.

This high-stakes divorce case isn't over yet

The ex-wife of an oil magnate will appeal the divorce award of over $1 billion in cash and assets that she was handed this week, in one of the largest divorce cases in U.S. History, her lawyers said Thursday.

Attorneys for Sue Ann Hamm said the $995 million sum that her ex-husband, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm (worth an estimated $12.6 billion), was ordered to pay her was “not equitable,” according to Reuters. She was also allowed to keep additional assets, including homes in California and Oklahoma that are worth tens of millions of dollars.

Hamm, a lawyer and an economist, worked at Continental during parts of their 26-year marriage.

Continental Resources’ shares have fallen since the divorce proceedings began. Harold Hamm holds more than 68% of the company’s stock, a stake valued at around $13.5 billion today, but was worth $18 billion nine and a half weeks ago since the trial began. The appeals process could take months or even years.

[Reuters]

The White House could make the move as early as next week

President Barack Obama is poised to unilaterally overhaul American immigration policy, according to several reports Thursday, in a long-anticipated move that would ignore his Republican critics and could allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

Citing unnamed administration officials, the New York Times reports that Obama intends as early as next week to announce plans to substantially refocus immigration enforcement involving some 12,000 agents and reduce the risk of deportation for millions of immigrants.

As many as 3.3 million parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents would be able to obtain legal work documents under the plan, the Times adds. Many immigrants with high-tech skills or who came to the United States as children could also be affected by the plan.

Obama has infuriated Republicans by pledging executive action on immigration if Congress does not pass a comprehensive reform bill. TIME’s Alex Altman wrote this week on the widely expected move, as well as the likely push-back from the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Congress:

The pressure on Obama to delay executive action is likely to build. Republican leaders say that skirting Congress to go it alone would ignite a controversy that jeopardizes the chances for cooperation between the President and the new GOP Congressional majority on a host of issues. “It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said. Immigration will be a touchstone in confirmation hearings for Loretta Lynch, Obama’s pick for attorney general. Tea Party conservatives in the Senate signaled they plan to use the hearings to press Lynch on her views of the President’s executive authority on immigration.

Enacting sweeping changes to immigration law just weeks after the party was rebuked by voters at the polls could spark a blowback from voters. In one recent survey, conducted by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, 74% of respondents said they preferred Obama to work with Congress to retool a broken immigration system rather than maneuvering around the legislative branch.

Even some seasoned Democrats seem a bit skittish about the idea. Over a sea bass lunch Friday with Congressional leaders in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, Obama told Boehner that his patience in waiting for the House to act on immigration had run out. At that point, according to a source familiar with the meeting, Vice President Joe Biden piped up to ask how long Republicans would need to craft immigration legislation—prompting the President to shoot Biden a look that closed the discussion.

Read more about Obama’s plan to overhaul immigration at the New York Times

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Lawyers for Michael Brown's family call for restraint following a decision

The grand jury that will decide whether a white police officer will be charged in the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown is close to wrapping up, lawyers for the Brown family said Thursday.

“We are probably reaching the end of the road as it relates to witnesses,” said Anthony Gray, one of the family lawyers, according to Reuters.

Gray and attorney Benjamin Crump also called for Ferguson residents to exercise restraint when a decision by the grand jury is announced, expected to be sometime this month. Earlier this week, Gov. Jay Nixon said that he would consider deploying the National Guard to quell potential violence in the wake of a grand jury decision.

Ferguson, which is predominantly black but overseen by a largely white police force, became a focal point for race relations in the U.S. this summer when officer Darren Wilson shot 18-year-old Brown. Witnesses have provided differing versions of the incident, with some describing a physical altercation between the two while others saying Wilson shot Brown as he had his hands up.

Pathologist Michael Baden was set to testify Thursday. According to an autopsy performed by Baden, Brown was shot at least six times, twice in the head.

Read next: Ferguson Braces for the Worst Ahead of Grand Jury Decision

Will give Uber for Business some competition

Ride-sharing company Lyft announced the launch of a commuting service Thursday, bringing some new competition to Uber in the employee-travel market.

Lyft for Work allows employers to purchase and issue credits to employees each month, which they can dip into for commuting to the office or traveling to and from certain company events. In July, Uber launched Uber for Business, which allows multiple employees to use a company credit card for billing their work-related car rides, rather than each using individual company cards (or their own and then seeking reimbursement).

The two companies are positioning their employee-centric programs as different types of solutions. Lyft touts Lyft for Work as a social good more than a way to streamline tedious expense accounting. “Across the country, nearly 80% of workers drive to work alone. Imagine if that 80% filled the seats in their empty cars through Lyft,” the company said in their press release announcing the service. “We could eliminate rush hour congestion, drastically reduce travel time and make the commute more enjoyable.”

Uber, on the other hand, bills their service up front as “uncomplicating [sic] business travel for your entire company.” In October, the company claimed that businesses opting for employees to use the lower-priced UberX (rather than cabs or limos) may be saving around $1,000 per employee.

When asked how the new service differs from Uber’s offering, Lyft spokesperson Paige Thelen says it’s more customizable. Employers can set up their workers’ accounts so that funds can be used only to and from preapproved addresses. If a worker takes a Lyft to the office, for example, the app can detect the drop-off point and automatically apply the commuting credits rather than the user’s personal credit card.

