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- Executive Producers:
- Sir Andy of the Hickory Flat Protector of Small Horses
- Sir Spro Sir Bean Brewer of the South
- Tony Cabrera - No Agenda Shop
- Earl Mittens of A World Distant
- Dame Mariella of the Anterior Communicating Artery
- Baron Stephen of the Fox River Valley
- Associate Executive Producers:
- Baronette Sir Rogue of the Taverns
- Sir Donald of the Firebottles, Count of Eastern Washington State
- Sir Niels den Oliesjeik of the Great Burgundic State of Brabant
- Sir Kunkleberry of Brookhaven, Georgia
- Become a member of the 1363 Club, support the show here
- Title Changes
- Sir Michael Minton -> Earl Mittens of A World Distant
- Knights & Dames
- Virginia Leigh Watts -> Dame Vox of the Gateway
- Mariella Nolfo -> Dame Mariella of the Anterior Communicating Artery
- Emma Pilgrim -> Dame Orchid Thief
- Jeff Alicea -> Sir Jeff of PA Route 33
- End of Show Mixes: Neal Jones - Sound Guy Steve - Rolando Gonzalez
- Engineering, Stream Management & Wizardry
- Mark van Dijk - Systems Master
- Ryan Bemrose - Program Director
- Clip Custodian: Neal Jones
- Bogatives
- Tesla lightning strike was bogative
- Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has received COVID-19 vaccine
- Portugal covid death correction
- From the original court document "obito pelos medicos que trabalham para a tutela Ministerio da Justica" - i.e. "physicians working for the MoJ", which is only a small fraction of MDs in Portugal.**
- The "court verified" 152 COVID deaths are only those certified by doctors of the Ministry of Justice, who perform autopsies in cases of death with a violent or uncertain cause.
- Therefore this is a small fraction of any number of disease deaths.
- Vaccine Incentives
- I'm from the government, here to help
- How does the admin know whose door to knock on?
- Pfizer Marketing
- Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna registering new names for Covid-19 jabs
- Over the coming months, millions of Australians will roll up a sleeve to get the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, just as millions have done for the AstraZeneca shot already.
- But if you take a look at the vial before the syringe goes in, you may notice something curious – the lack of the actual Pfizer name on the label.
- The most prominent name on the pack is one few Aussies will have seen before. That name is “Comirnaty”.
- Similarly, when the US-produced Moderna vaccine heads our way, the vials will likely say “Spikevax”.
- Ivermectin
- RN and Dr Ivermectin dilemma
- I just got off the phone with a patient being admitted for COVID+. She is a very intelligent Nurse Practitioner and more than capable of making her own well informed treatment decisions. However, most of our phone call was spent with regard to the fact that her physician would probably not be favorable to ivermectin, and if not what would happen next. The 2 of us agree, based on our education and experience, that it *might* work but aren’t sure because of all the censorship. We both get the basic logic that a possible solution to a deadly disease, even if unlikely to work, is warranted when it carries an extremely low risk.
- So, what we have is someone who completely understands her situation, scared and stuck in an isolation room worrying about whether or not she will be able to get a safe drug that I have sitting on the shelf… because of money and politics. Enough is enough. I thought I’d share this with you because it’s the only chance it’ll get any attention.
- Cyber Pandemic
- Kaseya BOTG BLM registry
- I believe you guys have some confusion on the product and what an RMM tool like Kaseya offers and why the premise of "Why would a grocer in Sweden need a cloud connected cash register?" is a bit off base.
- Kaseya's VSA software is a RMM tool similar with other competitors such as ConnectWise.... Remote Monitoring and Management. It is used by Managed Service Providers or Enterprises to support and manage remote endpoints. In the case of the pandemic, this is an even more widely used type tool with remote laptops being deployed. This is OS patching, software patching, remote control (support/troubleshooting), automation/scripting, reporting, antivirus, etc.
- MSPs are generally used for businesses that don't have the personnel, budget, or expertise to properly manage their endpoints to ensure they meet regulatory requirements. Cash registers\ card processing in this case would probably have to meet PCI regulations or something similar. They would have to be able to show proof of this as well. Banks in the US typically follow FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) guidelines and abide by FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) regulations.
- The hack involved a Supply Chain attack that only appeared to affect Kaseya's customers that were running their VSA software on-prem, not their hosted or cloud offering of the same product. Because it was a supply chain attack, it was similar to the Solarwinds hack in the update mechanism. It was then able to attack some vulnerabilities via SQL injection and ASP. Even if the product on-prem is locked down and restricted properly with security and network controls, the update mechanism from Kaseya to the MSP/Enterprise VSA servers caused the infection. Once those were infected, an MSP that has access to potentially hundreds of customers and thousands of endpoints has many new targets to spread the ransomware to. This makes MSP's and software vendors that make RMM type tools a prime target for ransomware. Infect one to reach the potential of many.
- Background that I would like to be kept from being read if possible:
- I am a dude named Ben that works for a company (MSP) that uses Kaseya in the financial field.(that requires all of this regulation and reporting for customers). This is def. a product that no one really loves and most dislke for some of the decisions software/application coders make. But you pick a RMM tool vendor and make it do what it wasn't supposed to do. There just isn't that much to choose from.More now than when we started. I am the network/firewall/security guy and do a lot of the other internal infrastructure when I can. We were very lucky not to be one effected. We luckily have a guy who knows this Kaseya product probably better than they do. He actually found additional vulnerabilities during this attack in SQL./ASP that he submitted while our servers were sandboxed. Our deployment on-prem is highly customized and do not auto update and manually update on a delay. Some of our layered security measures and policies that were in place helped us avoid this but there was no guarantee. We could have easily been one of the ones affected.
- the following can be used:
- Interestingly enough, analysis of the attack... some of the Indicators of Compromise showed that there were Windows registry modifications that say "Black Lives Matter". of course no one mentions this in the media.
- It is scary cause they push heavily for automated updates and for p2p updates just increasing the spread of something like this. However, automated updates with a supply chain hack like this will cause havoc for anything including Linux. Just imagine an Ubuntu repo being compromised.
- There's a need to stay current on updates but never be the the guinea pig and disable automatic updates.
- Cyber Polygon | World Economic Forum
- Cyber Polygon is a unique cybersecurity event that combines the world's largest technical training exercise for corporate teams and an online conference featuring senior officials from international organisations and leading corporations.
- The 2021 conference discusses the key risks of digitalisation and best practice for the secure development of digital ecosystems.
- The 2021 technical exercise builds and tests the skills needed to protect our industries, centring on a targeted supply-chain attack.
- Digitalisation is accelerating everywhere. New digital ecosystems are forming all around us, creating unnoticed linkages across services and supply chains.
- As the world grows more interconnected, the speed of development makes it difficult to assess the impact of change.
- OTG
- EU e-Privacy Directive approved
- Commission proposal on the temporary derogation from the e-Privacy Directive for the purpose of fighting online child sexual abuse
- Supply Chains
- Chinese-owned Nexperia confirms acquisition of UK’s largest chip plant
- Nexperia, a Dutch chip firm owned by China’s Wingtech, confirmed on Monday that it plans to acquire the U.K.’s largest chip producer, Newport Wafer Fab.
- The Purge
- Bill Cosby Shreds Mainstream Media, Blames Them For January 6
- “This (sic) mainstream media are the Insurrectionists, who stormed the Capitol. Those same Media Insurrectionists are trying to demolish the Constitution of these United State of America on this Independence Day,” the statement by spokesman Andrew Wyatt said. “No technicality — it’s a violation of ones rights & we the people stand in support of Ms. Phylicia Rashad.”
- “Mainstream media has irresponsibly, egregiously and inexcusably misled the public with out of context coverage regarding Bill Cosby’s deposition testimony. This shall serve as a grave reminder of the consequences that come with lying to the American people to satisfy an agenda,” he said on Twitter.
- ESG
- ESG BOTG
- ITM Gents!
- I just remember being introduced to ESG 2 years ago. I'm in a zoom meeting with all senior management and the board, listening to the jamokes who are trying to convince us how important the measures and the first thing that came to my mind were the mud flats.
- I'm part of my organization's ESG comitee and you won't believe how I can game the system and thrill our consultants with my no agenda inspired measures and ESG initiatives. I'm now maintaining one of the highest ranks in the region in the field of privacy and cyber security.
- But there's one very important global agenda that started the ESG phenomenon. And it's the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). I suggest that you look into that as well to connect the dots.
- BLM / Noodle Gun
- Black TikTokers go on STRIKE and refuse to create viral dances because white creators are 'stealing their moves and failing to credit them'
- Black TikTokers have gone on strike and are refusing to create viral dances because they say white creators don't credit them and become overnight stars with the stolen moves.
- The no-dance strike erupted when Megan Thee Stallion released her new song 'Thot S**t' on June 11 - something that would typically lead to the creation of a viral dance circulating on the social media app as happened with her song 'WAP' with Cardi B.
- By Tuesday morning - almost one month on from the song's release - there were around 487,000 videos on TikTok set to the song but no dance trend has yet emerged.
- Canada’s National Archive Cancels Country’s First Prime Minister
- Canada’s national archive has effectively canceled the country’s first Prime Minister Sir John Alexander Macdonald by deleting a page about him because it was “offensive” and didn’t represent Canada as “diverse and multicultural.”
- “Sir John Alexander Macdonald, born in Scotland, was Canada’s first prime minister. He is famous for his role in the establishment of Canada as a country on July 1 1867. Some of his other notable achievements include building the Canadian Pacific Railway and forming a strong Conservative Party,” writes Dan Frieth.
- However, it is Macdonald’s role in passing the Indian Act, which mandated that children from indigenous tribes assimilate into Christian boarding schools, that has drawn the ire of far-left activists.
- The government’s establishment of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, which limited the entrance of Chinese immigrants into Canada by charging them a head tax of $50 each, is also apparently grounds for Macdonald’s cancellation.
- After an unknown number of complaints (it may have been just one), Canada’s national archive website apologized and vowed to remove all offending material about Macdonald and any other historical figure who upsets 21st century woke imbeciles.
- Cyberbullying Insurance
- Insurance tech startup Waffle in May began offering stand-alone cyberprotection policies underwritten by Chubb that include cyberbullying and other cyber risks such as identity theft or extortion. The policies are intended to help victims recover costs associated with cyberbullying, such as legal fees, mental health services, tutoring to cover missed school or relocation costs if bullying was so bad that a student had to move to a new school.
- Audio/Video Clips
- VIDEO - (122) Huge explosion erupts on ship at Jebel Ali port, sending shockwaves through Dubai | WION World News - YouTube
- VIDEO - Gov. Cuomo Issues Executive Order Declaring Gun Violence in NY a Disaster Emergency '' NBC New York
- What to KnowGov. Andrew Cuomo has issued the first-in-the-nation Executive Order declaring gun violence in New York as a Disaster Emergency -- the first step in a comprehensive plan that aims to tackle the surge in gun violence throughout the state.The disaster emergency status will allow the state to address the gun violence crisis by expediting money and resources to communities so they can begin targeting gun violence immediately.Cuomo's announcement comes at a time when the city and the country a as whole are struggling to curtail the uptick in gun violence.Gov. Andrew Cuomo has issued the first-in-the-nation Executive Order declaring gun violence in New York as a Disaster Emergency -- the first step in a comprehensive plan that aims to tackle the surge in gun violence throughout the state.
- The announcement was made at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan in New York Tuesday afternoon.
- The disaster emergency status will allow the state to address the gun violence crisis by expediting money and resources to communities so they can begin targeting gun violence immediately.
- This is the first step in a comprehensive plan Cuomo outlined composed of 7 key areas -- all with the aim of quelling the gun violence surge. The key areas are:
- Treat gun violence like the emergency public health it is;Target hotspots with data and science;Positive engagement for at-risk youth;Break the cycle of escalating violence;Get illegal guns off the streets;Keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people;Rebuild the police-community relationshipThis new strategy treats gun violence as a public health crisis, using short-term solutions to manage the immediate gun violence crisis and reduce the shooting rate, as well as long-term solutions that focus on community-based intervention and prevention strategies to break the cycle of violence.
- To coordinate this nation-leading gun violence prevention effort, Cuomo announced the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and is also requiring by Executive Order major police departments to share data on gun violence with DCJS to compile this data weekly. This data will be used by the new Office of Gun Violence Prevention to track emerging gun violence hotspots and deploy resources.
- This comprehensive strategy also includes a $138.7 million investment in intervention and prevention programs, including programs that engage at-risk youth in summer job opportunities and community activity programs to get young people off the streets, and supports ongoing gun violence prevention programs.
- If you look at the recent numbers, more people are now dying from gun violence and crime than COVID - this is a national problem but someone has to step up and address this problem because our future depends on it.
- Andrew Cuomo, New York GovernorA new State Police Gun Trafficking Interdiction Unit was announced. The group's main purpose will be to stop illegal guns from coming into New York from states with weak gun safety laws. Additionally, the State will continue to strengthen police-community relations through a partnership with John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
- "We're building New York back better than ever before, but part of rebuilding is addressing the systemic injustices that were exposed by COVID. If you look at the recent numbers, more people are now dying from gun violence and crime than COVID - this is a national problem but someone has to step up and address this problem because our future depends on it," Cuomo said.
- "Just like we did with COVID, New York is going to lead the nation once again with a comprehensive approach to combating and preventing gun violence, and our first step is acknowledging the problem with a first-in-the-nation disaster emergency on gun violence. When we see an injustice we don't look the other way, we stand up and fight it because that's the New York way," Cuomo went on to say.
- Additionally, the state is also launching a new portal of statewide police reform plans to encourage jurisdictions to learn from each other.
- Cuomo's announcement comes at a time when the city and the country a as whole are struggling to curtail the uptick in gun violence.
- Since the spring of 2020, the number of shootings has soared in New York City. At least 687 people were wounded or killed by gunfire through June 6. Although the figure is not as high as the more than 2,400 people were shot during the same period in 1993, it is the highest number for a winter and early spring since 2000.
- Additionally, late last month, President Joe Biden announced new efforts to stem a rising national tide of violent crime, declaring the federal government is ''taking on the bad actors doing bad things to our communities.'' But questions persist about how effective the efforts can be in what could be a turbulent summer.
- Crime rates have risen after plummeting during the initial months of the coronavirus pandemic, creating economic hardship and anxiety. Biden's plan focuses on providing money to cities that need more police, offering community support and most of all cracking down on gun violence and those supplying illegal firearms.
- VIDEO - Breaking911 on Twitter: "Dr. Fauci to vaccine-hesitant Americans: ''Get over it. Get over this political statement. Just get over it and try to save the lives of yourself and your family.'' https://t.co/4vo17EngAp" / Twitter
- Breaking911 : Dr. Fauci to vaccine-hesitant Americans: ''Get over it. Get over this political statement. Just get over it and tr'... https://t.co/vk8XFfsYNH
- Thu Jul 08 01:29:21 +0000 2021
- Caution. : @Breaking911 99.8 percent chance of recovery. Why?
- Thu Jul 08 02:46:38 +0000 2021
- Dr Dick Skinner : @Breaking911 https://t.co/Q6JTllcNok
- Thu Jul 08 02:46:10 +0000 2021
- Meagan Shipley : @Breaking911 Take your own advice and DON'T TREAD ON ME AND MY FAMILY.
- Thu Jul 08 02:45:39 +0000 2021
- TradCatchCaveman : @Breaking911 https://t.co/50nnpM5PKo
- Thu Jul 08 02:45:34 +0000 2021
- Joseph Dooley Fiction : @Breaking911 Bro if you're gonna scare people into getting the jab, this is how you do it. https://t.co/yeMclf4weS
- Thu Jul 08 02:43:52 +0000 2021
- VIDEO - Human Rights Watch Watcher on Twitter: "Joe Biden in 1994: "If Haiti'--a God-awful thing to say'--if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot to our interests." https://t.co/iMvSJzg2JU" / Twitt
- Human Rights Watch Watcher : Joe Biden in 1994: "If Haiti'--a God-awful thing to say'--if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300'... https://t.co/oz75V4YQp2
- Wed Jul 07 16:09:21 +0000 2021
- RoxieMoxie : @queeralamode @HarielTermilus Dude he was talking about what constitutes consequential foreign developments. mentio'... https://t.co/YDILG3o7Rg
- Thu Jul 08 02:43:01 +0000 2021
- RoxieMoxie : @queeralamode @julianamscastro he was talking about what constitutes consequential foreign developments. mentioning'... https://t.co/BY6gDPq7zY
- Thu Jul 08 02:42:37 +0000 2021
- Angelo : @queeralamode Damn thats cold.... but is it true?
- Thu Jul 08 02:40:56 +0000 2021
- Steve : @queeralamode @misslolahunt all heart
- Thu Jul 08 02:19:10 +0000 2021
- VIDEO - User Clip: Matt Lee call out Ned Price | C-SPAN.org
- July 6, 2021 | Clip Of State Department Daily Briefing This clip, title, and description were not created by C-SPAN. User-Created Clipby BlueHensJuly 6, 2021 2021-07-06T14:32:38-04:00 https://images.c-span.org/Files/d64/20210706143418011_hd.jpg Matt Lee call out Ned PriceMatt Lee call out Ned Price
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- VIDEO - Biden seeks to get more Americans vaccinated by taking message 'door-to-door' & mobilizing 'Covid surge response teams' '-- RT USA News
- Fresh from missing his Fourth of July goal for Covid-19 vaccinations, President Joe Biden plans to ramp up efforts to get more Americans inoculated by sending public health workers ''door-to-door.''
- ''Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and, oftentimes, door to door '' literally knocking on doors '' to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,'' Biden told reporters on Tuesday, adding that coronavirus ''surge response teams'' would also be mobilized to combat new outbreaks among the unvaccinated.
- BIDEN: "Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and often times door to door'-- literally knocking on doors" to get people vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/VQusdjG30A
- '-- Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 6, 2021Biden's administration is aiming to make more localized efforts, especially in areas with relatively low vaccination rates, to get the jabs to more people. For instance, it will partner with local pharmacies and family doctors to promote Covid-19 vaccines, and it will boost access to the shots at pediatrician offices.
- ''As we shift from these centralized mass vaccination sites... we're going to put even more emphasis to getting vaccinated in your community, close to home, conveniently at a location you're already familiar with,'' Biden said.
- The new initiative comes after Biden fell short of his target of getting 70% of US adults vaccinated by Independence Day. About 67% of American adults have taken at least one dose, meaning the Democrat president missed his goal by about eight million people, according to CDC data.
- Also on rt.com Biden says 'getting vaccinated is the most patriotic thing you can do' in speech marking July 4 While Biden didn't specify how the door-to-door interactions would play out, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier on Tuesday that the aim would be to ensure that people ''have the information they need on how safe and accessible the vaccine is.''
- It's not clear whether that would mean sending agents to every household or somehow ascertaining which homes have unvaccinated residents. Critics said such a program could violate privacy rights and lead to other abuses or conflicts.
- ''Yeah, so what does this mean?'' author Alex Berenson asked on Twitter. ''Will the stormtroopers '' I mean, friendly public health professionals '' have individual-household-level data on who has been vaccinated? I'd ask Uncle Joe, but he's busy ordering ice cream.''
- Yeah, so what does this mean? Will the stormtroopers, I mean friendly public health professionals, have individual/household level data on who has been vaccinated? I'd ask Uncle Joe but he's busy ordering ice cream https://t.co/HFbxxEhUcv
- '-- Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 6, 2021Biden did, however, offer more details about the ''surge response teams,'' noting that they would be made up of ''experts'' from a number of federal agencies, including FEMA and the CDC. They will help states to ''prevent, detect, and respond to the spread of the Delta variant among unvaccinated people in communities with low vaccination rates,'' he said.
- Self-described ''news junkie'' Erik Sykes pointed out that if former president Donald Trump had suggested the 'door-to-door' scheme, ''Twitter literally would not have the bandwidth to be able to display the high volume of Hitler references.''
- If Trump had suggested this, Twitter literally would not have the bandwidth to be able to display the high volume of Hitler references.
- '-- Eric Sykes (@ConsiderEric) July 6, 2021Florida congressional candidate Lavern Spicer reacted similarly, saying, ''Sending Joe Biden's Gestapo door-to-door to check up on non-vaccinated Americans is really a recipe for disaster.''
- Sending Joe Biden's Gestapo door-to-door to check up on non-vaccinated Americans is really a recipe for disaster.
- '-- Lavern Spicer (@lavern_spicer) July 6, 2021Another commenter said that although he was vaccinated and had no side effects, he found Biden's plan troubling. ''Isn't what the president suggests an incredible violation of privacy rights?''
- Conservative activist David Bozell, president of ForAmerica, referred to the program as ''door-to-door vaccine checks'' and said that if Republicans don't stop it from going forward, ''they deserve to lose every election from here to eternity.''
- If Republicans don't stop the funding for door-to-door vaccine checks dead in its tracks, they deserve to lose every election from here to eternity.
- '-- David Bozell ðºð¸ (@DavidBozell) July 6, 2021Biden's comments reminded other observers of a famous statement by former president Ronald Reagan: ''The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.''
- BIDEN: "We need to go community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oft-times door-to-door, literally knocking on doors..." REAGAN: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." pic.twitter.com/QMtzAmQxiW
- '-- Independent Women's Voice (@IWV) July 6, 2021Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
- VIDEO - (18) Red Walrus on Twitter: "Warren Buffett says a new pandemic "worse then covid" is coming. He continues ... "We just got started". Buffett Knows And Let The Cat Out Of The Bag. https://t.co/LP25CNkhIg" / Twitter
- Red Walrus : Warren Buffett says a new pandemic "worse then covid" is coming.He continues ... "We just got started".Buffett'... https://t.co/009SARoC6K
- Wed Jul 07 01:08:02 +0000 2021
- VIDEO - (1) NQTABLE * * * on Twitter: "New Zealand will hunt down those not vaccinated. https://t.co/3bfWxqAA8Y" / Twitter
- NQTABLE * * * : New Zealand will hunt down those not vaccinated. https://t.co/3bfWxqAA8Y
- Tue Jul 06 19:44:51 +0000 2021
- Osborne : @ConspiracyCen @GetVideoBot
- Thu Jul 08 01:40:11 +0000 2021
- Speaking_Tree : @ConspiracyCen You can't force people to take an experimental shot. We settled this at Nuremberg!
- Thu Jul 08 01:37:23 +0000 2021
- LydianMode : @ConspiracyCen https://t.co/dMO1v2puHH The law will eventually hunt down those that mandate the death jabs.
- Thu Jul 08 01:32:41 +0000 2021
- Simon Green : @ConspiracyCen How did you people ever put a man on the moon with such pudding for brains?
- Thu Jul 08 01:29:20 +0000 2021
- Jeff Alexander : @ConspiracyCen #VaccineBlackmail
- Thu Jul 08 01:29:02 +0000 2021
- BET.NO.EVIL : @ConspiracyCen He keeps saying ''opportunity'' like there is a choice. I think this psycho knows what he's about to do.
- Thu Jul 08 01:25:07 +0000 2021
- Flatearth : @ConspiracyCen They are going to kill you with the vaccine so you might as fight them to the death.
- Thu Jul 08 01:23:16 +0000 2021
- ð¨ð...Patriot Gamesð¨ð... : @ConspiracyCen New Zealand is a joke.
- Thu Jul 08 01:20:27 +0000 2021
- VIDEO - (120) Media briefing on COVID-19 - YouTube
- VIDEO - (120) Outsiders Weather and Ice Age Watch: Australia experiences 'second coldest June on record' - YouTube
- VIDEO - ESG's Are the Reason for Woke Corporate Interests - YouTube
- VIDEO - Caleb Hull on Twitter: "Jen Psaki: We will be going door-to-door to Americans who have not been vaccinated https://t.co/S70VjPojfj" / Twitter
- Caleb Hull : Jen Psaki: We will be going door-to-door to Americans who have not been vaccinated https://t.co/S70VjPojfj
- Tue Jul 06 17:16:13 +0000 2021
- Michael Malice : @CalebJHull answer the door wearing thishttps://t.co/cIUNU9ubLz https://t.co/SlE8NfqfD3
- Tue Jul 06 18:43:44 +0000 2021
- Jeffrey Meyer : @CalebJHull If we don't answer the door do they just bust the door down?
- Tue Jul 06 18:43:39 +0000 2021
- VIDEO - SolarWinds: How Russian spies hacked the Justice, State, Treasury, Energy and Commerce Departments - CBS News
- When Presidents Biden and Putin met in Geneva last month '' it was the first time that the threat of cyber war eclipsed that of nuclear war between the two old super-powers'... and "SolarWinds" was one big reason why. Last year, in perhaps the most audacious cyber attack in history, Russian military hackers sabotaged a tiny piece of computer code buried in a popular piece of software called SolarWinds. As we first reported in February, the hidden virus spread to 18,000 government and private computer networks by way of one of those software updates we all take for granted. After it was installed, Russian agents went rummaging through the digital files of the U.S. departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Energy, and Commerce ''among others'--and for nine months, they had unfettered access to top-level communications, court documents, even nuclear secrets.
- Cybersecurity experts say U.S. needs to strike back after SolarWinds hack Brad Smith: I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.
- Brad Smith is president of Microsoft. He learned about the hack after the presidential election this past November. By that time, the stealthy intruders had spread throughout the tech giants' computer network and stolen some of its proprietary source code used to build its software products. More alarming: how the hackers got in'... piggy-backing on a piece of third party software used to connect, manage and monitor computer networks.
- Bill Whitaker: What makes this so momentous?
- Brad Smith: One of the really disconcerting aspects of this attack was the widespread and indiscriminate nature of it. What this attacker did was identify network management software from a company called SolarWinds. They installed malware into an update for a SolarWinds product. When that update went out to 18,000 organizations around the world, so did this malware.
- "SolarWinds Orion" is one of the most ubiquitous software products you probably never heard of, but to thousands of I.T. departments worldwide, it's indispensable. It's made up of millions of lines of computer code. 4,032 of them were clandestinely re-written and distributed to customers in a routine update, opening up a secret backdoor to the 18,000 infected networks. Microsoft has assigned 500 engineers to dig in to the attack. One compared it to a Rembrandt painting, the closer they looked, the more details emerged.
- Brad Smith: When we analyzed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves how many engineers have probably worked on these attacks. And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more than 1,000.
- Bill Whitaker: You guys are Microsoft. How did Microsoft miss this?
- Brad Smith: I think that when you look at the sophistication of this attacker there's an asymmetric advantage for somebody playing offense.
- Bill Whitaker: Is it still going on?
- Brad Smith: Almost certainly, these attacks are continuing.
- Brad SmithThe world still might not know about the hack if not for FireEye, a three-and-a-half billion dollar cybersecurity company run by Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force intelligence officer.
- Kevin Mandia: I can tell you this, if we didn't do investigations for a living, we wouldn't have found this. It takes a very special skill set to reverse engineer a whole platform that's written by bad guys to never be found.
- FireEye's core mission is to hunt, find, and expel cyber intruders from the computer networks of their clients - mostly governments and major companies. But FireEye used SolarWinds software, which turned the cyber hunter into the prey. This past November, one alert FireEye employee noticed something amiss.
- Kevin Mandia: Just like everybody working from home, we have two-factor authentication. A code pops up on our phone. We have to type in that code. And then we can log in. A FireEye employee was logging in, but the difference was our security staff looked at the login and we noticed that individual had two phones registered to their name. So our security employee called that person up and we asked, "Hey, did you actually register a second device on our network?" And our employee said, "No. It wasn't, it wasn't me."
- Suspicious, FireEye turned its gaze inward, and saw intruders impersonating its employees snooping around inside their network, stealing FireEye's proprietary tools to test its clients defenses and intelligence reports on active cyber threats. The hackers left no evidence of how they broke in '' no phishing expeditions, no malware.
- Bill Whitaker: So how did you trace this back to SolarWinds software?
- Kevin Mandia: It was not easy. We took a lotta people and said, "Turn every rock over. Look in every machine and find any trace of suspicious activity." What kept coming back was the earliest evidence of compromise is the SolarWinds system. We finally decided: Tear the thing apart.
- They discovered the malware inside SolarWinds and on December 13 informed the world of the brazen attack.
- Kevin MandiaMuch of the damage had already been done. The U.S. Justice Department acknowledged the Russians spent months inside their computers accessing email traffic '' but the department won't tell us exactly what was taken. It's the same at Treasury, Commerce, the NIH, Energy. Even the agency that protects and transports our nuclear arsenal. The hackers also hit the biggest names in high tech.
- Bill Whitaker: So, what does that target list tell you?
- Brad Smith: I think this target list tells us that this is clearly a foreign intelligence agency. It exposes the secrets potentially of the United States and other governments as well as private companies. I don't think anyone knows for certain how all of this information will be used. But we do know this: It is in the wrong hands.
- Experts warn U.S. needs new cyber strategy 05:14 And Microsoft's Brad Smith told us it's almost certain the hackers created additional backdoors and spread to other networks.
- The revelation this past December came at a fraught time in the U.S. President Trump was disputing the election, and tweeted China might be responsible for the hack. Within hours he was contradicted by his own secretary of state and attorney general. They blamed Russia. The Department of Homeland Security, FBI and intelligence agencies concurred. The prime suspect: the SVR, one of several Russian spy agencies the U.S. labels "advanced persistent threats." Russia denies it was involved.
- Brad Smith: I do think this was an act of recklessness. The world runs on software. It runs on information technology. But it can't run with confidence if major governments are disrupting and attacking the software supply chain in this way.
- Bill Whitaker: That almost sounds like you think that they went in to foment chaos?
- Brad Smith: What we are seeing is the first use of this supply chain disruption tactic against the United States. But it's not the first time we've witnessed it. The Russian government really developed this tactic in Ukraine.
- For years the Russians have tested their cyber weapons on Ukraine. NotPetya, a 2017 attack by the GRU, Russia's military spy agency, used the same tactics as the SolarWinds attack, sabotaging a widely-used piece of software to break into thousands of Ukraine's networks, but instead of spying - it ordered devices to self-destruct.
- Brad Smith: It literally damaged more than 10% of that nation's computers in a single day. The television stations couldn't produce their shows because they relied on computers. Automated teller machines stopped working. Grocery stores couldn't take a credit card. Now, what we saw with this attack was something that was more targeted, but it just shows how if you engage in this kind of tactic, you can unleash an enormous amount of damage and havoc.
- Bill Whitaker: It's hard to downplay the severity of this.
- Chris Inglis: It is hard to downplay the severity of this. Because it's only a stone's throw from a computer network attack.
- Chris InglisChris Inglis spent 28 years commanding the nation's best cyber warriors at the National Security Agency '' seven as its deputy director '' and now sits on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission '' created by Congress to come up with new ideas to defend our digital domain.
- Bill Whitaker: Why didn't the government detect this?
- Chris Inglis: The government is not looking on private sector networks. It doesn't surveil private sector networks. That's a responsibility that's given over to the private sector. FireEye found it on theirs, many others did not. The government did not find it on their network, so that's a disappointment.
- Disappointment is an understatement. The Department of Homeland Security spent billions on a program called "Einstein" to detect cyber attacks on government agencies. The Russians outsmarted it. They circumvented the NSA, which gathers intelligence overseas, but is prohibited from surveilling U.S. computer networks. So the Russians launched their attacks from servers set up anonymously in the United States.
- Bill Whitaker: This hack happened on American soil. It went through networks based in the United States. Are our defense capabilities constrained?
- Chris Inglis: U.S. Intelligence Community, U.S. Department of Defense, can suggest what the intentions of other nations are based upon what they learn in their rightful work overseas. But they can't turn around and focus their unblinking eye on the domestic infrastructure. That winds up making it more difficult for us.
- He says history shows that once inside a network, the Russians are a stubborn adversary.
- Chris Inglis: It's hard to kind of get something like this completely out of the system. And they certainly don't understand all the places that it's gone to, all of the manifestations of where this virus, where this software still lives. And that's gonna take some time. And the only way you'll have absolute confidence that you've gotten rid of it is to get rid of the hardware, to get rid of the systems.
- Bill Whitaker: Wow. So unless you get rid of all the computers and all the computer networks, you will not be sure that you have gotten this out of the systems.
- Chris Inglis: You will not be.
- Jon Miller: We've never been left with a breach like that before where we know months into it that we're only looking at the tip of the iceberg.
- Jon MillerIt's not everyday you meet someone who builds cyber weapons as complex as those deployed by Russian intelligence. But Jon Miller, who started off as a hacker and now runs a company called Boldend, designs and sells cutting-edge cyber weapons to U.S. intelligence agencies.
- Jon Miller: I build things much more sophisticated than this. What's impressive is the scope of it. This is a watershed style attack. I would never do something like this. It creates too much damage.
- Miller says with the SolarWinds attack, Russia has demonstrated that none of the software we take for granted is truly safe, including the apps on our telephones, laptops, and tablets. These days, he says, any device can be sabotaged.
- Jon Miller: When you buy something from a tech company, a new phone or a laptop, you trust that that is secure when they give it to you. And what they've shown us in this attack is that is not the case. They have the ability to compromise those supply chains and manipulate whatever they want. Whether it's financial data, source code, the functionality of these products. They can take control.
- Bill Whitaker: So, for instance, they could destroy all the computers on a network?
- Jon Miller: Oh, easily. The malware that they deployed off of SolarWinds, it didn't have the functionality in it to do that. But to do that is trivial. Couple dozen lines of code.
- Since our story first aired, the hacks have kept coming. And one of the people you just heard from, former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis, was chosen as the country's first national cyber director, reporting directly to President Biden. President Putin, for his part, still denies Russia's involvement in SolarWinds.
- Produced by Graham Messick and Jack Weingart. Broadcast associate, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Michael Mongulla.
- (C) 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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- Attorney Mathew DePerno, who has been working on election audit issues in Michigan and Arizona, just returned back from the Arizona audit on Sunday. Today, he broke huge news exclusively on Steve Bannon's War Room.
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- VIDEO - MIT Scientist: Covid Vaccines May Cause Diseases in '10 to 15 years' (Exclusive Video) - RAIR
- ''We are in for a big surprise down the road,'' Dr. Stephanie Seneff predicts.
- RAIR Foundation USA is honored to present an exclusive interview with prominent scientist Stephanie Seneff about her take on the impact of mRNA vaccines. RAIR also features Scientist Madeline Weld, Ph.D., Physiology and Biology who has graciously used her background to write about the interview for RAIR's readers (scroll down).
- Dr. Seneff serves as Senior research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment. The MIT scientist wrote a research paper with Dr. Greg Nigh titled: ''Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19'' for the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
- ''Dr. Seneff's background led her to have concerns about the Covid-19 vaccines that are being heavily promoted. These vaccines use a novel mRNA technology, and their long-term effects remain unknown. However, there is sufficient published scientific information to explain some of the mechanisms behind the adverse effects these vaccines are having now and what they might cause in the years and decades ahead. She anticipates an increase in autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, which take 10 to 15 years to manifest themselves.''
- Some of the major points of the RAIR exclusive interview:
- Dr. Seneff ''anticipates that there will be long-term damage that won't instantly be linked to the vaccine. Developments, such as an increase in auto-immune and neurodegenerative diseases, which may take 10 to 15 years before manifesting themselves.'' ''We are in for a big surprise down the road,'' she predicts.Dr. Seneff believes the vaccine would exacerbate symptoms of those with Parkinson's.Those who claimed that mRNA would not impact DNA are ''wrong.''Spike protein ''really has become the most toxic part of the virus'' and exists when Covid is gone. ''Among the possibilities she foresees is an increase in Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), a prion disease (or protein misfolding disease) comparable to mad cow disease.''''There is an epidemic of Alzheimer disease, which people are getting at an increasingly younger age. The recklessly and haphazardly implementation of the vaccine roll-out will contribute to this trend.''Watch the video and see more below:
- See below for rough transcript:Seneff has been working on glyphosate, about which she has written a new book (Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is destroying our health and the environment). She has been researching this topic for almost 10 years. She believes that glyphosate poisons the immune system, leading to immune deficiency and autoimmune disease, which is increasing the impact of Covid-19, in terms of contributing to the cytokine storm, the lungs filling with fluid, hemorrhaging and thrombosis. Her book has a whole chapter on glyphosate and the immune system.
- This paper was intensely reviewed (6 reviewers). They had read about the possibility that the spike protein might be a prion but had originally left it out of their paper as possibly being too speculative.
- However, one of the reviewers suggested they include a discussion about it, leading them to expand their research on it and finding that it connected a lot of dots. Many viruses have prion-like proteins. She learned about an organic farmer in the UK who linked mad cow disease to magnesium toxicity from a chemical that was being put on the backs of cows. Seneff believes that prion diseases are connected to toxic chemicals because they cause proteins to misfold.
- Prion proteins can seed other unrelated proteins to misfold. There is a list of proteins that will ''catch the disease'' when there is a prion or prion-like protein near them, that misfolds in a characteristic way called ''beta-sheets.'' It causes other proteins in that same cell to misfold in that same way and to bind together in fibrils that eventually precipitate out. Alzheimer's is a classic prion-like disease. The amyloid beta plaque is linked to Alzheimer's. Amyloid beta plaques normally fold as alpha helices, they are like screws that go into the membrane. All prion proteins have that characteristic. They normally go into a membrane and form an alpha helix.
- When prion proteins misfold, and they can misfold when you get too many of them in the cytoplasm, for example if there is too much alpha-synuclein amyloid-beta, those alpha-synuclein amyloid-beta molecules start glomming together in these beta sheets that are quite soluble, so they end up with soluble complexes of beta sheets that are many amyloid betas.
- Alpha-synuclein misfolding goes with Parkinson's diseaseAmyloid-beta goes with Alzheimer'sTDP43 goes with ALS
- There is a classic prion protein which is the mad cow in the cows and that's also CJD in humans. So you have individual proteins that are linked to individual neurodegenerative diseases and each of those proteins is characteristic the same way, with alpha helix going into beta sheet becoming soluble in cytoplasm causing trouble. That is a common pattern for many different debilitating diseases. That happens through a trigger from some kind of prion-like protein that comes from outside often.
- Parkinson's is an example. You can start with a protein produced by E. coli that is a prion-like protein. If it gets too much, it starts to misfold, it starts to build the prion C in the gut. And then the immune cells pick up that protein, transport it into the spleen.
- There are germinal centres in the spleen where the prion proteins really get going. It seems like it's kind of a special factory for trying to deal with prion proteins to get rid of them. In the germinal centres in the spleen, the immune cells pack up prion proteins into little particles that they release as exosomes.
- Exosomes are central to the disease process that I predict will happen with these vaccines. Parkinson's starts with germinal centres in the spleen that release exosomes that contain some kind of misfolded protein that's dangerous. The cells are trying to get rid of them and distribute them. You could cough them out through your lungs, release them through your skin, they possibly get into breast milk. They are exported as these little exosomes to get rid of them, to shed them out. But they also get transported along the vagus nerve to the brain stem. And that's how you end up with Parkinson's disease. So Parkinson's starts with the gut, then the spleen, the vagus nerve, and finally the brain stem nuclei.
- So the vaccine turns your body into a factory that makes the protein?
- That's right. The corona virus might be described as an orange covered in cloves. The spike protein is the most dangerous part of the virus. That is becoming very clear. Many people are doing studies, where they are using only the spike protein and can find brain damage. Greg and I just uncovered this study which we did not reference in our paper. Maybe it's too new, but it's a fascinating paper by people in India. It's an in vitro study where they show that if you expose human cells in culture to the RNA from the spike protein, they will make spike protein, they ship it out in exosomes. And then if you expose the immune cells in the brain in another in vitro study to those exosomes, they become neurodegenerative.
- When those exosomes make their way to the brain, the immune cells in the brain called microglia take them up and cause brain inflammation, brain damage, neurodegenerative diseases. Basically they hurt the brain very badly. I feel like the vaccines are inviting a direct hit on the brain.
- Everyone I've spoken to who's had the vaccine has at least a week of down time. When you say prion-like, are you making a distinction to a prion?
- That's a tricky thing, because there is a protein called the prion protein. There's a human prion protein, there's a cow prion protein. And then there are all these other proteins that are called prion-like proteins, because they have similar characteristics. And then amyloid beta, alpha-synuclein and the spike protein are all prion-like proteins because they have similar characteristics. The characteristics are well-defined in terms of the protein itself because there is a specific pattern, called a glycine zipper. It's a pattern of GXXXG, two glycines (amino acid), separated by three wild cards, it could be any amino acids. Proteins are built from amino acids like beads on a string.
- You have 20 amino acids that make up the core of all the proteins. You have the DNA code that instructs how the protein is made. This GXXXG pattern is a characteristic prion pattern called a glycine zipper.
- Amyloid beta has four glycine zippers. And the spike protein has five. So it's in some sense more prion-like than amyloid beta, which is the protein that causes Alzheimer's disease.
- So we have turned the body into a factory for making a protein which for all intents and purposes is a prion?
- Yes, and worse than that, they actually re-engineered the protein to make it more prion-like than it normally is. Because they have mucked with the protein structure to give it a pair of prolines that are next door to each other. Two prolines. They've modified the spike protein design for the vaccine such that it couldn't go into the membrane. So they wanted it to stay. So basically the protein is made by these cells under instruction from the vaccine, and then it's released and exposed on their membrane.
- It attaches to ACE-2 receptors. And then it needs to be exposed to immune cells so they can make their antibodies. The whole point is to have these cells collaborate with each other and one cell exposes (the protein), another one makes the antibodies. And they thought it was a really good idea not to let it go into the membrane, because then it would expose itself. There's a critical part it wants the antibodies to be able to see. And they've mucked with the protein so it can't snap into place and go into the membrane. So it stays stuck to the ACE-2 receptors, which I think is really, really bad, because it suppresses them.
- Many papers have shown that the spike protein suppresses the ACE-2 receptors. And that's causing a lot of these other symptoms that we're seeing, heart problems and blood problems, thrombosis, loss of platelets. All these things are happening in response to this shutdown of the ACE-2 receptor.
- Listening to you sounds like you're leaning toward incompetence rather than malice.
- I don't know. It didn't take me that long to read about all these things and to see that this thing is really big trouble. I don't know why they couldn't also realize that. I don't know how they can read the same things I'm reading and not reach the same conclusions. They're being very very reckless. Anyone who's involved in this ought to be worried about those germinal centres in the spleen and that is exactly what these vaccines do. They've traced them where they go and this is another interesting story.
- They say that it's injected in the arm and it stays in the arm and everything happens in the arm. But that's not true at all. The immune cells pick up the vaccines, they open up that box and they start making prion proteins, and they get really excited and worried because they don't understand what's going on here. They've never seen anything like this before. It's extremely unusual. Everything is not natural in these vaccines. So the immune cells get really worried and they go into the lymph system from the arm. And lots of women are getting swollen lymph nodes under their arm which is a characteristic feature of breast cancer. From the lymph nodes, it gets into the lymph system and it works its way to the spleen.
- Greg and I talked about one of these studies where they showed that this mRNA technology causes immune cells to go the spleen, into those germinal centres, and start furiously making spike protein in those germinal centres. That is just a complete set up for Parkinson's.
- So if somebody already had Parkinson's, and they were to get this vaccine, do you think it would exacerbate it?
- I would definitely expect so. I'm hoping we'll see some data coming out like that because it's really crucial for us to watch now and see what happens. Everything's predictive right now but there's a lot of science behind it to show that this is what you would expect. It's disturbing to me to think about these exosomes. The critical thing is that the germinal centres are making all these exosomes, releasing them out into the circulation. Those exosomes can leave the body. It's been shown that exosomes are present in the breath that comes out from the lungs.
- The paper that I read a couple of days ago showed that exosomes are made by cells that are exposed to something very much like the mRNA in the vaccine. They make the exosomes and these exosomes are taken up by the immune cells in the brain. They cause the brain to go on fire basically. They cause an inflammatory response in the brain which damages the brain tissues. Greg and I predicted that in what we wrote but we didn't have hard evidence at that time. This study shows that this is exactly what happens.
- And so the spike protein is packaged up by these dendritic cells which are immune cells that are taking up that vaccine, furiously making spike protein, being unable to stop themselves because that RNA has been engineered to be very sturdy. Normally RNA would just disintegrate if you injected RNA into the body. That's why they put in this polyethylene glycol, this cationic lipid around the surface to make it be reactive and then to turn the RNA into a different RNA, changing one of the nucleotides to make it really sturdy, so it can't be broken down easily. They did a lot of tricks. This is terrible because it means these cells can't stop themselves from making spike protein.
- And when you get too much of a prion protein in the cytoplasm, that's when you get in trouble with other proteins misfolding. And these immune cells actually upregulate alpha-synuclein in response to stress. So they've got tremendous stress in those dendritic cells in those germinal centres in the spleen.
- That's where I think a lot of the action is happening. And studies tracing the RNA show that the spleen was the organ which accumulated the highest levels. But it also accumulated in other scary places like the liver and ovaries and adrenal glands. They all showed up with lots of mRNA from the vaccine migrating through the lymph system, getting to those places.
- It's disturbing that it was found in the ovaries, which were number two after the spleen. And then the adrenal glands. Those are all really important organs '' with hormones and what not. There will be a big mess there.
- So you're saying we don't even know if our bodies will shut down manufacturing this toxin.
- Right. I could not find information on exactly how long this would last. I found a paper that said it could be as long as six months. I think it could be forever in the case where it gets turned into DNA and that's another thing we discussed in our paper. All the machinery is there to take the spike protein RNA and convert it into DNA, put out DNA plasmids. Little plasmids contain that DNA and are able to reproduce themselves. And then infect the cells in the bone marrow, the precursor stem cells. Infect them with that, and they're going to be able to make spike protein for the rest of the person's life. There is an entire mechanism that could make that possible. For someone who is already sick, for example cancer cells produce lots of this enzyme that can convert RNA into DNA. Immune cells do too, under stress. So those immune cells in the spleen under stress might predict that they would upregulate enzymes that convert RNA into DNA.
- You get the DNA and then you get these plasmids which are kind of like exosomes. They're little lipid-membraned things that package up DNA. But then the plasmids can also get into the DNA in the nucleus and become a permanent part of the human genome. That is not beyond the realm of possibility.
- One of the original sales pitches for the vaccine was that it would not be able to penetrate the nucleus and would not get into your DNA.
- They're wrong. I can show you the study that shows that sperm take up foreign messenger RNA, convert it into DNA, put it into plasmids, release those plasmids around the fertilized egg. The fertilized egg takes those plasmids up and can carry them throughout the lifespan of that person and passing it down to the next generation. There is a paper that talks about all of that. Not mentioning the spikeprotein, not mentioning these vaccines which didn't even exist at the time. It could be very, very bad. It could kill you. In fact, people are dying. Even teenagers are dying from heart failure.
- You mentioned shedding a number of times. I think that's a very important topic. Dr. Roger Hodkinson was saying that there would be a bell curve. From the middle of the bell curve to the right side would be people who would produce more of the spike protein than their systems could mop up. So those people would shed it in their breath and sweat and that could present a risk to people in close proximity for a long period of time. Would you say that's accurate?
- I would say it's completely accurate. And plausible. We wrote something about that. At the third-round review, that last reviewer who suggested talking about prions. And that's when we realized those exosomes are really crucial. Exosomes have been a big topic recently. It wasn't something researchers in biology were that aware of in the past. But right now they're really excited about them. And they're actually designing Covid-19 vaccines based on exosomes. They're proposing to use exosomes as a form of vaccination. Which is amazing because that's the last stage of what's happening with these immune cells. When they're in that spleen and they're furiously making the spike protein, it's very toxic to that cell and it's trying to survive, so it says ''I've got to get rid of this stuff,'' so it pushes all these little pelletsout into the circulation. And they go throughout the body. They go along the vagus nerve up to the brain, and cause all kinds of trouble there. But then they just exit right straight through the'....I think they're ending up in breast milk. There was actually an infant who died of thrombosis from breast-feeding from his mother who had been vaccinated. I was surprised but it makes sense because those exosomes would go out through the lungs, through the skin through the sweat. Their body is trying to get rid of this toxic thing that it's coping with. And the way to do that is to shed it. So somebody nearby could pick it up through skin contact or breathing it in. I think they could easily get it. I've heard people say, ''I hung out with my grandmother who was vaccinated, and I got sick. My periods got screwed up and all of a sudden, I got a really heavy period. I've always been very regular.'' I was getting stories like that. At first it was like that was really crazy, but it's a perfectly fine explanation based on these exosomes.
- You're saying this is not a small or subtle effect. What kind of contact or amount of contact is safe for vaccinated or non-vaccinated people?
- How do you know? I can't really say. I was really quite surprised. And it's not just one or two people. Of course, I'm watching for it, but I'm seeing a lot of stories on the web. Greg and I have talked to two or three women who have experience menstrual irregularities by hanging out with people who had been vaccinated. It's a completely plausible mechanism based on these exosomes which is the thing I'm most scared of at this point.
- The person who is distributing the spike protein throughout the body is just trying to get them somewhere else because they're so dangerous and that's how it's affecting the brain and it's also messing up the blood. It's just a nightmare. That spike protein really has become the most toxic part of the virus. And even people who have recovered from Covid and have ''long Covid'' or ''long-haul Covid'' with a lot of neurological symptoms and a lot of brain problems. Papers on that have shown that they are no longer infected. The virus is gone. But the spike protein is still there, and the spike protein is what's causing the damage.
- I have to dip into this magnet thing. I don't believe it's trauma at the injection site because there just isn't enough iron in the blood to hold a magnet to somebody's arm who's standing upright. There's a lot of papers that indicate that there's research that goes back a long time. It appears that they are using magnetic nanoparticles.
- And there's that ferritin. There's some kind of special form of ferritin. I've been scanning through that literature. It's quite shocking. There's actually literature about doing that in order to enhance the effect of these things. You can't believe they'd be doing that without saying what they're doing.
- Somehow, everybody in the world is being practically forced to have an experimental substance with a brand new technology forced into them for an ice cream cone or something. And the promise is that they will promise to give you back some of your most basic liberties if you get it. And then not give it to you. So if that's possible, anything is. Why do you say ''and not give it to you''?
- Because I think it was either the head of the UN or the head of the WHO, yesterday, they came out with a statement saying, ''Just because you have both inoculations doesn't mean that you can stop wearing a mask or that you have to stop social distancing or that you can go out like normal. Those measures have to continue,'' and he was very clear about it.
- I think we're tying to get the vaccine to just get this virus off their back so we can go back to normal living and that that's not happening, right?
- Especially in Canada. You guys are really under lock down there.
- Yeah, in Canada a very strange thing happened today where the chief medical fellow for the province of Nova Scotia openly said that people weren't going to be allowed to gather in groups because they wanted to control the dissemination of information. They actually said that.
- They actually said that. Amazing. And all the censorship that is going on is so shocking to me. Unbelievable. The Facebook'... Mercola getting completely disappeared from the web basically. Dr. Mercola is a friend of mine and he has done some amazing work. He has one article after the other on'...
- I've seen some of those videos. They're really really good. (Asks about follow-up).
- I would love to. I could talk about this forever. There's so much to say. I think individuals have no idea the degree to which an injection like this could cause long-term harm to them. They're thinking, ''it's just a vaccine. I'll endure it because they want me to.'' Even if they don't really want to, just because the government is pressuring them. They shouldn't. They really should stand their ground.
- I have a Hail Mary question for you. If a person did receive these vaccines, is there anything that they can do to mitigate the effects of it?
- I wish I knew. I would do the same thing I would advise in any case, which is to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 as well because there's a lot of things you can do to keep yourself healthy. And it's all about keeping your immune system healthy. Number one is to eat a certified organic diet. Stop eating foods that are contaminated with glyphosate. That is really central. Because if you don't have a lot of glyphosate wandering around your body, you're going to be a lot more robust against both the vaccine and the disease. And then getting out in the sunlight, making sure you have lots of vitamin D. Eating a lot of fresh vegetable and fruits, getting vitamin C, the B vitamins and minerals. Just basically eating high nutrient-dene foods like organic eggs and grass-fed beef and cruciferous vegetables. Lots of sulphur-containing foods, seafood is really healthy, clams and oysters and crabs and fish for the taurine. Eat whole foods, throw away the soy protein bar.
- Just for the record, glyphosate is that chemical we know as Roundup.
- Yes, it's all over the food supply. It's in the air, the water, the food supply. It's considered perfectly safe by the government. But the US government doesn't even bother to test. Actually Canada had a big initiative and they tested lots of different foods, both Canadian and imports, and a friend of mine, Tony Mitra, produced a book out of it. He was the one who got them to do it. They tested over 8000 foods.
- Tony's book was Poison Foods of North America. It's a dry book with a lot of data about all these different foods. But Canada found very high levels in garbanzo beans, in chickpeas, like hummus, these legumes, and also in wheat and oats, cookies, goldfish crackers. And very high levels in foods from Canada and the United States compared to Mexico, which came out much more like Europe. Europe had generally much lower levels than America did. Mexico has actually decided to ban glyphosate, they're going to wipe it out by 2024. The US government and Monsanto have been harassing them to back down. So far they have not. I'm very proud of Mexico. If Mexico bans glyphosate, it's going to be a real problem for the United States to be next door to Mexico.
- Mexico I heard also managed to defeat Covid-19 with Ivermectin.
- Yes, that's right. Ivermectin is a good one. I've been reading a lot about how excited people are about how well it's working. And I think if we had worked on trying to treat Covid, we would have reduced the death rate by a whole lot. And once you do that, on top of everything that's happening with these vaccines'... You know the vaccines are not even breaking even. They're basically hurting you more than they're helping you. Staying healthy is the key to preventing Covid-19. Keeping your immune system strong.
- It seems to me that the inverse of that formula is what the government is using. We can't let people treat Covid-19 because we need to get them to take the vaccine.
- I know. I see that. I've been not wanting to believe it, but it's become more and more clear to me that it's been an agenda all along. They've got this mRNA technology waiting to go out the gate. They love it. They think it's going to be their answer 'cause they're kind of striking out. Pharma's been having a lot of hard times right now, not able to come up with new drugs that are effective. They're thinking that this messenger RNA technology opens up a whole new suite of drugs that they're going to start pushing out. Now that they've got past this initial barrier of getting people to get used to it, to think that it's OK to inject this stuff into your body. I hope that something huge happens, that it becomes very obvious, so people stop this insanity. It's sad that you have to have a lot of bad things happen before people finally wake up. They should have known already just from what's available in the research literature. They should have known better than to do this.
- GLOSSARY:The alpha helix in proteins: the α helix, a common structural motif of proteins, consists of a right-handed helix with a repeat length of 3.6 amino acid residues per helical turn. The α helix is stabilized by hydrogen bonds between an amide hydrogen of one amino acid and a carbonyl oxygen four amino acids away.
- Alpha-synuclein: Alpha-synuclein is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the SNCA gene. Alpha-synuclein is a neuronal protein that regulates synaptic vesicle trafficking and subsequent neurotransmitter release. It is abundant in the brain, while smaller amounts are found in the heart, muscle and other tissues.