Employees can also be left to manually apply the credits, just as Uber for Business users simply toggle to the company credit card as their billing option. Uber emphasizes that using “U4B” gives administrators oversight by cataloging trips and is integrated with an expense management tool, taking another step out of the expensing process for companies who use it.

The two companies—which at their heart share the mission of making local transportation easier—already have several competing services, including a pair rolled out within a day of each other. Lyft Plus is a fancier, more expensive option than a standard ride, which competes with Uber’s signature black car service. UberX is a lower-cost, less formal option that is more on par with the average Lyft, a ride in a non-professional’s personal car. This August, Uber and Lyft both announced new carpooling options, Lyft Line and Uber Pool, cheaper rides available to passengers who are willing to share their vehicle with other travelers going in the same direction.

Uber for Business and Lyft for Work may share a grammatical construction but, as pundits have noted, it’s not necessarily easy to say who really had an idea first. Perhaps with allegations of mimicry in mind, Lyft pointed out in their press release that this type of service has been in line with the company’s mission since it was called Zimride, a precursor to Lyft that was founded before Uber. “From the earliest days, Zimride’s platform was powered through partnerships with companies and college campuses where individuals shared common starting points or destinations,” the company wrote in their release.

“It’s going back to our initial vision,” Lyft spokesperson Paige Thelen says of the new service, “to fill the empty seats in our cars and on our roads.”

Lyft also announced partnerships with 29 companies in place before the launch, including headliners like Adobe and Yelp. In October, Uber announced that “thousands” of small to mid-sized businesses signed up within the first three months.

Bill would keep the source of lethal injection drugs anonymous

Ohio lawmakers introduced legislation this week that would keep the source of lethal injection drugs anonymous.

The House bill, which was introduced on Monday and had its first hearing Wednesday, would protect individuals and pharmaceutical companies that manufacture, compound or supply drugs for executions while keeping those involved in administering the drugs, like physicians, anonymous.

Shielding the identity of drugmakers has become a common tactic by states that have had trouble obtaining execution drugs. Many drugmakers, especially compounding pharmacies—which are not under federal oversight but have been frequently used by prison systems and departments of corrections—don’t want it publicly known that they’re working with states to carry out lethal injections, fearing backlash from consumers and anti-death penalty advocates. Several states, including Arizona, Georgia and Missouri, have secrecy laws protecting drugmakers’ identities.

In October, Ohio’s attorney general said it was unlikely that the state would perform another lethal injection without action from legislators keeping the source of the state’s drugs anonymous. That statement indicated Ohio was likely out of lethal drugs altogether, and needed the ability to reassure compounding pharmacies that their identities would remain protected if the state sought drugs from them.

In August, a U.S. district judge extended a moratorium on lethal injections in the state until January 15, 2015. The order came after the execution of Dennis McGuire, who reportedly snored and snorted on the execution table in January in a prolonged lethal injection widely considered botched.

The ambitious plan will face opposition at home and abroad

Report shows only 14% of cases over two years were properly investigated

The city of New Orleans’ top inspector has accused its police force of multiple failures to properly investigate sex crimes, in a damning new report.

Detectives ignored reports of sex crimes, failed to follow up on reported sexual abuse cases and routinely failed to provide documentation of sexual investigations, often writing up questionable case files, according to a report released by the city’s inspector general.

The report identified 1,290 sex crime incidents from 2011 to 2013 assigned to five detectives; only 179 (14%) included supplemental reports showing that they properly pursued and investigated those cases. In 450 cases with initial investigative reports filed by the detectives, 271 (60%) did not include documents showing that there was any additional follow-up.

While the report didn’t name the detectives, it did describe multiple instances where additional investigation appeared warranted, but wasn’t pursued. In one case, an infant was brought to an emergency room with a skull fracture from what a nurse described as “suspected non-accidental trauma.” The detective, however, did not investigate the incident further and closed the case.

In another case, involving a different detective, a woman who told police she had been sexually assaulted and that her iPhone had been stolen. But there was no follow-up investigation nor apparent efforts made to track her phone or obtain phone records.

The New Orleans police department has a history of mismanagement and problematic practices and has been under federal court supervision since 2012 in part due to issues like those raised by the inspector general’s report.

The federal oversight came about in part due to issues in investigating sexual assaults, with detectives often misclassifying or reclassifying sex crime incidents as lower-level “miscellaneous” offenses, leading to citywide numbers appearing lower.

Ballmer wants to make Harvard's computer science department the best in the world

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has given Harvard University an unknown amount of money to significantly expand the school’s computer science department, it was announced Thursday.

Ballmer, now owner of the NBA’s L.A. Clippers, graduated from Harvard College in 1977. He said in a statement that Harvard’s computer science department is “small, but excellent,” and believes a faculty expansion will allow the university to build a preeminent program. Harvard President Drew Faust said in a statement that “we’re so grateful for Steve’s game-changing support and welcome this opportunity for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to take full advantage of the entire University’s distributed strengths.”

While Harvard nor Ballmer disclosed the exact amount of the gift, Ballmer told The New York Times that it would allow Harvard’s computer science faculty to expand from its current number of 24 to about 35.

Though Harvard is top-ranked as a national university, its computer science program is ranked at number 18, behind programs at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley, which are tied for the top spot, according to U.S. News & World Report. Still, Harvard undergraduates have demonstrated a rising interest in computer science, with the number of students concentrating in the field more than doubling between 2009 and 2013, according to the university’s handbook for students. A record-breaking 818 students enrolled in Harvard’s popular introductory computer science class, CS50, this semester.