- Germinal centres in spleen: Germinal centres are specialized microstructures in secondary lymphoid organs (lymph nodes, spleen, Peyer's patches in the ileum), producing antibody-secreting plasma cells and memory B cells.
- Exosome: Exosomes are membrane-bound extracellular vesicles (EVs) that are produced in the endosomal compartment of most eukaryotic cells (eukaryotic: genetic material inside the nucleus of the cell). They carry nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and metabolites. They are mediators of near and long-distance intercellular communication in health and disease and affect various aspects of cell biology.
- Endosomes: Endosomes are primarily intracellular sorting organelles. They regulate trafficking of proteins and lipids among other subcellular compartments of the secretory and endocytic (process by which cells absorb material) pathway.
- Dendritic cells are a type of antigen-presenting cell (APC) that form an important role in the adaptive immune system. The main function of dendritic cells is to present antigens (like the spike protein) and the cells are therefore sometimes referred to as ''professional'' APCs.
- Plasmid: A plasmid is a small, circular, double-stranded DNA molecule that is distinct from a cell's chromosomal DNA. Plasmids naturally exist in bacterial cells, and they also occur in some eukaryotes. Often, the genes carried in plasmids provide bacteria with genetic advantages, such as antibiotic resistance.
- Ferritin: Ferritin is a universal intracellular protein that stores iron and releases it in a controlled fashion. The protein is produced by almost all living organisms, including archaea, bacteria, algae, higher plants, and animals.
- Taurine: Taurine, or 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, is an organic compound that is widely distributed in animal tissues. It is a major constituent of bile and can be found in the brain, retina, heart, and platelets. Taurine supports nerve growth, lowers blood pressure, improves heart function where there is fluid build-up, and helps liver function in people with hepatitis.
- Glyphosate: Commercially known as Roundup, it is a broad-spectrum herbicide and plant desiccant, used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf plants and grasses that compete with crops. It inhibits a plant enzyme (EPSP synthase) that is needed by the plant to make three essential amino acids (tyrosine, tryptophane, and phenylalanine).
- Important input from Scientist Madeline Weld:Dr. Seneff's background led her to have concerns about the Covid-19 vaccines that are being heavily promoted. These vaccines use a novel mRNA technology, and their long-term effects remain unknown. However, there is sufficient published scientific information to explain some of the mechanisms behind the adverse effects these vaccines are having now and what they might cause in the years and decades ahead. She anticipates an increase in autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, which take 10 to 15 years to manifest themselves.
- Regarding glyphosate (of which there is a whole chapter in her book), Dr. Seneff has concluded that it impairs the immune system, leading to immune deficiency and autoimmune disease. It increases the impact of Covid-19 by contributing to the ''cytokine storm,'' fluid in the lungs, hemorrhaging and thrombosis. (Glyphosate, commercially known as Roundup, is a widely used broad-spectrum herbicide used to kill weeds that compete with crops.)
- The ''spikes'' on the surface of the corona virus are made of a ''spike protein.'' The spike protein binds to ''ACE-2'' receptors on surface of a host cells, which enables the virus to inject its RNA into that cell (which then makes more viruses). The mRNA vaccines contain mRNA that codes for the spike protein of the coronavirus, so that the injected person's cells make the spike protein and activate their own immune system against it. Theoretically, their immune system will then be ready to fight the virus if they are exposed to it.
- But Dr. Seneff has concluded that the spike protein is a prion-like protein. Prion-like proteins cause diseases by inducing certain normal proteins to fold incorrectly. There is a list of proteins normally found in the body that are susceptible to misfolding in the presence of these prion-like proteins. Parkinson's disease is caused by the misfolding of the protein alpha-synuclein, Alzheimer's by the misfolding of amyloid beta, and ALS by the misfolding of TDP-43. Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), the human equivalent of mad cow disease, is also a prion disease. When misfolded proteins become too abundant in the cell's cytoplasm, they can start packing together in soluble fibrils or plaques, such as the amyloid beta sheets in Alzheimer's, and create tissue damage.
- The normal progression of Parkinson's disease could be illustrative of how the spike protein might act as a disease-producing prion. In Parkinson's disease, an amyloid protein (called curli) produced by E. coli in the gut, is transported by immune cells to the spleen. In the spleen's germinal centres (germinal centres are areas in lymphoid tissue where mature B cells, which produce antibodies, proliferate, differentiate, and mutate), the immune cells pack up the prion protein into little particles that they release as exosomes, which are membrane-bound extracellular vesicles. The cell is trying to get rid of these dangerous, misfolded proteins by exporting them in exosomes. These exosomes get transported by the vagus nerve to the brain stem and can also end up being coughed out, or shed in the sweat, and even possibly get into breast milk.
- A study in India has shown that when human cells are exposed to spike protein mRNA in vitro, they will make spike protein and then ship it out as exosomes. In another study, immune cells in the brain, called microglia, when exposed to those exosomes, became neurodegenerative. When those exosomes make their way to the brain, the microglia take them up and cause brain inflammation, brain damage, and neurodegenerative diseases.
- There is a specific pattern, called the glycine zipper, that is characteristic of prion-like proteins. It consists of two glycines (glycine is an amino acid) separated by any other three other amino acids (GXXXG). Amyloid beta, which causes Alzheimer's, has four glycine zippers. The spike protein has five.
- The spike protein is made by cells at the injection site under instruction of the mRNA in the vaccine, released from the cell, and attaches to an ACE-2 receptor on the cell membrane. There it is exposed to immune cells of the host so they can make their antibodies to it. But the spike protein coded for by the mRNA in the vaccine is a modified version of the virus spike protein. It is modified so that it doesn't get into the cell membrane but remains by stuck on the ACE-2 receptor, where it remains exposed to the immune system cells. But by remaining stuck on the ACE-2 receptor, the modified spike protein prevents that receptor from functioning. The shut down of the ACE-2 receptor might be causing some of the symptoms we're seeing, such as heart and blood problems, thrombosis, and loss of platelets.
- Although the content of the mRNA vaccines injected into the arm is supposed to stay in the arm, immune cells encountering the spike protein made at the injection site get ''excited'' about this unknown protein. These immune cells enter the lymphatic system from the arm. A lot of vaccinated women are getting swollen lymph nodes under the arm, which is characteristic of breast cancer. From the lymph nodes, the immune cells enter the lymphatic system and work their way to the spleen and into the germinal centres. They start making the spike protein in the germinal centres and releasing it via exosomes to the circulation. This is a complete set up for Parkinson's. It's been shown that exosomes made by something similar to the mRNA in the vaccines are taken up by the immune cells in the brain, causing an inflammatory response which damages brain tissue.
- The immune cells keep making the spike protein because the RNA in the vaccine has been engineered to be very sturdy. Normal RNA would just disintegrate if you injected it into the body. But they have added polyethylene glycol and changed one of the nucleotides in the vaccine RNA, among other things, to keep it from breaking down. This means that cells can't stop themselves from making the spike protein. It is when you have too much of a prion protein in the cytoplasm that you are in danger of having misfolding.
- And immune cells actually upregulate the production of alpha-synuclein (the misfolding of which leads to Parkinson's) in response to stress. And there is a lot of cells in the immune cells (dendritic cells) in the germinal centres in the spleen. Studies tracing the RNA show that the spleen is the organ which accumulated the highest levels, but it was also found in the liver, ovaries, and adrenal glands. It reaches those organs through the lymph system.
- Another possibility is that the RNA could be converted to DNA in the cell, which would then produce DNA plasmids. These plasmids would be able to reproduce themselves and infect precursor stem cells in the bone marrow. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the plasmids would get into the DNA in the nucleus of the cell and become a permanent part of the injected person's genome. A person producing high levels of spike protein might be shedding it in the breath or through the skin.
- Read more of RAIR's coverage on coronavirus vaccines:Warning: Long Term Effects of Myocarditis and Pericarditis from Covid Vaccines are 'Unclear'Pathologist Tackles Taboo Covid Topics: Are Vaccinated People Dangerous? Is Magnet Phenomenon Real? (Video)Renowned Pathologist: Myocarditis Diagnoses Should Halt Covid Vaccine (Interview)Virologist Sucharit Bhakdi Warns Parents: 'If You Give That Jab to Your Child You Are Committing a Crime' (Video)Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier '' Warns Covid Vaccine May Lead to 'Neurodegenerative Illness'ALERT: Luc Montagnier Did NOT Say Vaccine Would Kill People in Two Years '' Here's What he DID Say (Video)Bombshell: Nobel Prize Winner Reveals '' Covid Vaccine is 'Creating Variants'Exposed: Virologist Reveals New Covid Cases Appearing in Vaccinated Patients in French Nursing Homes (Video)Warning: Vaccines are Not 'Approved' '' Media and Big Tech are Lying to YouVaccine Coercion: Racist Democrats Target Pregnant Black Christian Women (Watch)BEWARE: Disgraced Lincoln Project Unites with Left-Wing Group to Coerce Conservatives to Take Vaccine (Watch)Warning: Young Women Experience Highest Blood Clot Risk from Leading VaccinesWARNING: EU Medical Chief Pushing Fatal AstraZeneca Vaccine Exposed as Pharma Lobbyist (Video)WARNING: Left-Wing Fights To Morph Pandemic Lockdowns into Climate LockdownsCOVID PLOT: Gay Man Who Fled Venezuela Warns Communists Are Taking Over Canada (Video)Breaking: Famous Doctor Develops Safe Vaccine Against COVID; Germany Prosecutes Him (Video)BEWARE: Biden Targets 'Vaccine Deniers;' Smears Trump5 Questions To Answer Before You Get the Coronavirus VaccineVirologist Sucharit Bhakdi: 'Healthy People Aren't Dangerous' but the Vaccine IS (Video)Netherlands Vaccine Propaganda: 'Until We Are All Vaccinated '' Wait To Get Pregnant' (Video)ALERT: Socialist Spain Keeps Register of Vaccine Refusers '' 27 Countries Receive List of NamesDire Warning: Prominent Virologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi Exposes 'Major Risks' of Gene-Altering Vaccine (Video)BREAKING: Left-Wing 'Trusted News Initiative' will Ban Posts Challenging Coronavirus Vaccine (Plot Exposed)WARNING: Renowned Virologist Sucharit Bhakdi Warns Against Hastily Created Gene-Altering Coronavirus Vaccine (video)ALERT: Mandatory Coronavirus Vaccinations Coming to Spain (Video)Merkel Releases Ultimatum: Get Vaccinated or Be Banished (Video)
- VIDEO - Unvaccinated people are 'variant factories,' infectious diseases expert says - CNN
- (CNN)Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They're also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say.
- That's because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.
- "Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday.
- "The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply," Schaffner said.
- "When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road."
- All viruses mutate, and while the coronavirus is not particularly mutation-prone, it does change and evolve.
- Most of the changes mean nothing to the virus, and some can weaken it. But sometimes, a virus develops a random mutation that gives it an advantage -- better transmissibility, for instance, or more efficient replication, or an ability to infect a great diversity of hosts.
- Viruses with an advantage will outcompete other viruses, and will eventually make up the majority of virus particles infecting someone. If that infected person passes the virus to someone else, they'll be passing along the mutant version.
- If a mutant version is successful enough, it becomes a variant.
- But it has to replicate to do that. An unvaccinated person provides that opportunity.
- "As mutations come up in viruses, the ones that persist are the ones that make it easier for the virus to spread in the population," Andrew Pekosz, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN.
- "Every time the viruses changes, that gives the virus a different platform to add more mutations. Now we have viruses that spread more efficiently."
- Viruses that don't spread cannot mutate.
- Variants have arisen all over the world -- the B.1.1.7 or Alpha variant was first seen in England. The B.1.351 or Beta variant was first spotted in South Africa. The Delta variant, also called B.1.617.2, was seen first in India. And the US has thrown up several of its own variants, including the B.1.427 or Epsilon lineage first seen in California, and the B.1.526 or Eta variant first seen in New York.
- Already, one new variant has swept much of the world. Last summer, a version of the virus carrying a mutation called D614G went from Europe to the US and then the rest of the world. The change made the virus more successful -- it replicated better -- so that version took over from the original strain that emerged from China. It appeared before people starting naming the variants, but it became the default version of the virus.
- Most of the newer variants added changes to D614G. The Alpha variant, or B.1.1.7, became the dominant variant in the US by late spring thanks to its extra transmissibility. Now the Delta variant is even more transmissible, and it's set to become the dominant variant in many countries, including the US.
- The current vaccines protect well against all the variants so far, but that could change at any moment. That's why doctors and public health officials want more people to get vaccinated.
- "The more we allow the virus to spread, the more opportunity the virus has to change," the World Health Organization advised last month.
- Vaccines are not widely available in many countries. But in the US, there is plenty of supply, with slowing demand. Just 18 states have fully vaccinated more than half their residents, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- "Currently, approximately 1,000 counties in the United States have vaccination coverage of less than 30%. These communities, primarily in the Southeast and Midwest, are our most vulnerable. In some of these areas, we are already seeing increasing rates of disease," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told a White House briefing Thursday.
- "Every time we see the virus circulating in the population, particularly a population that has pockets of immune people, vaccinated people, and pockets of unvaccinated people, you have a situation where the virus can probe," Pekosz said.
- If a virus tries to infect someone with immunity, it may fail, or it may succeed and cause a mild or asymptomatic infection. In that case, it will replicate in response to the pressure from a primed immune system.
- Like a bank robber whose picture is on wanted posters everywhere, the virus that succeeds will be the virus that makes a random change that makes it look less visible to the immune system.
- Those populations of unvaccinated people give the virus the change not only to spread, but to change.
- "All it takes is one mutation in one person," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and immunologist at Boston College.
- CNN's Virginia Langmaid contributed to this story
- VIDEO - Jeep With Family Inside Struck by Lightning on Highway - YouTube
- Articles
- Cyberbullying Insurance Is Here. Do You Need It? - WSJ
- If you're a victim of cyberbullying, you might be entitled to compensation.
- Insurance tech startup Waffle in May began offering stand-alone cyberprotection policies underwritten by Chubb that include cyberbullying and other cyber risks such as identity theft or extortion. The policies are intended to help victims recover costs associated with cyberbullying, such as legal fees, mental health services, tutoring to cover missed school or relocation costs if bullying was so bad that a student had to move to a new school.
- ''Mark my words, in five years every major insurance company will offer this,'' Waffle Chief Executive Officer Quentin Coolen said.
- Personal cyber insurance is still a nascent category. Only about 10% of U.S. consumers who own Internet-connected devices said they have insurance to help them recover from a cyberattack, and 74% said they're unwilling, or don't know whether they're willing, to pay more for cyber-risk coverage, according to a 2019 survey commissioned by the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group.
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- The question is: Do you really need it?
- Specific damages from cyberbullying must be demonstrated for a policy to kick in. The bullying must lead to wrongful job termination in the case of an adult, false arrest, unfair discipline at school or an inability to attend work or school due to psychological injury, according to Patrick Thielen, a senior vice president at Chubb.
- A common form of cyberbullying among kids is using social media accounts against someone. Kids often share social media or online gaming passwords with one another, according to digital safety experts and teens I've interviewed. Sometimes they do it so a friend can help them level-up in a game or maintain their Snapchat streak, an unbroken series of snaps sent back and forth between friends for consecutive days.
- A bully'--which can be a peer or an adult'--who gets hold of a password can post offensive things from an account, getting the account holder in trouble. Or, a bully can create a fake account in someone's name and post things that could get that person suspended from school or fired from a job.
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- Deep fakes, such as pasting a photo of a teen's face on the body of someone else engaging in illegal or inappropriate behavior, can also be created to get someone in trouble.
- Undoing the reputational harm caused by an account takeover or deep fake can require hiring a lawyer and a digital forensics expert to prove it wasn't the victim who posted the content. The psychological effects of bullying can require mental health treatment. In extreme cases, some kids have killed themselves due to cyberbullying, according to news reports.
- If a mental health professional determines a victim to be at risk of suicide, and prescribes psychiatric or other services, those would be covered by the policy, according to Chubb's Mr. Thielen. Funeral expenses wouldn't be covered, he said.
- ''As the threat landscape moves from attacking businesses to attacking individuals and families, I think it makes sense to have this kind of insurance,'' said Jack Koziol, CEO of Infosec, a cybersecurity education firm. He said he has a cyber-risk policy for his own family that includes cyberbullying protection.
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- Some digital-safety experts argue that cyberbullying insurance is superfluous and could cover things already covered by other types of insurance: Mental-health services that might be needed likely would be covered under a family's health-insurance plan. And since most banks and credit-card companies are pretty good about reimbursing account holders for fraudulent activity, paying for financial fraud protection might be an unnecessary expense.
- ''Insurance doesn't solve the problem of cyberbullying. Our time and energy should go toward remedies on the front end,'' said Diana Graber, who teaches digital literacy to students and families. (See below for ways to prevent cyberbullying.)
- Premiums and coverage amounts for cyber-risk policies vary, but for a monthly premium of about $5, families can get coverage of up to $10,000 under Chubb's cyberprotection plan, while a monthly premium of about $20 can get families coverage of up to $100,000. Chubb declined to say how many cyber policies it has sold, or how many claims have been filed. In addition to Waffle and Chubb, there are a few other insurance companies that offer cyberbullying protection, including New England insurer Arbella and global insurer AIG.
- What if your child is the bully? Some homeowners and umbrella policies include personal-injury protection that could cover a parent's legal expenses if they are held liable for their child's actions. It's best to check with your insurance agent to understand exactly what coverage is included in your policy.
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- Some homeowners policies can include endorsements, or add-ons, that provide protection for victims of cyberattacks, but they don't cover cyberbullying. State Farm offers them for cyberattacks, identity restoration and fraud loss on its homeowners policies, but bullying protection isn't included. Allstate doesn't offer cyberbullying insurance either, nor does it plan to, according to Jeff Wright, Allstate's chief information security officer. Allstate offers a free cybersafety course for schools, which includes lessons on cyberbullying.
- ''It's a very fragmented space if you provide coverage for each type of bad thing that can happen,'' Mr. Wright said. ''My money is more on knowledge and prevention.''
- What you can doThere are ways to safeguard social media and online gaming accounts to prevent identity theft and account takeovers, as well as ways to handle online bullying before it becomes a bigger problem. Here's some advice from experts.
- Teach good digital citizenship. As soon as your child has an internet-connected device, it's time to begin talking to them about behaving online the same way they're expected to behave in person.
- Report bad actors. Experts say children should report any ongoing online harassment to a trusted adult and collect evidence by taking screenshots. It's a good idea for parents and kids to read the terms of service for any social media app or online game they have so that they know what's considered unacceptable behavior on the platform and the mechanisms for reporting it.
- Kids should learn to unfollow or block people who are bullying them, but Sue Scheff, author of ''Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate,'' cautions that blocking someone will only prevent a child from seeing what the bully is posting on their account. Ms. Scheff, who won a defamation suit against someone who harassed her online, said she maintains secondary accounts so she can monitor what others say about her online, and she advises parents to do that for their children if they've been bullied.
- Manage passwords. Kids should avoid sharing passwords to their accounts, even with trusted friends. ''Treat your password like a toothbrush: don't share it, and change it often,'' said Infosec's Mr. Koziol.
- Parents can use a password manager to keep track of passwords and access their kids' accounts, if needed. Password managers can generate strong passwords that are difficult to hack. My colleague Nicole Nguyen recommends 1Password and explains the pros and cons of others in this column.
- Mr. Koziol suggests changing passwords twice a year and enabling two-factor authentication, or 2FA, on accounts, which requires an extra code to be entered before logging in.
- Keep tech up-to-date. It may be annoying to have to run updates on all of your devices, but it's important. Software updates include important security patches to keep hackers out.
- '--For more Family & Tech columns, advice and answers to your most pressing family-related technology questions, sign up for my weekly newsletter.
- Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
- Smokers of menthol cigarettes have a harder time quitting - STAT
- A new study published Tuesday finds that smoking menthol cigarettes versus unflavored cigarettes is associated with reduced success in quitting among people who smoke nearly every day.
- In recent years, the FDA has moved to ban almost all flavored cigarettes and cigars, but menthol has remained the lone holdout. Even so, the agency proposed such a ban in April, and researchers say the new findings support this ban.
- In the study published in Tobacco Control, a BMJ journal, researchers at the University of California, San Diego found that menthol-cigarette smokers '-- who made up nearly 40% of those in the study '-- had a significantly harder time quitting than non-menthol smokers. Use of menthol cigarettes prior to attempting to quit decreased the probability of a smoker being able to abstain for more than one month by 28%, and for more than one year by 53%, compared to those who didn't smoke menthol cigarettes.
- ''This [current study] is the best data we have so far from an observational study,'' said Eric Leas, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego and first author of the study. ''It's confirming [the FDA's] choice'' to ban menthol.
- Cigarette makers began adding menthol '-- known for its cooling and numbing properties '-- to cigarettes in the 1920s as a way to reduce the irritation caused by cigarette smoke. For years, menthol use has worried public health experts who say it makes it easier for young people to start smoking and leads smokers to potentially consume more tobacco and nicotine, increasing the risk of addiction.
- Health experts have also been concerned about the disproportionate impact on certain minority groups. For instance, 85% of Black smokers use menthol cigarettes compared to 30% of white smokers. Black smokers also tend to have lower quitting rates, which is one of the reasons the researchers behind the new study decided to explore the link between menthol use and smoking cessation in vulnerable populations, said Leas. ''It's a clear signal in the data.''
- Previous studies had examined the effect of menthol in cigarettes and similarly found that menthol makes it harder for smokers who quit to stay off smoking, but these were largely conducted in smaller groups. This new study, however, looked at this relationship in one of the largest cohorts '-- roughly 46,000 individuals '-- studied for tobacco use.
- The scientists used data from an FDA-funded nationwide survey called Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health to examine the probability of people abstaining from smoking for 30 days and 12 months. The people in the nationally representative sample '-- 17% of whom were Black Americans '-- were surveyed four times between 2013 and 2018, allowing researchers to track smoking habits in specific individuals. This design also allowed the researchers to identify transitions between menthol and non-menthol use and the factors that might have contributed to the continued use of cigarettes.
- The researchers found that individuals who switched from menthol cigarettes to unflavored cigarettes had a higher likelihood of quitting than those who maintained menthol use. Participants were considered to have attempted to quit if they reported doing so by trying to gradually scale back the number of cigarettes smoked, or by trying to quit entirely.
- The study also found that the association between menthol use and difficulty quitting was more pronounced in non-Hispanic Black smokers. This finding ''indicates the continued threat that menthol poses for the health of Black Americans,'' said Geoffrey Fong, chief principal investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project and a professor at University of Waterloo in Canada.
- The new study ''would be another reason why the FDA should go ahead with their plan in the next year and go through regulations to ban menthol cigarettes,'' said Fong, who was not involved with the study but was part of the group that conceived the PATH survey.
- Such bans have shown success elsewhere. Canada, for instance, enacted a similar ban on menthol-flavored tobacco products in 2017, and followup studies have validated the effectiveness of the ban, showing that more smokers quit.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the maker of Newport cigarettes, the best-selling menthol brand in the U.S., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
- The study's authors say that they next plan to assess whether menthol use could also impact other aspects of smoking, such as initiation, which would be critical for young smokers. ''The scientific evidence is very clear about the benefits of a ban and the continued greater devastation among those who are smoking menthol,'' said Fong. ''Menthol is not a good thing to have in cigarettes.''
- Canada's National Archive Cancels Country's First Prime Minister '' Summit News
- censorship New attempt to lobby for deplatforming of Fox News host.
- Chip Somodevilla via Getty ImagesCNN hosts Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy asserted that ''Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones'' during Stelter's show after they played clips where Carlson's rhetoric was similar to Jones' on several different issues.
- After Stelter asked Darcy about the comparison, Darcy remarked, ''Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones '' if you watch Tucker Carlson's program and you watch Alex Jones' program '' they might differ a little bit in antics and the way they deliver their message, but that message to viewers is consistent and it's pretty identical.''
- Darcy went on to claim that Carlson mirrored Jones in pushing ''vaccine conspiracy theories, false flag conspiracy theories, deep state conspiracy theories.''
- Stelter then pressed Darcy on whether Jones and Carlson were close friends after playing a clip where Jones said he would let Tucker tackle an issue first on his show.
- ''Are these two guys in cahoots? Are they friends, do they communicate'...are they bros, what do we know about their relationship?'' asked Stelter.
- Tucker Carlson is Alex Jones. pic.twitter.com/W2xIMHhQI1
- '-- Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 4, 2021
- ''It does sound like they're talking to each other,'' responded Darcy, without explaining why in any way this would be an issue.
- Darcy then complained that Tucker seemingly thinks Alex Jones voices ideas ''that are legitimate and should be debated,'' before labeling them ''far right conspiracy theories.''
- ''I remember when Fox News and the Republican party mocked Alex Jones and said that guy is crazy, we're not gonna touch that sort of stuff, but now, Fox's face is effectively Alex Jones '' the de facto leader of the Republican party is touting the same stuff that Jones touts on his show,'' said Darcy.
- Stelter then concluded the segment by attempting to dismiss Carlson's claim that the NSA is spying on his emails.
- Jones himself responded to the hit piece by pointing out that it is merely a ruse to amplify attempts to deplatform Tucker Carlson.
- Stelter and Darcy were instrumental in lobbying for Jones to be censored when he was banned by multiple platforms back in 2018.
- By asserting that Tucker Carlson is no different from Jones, CNN is hoping to pressure Fox News higher-ups and social media networks to drop the ban hammer on Carlson just like they did on Trump and Jones.
- The agenda couldn't be any clearer.
- CNN has been hemorrhaging viewers since the start of the year, as experts warn of a ''serious credibility problem'' caused by the network's fawning obsequiousness towards the Biden administration.
- Fox News' average viewership has been around double that of CNN during the second quarter, while Brian Stelter's Reliable Sources show has lost a massive 56 per cent of its viewership since Biden took office.
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- censorship ISP threatens to terminate service permanently.
- SOPA Images via Getty ImagesAfter Comcast suspended a user's Internet access for downloading copyrighted material, some people are asking whether in the near future similar punishments could be inflicted for accessing 'offensive content'.
- A Comcast Xfinity subscriber was informed that his Internet service had been suspended for 8 hours due to downloading torrents and that it wouldn't be restored until he contacted the company.
- ''This alert is to let you know that this month, we again received notifications of alleged copyright infringement associated with your Xfinity account. That means your Internet service may have been used repeatedly to copy or share a movie, show, song, game, or other content without any required permission,'' said the email to the customer.
- The user was told that further violations would result in another 12 hour suspension and that, ''Further notifications may result in your Xfinity Internet account being suspended again or terminated.''
- ISP Cox also previously handed out a 6 month suspension against a user after receiving multiple complaints.
- ''Such terminations have the potential to disrupt everything from distance learning to telework and telemedicine,'' reports Torrent Freak.
- Indeed, now that things like grocery shopping, banking, housing, government services and other basic life necessities are mainly conducted online (exclusively in some cases), cutting off someone's Internet access isn't far removed from cutting off their power or water supply.
- And if major ISPs are willing to bow to the entertainment industry by metering out such draconian punishments, what's to say they won't do the same when pressured by governments or woke mobs?
- ''If Comcast is cutting people's internet off for civil copyright infractions, whose to say they won't start cutting people off for ''hate speech'' next?'' asks Chris Menahan.
- ''The same measures the US government used to seize the domains of torrent sites a decade ago are now being used to seize Middle East news websites the Biden regime doesn't fancy.''
- He is referring to the Iranian news website Press TV and similar sites, which Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last month had been seized by the FBI.
- This all underscores the fact that Internet access should be treated as a utility and protected by law.
- Follow on Twitter: Follow @PrisonPlanet
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- In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.
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- censorship CNN spins it as a failure on behalf of Facebook, while lobbying for more censorship.
- NurPhoto via Getty ImagesEmails obtained by CNN reveal how the Biden campaign pressured Facebook to censor President Donald Trump before the 2020 election.
- The messages reveal how Biden campaign officials repeatedly insisted that Facebook remove information that it deemed to be 'violent rhetoric', a concern that seemed to be absent during months of leftists rioting and burning down entire city blocks throughout the summer.
- After a deluge of public and private complaints by members of Biden's team and other Democrats, a former Biden campaign staffer said Facebook ''essentially did nothing'' in response.
- The focus was primarily on the official Team Trump account, with Biden officials infuriated that Facebook didn't remove enough videos that warned people of upcoming election fraud.
- Gee, I wonder why they were concerned about that.
- ''It was the most frustrating series of conversations,'' a Biden aide said. ''We went to Facebook with a series of letters, public complaints, private emails and all throughout, they essentially did nothing.''
- Naturally, CNN spins the story as an example of how Facebook failed to clamp down on ''misinformation,'' despite the social network giant banning many of Trump's most prominent supporters before the election and engaging in industrial-scale levels of censorship of pro-Trump content.
- ''Not only the election but also the January 6 breach in Washington DC are thrown in as yet more evidence that Facebook was not diligent enough in suppressing and censoring information, because it allowed protesters to use it to plan their activities (at the time, though, legacy media like CNN accused independent alternative platforms as hubs for this, leading the charge in what resulted in wiping some of them off the social media map),'' writes Didi Rankovic.
- CNN's narrative is to blame Facebook for not censoring enough and scolding it for facilitating the January 6th ''insurrection,'' despite the MSM initially blaming the likes of Gab and Parler for the incident at the Capitol Building.
- ''Fears are growing about the role Facebook misinformation could play in the 2022 midterms and beyond,'' states the CNN report.
- In other words, despite its notoriously censorial standpoint against conservatives and Trump supporters, CNN needs to ban and blacklist even more anti-leftist content before 2022.
- The entire farce is just CNN lobbying for more censorship and since Facebook is completely in bed with Democrats and the deep state, they'll be sure to get it.
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- Fiery explosion erupts on ship at major global port in Dubai - ABC News
- Authorities in Dubai say a fiery explosion erupted on a container ship anchored at one of the world's largest ports, sending tremors across the commercial hub of the United Arab Emirates
- By ISABEL DEBRE and AYA BATRAWY Associated Press
- FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010 file photo, container ships dock at the Dubai Port in the Jebel Ali Free Zone about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Authorities in Dubai say a container ship anchored at its huge port caught fire, causing an explosion that sent tremors across the commercial hub of the United Arab Emirates. The Twitter post from Dubai's state-run media office said the fire was reported on the ship late Wednesday, July 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)
- DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A fiery explosion erupted on a container ship anchored in Dubai at one of the world's largest ports late Wednesday, authorities said, sending tremors across the commercial hub of the United Arab Emirates.
- There were no immediate reports of casualties, and it was unclear what triggered the blast.
- The blaze sent up giant orange flames from a vessel at the Jebel Ali Port, the busiest in the Middle East. Jebel Ali sits on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula and is also the busiest port of call for American warships outside the U.S.
- The combustion unleashed a shock wave through the city of Dubai, causing walls and windows to shake in neighborhoods as far as 25 kilometers (15 miles) away from the port. Residents filmed from their high-rises as a fiery ball illuminated the night sky. The blast was powerful enough to be seen from space by satellite.
- Some 2 1/2 hours after the blast, Dubai's civil defense teams said they had brought the fire under control and started the ''cooling process.'' Authorities posted footage on social media of firefighters dousing giant shipping containers. The glow of the blaze remained visible in the background as civil defense crews worked to contain the fire.
- The extent of damage to the sprawling port and surrounding cargo was not immediately clear. Footage shared on social media of the aftermath showed charred containers, ashes and littered debris.
- The sheer force and visibility of the explosion suggested the presence of a combustible substance. Dubai authorities told the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV that the crew had evacuated in time and that the fire appeared to have started in one of the containers holding flammable material, without elaborating.
- Seeking to downplay the explosion, Mona al-Marri, director general of the Dubai Media Office, told Al-Arabiya the incident ''could happen anywhere in the world'' and that authorities were investigating the cause.
- The Jebel Ali Port at the northern end of Dubai is the largest man-made deep-water harbor in the world and serves cargo from the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Asia. The port is not only a critical global cargo hub, but a lifeline for Dubai and surrounding emirates, serving as the point of entry for essential imports.
- Dubai authorities did not identify the stricken ship beyond saying it was a small vessel with a capacity of 130 containers.
- Ship tracker MarineTraffic showed a fleet of small support vessels surrounding a docked container ship called the Ocean Trader flagged in Comoros. Footage from the scene rebroadcast by the UAE's state-run WAM news agency showed firefighters hosing down a vessel bearing paint and logo that corresponds to the Ocean Trader, operated by the Dubai-based Inzu Ship Charter.
- The Ocean Trader docked at Jebel Ali Port at midday Wednesday. Ship tracking data showed the vessel had been sailing up and down the coast of the UAE since April. The United Nations ship database identified the vessel's owners as Sash Shipping corporation. Sash and Inzu Ship Charter did not immediately respond to request for comment.
- Operated by the Dubai-based DP World, Jebel Ali Port boasts a handling capacity of over 22 million containers and sprawling terminals that can berth some of the world's largest ships. Port officials said they were ''taking all necessary measures to ensure that the normal movement of vessels continues without any disruption."
- State-owned DP World describes Jebel Ali Port as a ''gateway hub'' and a ''vital link in the global trade network'' that connects eastern and western markets. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment on the blast.
- Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Hamilton, Ohio, contributed to this report.
- Police capture, kill alleged assailants in assassination of Haitian President - The Washington Post
- Police killed four alleged assailants and arrested two others suspected of assassinating Haitian President Jovenel Mo¯se, in an attack that has escalated a spiraling political and security crisis in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
- The gunmen have not been identified, but Communications Minister Pradel Henriquez described them as ''foreigners.''
- The motivation for Wednesday's overnight attack is currently unknown. Mo¯se, 53, dissolved parliament in January 2020 and ruled by decree as opponents and protesters demanded that he step down. Armed gangs with unclear allegiances have seized control of growing portions of the country, terrorizing the population with kidnappings, rapes and killings.
- ''He had obviously many enemies,'' said Robert Fatton, a politics professor and expert on Haiti from the University of Virginia. ''There might have been some degree of complicity on the part of those protecting the president.''
- His death raises questions around who is in charge of the country. Mo¯se had been due to install Ariel Henry, a neurologist, as prime minister on Wednesday after dismissing his predecessor, Claude Joseph '-- the latest in a revolving door of prime ministers. It was Joseph who announced Mo¯se's killing on Wednesday morning and said he was now the head of Haiti's government.
- However, in a separate Associated Press interview, Henry appeared to contradict Joseph. ''It's an exceptional situation. There is a bit of confusion,'' he said. ''I am the prime minister in office.''
- Haitian President Jovenel Mo¯se assassinated at his home by unidentified gunmen
- The leadership vacuum is a potential powder keg in a nation grappling with deepening economic, political and social woes, with gang violence spiking in the capital Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling, and food and fuel becoming scarcer in a country where 60 percent of the population makes less than $2 a day.
- ''The past 30 years have been one calamity after another, and now it is getting more serious,'' Fatton said. ''We have two individuals vying for the position of prime minister. The economy is in terrible shape. The covid situation is deteriorating. No one is vaccinated. And then you have the security situation. The police are completely fragmented, and some members of gangs are former police officers.''
- A man looks at the bullet holes in a car outside the presidential residence on July 7, 2021, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP/Getty Images)
- The Supreme Court's chief justice, who might be expected to help provide stability in a crisis, died recently of covid-19.
- Fatton said Haiti '-- which was subject to a controversial U.N. stabilization mission between 2004 and 2017 '-- could face another such intervention if the security situation worsens after the president's murder.
- The U.N. Security Council condemned the assassination on Wednesday and called on all parties to ''remain calm, exercise restraint and to avoid any act that could contribute to further instability.''
- In a statement, the 15-member council ''made an emphatic call on all political stakeholders in Haiti to refrain from any acts of violence and any incitement to violence.'' It also called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
- The council is due to be briefed on Mo¯se's assassination in a closed-door meeting on Thursday.
- World leaders were quick to condemn the assassination on Wednesday. President Biden said he was ''shocked and saddened to hear of the horrific assassination'' and condemned ''this heinous act.''
- Despite the turmoil, State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was still the view of the United States that elections this year should proceed. Mo¯se had been ruling by decree for more than a year after failing to hold elections, and the opposition demanded he step down in recent months, saying he was leading it toward yet another grim period of authoritarianism.
- Jake Johnston, a Haiti specialist from the Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, called for patience from the international community, saying a push for new elections in the current state of turmoil was an ''extremely dangerous game.''
- Rather than going through with rushed elections, Haitian civil society organizations before Mo¯se's assassination had proposed a negotiated departure for the president and his replacement through a nonpartisan transitional government that could undertake needed reforms and eventually oversee a secure and credible transition back to democracy. The Biden administration, the U.N. Security Council and the Organization of American States had all rejected this path forward.
- ''There's multiple crises happening here. There's a massive food crisis. Hurricane season is approaching. The economic crisis is deepening,'' said Johnston. ''Rather than trying to rush in and solve the situation, international actors should exercise some patience.''
- The assassination could pose another big test for the Biden administration, observers said, if it fans a wave of Haitian immigration.
- Gang violence and the coronavirus outbreak are both worsening. A shooting rampage in the streets of Port-au-Prince last week left at least 15 people dead. At least 278 Haitians have been killed this year in attacks that have prompted some citizens to flee the capital, traveling by boat and plane to avoid dangerous, gang-controlled roads.
- What to know about Haiti, where President Jovenel Mo¯se was just assassinated
- A timeline of Haiti's political turmoil in pictures
- Haitians in the United States fear for homeland following assassination
- Orthohantavirus - Wikipedia
- Orthohantavirus is a genus of single-stranded, enveloped, negative-sense RNA viruses in the family Hantaviridae of the order Bunyavirales.[3] Members of this genus may be called orthohantaviruses or simply hantaviruses. They normally cause infection in rodents, but do not cause disease in them.[3] Humans may become infected with hantaviruses through contact with rodent urine, saliva, or feces. Some strains cause potentially fatal diseases in humans, such as hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), or hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), also known as hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS),[4] while others have not been associated with known human disease.[5] HPS (HCPS) is a "rare respiratory illness associated with the inhalation of aerosolized rodent excreta (urine and feces) contaminated by hantavirus particles."[4]
- Human infections of hantaviruses have almost entirely been linked to human contact with rodent excrement; however, in 2005 and 2019, human-to-human transmission of the Andes virus was reported in South America.[5]
- Hantavirus is named for the Hantan River area in South Korea, where an early outbreak was observed,[6] and was isolated in 1976 by Ho Wang Lee.
- Disease Edit Hantavirus infections in humans are associated with two diseases: hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, caused by Old World and New World hantaviruses, respectively. Common characteristics of the two include increased vascular permeability, causing hypotension, thrombocytopenia, and leucocytosis. The pulmonary illness is the more fatal of the two, whereas the hemorrhagic fever is much more common. Treatment for both is primarily supportive as there is no specific treatment for hantavirus infections.[7] While many hantaviruses cause either of the two diseases, some are not known to cause illness, such as the Prospect Hill orthohantavirus.[8]
- Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome Edit Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is caused chiefly by hantaviruses in Asia and Europe. Clinical presentation varies from subclinical to fatal, depending on the virus. After an incubation period of 2''4 weeks, the typical illness starts with non-specific symptoms such as high fever, chills, headache, backache, abdominal pains, nausea, and vomiting. After the initial period, bleeding under the skin begins, often paired with low blood pressure, followed by further internal bleeding throughout the body. Renal dysfunction leading to further health issues begins thereafter, which may cause death.[7] A more mild form of HFRS that occurs in Europe is called "nephropathia epidemica" (NE).[9] Trench nephritis during World War I is now thought to have been HFRS.
- Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome Edit Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), also called hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), is usually caused by hantaviruses in the Americas. Its incubation period ranges from 16 to 24 days. Illness initially shows similar symptoms as HFRS. After a few days of non-specific symptoms, sudden onset of progressive, or productive, coughing, shortness of breath, and elevated heart rate occur due to fluid buildup in the lungs. These symptoms are accompanied by impairment of lymphoid organs. Death from cardiovascular shock may occur rapidly after the appearance of severe symptoms.[7][8] While HCPS is typically associated with New World hantaviruses, the Puumala orthohantavirus in Europe has also caused the syndrome on rare occasions.[9]
- Transmission Edit Hantaviruses are transmitted by contact with the bodily fluids of rodents, particularly from saliva from bites and especially from inhalation of viral particles from urine and feces in aerosols. The manner of transmission is the same for both diseases caused by hantaviruses. Among the HCPS-causing hantaviruses is the Andes orthohantavirus, which is the only hantavirus confirmed to be capable of spreading from person to person, though this is rare.[7][8]
- Characteristics Edit Structure Edit Hantavirus virions are about 120''160 nm in diameter. The lipid bilayer of the viral envelope is about 5 nm thick and is embedded with viral surface proteins to which sugar residues are attached. These glycoproteins, known as Gn and Gc, are encoded by the M segment of the viral genome. They tend to associate (heterodimerize) with each other and have both an interior tail and an exterior domain that extends to about 6 nm beyond the envelope surface.[citation needed ]
- Inside the envelope are the nucleocapsids. These are composed of many copies of the nucleocapsid protein N, which interact with the three segments of the viral genome to form helical structures. The virally encoded RNA polymerase is also found in the interior. By mass, the virion is greater than 50% protein, 20''30% lipid, and 2''7% carbohydrate. The density of the virions is 1.18 g/cm3. These features are common to all members of the family Hantaviridae.[citation needed ]
- Genome Edit The genome of hantaviruses is negative-sense, single-stranded RNA. Their genomes are composed of three segments: the small (S), medium (M), and large (L) segments. The S segment, 1-3 kilobases (kb) in length, encodes for the nucleocapsid (N) protein. The M segment, 3.2-4.9 kb in length, encodes a glycoprotein precursor polyprotein that is co-translationally cleaved into the envelope glycoproteins Gn and Gc, alternatively called G1 and G2. The L segment, 6.8''12 kb in length, encodes the L protein which functions primarily as the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase used for transcription and replication.[8][10]
- Within virions, the genomic RNAs of hantaviruses are thought to complex with the N protein to form helical nucleocapsids, the RNA component of which circularizes due to sequence complementarity between the 5' and 3' terminal sequences of genomic segments.[citation needed ]
- As with other Bunyavirales, each of the three segments has a consensus 3'-terminal nucleotide sequence (AUCAUCAUC), which is complementary to the 5'-terminal sequence and is distinct from those of the other four genera in the family.[11] These sequences appear to form panhandle structure which seem likely to play a role in replication and encapsidation facilitated by binding with the viral nucleocapsid (N) protein.[12] The large segment is 6530''6550 nucleotides (nt) in length, the medium is 3613''3707 nt in length and the small is 1696''2083 nt in length.[citation needed ]
- No nonstructural proteins are known, unlike the other genera in this family. At the 5' and 3' of each segment are short noncoding sequences: the noncoding segment in all sequences at the 5' end is 37''51 nt. The 3' noncoding regions differ: L segment 38''43 nt; M segment 168''229 nt; and S segment 370''730 nt. The 3' end of the S segment is conserved between the genera suggesting a functional role.[citation needed ]
- Lifecycle Edit Viral entry into host cells initiates by binding to surface cell receptors. Integrins are considered to be the main receptors for hantaviruses in vitro, but complement decay-accelerating factor (DAF) and globular heads of complement C1q receptor (gC1qR) have mediated attachment in cultured cells too. Entry may proceed through a number of possible routes, including clathrin-dependent endocytosis, clathrin-independent receptor-mediated endocytosis, and micropinocytosis. Viral particles are then transported to late endosomes. Gc-mediated membrane fusion with the endosomal membrane, triggered by low pH, releases the nucleocapsid into the cytoplasm.[10]
- After the release of the nucleocapsids into cytoplasm, the complexes are targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum''Golgi intermediate compartments (ERGIC) through microtubular-associated movement resulting in the formation of viral factories at ERGIC.[citation needed ]
- These factories then facilitate transcription and subsequent translation of the viral proteins. Transcription of viral genes must be initiated by association of the L protein with the three nucleocapsid species. In addition to transcriptase and replicase functions, the viral L protein is also thought to have an endonuclease activity that cleaves cellular messenger RNAs (mRNAs) for the production of capped primers used to initiate transcription of viral mRNAs. As a result of this cap snatching, the mRNAs of hantaviruses are capped and contain nontemplated 5'-terminal extensions.[13]
- The G1 (or Gn) and G2 (Gc) glycoproteins form hetero-oligomers and are then transported from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi complex, where glycosylation is completed. The L protein produces nascent genomes by replication via a positive-sense RNA intermediate. Hantavirus virions are believed to assemble by association of nucleocapsids with glycoproteins embedded in the membranes of the Golgi, followed by budding into the Golgi cisternae. Nascent virions are then transported in secretory vesicles to the plasma membrane and released by exocytosis.[citation needed ]
- Pathogenesis Edit The pathogenesis of hantavirus infections is unclear as there is a lack of animal models to describe it (rats and mice do not seem to acquire severe disease). While the primary site of viral replication in the body is not known, in HFRS the main effect is in the blood vessels while in HPS most symptoms are associated with the lungs. In HFRS, there are increased vascular permeability and decreased blood pressure due to endothelial dysfunction and the most dramatic damage is seen in the kidneys, whereas in HPS, the lungs, spleen, and gall bladder are most affected. Early symptoms of HPS tend to present similarly to the flu (muscle aches, fever and fatigue) and usually appear around 2 to 3 weeks after exposure. Later stages of the disease (about 4 to 10 days after symptoms start) include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath and coughing.[14]
- Evolution Edit Findings of significant congruence between phylogenies of hantaviruses and phylogenies of their rodent reservoirs have led to the theory that rodents, although infected by the virus, are not harmed by it because of long-standing hantavirus''rodent host coevolution,[15][16] although findings in 2008 led to new hypotheses regarding hantavirus evolution.[17][18]
- Various hantaviruses have been found to infect multiple rodent species, and cases of cross-species transmission (host switching) have been recorded.[19][20][21] Additionally, rates of substitution based on nucleotide sequence data reveal that hantavirus clades and rodent subfamilies may not have diverged at the same time.[18][22] Furthermore, as of 2007 hantaviruses have been found in multiple species of non-rodent shrews and moles.[18][23][24][25]
- Taking into account the inconsistencies in the theory of coevolution, it was proposed in 2009 that the patterns seen in hantaviruses in relation to their reservoirs could be attributed to preferential host switching directed by geographical proximity and adaptation to specific host types.[18] Another proposal from 2010 is that geographical clustering of hantavirus sequences may have been caused by an isolation-by-distance mechanism.[21] Upon comparison of the hantaviruses found in hosts of orders Rodentia and Eulipotyphla, it was proposed in 2011 that the hantavirus evolutionary history is a mix of both host switching and codivergence and that ancestral shrews or moles, rather than rodents, may have been the early original hosts of ancient hantaviruses.[23]
- A Bayesian analysis in 2014 suggested a common origin for these viruses ~2000 years ago. The association with particular rodent families appears to have been more recent. The viruses carried by the subfamilies Arvicolinae and Murinae originated in Asia 500''700 years ago. These subsequently spread to Africa, Europe, North America and Siberia possibly carried by their hosts. The species infecting the subfamily Neotominae evolved 500''600 years ago in Central America and then spread toward North America. The species infecting Sigmodontinae evolved in Brazil 400 years ago. Their ancestors may have been a Neotominae-associated virus from northern South America.[26]
- The evolution of shrew-borne hantaviruses appears to have involved natural occurrences of homologous recombination events and the reassortment of genome segments.[27] The evolution of Tula orthohantavirus carried by the European common vole also appears to have involved homologous recombination events.[28]
- Taxonomy Edit Orthohantaviruses belong to the family Hantaviridae and members of both the genus and the family are called hantaviruses. The genus also belongs to the subfamily Mammantavirinae, the mammalian hantaviruses, with three other genera. Orthohantaviruses specifically are mammalian hantaviruses that are transmitted among rodents.[29] The genus contains these 38 species:[30]
- Prevention Edit According to the U.S. CDC, the best prevention against contracting hantavirus is to eliminate or minimize contact with rodents in the home, workplace, or campsite.[31] As the virus can be transmitted by rodent saliva, excretions, and bites, control of rats and mice in areas frequented by humans is key for disease prevention. General prevention can be accomplished by disposing of rodent nests, sealing any cracks and holes in homes where mice or rats could enter, setting traps, or laying down poisons or using natural predators such as cats in the home.[14]
- The duration that hantaviruses remain infectious in the environment varies based on factors such as the rodent's diet, temperature, humidity, and whether indoors or outdoors. The viruses have been demonstrated to remain active for 2-3 days at normal room temperature, while ultraviolet rays in direct sunlight kill them within a few hours. Rodent droppings or urine of indeterminate age, though, should always be treated as infectious.[32][33][34]
- Vaccine Edit As of 2021[update], no vaccines against hantaviruses have been approved by the U.S. FDA, but whole virus inactivated bivalent vaccines against Hantaan virus and Seoul virus are available in China and South Korea. In both countries, the use of the vaccine, combined with other preventive measures, has significantly reduced the incidence of hantavirus infections. Apart from these vaccines, four types of vaccines have been researched: DNA vaccines targeting the M genome segment and the S genome segment, subunit vaccines that use recombinant Gn, Gc, and N proteins of the virus, virus vector vaccines that have recombinant hantavirus proteins inserted in them, and virus-like particle vaccines that contain viral proteins, but lack genetic material. Of these, only DNA vaccines have entered into clinical trials.[35][36]
- Treatment Edit Ribavirin may be a drug for HPS and HFRS, but its effectiveness remains unknown; still, spontaneous recovery is possible with supportive treatment. People with suspected hantavirus infection may be admitted to a hospital, and given oxygen and mechanical ventilation support to help them breathe during the acute pulmonary stage with severe respiratory distress.[14][37] Immunotherapy, administration of human neutralizing antibodies during acute phases of hantavirus, has only been studied in mice, hamsters, and rats. No controlled clinical trials have been reported.[38]
- Epidemiology Edit Hantavirus infections have been reported from all continents except Australia. Regions especially affected by HFRS include China, the Korean Peninsula, Russia (Hantaan, Puumala, and Seoul viruses), and Northern and Western Europe (Puumala and Dobrava virus). Regions with the highest incidences of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome include Argentina, Chile, Brazil, the United States, Canada, and Panama.
- Africa Edit In 2010, a novel hantavirus, Sangassou virus, was isolated in Africa, which causes HFRS.[39]
- Asia Edit In China, Hong Kong, the Korean Peninsula, and Russia, HFRS is caused by Hantaan, Puumala, and Seoul viruses.[40]
- China Edit In March 2020, a man from Yunnan tested positive for hantavirus. He died while travelling to Shandong for work on a chartered bus. According to the Global Times reports, around 32 other people have been tested for the virus.[41][42][43]
- Australia Edit As of 2005[update], no human infections have been reported in Australia, though rodents were found to carry antibodies.[44]
- Europe Edit In Europe, two hantaviruses '' Puumala and Dobrava-Belgrade viruses '' are known to cause HFRS.[45] Puumala usually causes a generally mild disease, nephropathia epidemica, which typically presents with fever, headache, gastrointestinal symptoms, impaired renal function, and blurred vision. Dobrava infections are similar, except that they often also have hemorrhagic complications.
- Puumala virus is carried by its rodent host, the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus), and is present throughout most of Europe, except for the Mediterranean region. Four Dobrava virus genotypes are known, each carried by a different rodent species. Genotype Dobrava is found in the yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis), genotypes Saaremaa and Kurkino in the striped field mouse (Apodemus agrarius), and genotype Sochi in the Black Sea field mouse (Apodemus ponticus).
- In 2017 alone, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany received 1,713 notifications of hantavirus infections.[46]
- North America Edit Canada Edit The primary cause of the disease in Canada is Sin Nombre virus-infected deer mice. Between 1989 and 2014, 109 confirmed cases were reported, with the death rate estimated at 29%.[4] The virus exists in deer mice nationwide, but cases were concentrated in western Canada (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) with only one case in eastern Canada. In Canada, "[a]ll cases occurred in rural settings and approximately 70% of the cases have been associated with domestic and farming activities."[4]
- United States Edit In the United States, minor cases of HPS include Sin Nombre orthohantavirus, New York orthohantavirus, Bayou orthohantavirus, and possibly Black Creek Canal orthohantavirus.
- As of January 2017[update], 728 cases of hantavirus had been reported in the United States cumulatively since 1995, across 36 states, not including cases with presumed exposure outside the United States. More than 96% of cases have occurred in states west of the Mississippi River. The top 10 states by number of cases reported (which differs slightly from a count ordered by the state of original exposure) were New Mexico (109), Colorado (104), Arizona (78), California (61), Washington (50), Texas (45), Montana (43), Utah (38), Idaho (21), and Oregon (21); 36% of the total reported cases have resulted in death.[47]
- Mexico Edit In Mexico, rodents have been found to carry hantaviruses include Thomas's giant deer mouse (Megadontomys thomasi), the pack rat Neotoma picta, Orizaba deer mouse (Peromyscus beatae), Western harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis) and Sumichrast's harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys sumichrasti).[48]
- South America Edit Agents of HPS found in South America include the Andes virus (also called Oran, Castelo de Sonhos '' Portuguese for "Castle of Dreams", Lechiguanas, Juquitiba, Araraquara, and Bermejo virus, among many other synonyms), which is the only hantavirus that has shown an interpersonal form of transmission, and the Laguna Negra virus, an extremely close relative of the previously known Rio Mamore virus.
- Rodents that have been shown to carry hantaviruses include Abrothrix longipilis and Oligoryzomys longicaudatus.[49]
- History Edit Hantavirus HFRS was likely first referenced in China in the 12th century. The first clinical recognition was in 1931 in northeast China. Around the same time in the 1930s, NE was identified in Sweden. HFRS came to the recognition of western physicians during the Korean War between 1951 and 1954 when more than 3,000 United Nations soldiers fell ill in an outbreak. In 1976, the first pathogenic hantavirus, the Hantaan orthohantavirus, was isolated from rodents near the Hantan River in South Korea. Other prominent hantaviruses that cause HFRS, including the Dobrava-Belgrade orthohantavirus, Puumala orthohantavirus, and Seoul orthohantavirus, were identified in the years after then and are collectively referred to as the Old World hantaviruses.[9]
- In 1993, an outbreak of HCPS, then unrecognized, occurred in the Four Corners region of the United States and led to the discovery of the Sin Nombre orthohantavirus. Since then, approximately 43 hantavirus strains, of which 20 are pathogenic, have been found in the Americas and are referred to as the New World hantaviruses. This includes the Andes orthohantavirus, one of the primary causes of HCPS in South America and the only hantavirus known to be capable of person-to-person transmission.[9]
- In late medieval England a mysterious sweating sickness swept through the country in 1485 just before the Battle of Bosworth Field. Noting that the symptoms overlap with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, several scientists have theorized that the virus may have been the cause of the disease.[50][51] The hypothesis was criticized because sweating sickness was recorded as being transmitted from human to human, whereas hantaviruses were not known to spread in this way.[52]
- See also Edit 1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreakBat-borne virusCocoliztli epidemicsConjunctival suffusionLimestone Canyon virusList of cutaneous conditionsReferences Edit ^ "Virus Taxonomy: 2018b Release". International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). March 2019 . Retrieved 18 March 2019 . ^ "ICTV Taxonomy all history: Orthohantavirus". International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) . Retrieved 28 January 2019 . ^ a b "Rodent-borne diseases". European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control . Retrieved 2018-06-04 . ^ a b c d Drebot, Jones S.; Grolla, A.; Safronetz, D.; Strong, J. E.; Kobinger, G.; Lindsay, R. L. (4 June 2015). Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Canada: An overview of clinical features, diagnostics, epidemiology and prevention. Canada Communicable Disease Report (Report). Vector-borne diseases in Canada. 41''6. Winnipeg, MB: National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada. p. 40. ISSN 1481-8531. ^ a b Martinez VP, Bellomo C, San Juan J, Pinna D, Forlenza R, Elder M, Padula PJ (2005). "Person-to-person transmission of Andes virus". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 11 (12): 1848''1853. doi:10.3201/eid1112.050501. PMC 3367635 . PMID 16485469. ^ "ICTV 9th Report (2011) '' Negative Sense RNA Viruses '' Bunyaviridae". International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) . Retrieved 31 January 2019 . Hanta: from Hantaan, river in South Korea near where type virus was isolated. ^ a b c d AvÅiÄ-Županc T, Saksida A, Korva M (2019). "Hantavirus infections". Clin Microbiol Infect. 21S: e6''e16. doi:10.1111/1469-0691.12291 . PMID 24750436 . Retrieved 21 April 2020 . ^ a b c d Gravinatti ML, Barbosa CM, Soares RM, Gregori F (2020). "Synanthropic rodents as virus reservoirs and transmitters". Rev Soc Bras Med Trop. 53: e20190486. doi:10.1590/0037-8682-0486-2019. PMC 7083353 . PMID 32049206. ^ a b c d Jiang H, Zheng X, Wang L, Du H, Wang P, Bai X (2017). 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"Hantavirus Evolution in Relation to Its Rodent and Insectivore Hosts: No Evidence for Codivergence". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 26 (1): 143''153. doi:10.1093/molbev/msn234 . PMID 18922760. ^ Delfraro A, Tom(C) L, D'Ela G, Clara M, Achval F, Russi JC, Arbiza Rodonz JR (2008). "Juquitiba-like Hantavirus from 2 Nonrelated Rodent Species, Uruguay". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 14 (9): 1447''1451. doi:10.3201/eid1409.080455. PMC 2603116 . PMID 18760017. ^ Plyusnina A, Ibrahim IN, Plyusnin A (2009). "A newly recognized hantavirus in the Asian house rat (Rattus tanezumi) in Indonesia". Journal of General Virology. 90 (Pt 1): 205''209. doi:10.1099/Vir.0.006155-0 . PMID 19088290. ^ a b Schmidt-Chanasit J, Essbauer S, Petraityte R, Yoshimatsu K, Tackmann K, Conraths FJ, Sasnauskas K, Arikawa J, Thomas A, Pfeffer M, Scharninghausen JJ, Splettstoesser W, Wenk M, Heckel G, Ulrich RG (2009). "Extensive Host Sharing of Central European Tula Virus". 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International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses . Retrieved 24 April 2020 . ^ "Virus Taxonomy: 2020 Release". International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). March 2021 . Retrieved 19 May 2021 . ^ "Hantavirus Prevention". CDC. USA.gov. 2019-02-22. ^ Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (April 2010). "Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) and the workplace". wisha-training.lni.wa.gov . Retrieved 2017-08-25 . ^ Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (2016-01-08). "Hantavirus : OSH Answers". www.ccohs.ca . Retrieved 2017-08-25 . ^ Washington State Department of Health (2017). "Hantavirus". www.doh.wa.gov . Retrieved 2017-08-25 . ^ Liu R, Ma H, Shu J, Zhang Q, Han M, Liu Z, Jin X, Zhang F, Wu X (2020). "Vaccines and Therapeutics Against Hantaviruses". Front Microbiol. 10: 2989. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.02989. PMC 7002362 . PMID 32082263. ^ Brocato RL, Hooper JW (2019). "Progress on the Prevention and Treatment of Hantavirus Disease". Viruses. 11 (7): 610. doi:10.3390/v11070610. PMC 6669544 . PMID 31277410. ^ "CDC '' Diagnosing and Treating Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) '' Hantavirus". www.cdc.gov . Retrieved 2016-11-09 . ^ Jonsson, Colleen B.; Hooper, Jay; Mertz, Gregory (2008-04-01). "Treatment of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome". Antiviral Research. Special Issue: Treatment of highly pathogenic RNA viral infections. 78 (1): 162''169. doi:10.1016/j.antiviral.2007.10.012. PMC 2810485 . PMID 18093668. ^ Klempa B, Witkowski PT, Popugaeva E, Auste B, Koivogui L, Fichet-Calvet E, Strecker T, Ter Meulen J, Kr¼ger DH (2012). "Sangassou Virus, the First Hantavirus Isolate from Africa, Displays Genetic and Functional Properties Distinct from Those of Other Murinae-Associated Hantaviruses". Journal of Virology. 86 (7): 3819''3827. doi:10.1128/JVI.05879-11. PMC 3302504 . PMID 22278233. ^ "ç--·ç--æ£æ¼å'...é£ç½²Heaè£'é ä½èéèå
æ´¾å"å®". ^ "Man in China dies after testing positive for hantavirus '' what exactly is it?". The Free Press Journal . Retrieved 2020-03-24 . ^ "What is hantavirus? Man in China tests positive after dying of infection spread by rodents". Newsweek. 2020-03-24 . Retrieved 2020-03-24 . ^ Leonardi, Anthony (March 24, 2020). " ' Do not panic, unless you plan to eat rats': Man who died in China tests positive for hantavirus". Washington Examiner . Retrieved March 24, 2020 . ^ Bi, P.; Cameron, S.; Higgins, G.; Burrell, C. (2005). "Are humans infected by Hantaviruses in Australia?". Internal Medicine Journal. 35 (11): 672''674. doi:10.1111/j.1445-5994.2005.00954.x. PMID 16248862. S2CID 37603482. ^ Vapalahti O, Mustonen J, Lundkvist A, Henttonen H, Plyusnin A, Vaheri A (2003). "Hantavirus infections in Europe". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 3 (10): 653''661. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(03)00774-6. PMID 14522264. ^ Hofmann J, Kr¼ger DH, Loyen M (2018). "Hantavirus-Infektionen in Deutschland '' ein R¼ckblick auf das Ausbruchsjahr 2017". Epid Bull. 15: 143''146. doi:10.17886/EpiBull-2018-018. ^ "Hantavirus Cases, by State of Reporting | Hantavirus | DHCPP". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2017-07-19 . Retrieved 2017-08-25 . ^ Kariwa H, Yoshida H, Snchez-Hernndez C, Romero-Almaraz Mde L, Almazn-Cataln JA, Ramos C, Miyashita D, Seto T, Takano A, Totani M, Murata R, Saasa N, Ishizuka M, Sanada T, Yoshii K, Yoshimatsu K, Arikawa J, Takashima I (2012). "Genetic diversity of hantaviruses in Mexico: Identification of three novel hantaviruses from Neotominae rodents". Virus Research. 163 (2): 486''494. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2011.11.013. PMID 22138671. ^ Medina RA, Torres-Perez F, Galeno H, Navarrete M, Vial PA, Palma RE, Ferres M, Cook JA, Hjelle B (2008). "Ecology, Genetic Diversity, and Phylogeographic Structure of Andes Virus in Humans and Rodents in Chile". Journal of Virology. 83 (6): 2446''2459. doi:10.1128/JVI.01057-08. PMC 2648280 . PMID 19116256. ^ Thwaites G, Taviner M, Gant V (1997). "The English Sweating Sickness, 1485 to 1551". New England Journal of Medicine. 336 (8): 580''582. doi:10.1056/NEJM199702203360812. PMID 9023099. ^ Taviner M, Thwaites G, Gant V (1998). "The English sweating sickness, 1485''1551: a viral pulmonary disease?". Medical History. 42 (1): 96''98. doi:10.1017/S0025727300063365. PMC 1043971 . PMID 9536626. ^ Bridson, Eric (2001). "English 'sweate' (Sudor Anglicus) and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, The". British Journal of Biomedical Science. 58 (1): 1''6. PMID 11284216. Archived from the original on 2006-03-24. External links Edit "Hantaviruses, with emphasis on Four Corners Hantavirus" by Brian Hjelle, M.D., Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of New MexicoCDC's Hantavirus Fact Sheet (PDF)CDC's Hantavirus Technical Information Index pageViralzone: HantavirusVirus Pathogen Database and Analysis Resource (ViPR): HantaviridaeOccurrences and deaths in North and South America
- Cyber Polygon | World Economic Forum
- Digitalisation is accelerating everywhere. New digital ecosystems are forming all around us, creating unnoticed linkages across services and supply chains.
- As the world grows more interconnected, the speed of development makes it difficult to assess the impact of change.
- A secure approach to digital development today will determine the shape of our future for decades to come. Having the right skills in place is key to protecting organisations from attack now.
- Cyber Polygon is a unique cybersecurity event that combines the world's largest technical training exercise for corporate teams and an online conference featuring senior officials from international organisations and leading corporations.
- The 2021 conference discusses the key risks of digitalisation and best practice for the secure development of digital ecosystems.
- The 2021 technical exercise builds and tests the skills needed to protect our industries, centring on a targeted supply-chain attack.
- Every year, the training brings together a global businesses and government agencies to collaborate on technical exercises. The live stream draws in millions of spectators from across the world.
- 120 teams from 29 countries took part in the technical cybersecurity training in 2020. The live stream viewership reached 5 million from 57 nations.
- A comprehensive report with detailed results of Cyber Polygon 2020 is available here.
- This year discussions during the live-streamed conference will centre on secure development of ecosystems. With global digitalisation further accelerating and people, companies, and countries becoming ever more interconnected, security of every single element of a supply-chain is
- key to ensuring the sustainability of the whole system.
- During the technical exercise, participants will hone their practical skills in mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real
- The event will be held online on July 9th. Applications from organisations wishing to join the training are open. See further details on the official website.
- cyber-polygon@weforum.org
- Miami condo collapse highlights urgent need to adapt to rising seas
- The partial collapse of a condominium in Miami is pointing up the fact that waterfront communities there need to urgently address sea level rise, which is quickly becoming a hazard.
- Photograph by Jeffrey Greenberg, Education Images/Universal Images Group/GettyPlease be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
- Environment News Though climate change-related factors were probably not behind the partial collapse of the Florida beachside building, other properties are vulnerable to rising seas.
- The collapse of the condominium building in Surfside, Florida, may force what some say is a long overdue conversation about the hard realities of climate change that will transform one of the nation's most vulnerable regions.
- To be sure, no evidence has emerged so far to connect climate change to the middle-of-the-night collapse of the Champlain Towers on June 24, which buried residents in the rubble. Sea level has risen eight inches in South Florida since 1981, when the 12-story condo was built'--not enough to be responsible for its collapse, says Hal Wanless, a University of Miami geologist and South Florida's preeminent voice on sea-level rise.
- The investigation so far is more focused on a confluence of events'--including delays by the homeowners association in carrying out recommended repairs'--and an environmental danger that's been known for more than a century: the corrosive effects of salt water on coastal construction.
- Photos of corroded rebar and rotted concrete in the condo basement have recently been released. A 2018 report of an engineering inspection of the building, posted on the City of Surfside's website, documented ''abundant cracking and spalling in various degrees'' in concrete columns. Spalling is a term used to describe concrete degraded by crumbling or cracks.
- But if the present building codes and the inspections they require failed to prevent this failure, how will residents of the oceanfront high-rises that dot the coast be protected in the coming decades'--when at least two feet of sea-level rise could dramatically eat away the beaches where towers now stand, increase the magnitude of storm surges, and spread salt-water intrusion further inland, worsening its corrosive effects?
- With the accelerated melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland in the next decade, Wanless thinks two feet of sea-level rise could occur sooner than current projections. NOAA's intermediate high for 2070 is 40 inches.
- ''We could well be two or three feet by mid-century, and once we are talking about those numbers, we are talking about within a 30-year-mortgage cycle,'' he says. ''That will make the viability of every barrier island in the world questionable.''
- A lost decadeOfficials in Florida's four southernmost counties organized a decade ago to address climate issues that the Republican-controlled legislature had ignored. (Legislators conceded in 2019 they had ''lost a decade'' by failing to address climate change.)
- In South Florida, the mayors and other officials have taken steps to mitigate flooding, which already occurs regularly in low-lying areas during high tides, and to plan for future impacts. For example, they are phasing out more than 100,000 septic tanks that will be rendered inoperative by the rising water table.
- But conversations about the magnitude of the change that's coming and the limited options for adapting, most of which will cost billions of dollars, are difficult. The most recent project under consideration would be a six-mile seawall built along the edge of Biscayne Bay through downtown Miami. It would be 20 feet high in places and cost $6 billion, according to an Army Corps of Engineers conceptual design. The magnitude of the wall as well as the price tag have horrified more than a few Miamians.
- Phil Stoddard, a biology professor at Florida International University in Miami who served as South Miami's mayor for a decade, says the notion that solid ground in South Florida will give way to flooding seems incomprehensible to some today, especially in an area brightened by endlessly blue skies and fueled, at least pre-COVID, by a roaring economy.
- ''As long as humans have existed in recorded history, land hasn't gone away, and people I know talk about land being here for future generations,'' he says. ''It's hard for people to get their head around that land won't be here. They can hear you say it, but they don't have a mental construct for this kind of thing happening.''
- Meanwhile, the building boom that has transformed downtown Miami and spurred lines of new condo towers along Miami Beach, many with units priced at $30 million, continues apace.
- The investigations beginIn the days since the Surfside collapse, 18 bodies have been recovered and searchers continue to dig for 145 people who remain missing. The search had to be suspended for much of Thursday after concerns were raised that the rest of the complex appeared unstable and could collapse as well. Searchers resumed as Tropical Storm Elsa, on track to hit South Florida early next week, grew into a hurricane.
- The collapse has already prompted multiple investigations, including probes by FEMA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which investigated the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the 9/11 terrorist attack. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle announced plans to convene a grand jury to probe the disaster. A similar investigation after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992 led to significant state building code reforms related to wind loads.
- Officials have also ordered immediate inspections of older buildings in Miami Beach and the city of Miami.
- John Pistorino, the structural engineer who investigated the 1974 collapse of a building in downtown Miami that housed the Drug Enforcement Agency, has been retained to conduct an investigation of the condo collapse. That probe led to the requirement that buildings in Miami-Dade and Broward counties be inspected and recertified at age 40. The goal was to prevent another collapse. The Champlain Towers was 40 years old and in the early stages of recertification, though maintenance and repairs recommended in an 2018 engineering report had yet to begin.
- Pistorino says the existing building code addresses salt water corrosion and the type of concrete used in pilings as building supports.
- ''These buildings have been built and designed with the hostile environment we have in mind,'' he says. ''But they still require maintenance and upkeep from the day they were built, whether they are in coastal areas or not.''
- Other engineers and builders have echoed Pistorino, arguing that new buildings are constructed to withstand sea-level rise. Raul Schwerdt, who owns RAS Engineering in Miami, told the Miami Herald that Florida buildings should be able to withstand rising sea levels if they are built correctly. ''If the foundation has deep piles that go 30 feet under the sea that should hold the building forever, no matter what happens'--if a hurricane comes or the building is flooded.''
- Pistorino says the collapse of the tower will likely result in enhanced building inspections and greater involvement by homeowner associations and condo owners' boards to make sure maintenance and repairs are carried out.
- The most obvious lesson to be drawn from the disaster, he says, is that ''you don't wait 40 years before you start looking for problems in your building.''
- What resonance?The disaster at the Champlain Towers is a rare event. Buildings don't just fall down in the United States. Numerous Miamians have observed that this event has ''struck a chord'' around the world, drawing international media coverage as well as speculation about a host of factors ranging from the safety of high-rises to the viability of homeowner association oversight.
- Stoddard is not so sure the effects of the disaster on public opinion, in Miami and beyond, will be long-lasting.
- ''Has it struck a chord or hit a nerve?'' he asks. ''A chord resonates and goes beyond itself. Hitting a nerve hurts for a while and you recover from it. This certainly hit a nerve. But has it also hit a chord? Is it going to make people think about the bigger questions?''
- Car strikes mailbox, tree before smashing into vehicles in residential neighborhood - nj.com
- A 69-year-old man was hospitalized for a "medical episode" on Monday after smashing into two cars and property in a Monroe Township residential neighborhood.
- A 69-year-old man on Monday morning smashed into a mailbox, tree and two parked cars while driving through a residential neighborhood in Monroe Township, police said in a statement.
- Howard L. Kaplan, 69, was driving north on Riviera Drive in a 2021 Audi A6 when his car left the road and struck a home's mailbox.
- The car kept going, striking a 2019 Nissan Rogue parked in the driveway of the next-door property and a tree on the front lawn of that home. The car, continuing its path, then went on to hit a 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee parked in the driveway of the next house, pushing that vehicle into a 2020 Mercedes Benz CLA that was parked in the same driveway.
- Kaplan, who suffered facial injuries, was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick for a ''suspected medical episode,'' which police said, ''is believed to have led to the crash.''
- No further information on the medical episode was provided.
- It was not clear from the statement whether charges would be forthcoming.
- The crash is still under investigation. Anyone who may have seen the crash is asked to contact the Monroe Police Traffic Safety Division at 732-521-0222 ext. 224.
- Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
- Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com.
- Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
- Lambda coronavirus variant: What you need to know - New York Daily News
- As the novel coronavirus has spread around the world, variants are emerging. The latest catching the eye of the World Health Organization is labeled Lambda. Here's everything you need to know about it.
- The novel coronavirus has infected a known 184.4 million worldwide and killed nearly 4 million, at least 605,830 of them in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data. The number of infections has enabled the virus to mutate into several strains that the World Health Organization (WHO) has begun delineating with letters of the Greek alphabet.
- A healtcare worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site, in Arequipa, Peru, Saturday, June 26, 2021. (Guadalupe Pardo/AP)
- The variant that sparked the change from the potentially confusing numerical designations based on country of origin was Delta, which is prevalent in India and on its way to becoming dominant elsewhere in the world as well.
- Lambda was first identified in Peru at the end of 2020.
- The Lambda variant, first identified in Peru, has been classified as a ''variant of concern'' by the World Health Organization based on its transmissibility, which is driven by changes in the so-called spike protein that latches onto healthy cells.
- It is overtaking South America.
- The World Health Organization says Lambda sparked 82% of Peru's new Covid-19 cases in May and June, and almost a third of new cases in neighboring Chile, the Financial Times reported. Peru has the world's highest coronavirus mortality rate.
- It may be more transmissible than other varieties.
- As recently as December in Peru the virus variant was only one in 200 samples, Pablo Tsukayama, a doctor in molecular microbiology at the Cayetano Heredia university in Peru's capital Lima, told the Financial Times.
- ''By March, however, it accounted for about 50% of samples in Lima and now it's about 80%,'' Tsukayama told the Financial Times. ''That would suggest its rate of transmission is higher than other variants.''
- However, that is not definitive, and experts agree that more studies are needed, reported Euro News.
- In this June 25, 2021, file photo, family member shovels dirt into the grave of Giro Quispe who died from complications related to the coronavirus, at El Cebollar cemetery, in Arequipa, Peru. (GUADALUPE PARDO/AP)
- It has spread to at least 27 countries, including the U.K.
- The Lambda variant was formerly known as C.37 when it was first detected. Among the 27 countries it has spread to is the U.K., according to the Financial Times, though there are only a small number of cases so far.
- Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts.
- Vaccine efficacy is not yet established.
- While one study indicated that existing vaccines are effective against it, another study in preprint form '' not yet peer-reviewed '' indicates it may be more infectious than the Gamma and Alpha variants and can escape vaccine-produced antibodies with greater ease, the Financial Times said.
- WHO has designated it a ''variant of interest'' rather than a ''variant of concern.''
- This means it has been identified as causing transmission or detected in multiple countries, according to Euro News.
- Recommended on Daily News
- FBI infiltrates group that wanted to test bombs, surveil Capitol, secede from US, court records show
- The FBI has infiltrated a "Bible study" group in Virginia that, after the Jan. 6 riot, had members discussing surveilling the U.S. Capitol and their wish for secession from the U.S., and investigators closely followed one member's plans to build and test Molotov cocktails, according to recently unsealed court records.The startling new case, landing six months after the pro-Trump insurrection, adds to the more than 500 Capitol riot federal criminal cases already in court and fleshes out what's known about the Justice Department's understanding of the continued interests of right-wing extremists to allegedly interfere with the U.S. government and discuss with each other how to do so. The new case highlights one group member's apparent interest in a second American civil war.The newly disclosed criminal case against Virginia man Fi Duong '-- who also goes by "Monkey King" and "Jim," according to the court record '-- arose after Duong interacted with undercover law enforcement officers several times on Jan. 6 and into recent months, when the FBI ultimately gained access to his group in Virginia then accompanied him to an old jail as Duong allegedly pursued bomb building.Law enforcement's undercover interactions with Duong and his contacts since January are laid out in a 14-page statement from the FBI filed in court in recent days to support his arrest and initial charges.Jan. 6 chargesDuong was arrested last week after the Justice Department charged him with four federal crimes, including entering the restricted grounds of the Capitol and obstruction of an official proceeding related to his alleged participation in the siege on Jan. 6, according to his court record.He has not yet entered a plea.On Jan. 6 in downtown Washington, Duong spoke with an undercover Metropolitan Police officer, according to his charging papers. Duong was dressed in black, in an alleged effort to disguise himself as a member of an anti-fascist leftist group, investigators say. During the conversation, Duong asked the undercover officer if they were a "patriot," and identified himself as an "operator," according to FBI records supporting his arrest.As the riot progressed, the undercover officer saw him again, kneeling by a marble fence on a terrace of the Capitol '-- an area that was normally restricted, according to court records. Investigators say Duong also videotaped himself inside the Capitol and was captured on the building's cameras wearing a white mask shaped like a wide grin.The charges Duong faces are minor compared with what other right-wing extremists have faced for their alleged roles in the insurrection. He has not yet been formally indicted, and his charges could be expanded or rewritten in the coming weeks.He has not been charged with crimes related to any post-Jan. 6 conduct, including the alleged bomb planning.Duong's attorney declined to comment on Tuesday.FBI connects with groupIn mid-January, an undercover agent from the FBI made contact with Duong, who was a member of a secretive "loosely affiliated, unnamed group of like-minded individuals" in Virginia, according to court records made public on Tuesday describing the additional allegations against him.Though Duong put a member of the militia-like extremist group the Three Percenters in contact with his group, the FBI noted in court, his group appeared to exist separately from any known major groups previously identified as taking part in the Capitol riot.Duong added the FBI agent to one of the group's encrypted chats, then the agent attended one of the group's meetings with Duong and other group members, according to the FBI."For me, right now, my goal is in building the infrastructure first, to then building up the individuals that will compose of this, perhaps long after I'm gone," investigators say Duong told the undercover FBI agent in March. He also said he had written a "manifesto," the court record says."If I get into a gun fight with the feds and I don't make it, I want to be able to transfer as much wisdom to my son as possible," investigators noted him saying, according to a court filing.'Bible study' groupDuong told the FBI agent that his group tried to be "cloak and dagger" and wanted to "build resistances," according to court records. The agent then attended what the group members called a "Bible study" meeting at an Alexandria, Virginia, house in February, where the group members discussed the Bible and secession, weaponry and combat training, and using methods to make their communications private, according to court records.One person in the group commented at the meeting about creating "a semi-autonomous region" for Virginia. "I like the Constitution; I don't like the Democratic this region keeps voting for," the person said, according to the FBI.In early February, Duong and associates began to use encrypted messages to discuss gathering intelligence on the restricted zone that the National Guard had established around the Capitol, according to the FBI.One group member, identified in court records as "Associate 1," said he took video of Capitol entrances and would share it over an encrypted messaging app. He later claimed to have deleted the video but said that Duong had a copy, according to the charging documents."How do we feel about an Intel run around the Capitol tonight?" the FBI said the person wrote. "Fewer of them out. Posture may be lowered. Good opportunity to expose weaknesses."Collecting weaponsDuong had compiled a cache of weapons at his home in Alexandria, investigators say, including an AK-47 and five boxes full of materials to make and test Molotov cocktails.At one group meeting at Duong's house in May, the undercover agent saw five cardboard boxes filled with about 50 glass bottles and heard him and another person discuss what they could fill them with to make explosives, according to the court papers.The agent later asked Duong more about the Molotov cocktails and his plans for them, keeping tabs on the interest he had in testing them. Places they discussed included a rock quarry in West Virginia, Duong's backyard or at a former prison in Virginia, according to the court record.Ultimately, Duong and the undercover FBI agent met another undercover agent in mid-June at the former prison to discuss testing homemade bombs, the FBI wrote in its statement supporting Duong's arrest. Duong asked them about holding training at the site, too, according to the FBI."Give it about another three weeks," Duong told one of the undercover agents, as they were leaving the jail site, about his plans for testing. "Money's really tight right now. I gotta have a few boring weekends, stay at home and not do "Later that day, Duong riffed to the undercover FBI agent about the cost of peace versus standing one's ground."We're not a point where people are out in the street rioting. It's coming soon. I'd give it about another six weeks...whatever supplies you can get now, get 'em now," Duong told the undercover FBI agent as they left the old jail, according to the court record.Duong appeared for the first time last Friday in federal court in Washington. A judge released him from detention after the Justice Department agreed he could be released, according to his court record.
- The FBI has infiltrated a "Bible study" group in Virginia that, after the Jan. 6 riot, had members discussing surveilling the U.S. Capitol and their wish for secession from the U.S., and investigators closely followed one member's plans to build and test Molotov cocktails, according to recently unsealed court records.
- The startling new case, landing six months after the pro-Trump insurrection, adds to the more than 500 Capitol riot federal criminal cases already in court and fleshes out what's known about the Justice Department's understanding of the continued interests of right-wing extremists to allegedly interfere with the U.S. government and discuss with each other how to do so. The new case highlights one group member's apparent interest in a second American civil war.
- The newly disclosed criminal case against Virginia man Fi Duong '-- who also goes by "Monkey King" and "Jim," according to the court record '-- arose after Duong interacted with undercover law enforcement officers several times on Jan. 6 and into recent months, when the FBI ultimately gained access to his group in Virginia then accompanied him to an old jail as Duong allegedly pursued bomb building.
- Law enforcement's undercover interactions with Duong and his contacts since January are laid out in a 14-page statement from the FBI filed in court in recent days to support his arrest and initial charges.
- Jan. 6 chargesDuong was arrested last week after the Justice Department charged him with four federal crimes, including entering the restricted grounds of the Capitol and obstruction of an official proceeding related to his alleged participation in the siege on Jan. 6, according to his court record.
- He has not yet entered a plea.
- On Jan. 6 in downtown Washington, Duong spoke with an undercover Metropolitan Police officer, according to his charging papers. Duong was dressed in black, in an alleged effort to disguise himself as a member of an anti-fascist leftist group, investigators say. During the conversation, Duong asked the undercover officer if they were a "patriot," and identified himself as an "operator," according to FBI records supporting his arrest.
- As the riot progressed, the undercover officer saw him again, kneeling by a marble fence on a terrace of the Capitol '-- an area that was normally restricted, according to court records. Investigators say Duong also videotaped himself inside the Capitol and was captured on the building's cameras wearing a white mask shaped like a wide grin.
- The charges Duong faces are minor compared with what other right-wing extremists have faced for their alleged roles in the insurrection. He has not yet been formally indicted, and his charges could be expanded or rewritten in the coming weeks.
- He has not been charged with crimes related to any post-Jan. 6 conduct, including the alleged bomb planning.
- Duong's attorney declined to comment on Tuesday.
- FBI connects with groupIn mid-January, an undercover agent from the FBI made contact with Duong, who was a member of a secretive "loosely affiliated, unnamed group of like-minded individuals" in Virginia, according to court records made public on Tuesday describing the additional allegations against him.
- Though Duong put a member of the militia-like extremist group the Three Percenters in contact with his group, the FBI noted in court, his group appeared to exist separately from any known major groups previously identified as taking part in the Capitol riot.
- Duong added the FBI agent to one of the group's encrypted chats, then the agent attended one of the group's meetings with Duong and other group members, according to the FBI.
- "For me, right now, my goal is in building the infrastructure first, to then building up the individuals that will compose of this, perhaps long after I'm gone," investigators say Duong told the undercover FBI agent in March. He also said he had written a "manifesto," the court record says.
- "If I get into a gun fight with the feds and I don't make it, I want to be able to transfer as much wisdom to my son as possible," investigators noted him saying, according to a court filing.
- 'Bible study' groupDuong told the FBI agent that his group tried to be "cloak and dagger" and wanted to "build resistances," according to court records. The agent then attended what the group members called a "Bible study" meeting at an Alexandria, Virginia, house in February, where the group members discussed the Bible and secession, weaponry and combat training, and using methods to make their communications private, according to court records.
- One person in the group commented at the meeting about creating "a semi-autonomous region" for Virginia. "I like the Constitution; I don't like the Democratic [expletive] this region keeps voting for," the person said, according to the FBI.
- In early February, Duong and associates began to use encrypted messages to discuss gathering intelligence on the restricted zone that the National Guard had established around the Capitol, according to the FBI.
- One group member, identified in court records as "Associate 1," said he took video of Capitol entrances and would share it over an encrypted messaging app. He later claimed to have deleted the video but said that Duong had a copy, according to the charging documents.
- "How do we feel about an Intel run around the Capitol tonight?" the FBI said the person wrote. "Fewer of them out. Posture may be lowered. Good opportunity to expose weaknesses."
- Collecting weaponsDuong had compiled a cache of weapons at his home in Alexandria, investigators say, including an AK-47 and five boxes full of materials to make and test Molotov cocktails.
- At one group meeting at Duong's house in May, the undercover agent saw five cardboard boxes filled with about 50 glass bottles and heard him and another person discuss what they could fill them with to make explosives, according to the court papers.
- The agent later asked Duong more about the Molotov cocktails and his plans for them, keeping tabs on the interest he had in testing them. Places they discussed included a rock quarry in West Virginia, Duong's backyard or at a former prison in Virginia, according to the court record.
- Ultimately, Duong and the undercover FBI agent met another undercover agent in mid-June at the former prison to discuss testing homemade bombs, the FBI wrote in its statement supporting Duong's arrest. Duong asked them about holding training at the site, too, according to the FBI.
- "Give it about another three weeks," Duong told one of the undercover agents, as they were leaving the jail site, about his plans for testing. "Money's really tight right now. I gotta have a few boring weekends, stay at home and not do [expletive.]"
- Later that day, Duong riffed to the undercover FBI agent about the cost of peace versus standing one's ground.
- "We're not a point where people are out in the street rioting. It's coming soon. I'd give it about another six weeks...whatever supplies you can get now, get 'em now," Duong told the undercover FBI agent as they left the old jail, according to the court record.
- Duong appeared for the first time last Friday in federal court in Washington. A judge released him from detention after the Justice Department agreed he could be released, according to his court record.
- Messaging and Chat Control '' Patrick Breyer
- The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence The EU wants to have all private chats, messages, and emails automatically searched for suspicious content, generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance through fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence. On 26 May 2021, a majority of MEPs in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted in favor of the agreement allowing for the voluntary use of chatcontrol by online services providers. Now, the European Parliament will take the final vote on Chatcontrol on 6 July 2021.
- Czech TranslationSwedish Translation
- How did we get here?In 2020 the European Commission proposed ''temporary'' legislation aimed at allowing the search of all private chats, messages, and emails for illegal depictions of minors and attempted initiation of contacts with minors. This is to allow the providers of Facebook Messenger, Gmail, et al, to scan every message for suspicious text and images. This takes place in a fully automated process and using error-prone ''artificial intelligence''. If an algorithm considers a message suspicious, its content and meta-data are disclosed automatically and without human verification to a private US-based organization and from there to national police authorities worldwide. The reported users are not notified.
- Some U.S. providers of services such as Gmail and Outlook.com are already performing such automated messaging and chat controls. Through a second piece of legislation, the EU Commission intends to oblige all providers of chat, messaging and e-mail services to deploy this mass surveillance technology. At the same time, a representative survey conducted in March 2021 clearly shows that a majority of Europeans oppose the use of chat control (Detailed poll results here).
- More videos on Chatcontrol are available in this playlist
- How does this affect you?All of your chat conversations and emails will be automatically searched for suspicious content. Nothing remains confidential or secret. There is no requirement of a court order or an initial suspicion for searching your messages. It occurs always and automatically.If an algorithms classifies the content of a message as suspicious, your private or intimate photos may be viewed by staff and contractors of international corporations and police authorities. Also your private nude photos may be looked at by people not known to you, in whose hands your photos are not safe.Flirts and sexting may be read by staff and contractors of international corporations and police authorities, because text recognition filters looking for ''child grooming'' frequently falsely flag intimate chats.You can falsely be reported and investigated for allegedly disseminating child sexual exploitation material. Messaging and chat control algorithms are known to flag completely legal vacation photos of children on a beach, for example. According to Swiss federal police authorities, 86% of all machine-generated reports turn out to be without merit. 40% of all criminal investigation procedures initiated in Germany for ''child pornography'' target minors.On your next trip overseas, you can expect big problems. Machine-generated reports on your communications may have been passed on to other countries, such as the USA, where there is no data privacy '' with incalculable results.Intelligence services and hackers may be able to spy on your private chats and emails. The door will be open for anyone with the technical means to read your messages if secure encryption is removed in order to be able to screen messages.This is only the beginning. Once the technology for messaging and chat control has been established, it becomes very easy to use them for other purposes. And who guarantees that these incrimination machines will not be used in the future on our smart phones and laptops?Click here for further arguments against messaging and chat control
- Click here to find out what you can do to stop messaging and chat control
- TimelineThe trilogue negotiations on the draft law, in which representatives of the European Parliament negotiate with EU governments with the participation of the EU Commission, were concluded in May. Voluntary chat control is coming! Here is my press release on the outcome of the negotiations. The final vote in the European Parliament is scheduled for 6 July.
- In autumn 2021 the EU Commission intends to make a second legislative proposal, which is to force all providers of email, messaging and chat services to comprehensively search all private messages in the absence of any suspicion.
- According to the case-law of the European Court of Justice the permanent and comprehensive automated analysis of private communications violates fundamental rights and is prohibited (paragraph 177). For this reason, Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer has filed a complaint against U.S. companies Facebook and Google with the data protection authorities for violating the General Data Protection Regulation. Former judge of the European Court of Justice Prof. Dr. Ninon Colneric has extensively analysed the plans and concludes in a legal assessment that the EU legislative plans on chat control are not in line with the case law of the European Court of Justice and violate the fundamental rights of all EU citizens to respect for privacy, to data protection and to freedom of expression.
- Upcoming dates14 January 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament15 January 2021: Technical negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament (Technical Trilogue)18 January 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament19 January 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament20 January 2021: Technical negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament (Technical Trilogue)25 January Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament01 February 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament05 February 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament22 February 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament23 February 2021: Second Political Trilogue negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament26 February 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament1 March 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament2 March 2021: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament8 March 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament9 March 2021: Third Political Trilogue negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament23 March 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament25 March 2021: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament19 April: Internal technical negotiations of the European Parliament, Commission and Council28 April: Shadow rapporteur meeting of the negotiators of the European Parliament29 April: Fifth Political Trilogue negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament26 May: Committee Vote on Trilogue Agreement 6 July 2021: Plenary VoteExpected for Summer Autumn 2021: Commission proposal on mandatory messaging and chat controls for online service providersWhat you can doTalk about it! Inform others about the dangers of chat control. Here, you can find tweet templates, share pics and videos. Of course, you can also create your own images and videos.Generate attention on social media! Use the hashtags #chatcontrol and #secrecyofcorrespondenceReach out to your representatives in Parliament! If you want, you can use pre-worded message for this purpose. However, experience has shown that individually worded messages are more effective.Generate media attention! So far very few media have covered the messaging and chat control plans of the EU. Get in touch with newspapers and ask them to cover the subject '' online and offline.Ask your e-mail, messaging and chat service providers! Avoid Gmail, Facebook Messenger, outlook.com and the chat function of X-Box, where indiscriminate chat control is already taking place. Ask your email, messaging and chat providers if they generally monitor private messages for suspicious content, or if they plan to do so.All citizens are placed under suspicion, without cause, of possibly having committed a crime. Text and photo filters monitor all messages, without exception. No judge is required to order to such monitoring '' contrary to the analog world which guarantees the privacy of correspondence and the confidentiality of written communications. According to a judgment by the European Court of Justice, the permanent and general automatic analysis of private communications violates fundamental rights (case C-511/18, Paragraph 192). Nevertheless, the EU now intends to adopt such legislation. For the court to annul it can take years. Therefore we need to prevent the adoption of the legislation in the first place.The confidentiality of private electronic correspondence is being sacrificed. Users of messenger, chat and e-mail services risk having their private messages read and analyzed. Sensitive photos and text content could be forwarded to unknown entities worldwide and can fall into the wrong hands. NSA staff have reportedly circulated nude photos of female and male citizens in the past. A Google engineer has been reported to stalk minors.Indiscriminate messaging and chat control wrongfully incriminates hundreds of users every day. According the Swiss Federal Police, 90% of machine-reported content is not illegal, for example harmless holiday photos showing nude children playing at a beach.Securely encrypted communication is at risk. Up to now, encrypted messages cannot be searched by the algorithms. To change that back doors would need to be built in to messaging software. As soon as that happens, this security loophole can be exploited by anyone with the technical means needed, for example by foreign intelligence services and criminals. Private communications, business secrets and sensitive government information would be exposed. Secure encryption is needed to protect minorities, LGBTQI people, democratic activists, journalists, etc.Criminal justice is being privatized. In the future the algorithms of corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft will decide which user is a suspect and which is not. The proposed legislation contains no transparency requirements for the algorithms used. Under the rule of law the investigation of criminal offences belongs in the hands of independent judges and civil servants under court supervision.Indiscriminate messaging and chat control creates a precedent and opens the floodgates. Deploying technology for automatically monitoring all online communications is dangerous: It can very easily be used for other purposes in the future, for example copyright violations, drug abuse, or ''harmful content''. In authoritarian states such technology is to identify and arrest government opponents and democracy activists. Once the technology is deployed comprehensively, there is no going back.The temporary legislation on the table is ineffective. Contrary to its intent, it will not allow Facebook et al to continue the mass monitoring of private correspondence. It does limit the ePrivacy directive. The chat control, however, will continue to violate the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO) because it lacks a legal basis and violates the principle of proportionality. A complaint filed by Patrick Breyer is being examined by the Irish Data Protection Agency.Why messaging and chat control harms children and abuse victimsProponents claim indiscriminate messaging and chat control facilitates the prosecution of child sexual exploitation. However, this argument is controversial, even among victims of child sexual abuse. In fact messaging and chat control can hurt victims and potential victims of sexual exploitation:
- Safe spaces are destroyed. Victims of sexual violence are especially in need of the ability to communicate safely and confidentially to seek counseling and support, for example to safely exchange among each other, with their therapists or attorneys. The introduction of real-time monitoring takes these safe rooms away from them. This can discourage victims from seeking help and support.Self-recorded nude photos of minors (sexting) end up in the hands of company employees and police where they do not belong and are not safe.Minors are being criminalized. Especially young people often share intimate recordings with each other (sexting). With messaging and chat control in place, their photos and videos may end up in the hands of criminal investigators. German crime statistics demonstrate that 40% of all investigations for child pornography target minors.Indiscriminate messaging and chat control does not contain the circulation of illegal material but actually makes it more difficult to prosecute child sexual exploitation. It encourages offenders to go underground and use private encrypted servers which can be impossible to detect and intercept. Even on open channels, indiscriminate messaging and chat control does not contain the volume of material circulated, as evidenced by the constantly rising number of machine reports.Documents on the legislative procedureLegislative Proposal by the Commission (10 September 2020)Technical solutions to screen end to end encrypted communications (September 2020)Report of the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (11 December 2020)Answers given by the Commission to questions of the Members of Parliament (28 September 2020)Answers given by the Commission to questions of the Members of Parliament (27 October 2020)Impact Assessment by the European Parliamentary Research Service (5 February 2021)Leaked 4 column document reflecting the state of negotiations (englisch) (5 March 2021)Legal Opinion on the Compatibility of Chatcontrol with the case law of the ECJ (March 2021)Answers by Europol on statistics regarding the prosecution of child sexual abuse material online (28 April 2021)Consolidated Compromise Text of the Draft Regulation (Trilogue Agreement) (21 May 2021)Critical commentary and further readingProstasia Foundation: ''How the War against Child Abuse Material was lost'' (19 August 2020)European Digital Rights (EDRi): ''Is surveilling children really protecting them? Our concerns on the interim CSAM regulation'' (24 September 2020)Civil Society Organizations: ''Open Letter: Civil society views on defending privacy while preventing criminal acts'' (27 Oktober 2020)''we suggest that the Commission prioritise this non-technical work, and more rapid take-down of offending websites, over client-side filtering ['...]''
- European Data Protection Supervisor: ''Opinion on the proposal for temporary derogations from Directive 2002/58/EC for the purpose of combatting child sexual abuse online'' (10. November 2020)''Due to the absence of an impact assessment accompanying the Proposal, the Commission has yet to demonstrate that the measures envisaged by the Proposal are strictly necessary, effective and proportionate for achieving their intended objective.''
- Alexander Hanff (victim of child abuse and privacy professional): ''Why I don't support privacy invasive measures to tackle child abuse.'' (11 November 2020)''As an abuse survivor, I (and millions of other survivors across the world) rely on confidential communications to both find support and report the crimes against us '' to remove our rights to privacy and confidentiality is to subject us to further injury and frankly, we have suffered enough. ['...] it doesn't matter what steps we take to find abusers, it doesn't matter how many freedoms or constitutional rights we destroy in order to meet that agenda '' it WILL NOT stop children from being abused, it will simply push the abuse further underground, make it more and more difficult to detect and ultimately lead to more children being abused as the end result.''
- AccessNow: ''The fundamental rights concerns at the heart of new EU online content rules'' (19 November 2020)''In practice this means that they would put private companies in charge of a matter that public authorities should handle''
- Federal Bar Association (BRAK) (in German): ''Stellungnahme zur 'bergangsverordnung gegen Kindesmissbrauch im Internet'' (24 November 2020)'the assessment of child abuse-related facts is part of the legal profession's area of responsibility. Accordingly, the communication exchanged between lawyers and clients will often contain relevant keywords. ['...] According to the Commission's proposals, it is to be feared that in all of the aforementioned constellations there will regularly be a breach of confidentiality due to the unavoidable use of relevant terms.''
- Alexander Hanff (Victim of Child Abuse and Privacy Activist): ''EU Parliament are about to pass a derogation which will result in the total surveillance of over 500M Europeans'' (4 Dezember 2020)''I didn't have confidential communications tools when I was raped; all my communications were monitored by my abusers '' there was nothing I could do, there was no confidence. ['...] I can't help but wonder how much different my life would have been had I had access to these modern technologies. [The planned vote on the e-Privacy Derogation] will drive abuse underground making it far more difficult to detect; it will inhibit support groups from being able to help abuse victims '' IT WILL DESTROY LIVES.''
- German Data Protection Supervisor (in German): 'BfDI kritisiert vers¤umte Umsetzung von EU Richtlinie'' (17 Dezember 2020)''A blanket and unprovoked monitoring of digital communication channels is neither proportionate nor necessary to detect online child abuse. The fight against sexualised violence against children must be tackled with targeted and specific measures. The investigative work is the task of the law enforcement authorities and must not be outsourced to private operators of messenger services.''
- European Digital Rights (EDRi): Wiretapping children's private communications: Four sets of fundamental rights problems for children (and everyone else) (10 February 2021)''As with other types of content scanning (whether on platforms like YouTube or in private communications) scanning everything from everyone all the time creates huge risks of leading to mass surveillance by failing the necessity and proportionality test. Furthermore, it creates a slippery slope where we start scanning for less harmful cases (copyright) and then we move on to harder issues (child sexual abuse, terrorism) and before you realise what happened scanning everything all the time becomes the new normal.''
- German Bar Association (DAV): ''Indiscriminate communications scanning is disproportionate'' (9 March 2021)''The DAV is explicitly in favour of combating the preparation and commission of child sexual abuse and its dissemination via the internet through effective measures at EU-level. However, the Interim Regulation proposed by the Commission would allow blatantly disproportionate infringements on the fundamental rights of users of internet-based communication services. Furthermore, the proposed Interim Regulation lacks sufficient procedural safeguards for those affected. This is why the legislative proposal should be rejected as a whole.''
- Letter from the President of the German Bar Association (DAV) and the President of the Federal Bar Association (BRAK) (in German) (8 March 2021)''Positive hits with subsequent disclosure to governmental and non-governmental agencies would be feared not only by accused persons but above all by victims of child sexual abuse. In this context, the absolute confidentiality of legal counselling is indispensable in the interest of the victims, especially in these matters which are often fraught with shame. In these cases in particular, the client must retain the authority to decide which contents of the mandate may be disclosed to whom. Otherwise, it is to be feared that victims of child sexual abuse will not seek legal advice.''
- Strategic autonomy in danger: European Tech companies warn of lowering data protection levels in the EU (15 April 2021)''In the course of the initiative ''Fighting child sexual abuse: detection, removal, and reporting of illegal content'', the European Union plans to abolish the digital privacy of correspondence. In order to automatically detect illegal content, all private chat messages are to be screened in the future. This should also apply to content that has so far been protected with strong end-to-end encryption. If this initiative is implemented according to the current plan it would enormously damage our European ideals and the indisputable foundations of our democracy, namely freedom of expression and the protection of privacy ['...]. The initiative would also severely harm Europe's strategic autonomy and thus EU-based companies.''
- The date for the vote on the chat control regulation has been set: On 6 July, all Members of the
- On 26 May, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) approved a regulation that will
- Tomorrow, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) will vote on a legislative proposal that
- EU Council and Parliament agreed tonight to allow providers to automatically search all personal electronic mail and messages of each
- A great majority of EU citizens oppose the EU's plans for blanket messaging and chat control. This is the result
- The EU Commission is drafting permanent legislation on the automatic searching of all online activities, including personal electronic mail and
- In search of "child pornography", the EU wants to have all private digital communications automatically analysed and, in case of
- Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) accuses Google of misleading the public in a recent communication[1] on
- The second trilogue negotiation between Parliament, Commission and Council on the planned e-privacy derogation, which would allow providers of e-mail,
- An expert assessment published on February 8 by the European Parliamentary Research Service found that the automated screening of private
- The indiscriminate and error-prone automated screening of private emails and messages in search of child pornography and grooming by US
- The EU wants private e-mail, messaging and chat conversations to be screened for suspicious content generally and indiscriminately. On the
- The number of EU Facebook users reported to the police for allegedly sharing illegal depictions of minors declined by 46%
- Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) welcomes the decision by Facebook to suspend the error-prone mass screening
- Today the European Parliament's Civil liberties Committee voted to restrict the ePrivacy Directive which aims at protecting private communications. The
- The EU Commission wants to legalise the mass screening and surveillance of all private electronic communications in search of possible
- Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party), Member of the European Parliament, has filed a complaint with the data protection authority of Schleswig-Holstein
- The European Parliament today debated a draft legislation by the EU Commission that would allow the screening without suspicion of
- The EU Commission is proposing to screen and monitor all private electronic communications without suspicion in order to search for
- The EU Commission wants all private electronic communications to be screened for possible child pornography, in the absence of any
- Chatcontrol: European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communications '' Patrick Breyer
- Today, the European Parliament approved the ePrivacy Derogation, allowing providers of e-mail and messaging services to automatically search all personal messages of each citizen for presumed suspect content and report suspected cases to the police. The European Pirates Delegation in the Greens/EFA group strongly condemns this automated mass surveillance, which effectively means the end of privacy in digital correspondence. Pirate Party MEPs plan to take legal action.
- In today's vote, 537 Members of the European Parliament approved Chatcontrol, with 133 voting against and 20 abstentions.[1] According to police data, in the vast majority of cases, innocent citizens come under suspicion of having committed an offence due to unreliable processes. In a recent representative poll, 72% of EU citizens opposed general monitoring of their messages.[2] While providers will initially have a choice to search or not to search communications, follow-up legislation, expected in autumn, is to oblige all communications service providers to indiscriminate screening.
- Breyer: ''This harms children rather than protecting them''
- German Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer, shadow rapporteur on the legislative proposal, comments:
- ''The adoption of the first ever EU regulation on mass surveillance is a sad day for all those who rely on free and confidential communications and advice, including abuse victims and press sources. The regulation deals a death blow to the confidentiality of digital correspondence. It is a general breach of the dam to permit indiscriminate surveillance of private spaces by corporations '' by this totalitarian logic, our post, our smartphones or our bedrooms could also be generally monitored. Unleashing such denunciation machines on us is ineffective, illegal and irresponsible.
- Indiscriminate searches will not protect children and even endanger them by exposing their private photos to unknown persons, and by criminalising children themselves. Already overburdened investigators are kept busy with having to sort out thousands of criminally irrelevant messages. The victims of such a terrible crime as child sexual abuse deserve measures that prevent abuse in the first place. The right approach would be, for example, to intensify undercover investigations into child porn rings and reduce of the years-long processing backlogs in searches and evaluations of seized data.''
- Pirates plan legal action against the regulation
- The EU's plans for chat control have been confirmed to violate fundamental rights by a former judge of the European Court of Justice.[3] Patrick Breyer plans to take legal action against the regulation and is looking for victims of abuse who would file such a complainant. 'Abuse victims are particularly harmed by this mass surveillance'', explains Breyer. 'To be able to speak freely about the abuse they have suffered and seek help in a safe space is critical to victims of sexualised violence. depend on the possibility to communicate safely and confidentially. These safe spaces are now being taken away from them, which will prevent victims from seeking help and support.''
- The European Commission has already announced a follow-up regulation to make chat control mandatory for all email and messaging providers. Previously secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services such as Whatsapp or Signal would be forced to install a backdoor. There is a considerable backlash against these plans: A public consultation carried out by the EU Commission revealed that 51% of all respondents oppose chat control for e-mail and messaging providers. 80% of respondents do not want chat control to be applied to encrypted messages. [4] Due to the resistance, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johannson has postponed the proposal until September 2021.
- More Information on Chatcontrol: www.chatcontrol.eu
- [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-9-2021-07-06-RCV_FR.docx
- [2] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppose-eu-plans-to-search-all-private-messages-for-allegedly-illegal-material-and-report-to-the-police/
- [3] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Legal-Opinion-Screening-for-child-pornography-2021-03-04.pdf
- [4] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12726-Child-sexual-abuse-online-detection-removal-and-reporting-/public-consultation_de
- Communist China Seizes Control of Britain's Largest Microchip Factory
- A state-backed Communist Chinese firm has conducted a hostile takeover of the UK's largest microchip factory, raising concerns about Beijing's growing control of the market during a global chip shortage.
- On Monday, Dutch semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia, which is controlled by the China-owned electronics firm Wingtech, took 100 per cent control of the Newport Wafer Fab's factory in South Wales after using a contractural clause to seize the company.
- In 2019, Nexperia signed a contract to support the factory in exchange for Newport Wafer Fab putting up its factory as collateral. After the British company was unable to fulfil the manufacturing quota obligations in the deal, the Chinese owned enterprise was able to take full control of the factory, The Telegraph reported.
- The Welsh firm, which produces silicon chips for the automotive industry and has been developing next-generation ''compound semiconductors'', has been hard hit over the past year as the Chinese coronavirus crisis resulted in a global chip shortage. Nexperia has agreed to pay out £65 million to pay off Newport Wafer Fab's debts in exchange for taking ownership.
- Prior to the Chinese takeover, Newport Wafer Fab had called on the British government to step in and prevent the sale and to help find alternative funding sources. Yet, despite the concerns over national security, the Tory government did not intervene.
- The move is reminiscent of China's Belt and Road 'debt-trap diplomacy', in which the Communist nation offers predatory loans to developing nations throughout Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe for infrastructure projects '-- often built with Chinese labour and materials '-- and when the countries fail to repay the loans, the CCP seizes the assets.
- Global Britain: Boris Johnson to Seek 'Deeper Trade Links' with Communist China https://t.co/SPTXcctHBB
- '-- Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 16, 2021
- Questions have been raised as to why the UK government did not use the recently enacted National Security and Investment Act to prevent the sale to the Chinese on national security grounds, as microchips and semiconductors have been highlighted by both the United States and the European Union as one of the key areas of concern in preventing Chinese technological dominance.
- Speaking to Breitbart London, Hong Kong Watch chairman Benedict Rogers said: ''This is yet another example of the naivety and lack of wisdom in our relations with the Chinese Communist Party regime and our failures to secure our critical industries and infrastructure.
- ''To allow a takeover of this kind is simply inviting threats to national security. The National Security and Investment Act was designed to prevent such takeovers, and so I hope that this deal will be urgently reviewed under that legislation.''
- The head of the government's China Research Group and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Tom Tugendhat, said: ''Many of our allies have expressed serious concerns about this deal.
- ''This is the first real test of the new legislation since its introduction in April. The Government is yet to explain why we are turning a blind eye to Britain's largest semiconductor foundry falling into the hands of an entity from a country that has a track record of using technology to create geopolitical leverage.''
- Senior Tories Accuse Chinese Interests of Exploiting Coronavirus Crisis to Dominate UK Tech https://t.co/VyI8f6dM6E
- '-- Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 15, 2020
- In a letter to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng last month, Tugendhat warned: ''With the world experiencing a shortage in semiconductor production and companies and countries competing over the limited supply that exists, it is crucial that the UK protects its strategically valuable manufacturing resources.''
- Responding, the Tory government minister claimed that the Chinese acquisition has been ''considered thoroughly'' and was determined not to be a threat to national security.
- Mr Kwarteng said that the government ''will continue to monitor the situation closely and use our powers if appropriate'', but at present, the government considers it to be a ''commercial matter'' under the jurisdiction of the local Welsh government.
- A Welsh Government spokesman hailed the deal for saving 400 jobs and for the local government recouping its investment ''with interest''. The spokesman added that issues of Chinese ownership are a matter for the UK government.
- Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage warned last year that Communist China was looking to exploit the ''fire sale'' of British businesses hard hit by the Wuhan coronavirus to buy up ''vast swathes of our strategic and manufacturing industries''.
- Indeed, in May, it was revealed that Chinese companies and investors have bought up at least £135 billion in British companies, infrastructure, and property, with 40 per cent of the identified purchases having been made since 2019. The report found that Chinese companies or investors had bought stakes in infrastructure projects, including Thames Water, Heathrow airport, and UK Power Networks.
- In March of 2020, the Communist Party-linked Jingye Group completed its takeover of British Steel, which accounts for one-third of the UK's steel production.
- 'Money, Money, Money!' '-- Farage Accuses British Elites of Covering up Chinese Takeover https://t.co/BsrbGTnRM4
- '-- Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 27, 2021
- Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
- Trout Are Becoming Addicted to Meth in Polluted Waters, Study Reveals
- (C) BobGross/iStock A new study reveals that brown trout are becoming addicted to methamphetamine in polluted rivers. A new study reveals that brown trout can get addicted to small amounts of methamphetamine that appear in their freshwater environments, which includes experiencing signs of withdrawal. Though it might at first appear to be an odd subject to research, Live Science says meth pollutes rivers across the globe. "Where methamphetamine users are, there is also methamphetamine pollution of freshwaters," said Pavel Hork½, the study's first author in an email to Live Science.
- Aware of this fact, Hork½ and the other researchers wanted to know if the presence of illicit drugs in rivers had any effect on the fish living in those rivers. Hork½ and his team studied brown trout, and through their research, they determined not only could trout become addicted to the small amounts of meth polluting their homes but this addiction can hinder a trout's ability to get food, mate, etc.
- The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB) on Tuesday. As stated in a separate article written about the study in the JEB, the team placed 40 trout into a tank that contained trace levels of meth that tracked with the levels regularly found in freshwater rivers. The trout remained in the tank for eight weeks before being moved to a clean tank.
- After the fish were moved from the polluted tank to a clean one, researchers checked for withdrawal symptoms. To do this, they presented the fish with two options: the trout could swim in clean water, or they could swim in water containing trace amounts of the drug. Through this experiment, they found that, when given the choice, the fish who'd spent two months in the meth polluted tank would seek out the water laced with the drug. But that wasn't the only effect the illicit drug had on the fish.
- "In addition, the addicted fish were less active than trout that had never experienced the drug," reads the article, "and the researchers found evidence of the drug in the fish's brains up to 10 days after the methamphetamine was withdrawn."
- Hork½ and his team concluded that trace amounts of illicit drugs present in our waterways can cause addiction in and modify the "habitat preferences" of the creatures who live in them.
- According to Live Science, the team wants to conduct further research to see if the same addiction patterns can be found in wild fish populations, as well as to see if other drugs, such as antidepressants, alter aquatic life.
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- Sun Valley Conference to Feature Bill Gates, CIA Director Bill Burns - Variety
- SUN VALLEY, Idaho '-- Brian Grazer and Bobby Kotick goofed around a little bit when they ran into each other in the driveway outside the Sun Valley Lodge.
- Grazer pretended to be announcing Kotick's name in sports announcer fashion (''Bob-bee Kooo-tick''). But other than a little backslapping and mugging for a selfie by the chairman of Imagine Entertainment and the CEO of Activision Blizzard, Allen & Co. conference attendees were all business for the gathering here that brings together business moguls, tech titans and other influential figures for heady conversations about issues ranging from business to public health (a natural topic after last year's conference was KO'd by COVID) to immigration to climate change.
- Upon arriving at the mountain resort, Allen & Co. conference-goers were directed to take a rapid COVID-19 test. That sober reminder of real-world conditions outside of this picturesque Alpine village-style setting definitely cut into the willingness of CEOs to engage with the clutch business reporters who make the trek up to the region known to the locals as the ''Magic Valley.''
- ''Everybody's in a good mood but it feels like a year to be low key,'' said a prominent entertainment industry executive who is an Allen & Co. regular.
- Arrival day inevitably brings a few traffic jams to the tiny towns in the area. Private planes were lined up rows deep at Friedman Memorial Airport as others jockeyed for precious landing slots. Eleven miles north at the lodge, the parade of black and silver SUVs ferrying passengers to and fro also got backed up. Comcast chairman-CEO Brian Roberts chatted with Graham Holdings Co. chief Donald Graham as Roberts waited to park his vehicle while headed to the golf course with a bag of clubs in tow.
- Netflix's Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos skipped the car line and walked together into the lodge. Disney's Bob Iger and Bob Chapek, ViacomCBS' Shari Redstone, NBCUniversal's Jeff Shell, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, WarnerMedia's Jason Kilar, Snap's Michael Lynton, Shack Shake founder Danny Meyer and Hearst chief Steve Swartz were also spotted. Some waved but none stopped.
- The conference begins in earnest on Wednesday with sessions that will be held outdoors this year. The first day is expected to include a presentation on e-commerce by Shopify by CEO Tobias Lutke and a general discussion of the global economic climate. A session on criminal justice reform is also on the agenda.
- On Thursday, Allen & Co. regulars Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg will hold a session on creativity. Immigration reform will also be discussed. On Friday, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will address climate change. Another Friday session will be devoted to leading during trouble times.
- CIA director Bill Burns is among the heavyweight politicos on the guest list this year. James Baker III, former secretary of state, will interview Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett on Saturday for the traditional closing session with the Oracle of Omaha.
- (Pictured: Bill Gates and Bill Burns)
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- Two NHS hospitals declare code black alert as Covid cases soar and staff isolate - Mirror Online
- Two hospitals in Scotland have declared Code black status due to Covid-19 pressures.
- NHS Grampian said both Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Dr Gray's Hospital in Elgin, Moray have had to postpone non-urgent elective operations due to the soaring number of Covid patients.
- The health board blamed mounting pressure from rising Covid-19 cases in the north-east, both through the number of patients needing hospital treatment and staff absences due to self-isolation requirements for the decision to postpone non-urgent procedures.
- It follows an announcement from NHS Highland on Wednesday that Raigmore Hospital in Inverness had reached capacity and declared code black status - halting all non-urgent elective surgery.
- NHS Grampian medical director Professor Nick Fluck said: "This is a dynamic situation, subject to change throughout each day. I can confirm that both Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Dr Gray's Hospital have been at black status (i.e. at capacity) in recent days.
- Two hospitals in Scotland have declared Code black status (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)"Choosing to cancel procedures or appointments is never a decision we take lightly; however it is our only option if we are to relieve some of the pressure and allow staff to concentrate on the most urgent and emergency care.
- "I know it is distressing for people to have procedures or appointments postponed, sometimes at very short notice. I apologise to anyone who has been affected by this.
- "We will work to reschedule these, but we cannot offer any guarantees at present about when this might happen.
- Aberdeen Royal Infirmary"If you are accessing any healthcare services, please be aware delays are likely."
- Prior to the NHS Grampian announcement, BMA Scotland warned action is needed within days to tackle "a very high level of pressure" on the NHS in Scotland due to the surge in coronavirus cases.
- The doctors' trade union said hospitals may have to consider cancelling elective treatment unless measures are taken to ease pressure on staff.
- Dr Grays HospitalDr Lewis Morrison, BMA Scotland chair, told the BBC's Lunchtime Live radio programme that decisions needed to be made quickly regarding staff absences due to the requirement to self-isolate.
- He said: "Raigmore is an example of what might well happen in other places in the NHS in Scotland if we don't take some action to deal with what is a very high level of pressure on healthcare, both in general practice and in hospitals, combined with rising Covid cases leading to a quite large number of staff having to self-isolate as contacts."
- Dr Morrison said any change in self-isolation policies for double-vaccinated healthcare staff would have to be safe for patients and staff themselves.
- He said meetings were going ahead within the Scottish Government "with some urgency" on the issue.
- Dr Morrison continued: "Within the next few days I think some sort of decision needs to be made to assure the continuity of healthcare services in areas under these kind of pressures.
- "It's as urgent as that I think."
- The news comes as the UK recorded the highest number of new cases recorded in the third wave and since January 23 on Wednesday.
- A total of 32,548 people have tested positive to coronavirus in the last 24 hours and there have been 33 deaths.
- Read MoreRelated ArticlesUK records another 32,548 new Covid cases with 33 deaths in worst day yet of third waveRead MoreRelated ArticlesUK's five Covid hotspots with the highest rise in cases as lockdown ends on July 19
- Spotify staff reportedly outraged by Joe Rogan's show, insiders say
- July 7, 2021 | 4:01pm | Updated July 7, 2021 | 6:35pm
- Joe Rogan, the notoriously polarizing host of ''The Joe Rogan Experience,'' America's most popular podcast in 2020, is upsetting some Spotify staffers, according to a report. Employee complaints, however, fall on the deaf ears of company executives who paid the 53-year-old comedian more than $100 million to exclusively stream on the platform.
- ''I'm personally bothered by his transphobic comments and am concerned with the way he might spread misinformation,'' one Spotify employee wrote last fall on an internal networking channel on the app Fishbowl, Insider reported Tuesday.
- A former employee told the publication that, during his time at Spotify, the decision to sign a deal with Rogan was the most contentious one the company made.
- However, another employee told Insider that it's only ''a loud minority of people who are outraged'' at Rogan.
- This is far from the first time Rogan has inspired controversy. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal viaWhile only a subgroup of staff may be upset, their numbers were sufficient to merit a town hall meeting in September to address that they felt Rogan's show was at times anti-transgender, the Wall Street Journal reported in October. A request by some staffers for ''The Joe Rogan Experience'' to receive editorial supervision was denied by the company and Rogan subsequently retweeted a video mocking the employees for being oversensitive.
- ''He is the biggest voice by far that's going to accelerate our business,'' an employee told the WSJ at the time. ''Getting him on Spotify '-- and soon exclusively '-- is going to help bring a lot more audiences onto the platform, and hopefully we can spread that to other programming.''
- ''In the case of Joe Rogan, a total of 10 meetings have been held with various groups and individuals to hear their respective concerns,'' Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a September meeting, Vice reported at the time. ''And some of them want Rogan removed because of things he's said in the past.''
- Podcast host Joe Rogan. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal viaIn addition to company staffers, Rogan infuriated fellow Spotify podcast stars, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, after telling 21-year-olds not to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a claim on which he subsequently backpedaled.
- Spotify did not immediately return The Post's request for comment.
- Haiti President Jovenel Moise killed: interim PM Claude Joseph
- In this file photo taken on September 27, 2018 Jovenel Moise, President of Haiti, addresses the 73rd session of the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York. '-- AFPHaiti's Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph announced Wednesday the country's president Jovenel Moise was assassinated and his wife wounded in an armed attack at their home.
- Claude Joseph said he was now in charge of the country and urged the public to remain calm, while insisting the police and army would ensure the population's safety.
- "The president was assassinated at his home by foreigners who spoke English and Spanish," Joseph said.
- Moise had been ruling Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, by decree, after legislative elections due in 2018 were delayed in the wake of disputes, including on when his own term ends.
- In addition to the political crisis, kidnappings for ransom have surged in recent months, further reflecting the growing influence of armed gangs in the Caribbean nation.
- Haiti also faces chronic poverty and recurrent natural disasters.
- The president faced steep opposition from swathes of the population that deemed his mandate illegitimate, and he churned through a series of seven prime ministers in four years. Most recently, Joseph was supposed to be replaced this week after only three months in the post.
- In addition to presidential, legislative and local elections, Haiti was due to have a constitutional referendum in September after it was twice postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- Supported by Moise, the text of the constitutional reform, aimed at strengthening the executive branch, has been overwhelmingly rejected by the opposition and many civil society organizations.
- The constitution currently in force was written in 1987 after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship and declares that "any popular consultation aimed at modifying the Constitution by referendum is formally prohibited."
- Critics had also claimed it was impossible to organize a poll, given the general insecurity in the country.
- Moise had been accused of inaction in the face of the multiple crises, and faces steep opposition from swaths of the population.
- The United Nations Security Council, the United States and Europe have called for free and transparent legislative and presidential elections to be held by the end of 2021.
- Henry, 71, has been part of Haiti's coronavirus response and previously held posts in the government in 2015 and 2016 as interior minister then social affairs and labor minister.
- He was also a member of the health minister's cabinet from June 2006 to September 2008, before becoming chief of staff, a post he held from September 2008 to October 2011.
- Moise had tasked Henry with "forming a broad-based government" to "solve the glaring problem of insecurity" and to work toward "the holding of general elections and the referendum".
- Henry is close to the opposition, but his appointment was not welcomed by the majority of opposition parties, who has continued to demand the president step down.
- Haiti - FLASH : President Jovenel Mo¯se Assassinated by mercenaries (official) Updated 7am + video - HaitiLibre.com : Haiti news 7/7
- Haiti - FLASH : President Jovenel Mo¯se Assassinated by mercenaries (official) Updated 7am + video 07/07/2021 06:43:39 On Wednesday morning, Haitian President Jovenel Mo¯se was assassinated in his home by a commando made up of foreign elements, announced the outgoing Prime Minister Claude Joseph. The president's wife was injured in the attack and hospitalized, the ex-prime minister called on the population for calm and indicated that the police and the army would maintain order.
- "It is with great sadness that we confirm the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, during an attack on his residence by mercenaries. The First Lady, injured, receives the necessary care. Our hearts go out to the presidential family and to the whole nation," Embassy of Haiti in CanadaOfficial PRESS RELEASE"Around one (1) o'clock in the morning, on the night of Tuesday July 6 to Wednesday July 7, 2021, a group of unidentified individuals, some of whom spoke in Spanish, attacked the private residence of the President of the Republic and thus mortally wounded the Head of State. Wounded by gunshot, the First Lady takes the care that her case requires.Condemning this odious, inhuman and barbaric act, the Prime Minister a.i, Dr. Claude Joseph, and the CSPN call on the population for calm. The security situation in the country is under the control of the Haitian National Police and the Haitian Armed Forces.All measures are taken to guarantee the continuity of the State and protect the Nation.Democracy and the Republic will win.Dr. Claude Joseph Prime Minister a.i"Mise jour 7;00 a.m."The situation is under control. I am in a meeting with the CSPN to ensure security and take all measures for the continuity of the State," Prime Minister a.i. Claude Joseph informed.Due to an ongoing security situation, the US Embassy in Haiti is restricting its direct-hire US citizen staff to the Embassy compounds in Tabarre. The Embassy will be closed today.HL/ HaitiLibre
- The President of Haiti, A Strong Opponent of China, Has Been Assassinated | Powerhouse News
- President Jovenel Mose was assassinated in the early morning of Wednesday; this assassination was carried out by alleged paramilitary forces in a brutal and inhumane attack, according to departing Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph.
- Throughout the wake of the tumultuous 2015 elections, Mose stepped in as a stand-in leader for incumbent Michel Martelly. Mose stated that his tenure started in 2017, rendering him the rightful leader until 2022.
- However, he was met with opponents who stated that his tenure had already ended this year; these opponents then labeled Mose a tyrant. In February, opposition politicians sought to install a substitute president, 72-year-old judge Joseph M(C)c¨ne; although M(C)c¨ne garnered no worldwide support and issued no substantial public statements since his supposed election.
- BREAKING: Reports the President of Haiti has been assasinated.https://t.co/v0Va7SUTw0
- '-- Conflict News (@Conflicts) July 7, 2021
- There Might Be Something Darker HereMose faced rising requests from Haiti corporate executives to consider developing ties with China, as well as demands from opposition figures to resign. Haiti is among the few countries in the world that still recognize Taiwan's independence and maintains close ties with the island republic.
- Beijing maintains no official connections with nations that recognize Taiwan under the Maoist Party's One China policy. Haiti's envoy to Taiwan, in a statement with Taiwan News, published Wednesday, stated that Mose respected the diplomatic connection; the statement also confirmed he had no intentions of taking massive Chinese credit proposals to end Haiti's ties with Taiwan.
- President of Haiti has been assasinated.
- Feb 7 2021 ' July 7 2021 pic.twitter.com/gJVvhs2DsA
- '-- DJ No PK's'...ð£ (@DJThistle01) July 7, 2021
- Following three months in power, Prime Minister Joseph was set to step down. On Monday, Mose confirmed the choice of Ariel Henry as his seventh Prime Minister. Joseph had complimented Henry and had made no indication that the two were at odds.
- The DetailsAccording to Haiti Libre, Joseph's remark to the Haitian community, a cohort of unknown persons, many of whom had spoken Spanish, assaulted the personal home of the President of the Republic.
- This assault therefore fatally injured the Head of Government at about 1 a.m. this morning. The First Lady, who was struck by a bullet, is getting the medical attention she needs.
- NORTH AMERICA President of Haiti Jovenel Mo¯se has been assasinated in his private residence. pic.twitter.com/VSeBx42y2U
- '-- R&AW SUPPLY CHAIN (@BHARATANALYSIE) July 7, 2021
- The killing was described by Joseph as heinous, inhumane, and cruel, and he encouraged the population to stay calm. The crisis was also said to be underhand in the report.
- Officials have blocked aircraft that left before the assassination from landing; in an attempt to block the assassins from leaving, the airport has been closed and all air travel has been banned.
- The president's one child, as well as the First Lady Martine Mose, was there during the assault, but were allegedly unharmed. Mose was 53 years old when he died.
- In his announcement, Joseph declared himself to be the nation's leader. At the time of publication, M(C)c¨ne had made no public declarations or attempted to assert his claims to the office in any manner.
- Beijing targets Haiti as bid to isolate Taiwan from its diplomatic allies heads to the Caribbean | South China Morning Post
- If Port-au-Prince 'can uphold the one-China principle, Beijing is willing to establish country-to-country ties', commerce official Wang Xiaoyang saysBeijing can provide 'interest-free loans and concessional loans' and will 'respect the recipient country', he saysTopic |
- Taiwan E3B1C256-BFCB-4CEF-88A6-1DCCD7666635
- Published: 12:30pm, 14 Sep, 2019
- Updated: 12:00am, 15 Sep, 2019
- Tucker Carlson doesn't know how life expectancy works - The Washington Post
- Granted, Tucker Carlson is no stranger to hyperbole. But it is nonetheless worth noting an over-the-top assertion that he made during his Fox News show on Tuesday evening.
- ''This is the '-- I think, I honestly think is the greatest scandal of my lifetime by far,'' he said with all of the expected breathlessness. ''I thought the Iraq War was; this seems much bigger than that.''
- The ''this'' at issue? That the government would ''force people to take medicine they don't want or need'' '-- something that the government is not doing. That President Biden said a few hours earlier that public health professionals might go into communities to offer the coronavirus vaccine to those limited by time or mobility from seeking it out themselves was misinterpreted by commentators like Carlson to suggest that government patrols would soon be seizing people off the streets to inoculate them. This is ... not likely.
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- Carlson is by now deeply invested in the sort of anti-vaccine narrative that defenders of his network anxiously try to cast as not a central part of Fox's coverage. He has repeatedly hosted vaccine skeptics and elevated far-right claims about the efficacy or risks of the vaccine. It's his recognizable style: willfully or ignorantly misinterpreting information in an effort to alarm his viewers and, it often seems, himself.
- On Tuesday night, though, he offered a very good reminder of why no one on God's green Earth should rely on him for reliable information about the coronavirus pandemic or about covid-19, the disease the virus causes. Carlson thought he had a great gotcha, a rhetorical maneuver so sharp and so polished that he might dispatch the ''coronavirus is a serious issue'' dragon with one piercing thrust. What he actually had, though, was an opportunity to reveal how little he actually understands about public health.
- ''You spent so much time on TV, and in America more generally, throwing your opinions around, that sometimes it's good to look at the numbers, the government numbers, and then you can make your decisions based on the data, as they say,'' he began. ''So we looked into coronavirus deaths: who's dying and at what age, and we discovered something amazing.''
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- What was that amazing thing?
- ''The data show that the median age of death for covid is often older than life expectancy. For real,'' he continued. ''If you want to get a sense of just how completely they have hyped this virus, turning into something that the numbers show it is not, take a look at Ohio.''
- There, he said, the life expectancy was 73, while the median age of those who died was 80.
- ''So people who died from covid were on average seven years older than the average age of people in Ohio at which they died!'' he said triumphantly. Take that, doctors!
- Now, look. Let's say for the sake of argument that Carlson's data here are right on the money. It's not clear what follows from that. That the disease killed only those who were already beating the odds? That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That these people were simply living on a knife's edge and would have died at any instant anyway? That seems hard to defend. While he layered on the expected ''any death is tragic'' contextualizing, there's an inescapable morbidity to this argument broadly: These people were going to die anyway! This is no big deal!
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- But, of course, Carlson is wrong. He apparently has no idea how life expectancy works.
- We can look at national data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2018, life expectancy overall was 78.7 years, with women being expected to live longer than men. A rough estimate of the average age of death for covid patients using CDC data puts that figure at around 76 years. It's likely higher, but it doesn't really matter. Regardless, it's indicated on the chart below.
- What's important to remember, though, is that this is life expectancy at birth. The minute someone was born in 2018, they were expected to live to be about 79 years old. Not all of them would get that far, of course. Some would die earlier, often decades earlier. But, overall, that cohort of Americans would be expected to land at around 79 years.
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- For those who had already lived to be 65, though, their life expectancy wasn't similarly 79. After all, they had successfully already made it through 65 years of life! So among that group, life expectancy wasn't an additional 14 years but, instead, another 18. The older you get, the higher your life expectancy gets because you've already lived that long. Maybe once you hit, say, 100, your life expectancy dips into the days or hours. But because it's a lot more likely that a 75-year-old will reach the age of 90 than it is that someone just born will, life expectancy continues to extend outward.
- So for 75-year-olds, life expectancy in 2018 was an additional 12 years '-- meaning that an American who was that age in 2018 would be expected to live until 2030. Unless, of course, they contracted the coronavirus last year.
- For anyone making decisions ''based on the data, as they say,'' there's a surfeit of evidence about how covid-19 has truncated human lives. One study released in February estimates that had the pandemic not occurred, a cumulative 20.5 million additional years of human life would have been preserved, a function of the expected life spans of those who otherwise died. An estimate published last year put the toll in the United States alone at more than 1.2 million life-years. It's not the case that those who died had already beaten the odds by seven years, the lucky devils. Instead, those who died might have been expected to cumulatively have spent another 14.5 million months on this planet.
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- It is also not the case that death is the only negative side effect of the virus. Many of those who have contracted the virus have experienced significant symptoms for an extended period of time. One study in the United Kingdom estimated that some 2 million people there had months-long bouts with the virus. That difficulty in overcoming the disease can ''have a lasting and debilitating impact on the lives of those affected,'' the country's health minister said last month.
- It is the case, though, that those who are dying of the virus at this point '-- still several hundred a day '-- are almost entirely from the ranks of the unvaccinated. In Maryland, for example, every single person who died of covid-19 last month was someone who had not been vaccinated. But, you know, maybe they had already passed the life-expectancy-at-birth figure for the state, so no big deal.
- Tucker Carlson is more interested in showing how much smarter he is than public-health experts and is more interested in getting his audience ginned up with outrage than he is in offering accurate information about the pandemic. That's not the greatest scandal of my lifetime, but it is scandalous.
- Official: Haiti President Jovenel Mo¯se assassinated at home
- PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) '-- Haitian President Jovenel Mo¯se was assassinated in an attack on his private residence early Wednesday, according to a statement from the country's interim prime minister, who called the killing a ''hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.''
- First Lady Martine Mo¯se was shot in the overnight attack and hospitalized, interim Premier Claude Joseph said.
- Even before the assassination, Haiti had grown increasingly unstable and disgruntled under Mo¯se. The president ruled by decree for more than two years after the country failed to hold elections and the opposition demanded he step down in recent months.
- ''The country's security situation is under the control of the National Police of Haiti and the Armed Forces of Haiti,'' Joseph said in a statement from his office. ''Democracy and the republic will win.''
- In the early morning hours of Wednesday, the streets were largely empty in the Caribbean nation's capital of Port-au-Prince, but some people ransacked businesses in one area.
- Joseph said police have been deployed to the National Palace and the upscale community of P(C)tionville and will be sent to other areas.
- Joseph condemned the assassination as a ''hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.'' In the statement, he said some of the attackers spoke in Spanish but offered no further explanation. He later said in a radio address that they spoke Spanish or English, again offering no details.
- The White House described the attack as ''horrific'' and ''tragic'' and said it was still gathering information on what happened. U.S. President Joe Biden will be briefed later Wednesday by his national security team, spokesperson Jen Psaki said during an interview on MSNBC.
- ''The message to the people of Haiti is this is a tragic tragedy,'' she during a previously scheduled interview on CNN. ''It's a horrific crime and we're so sorry for the loss that they are all suffering and going through as many of them are waking up this morning and hearing this news. And we stand ready and stand by them to provide any assistance that's needed.''
- Haiti's economic, political and social woes have deepened recently, with gang violence spiking heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling and food and fuel becoming scarcer at times in a country where 60% of the population makes less than $2 a day. These troubles come as Haiti still tries to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that struck in 2016.
- Opposition leaders accused Mo¯se, who was 53, of seeking to increase his power, including by approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency that answers only to the president.
- In recent months, opposition leaders demanded the he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February 2021. Mo¯se and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional president to serve during a year-long gap.
- Haiti was scheduled to hold general elections later this year.
- Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- mRNA Vaccine Inventor Erased From History Books - LewRockwell
- June 11, 2021, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology,1 Dr. Robert Malone, spoke out on the DarkHorse podcast about the potential dangers of COVID-19 gene therapy injections, hosted by Bret Weinstein, Ph.D. The podcast was quickly erased from YouTube and Weinstein was issued a warning.
- To censor a scientific discussion with the actual inventor of the technology used to manufacture these COVID-19 shots is beyond shocking. But the censorship of Malone goes even further than that. As reported in the video above, Malone's scientific accomplishments are also being scrubbed.
- Wikipedia Scrubs Malone's Scientific Contributions
- As recently as June 14, 2021, Malone's contributions were extensively included in the historical section on RNA vaccines' Wikipedia page. He was listed as having co-developed a ''high-efficiency in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection system using cationic liposomes'' in 1989.
- In 1990, he demonstrated that ''in-vitro transcribed mRNA could deliver genetic information into the cell to produce proteins within living cell tissue.'' Malone was also part of the team that conducted the first mRNA vaccine experiments. In short, his scientific knowledge of mRNA vaccines is unquestionable.
- Two days later, June 16, 2021, just five days after Malone's appearance on the DarkHorse podcast, his name was removed from the Wikipedia entry. Now, all of a sudden, the discovery of mRNA drug delivery is accredited to nameless researchers at the Salk Institute and the University of California, and his 1990 research confirming that injected mRNA can produce proteins in cell tissue is accredited to nameless scientists at the University of Wisconsin.
- Hungarian biochemist Katalin Kariko is now suddenly praised by mainstream media as the inventor of mRNA vaccines.2 It's a convenient choice, considering Kariko is the senior vice president of BioNTech, the creator of Pfizer's COVID injection. Kariko's unofficial biography also includes being a communist-era police informant.
- As noted in the featured video, this goes beyond censoring. It's revisionism '-- a ''1984''-style rewriting of history to fit the official narrative of the day. The danger of this trend is incalculable.
- What Did Malone Say About mRNA Vaccines?
- The take-home messages Malone delivered on Weinstein's podcast were that government is not being transparent about the risks, that no one should be forced to take these experimental injections, that the risks outweigh the benefits in children, teens and young adults, and that those who have recovered from natural SARS-CoV-2 infection should not get the injection. In a June 24, 2021, interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News (above), Malone said:3
- ''I am of the opinion that people have the right to decide whether to accept vaccines or not, especially since these are experimental vaccines '... My concern is I know there are risks but we don't have access to the data '... We don't really have the information we need to make a reasonable decision.''
- A significant part of why we don't have adequate data is because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration purposely decided not to require stringent post-vaccination data collection and evaluation. This too was revealed in Malone's DarkHorse interview.
- Why did the FDA opt for lax data capture on a brand-new, never before used technology slated for mass distribution? Clearly, without post-injection data capture, there's no way to evaluate the safety of these products. You cannot identify danger signals if you don't have a process for capturing effects data and evaluating all of it.
- First Risk-Benefit Analysis of COVID Shots
- Malone also points out that risk-benefit analyses have not been done, and that's another objection he has. What data we do have, however, indicate these COVID-19 injections could be the most dangerous medical product we've ever seen.
- For example, the reported rate of death from COVID-19 shots now exceeds the reported death rate of more than 70 vaccines combined over the past 30 years, and it's about 500 times deadlier than the seasonal flu vaccine,4 which historically has been the most hazardous. The COVID shots are also seven times more dangerous than the pandemic H1N1 vaccine, which had a 25-per-million severe side effect rate.5
- Coincidentally, a peer-reviewed risk-benefit analysis6 was in fact published in the medical journal Vaccines the same day Malone spoke to Carlson. It revealed that the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV) to prevent one COVID-19 death using the Pfizer injection is between 9,000 and 50,000, and that for every three COVID-19 deaths prevented, two are killed by the injection. According to the authors, ''This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.''
- The Spike Protein Is a Bioactive Cytotoxin
- In his DarkHorse interview, Malone noted that he had warned the FDA that the spike protein '-- which the COVID-19 shots instruct your cells to make '-- could pose a health risk.
- The FDA dismissed his concerns, saying they did not believe the spike protein was biologically active. Besides, the vaccine makers specifically designed the injections so that the spike protein would stick and not float about freely. As it turns out, they were wrong on both accounts.
- The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has reproductive toxicity, and Pfizer's biodistribution data show it accumulates in women's ovaries. Despite that, Pfizer opted not to perform standard reproductive toxicology studies.It's since been established that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein does not stay near the injection site,7 and that it is biologically active. It is responsible for the most severe effects seen in COVID-19, such as bleeding disorders, blood clots throughout the body, heart problems and neurological damage.
- These are the same problems we now see in a staggering number of people having received one or two shots of COVID-19 gene therapy. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein also has reproductive toxicity, and Pfizer's biodistribution data show it accumulates in women's ovaries.8 ,9 ,10
- Despite that, Pfizer opted not to perform standard reproductive toxicology studies. For more in-depth information about how the spike protein can wreck your health, see my interview with Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and Judy Mikovits, Ph.D.
- COVID Jab Campaign Violates Bioethics Laws
- In his interviews with Weinstein and Carlson, Malone stressed that there are bioethical principles and bioethics laws in place to prevent undue risks in medical experimentation, and that those laws are currently being violated. He went into far more detail on this in a May 30, 2021, essay:11
- '''... the adult public are basically research subjects that are not being required to sign informed consent due to EUA waiver. But that does not mean that they do not deserve the full disclosure of risks that one would normally require in an informed consent document for a clinical trial.
- And now some national authorities are calling on the deployment of EUA vaccines to adolescents and the young, which by definition are not able to directly provide informed consent to participate in clinical research '-- written or otherwise.
- The key point here is that what is being done by suppressing open disclosure and debate concerning the profile of adverse events associated with these vaccines violates fundamental bioethical principles for clinical research. This goes back to the Geneva convention and the Helsinki declaration.12 There must be informed consent for experimentation on human subjects.''
- Experimentation without proper informed consent also violates the Nuremberg Code,13 which spells out a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation. This set of principles were developed to ensure the medical horrors discovered during the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II would never take place again.
- In the U.S., we also have the Belmont report,14 cited in Malone's essay, which spells out the ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research, covered under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A). The Belmont report describes informed consent as follows:
- ''Respect for persons requires that subjects, to the degree that they are capable, be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not happen to them. This opportunity is provided when adequate standards for informed consent are satisfied.
- While the importance of informed consent is unquestioned, controversy prevails over the nature and possibility of an informed consent. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that the consent process can be analyzed as containing three elements: information, comprehension and voluntariness.''
- Americans, indeed the people of the entire planet, are being prevented from freely accessing and sharing information about these gene therapies. Worse, we are misled by fact checkers and Big Tech platforms that ban or put misinformation labels on anyone and anything discussing them in a critical or questioning way. The same censorship also prevents comprehension of risk.
- Lastly, government and any number of vaccine stakeholders are encouraging companies and schools to make these experimental injections mandatory, which violates the rule of voluntariness. Government and private businesses are also creating massive incentives to participate in this experiment, including million-dollar lotteries and full college scholarships. None of this is ethical or even legal. As noted by Malone in his essay:15
- '''... as these vaccines are not yet market authorized (licensed), coercion of human subjects to participate in medical experimentation is specifically forbidden. Therefore, public health policies which meet generally accepted criteria for coercion to participate in clinical research are forbidden.
- For example, if I were to propose a clinical trial involving children and entice participation by giving out ice cream to those willing to participate, any institutional human subjects safety board (IRB) in the United States would reject that protocol.
- If I were to propose a clinical research protocol wherein the population of a geographic region would lose personal liberties unless 70% of the population participated in my study, once again, that protocol would be rejected by any US IRB based on coercion of subject participation. No coercion to participate in the study is allowed.
- In human subject clinical research, in most countries of the world this is considered a bright line that cannot be crossed. So, now we are told to waive that requirement without even so much as open public discussion being allowed? In conclusion, I hope that you will join me; stop to take a moment and consider for yourself what is going on. The logic seems clear to me.
- 1) An unlicensed medical product deployed under emergency use authorization (EUA) remains an experimental product under clinical research development.
- 2) EUA authorized by national authorities basically grants a short-term right to administer the research product to human subjects without written informed consent.
- 3) The Geneva Convention, the Helsinki declaration, and the entire structure which supports ethical human subjects research requires that research subjects be fully informed of risks and must consent to participation without coercion.''
- Clearly, Malone is preeminently qualified to speak on the topic of COVID gene therapy: Not only is he a highly ethical physician committed to integrity, but he actually invented the very technology and performed the first mRNA vaccine studies. The fact that he is now censored by Big Tech and outright being erased from scientific history is a crime in and of itself, and something that should worry just about everyone.
- This egregious example of censorship vividly demonstrates just how degenerated the media has become. The only possible explanation is that anyone or any piece of information that interferes with as many people getting the COVID jab is removed. Nothing that counters this narrative is tolerated despite every bit of information is making it clear that these COVID jabs are the biggest crime against mankind in the history of humanity.
- If Malone can be erased, what chance do the rest of us have to not encounter the same fate? The parallels between everyday reality and the fictional but uncannily prophetic book ''1984'' are mounting by the day. Where it will take us is obvious. We'll end up in a world where faithful adherence to the lies of the day is the only choice. To prevent such a fate, we have to get engaged and expose the lies by sharing facts, data and truth in every which way we can.
- The Best of Joseph Mercola
- Malaysian senior teaches himself how to podcast during MCO | The Star
- There's no better time than during the pandemic to learn something new, says Mohd Adib Noh, 68, from Bangi, Selangor.
- Since the first movement control order last year, Mohd Adib has been spending his time learning how to do podcasts.
- ''So despite having to stay home and not being able to go out, I'm having fun at home '' reading, doing podcasts, exploring new 'techy' stuff, and more, '' he says cheerfully
- Mohd Adib, who is a project management consultant, says that coming from an engineering background, he has always been ''into such techy stuff''.
- The avid hobbyist photographer and cyclist says that he is one of the ''early adopters of technology', and started blogging before it was even popular, and he has maintained several blogs, including ones on photography, cycling and his personal life.
- So it was only natural that he started getting into podcasts, which he calls ''voice-blogging''.
- ''Podcast is my version of blogging where instead of writing the words, I say them. It's a voice blog, '' says Mohd Adib, or Pak Adib as he is fondly called.
- He started exploring the world of podcasting in late 2019 but it wasn't until the MCO in March 2020 when he had a lot of free time at home that he started to actively do podcasts himself.
- He has two podcast sites: Putrajaya Caf(C) which is about his personal life and interests, and Simply Project for his work as a business consultant.
- Today, he has over 100 episodes on his sites. Although most are monologues, with only one person speaking '' namely, himself, sharing his thoughts and experiences in life, or his expertise in business and project management '' Mohd Adib has also done a few episodes which involve dialogues and trialogues.
- One such episode involves him interviewing a few photography friends after an outing he had organised during the recovery MCO.
- An avid cyclist, Adib used to organise cycling and photography events for his friends before the pandemic.
- Mohd Adib says that he was first inspired to get into podcasts because he is fan of American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer Dave Winer who together with announcer, Internet entrepreneur and media personality Adam Curry, started the first podcast in 2004.
- His first exposure to podcasts was when he started listening to BBC Sounds, which involves radio, music and podcasts. Inspired, he taught himself how to podcast by watching YouTube videos.
- Mohd Adib started producing his own podcasts using a free application called Anchor by Spotify which can be downloaded to the mobile phone and used to record, store and even publicise the podcast.
- ''In a nutshell, a podcast is where you record a conversation (whether with just oneself like a monologue or with others) and upload it and then people come and click on the sound file and listen to it, '' says Mohd Adib.
- ''It is totally audio, like a recorded message, '' he says. ''But different from radio because it isn't time-specific and you can listen at your own convenience, '' he adds.
- ''The word pod comes from iPod and it's related to sound, while cast is from broadcast, '' explains Mohd Adib.
- Mohd Adib says that doing podcasts helps him gain confidence in speaking, and he usually speaks as if talking to someone when podcasting because he feels it's more personal and natural than reading from a script.
- Mohd Adib says that doing podcasts helps him gain confidence in speaking, and he usually speaks as if talking to someone when podcasting rather than reading from a script. Photo: Mohd Adib Noh
- ''It's like talking to someone over a cup of coffee, '' he describes, but reveals that he does prepare before each episode.
- He will select a topic that is currently trending. usually something that he is interested in or feels strongly about. Then, he lists down the main points before he talks about them on his podcast. Usually, he will keep each episode to a maximum of 10 minutes because it's too long to listen to one person speaking for longer, unless it's a lecture, he says.
- On his personal podcast channel, there are all sorts of topics from cycling, to reading, to Covid-19 issues and the lockdown. One of his latest podcasts details his Covid-19 vaccination experience.
- On his business podcast, he usually features episodes on topics which he feels will help his students. He adds that indirectly, it also helps him publicise his business coaching services.
- Mohd Adib usually does his project management podcast on Tuesdays and his personal podcast on Thursdays.
- He says that true to his tagline for his personal podcast site ''let's have more conversations'', it's important for people to talk to one another and have more conversations so that they can help each other, especially during these pandemic times.
- Besides podcasting, the happening senior says that he has been busy writing his book entitled The Joys Of Cycling In Putrajaya, which he hopes to publish this year. He is now working on his second book titled Now And Then, which he says is soon to be completed.
- Mohd Adib hopes that podcasting will become more popular in Malaysia because ''it teaches people to listen''.
- ''Sometimes, people tend to talk too much but they don't listen enough. And sometimes, people forget to listen to one another. But, when there are no visuals, it forces us to listen more and that is a good thing, '' he concludes.
- ESG Information and Resources | Raytheon Technologies Corporation
- The merger of Raytheon Company and United Technologies' aerospace businesses created the world's most advanced aerospace and defense systems provider '' and a company that believes it has the responsibility to change the world for the better.From improving the fuel efficiency and safety of commercial airline travel to building smarter defense systems to counter sophisticated security threats, we owe it to our industry, our customers and all end users of our technology to address these tough challenges.
- This responsibility also extends far beyond our business operations. We are committed to dedicating our resources and our talent to help meet the needs of our communities and to build a better future together.
- This page includes environmental, social and governance (ESG) information and disclosures that support our approach to sustainability.
- SASB Disclosure2020 marks our first disclosure aligning with the framework of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). It follows disclosure and accountability guidance for the aerospace and defense industry, which most closely aligns with the operations of Raytheon Technologies. Our expectation is that these disclosures will continue to mature with time.
- 2020 SASB Disclosure Environment, Health and SafetyRaytheon Technologies' legacy companies each had longstanding histories of excellence as leaders in EH&S management, and as a merged company we've renewed that commitment. Building on best practices, we have created a new set of EH&S principles, a management system and sustainability goals for the year 2025.
- Raytheon Technologies Environment, Health and Safety Social ResponsibilitySocial responsibility drives the investments we make in our people and the diverse and united workplace we build. Through transformative investments, we are committed to dedicating resources and talent to help meet the needs of our communities and to build a better future together.
- Raytheon Technologies Corporate ResponsibilityUTC 2018 Corporate Responsibility ReportRaytheon Company 2018 Corporate Responsibility ReportDiversity, Equity and InclusionDiversity, equity and inclusion are more than just part of our culture '-- they're embedded in our business strategy. Our multi-year plan will create meaningful and measurable progress to advance diversity, equity and inclusion across the company and beyond.
- Global Diversity, Equity & InclusionWorkforce DevelopmentRaytheon Technologies is a company that builds careers. From our funding of employees' college degrees and other educational pursuits through our Employee Scholar program, to our respected professional development programs, and our promotion of mentorship among colleagues across disciplines and in different stages of professional life, we develop empowered employees and future leaders.
- Careers OverviewConflict MineralsOur company is committed to complying with the conflict minerals rule, and we have established a compliance program conforming to the internationally recognized due diligence framework established by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The annual Form SD disclosure report RTX files with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) describes the due diligence measures RTX undertook during the reporting period.
- Form SDRaytheon Technologies conflict minerals policy statementCorporate GovernanceOur corporate governance provides the framework for our culture of integrity and ethical behavior. Our Board of Directors and policies guide our actions and govern the relationships among employees, customers and communities.
- Governance Documents and PoliciesBoard of DirectorsEthics and Compliance"Stronger Together," our Code of Conduct, is intended to inspire, guide and enable our best performance '-- individually and collectively. By helping us identify potentially challenging situations, the Code promotes ethical decision-making and conduct. The Code is not simply about avoiding bad outcomes; it is about how we do business. By setting standards and by guiding us in line with our values, the Code helps us to build a strong ethical culture and to achieve our business goals with integrity.
- Ethics & Compliance and Code of ConductFinancials and FilingsWe adhere to the highest standards of financial reporting.
- SEC Filings2020 Annual Report 2021 Proxy Statement Legacy Raytheon Company and United Technologies reportsData PrivacyRaytheon Technologies respects the privacy of visitors to its websites, and we have implemented various safeguards to protect any personal information that we may collect. Our company has also adopted rules authorizing the sharing of personal Information between our businesses to comply with local regulations.
- Website and Mobile Privacy NoticeBinding Corporate Rules on intra-organizational transfers of personal dataSuppliersWe seek to develop strategic relationships with suppliers who hold the same values and who share the same commitment to delivering solutions that define the future of aerospace and defense. As a vital part of our team, we have the same expectations of our suppliers for ethics and compliance as we have for our officers, directors, employees and representatives. The RTX Supplier Code of Conduct sets forth our expectations for each of our product and service suppliers.
- RTX Suppliers and Supplier Code of ConductContact Investor Relations(781) 522-5123[email protected]
- Biden faces 'moment of reckoning' over sprawling Russian cyberassault
- As details continued to emerge about the range of companies hacked through the Kaseya operation, Biden officials declined to say whether the attack had crossed any sort of red line.
- Russian cybercriminals' latest massive ransomware attack is placing new pressure on President Joe Biden to follow through on his promise to make Moscow pay for turning a blind eye to digital assaults emanating from within its borders.
- The cyberattack disclosed Friday on IT management software maker Kaseya, which may have affected as many as 1,500 companies whose vendors were using Kaseya's product, prompted emergency meetings over the weekend between the FBI, DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other agencies, as officials scrambled to assess the scale of the damage. The victims included a tech vendor that provides services to the Republican National Committee, although the RNC said Tuesday that none of its own data had been "accessed."
- AdvertisementBut while the government's cyber defenders help affected companies recover their computer systems, senior Biden administration officials face a more daunting challenge: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin to crack down on criminals such as the REvil gang that took credit for infecting Kaseya with ransomware.
- After two ransomware attacks snarled the U.S. gasoline and meat supplies in May, Biden vowed to ''take action,'' potentially through the United States' ''significant cyber capability,'' if Russia continued to shelter ransomware gangs in violation of international norms. But REvil's holiday-weekend breach of hundreds or thousands of companies, from Kaseya to its own customers to those firms' clients, suggests that Putin didn't take Biden's threat seriously.
- As details continued to emerge about the range of companies hacked through the Kaseya operation, Biden and his appointees declined to say whether the attack had crossed any sort of red line and remained vague about the administration's next steps.
- "It appears to have caused minimal damage to U.S. businesses but we're still gathering information to the full extent of the attack," Biden told reporters Tuesday, while promising to "have more to say about this in the next several days."
- Advertisement"I feel good about our ability to be able to respond," he added.
- Earlier Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that U.S. and Russian officials have discussed the Kaseya attack at a ''high level'' and plan to meet next week to discuss ransomware.
- ''If the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors [residing] in Russia, we will take action '... on our own,'' she said.
- Biden on Wednesday will ''convene key leaders'' from multiple agencies, including the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security and the intelligence community, ''to discuss ransomware and our overall strategic efforts to counter it,'' Psaki said.
- AdvertisementThat response is unlikely to satisfy policymakers who say only bold action can deliver the wakeup call that Putin needs to receive.
- ''We're facing a moment of reckoning when it comes to deterrence,'' House Homeland Security ranking member John Katko (R-N.Y.) told the Daily Mail on Monday. ''Adversaries like Russia are creating safe havens for bad actors and we must project strength.''
- So far, the Kaseya attack appears to be different from May's digital strikes on Colonial Pipeline and the meatpacking giant JBS, at least in one key aspect: it has not affected the critical infrastructure facilities, such as power plants or hospitals, that Biden declared off-limits in his June 16 meeting with Putin in Geneva.
- In fact, no major U.S. business has yet been identified among the many victims of the Kaseya breach. The most visible impact to date has been the shutdown of a Swedish supermarket chain. That also sets this attack apart from past major global ransomware outbreaks, which in recent years have crippled targets ranging from Pfizer to the shipping giant Maersk.
- ''In terms of critical function consequences we aren't seeing anything at this stage,'' said a U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing cyber incident.
- The RNC said Tuesday, as it had over the weekend, that one of the tech vendors was among the victims of the ransomware exploit. But the committee insisted again that a probe found no sign that hackers had gotten ahold of any data from the Republican Party organization.
- ''Over the weekend, we were informed that Synnex, a third party provider, had been breached," RNC chief of staff Richard Walters said in a statement. "We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment. Our team worked with Microsoft to conduct a review of our systems and after a thorough investigation, no RNC data was accessed. We will continue to work with Microsoft, as well as federal law enforcement officials on this matter.''
- The RNC had made a similar comment in a statement to Bloomberg on Saturday.
- AdvertisementA second U.S. official said the attack probably didn't cross any administration red lines, both because it didn't appear to target critical infrastructure and because there was no clear link to the Kremlin. But this official also said the administration needs to be clearer with the Russians about what its red lines truly are.
- In remarks to reporters Saturday during a trip to Michigan, Biden appeared to focus on whether the Kremlin was directly responsible for the attack. ''The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government, but we're not sure yet,'' the president said.
- Still, some cyber researchers quickly labeled the Kaseya operation a major cyberattack '-- and an insidious one, given that, once again, the hackers exploited a trusted software provider to deliver their malware.
- The government is ''still trying to understand the extent of the issue,'' according to a DHS official, who likewise requested anonymity given the matter's sensitivity. ''There's not currently a good way for CISA to know who is affected and how badly.''
- Kaseya has been ''very responsive'' to federal inquiries, the first U.S. official said, calling the relationship ''very good thus far.''
- Even so, the attack is likely to fuel congressional efforts to mandate more reporting of cyber incidents, which experts say is vital for improving the government's understanding of evolving threats. A bipartisan group of senator is preparing to introduce legislation after the upper chamber returns from its recess next week, and in the House, Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee are preparing their own bill.
- Alex Ward, Jonathan Custodio, Sam Sabin and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
- Dutch crime reporter De Vries fighting for his life after shooting | Reuters
- People look on as police officers secure the area where Dutch celebrity crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, known for his reporting on some of the most renowned criminals in the Netherlands, was reportedly shot and seriously injured, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 6, 2021. REUTERS/Eva Plevier
- AMSTERDAM, July 6 (Reuters) - Celebrity Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, known for his work in exposing the criminal underworld, was fighting for his life after being shot on an Amsterdam street, officials said on Tuesday.
- Three suspects were detained, including the possible shooter, police said. They declined to provide any details.
- "He was seriously wounded and is fighting for his life," Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said in a televised news conference. "He is a national hero to us all. A rare, courageous journalist who tirelessly sought justice."
- Police cordoned off the area of the shooting near the downtown Leidseplein square. They were collecting video footage, witness statements and forensic evidence.
- De Vries won an international Emmy Award in the current affairs category in 2008 for his work investigating the disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005.
- Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the attack "shocking and incomprehensible. It was an attack on a courageous journalist and also an attack on the free press that is so critical to our democracy."
- "We are praying that he will survive," he said.
- Dutch broadcaster RTL said De Vries had just left its studio in downtown Amsterdam when one of five shots hit him in the head.
- Amsterdam's Parool newspaper published an image of the scene with several people gathered around a person lying on the ground.
- De Vries, 64, is a celebrity in the Netherlands, as both a frequent commentator on television crime programs and an expert crime reporter with sources in both law enforcement and the underworld.
- De Vries is known in the Netherlands for investigative work on countless cases, notably following the 1983 kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken.
- De Vries had received threats from the criminal underworld in the past in connection with several cases.
- In 2013 Willem Holleeder, the Heineken kidnapper, was convicted of making threats against De Vries. Holleeder is currently serving a life sentence for his involvement in five murders.
- In 2019 Ridouan Taghi, currently on trial for murder and drug trafficking, took the unusual step of making a public statement denying reports that he had threatened to have De Vries killed.
- De Vries has been acting as a counselor, but not lawyer, to a state witness identified as Nabil B. testifying in the case against Taghi and his alleged associates.
- Nabil B.'s previous lawyer was shot and killed on an Amsterdam street in September 2019.
- Reporting by Toby Sterling and Bart Meijer; Additional reporting by Anthony DeutschEditing by Alistair Bell and Sandra Maler
- Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
- Santa Clara County Revises Official COVID-19 Death Toll Down by 22 Percent '' CBS San Francisco
- SAN JOSE (KPIX) '-- On Friday, Santa Clara County health leaders announced a drop in its COVID-19 death toll by nearly a quarter after it refined its approach in reporting the data.
- The county reported that it had reviewed each COVID-19 fatality and was only counting those whose cause of death was from the virus and not those who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of death but did not necessarily die from the virus.
- The new approach meant that the death toll dropped by 22%, specifically from 2,201 to 1,696 deaths.
- ''It is important to go back and do this accounting to see if COVID was actually the cause of death,'' said University of California San Francisco Prof. of Medicine and Infectious Disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi. ''I think that transparent communication is an upside, I mean, in the sense that it's true that if we did this across the nation, it would bring our death rate lower. A downside of that, could be that people will say, 'Well, it wasn't as serious as you said.'''
- The refined approach in Santa Clara County comes as county officials try to figure out the true impact of the virus on the community. Last month, Alameda County health leaders refined their approach to reporting COVID-19 deaths as well and also registered a drop in that county's death toll by about a quarter.
- ''In the midst of everything COVID people were sort of putting down that cause of death as COVID,'' Gandhi said. ''It is important to go back and do this accounting to see if COVID was actually the cause of death.''
- Gandhi believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon ask all counties to do the same as Alameda and Santa Clara Counties and that the nation could also see a drop in its COVID-19 death toll.
- She also said she believes the lower, newer numbers may actually encourage people to get vaccinated.
- ''Because a lot of people have kind of said, 'I've heard people are dying anyway of COVID what's the point?' and it is very important to say, 'No, did they die of COVID or were they in the hospital for something else and they died of that?'' Gandhi said. ''That helps people say, 'Oh, the risk of breakthrough infection is so low I want to go ahead and get vaccinated.' So I think it's very good for vaccine hesitancy.''
- Dutch crime journalist shot in Amsterdam
- The well-known Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries is believed to have been shot and wounded in an attack in Amsterdam.
- Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries was shot and wounded by a gunman in the center of Amsterdam on Tuesday evening local time, Dutch media reported.
- De Vries, 64, was taken to hospital in a seriously wounded state, reports said.
- He had reportedly been taking part in a television show where he was a regular guest.
- Police were said to be looking for a suspect wearing a dark-green jacket.
- Unverified footage shared on social media showed De Vries lying on his back with blood on his face.
- The Het Parool news outlet quoted witnesses as saying he had been shot in the head.
- On a hit listIn 2019, De Vries wrote on Twitter that he had been informed by police and justice officials that he was on the hit list of a fugitive criminal.
- From 1995 to 2012, he hosted a highly popular Dutch television program on crime that covered high-profile cases.
- He is also known for his investigative work following the 1983 kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken. He became known in the US for his work investigating the disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway in 2006.
- Indian hospital closed amid FAKE COVID VACCINE scam, as 2,500+ are feared to have been given saline & antibiotics instead '-- RT World News
- Over a dozen private vaccination centers in India have been ''immunizing'' people with salt water and antibiotics labeled as vaccines. While arrests are being made, over 2,500 are left defenseless ahead of a potential new wave.
- Mumbai's local government sealed Shivam Hospital on Friday, local media reported, saying its license has been canceled in suspected connection to a massive vaccine scam. Police are investigating whether fake Covid vaccines originated from the hospital, with its owners now being arrested.
- Earlier this year, it enlisted as a private vaccination center and received the government's permission to immunize people against the virus. It had received over 20,000 vaccine vials from Mumbai's governing civic body, BMC, India Today reported. However, some of them might have ended up in the hands of scammers, police suspect, saying the hospital might have withheld vials to use them in illegal schemes, including refilling empty vaccine bottles with salt water.
- At least 2,000 people ''vaccinated'' in Mumbai in May and June were injected with a saline solution, the Indian Express reported, citing local police. ''We have arrested all the big fish by now. We will arrest more if anybody else is found involved,'' Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, law and order, Vishwas Nangre Patil, announced at a press conference.
- So far, at least 10 vaccination centers are being investigated in the scam, and are suspected of obtaining around 2,600,000 rupees ($35,000) from fake shots.
- Two of the victims, Hiren Mehta from Mumbai and his wife, paid around 1,260 rupees ($23) each for what they thought was a coronavirus vaccine. They say that now they can't receive a proper shot, as they received fake certificates from the private center which were entered into a government vaccination database.
- ''Our main concern is what they have injected into our body. And then to find out when we can get our first dose because the third wave is approaching,'' the man told the Straits Times.
- Police in Mumbai are still investigating what substance was injected into the patients, though it is suspected that the vials were refilled with saline water. In a separate case in Kolkata, antibiotics might have been used instead of the vaccine.
- Nearly 500 people, some of them disabled, are feared to have been fraudulently administered with Amikacin '' an antibiotic medicine used to treat bacterial infections, including meningitis, as well as blood, bone, and urinary infections. The seized vials were falsely labeled as the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, branded as Covishield in India, AFP reported, citing local police. A man posing as a civil servant with a master's degree in genetics has been arrested, suspected to have set up several scam vaccination centers in the region. Its patients are now in panic over the possible side effects. Also on rt.com Dozens of bodies, many of them buried Covid victims, are washed from banks of India's Ganges by seasonal floods & float downriver ''If any emergency arises, civic authorities will organize medical camps in the area to take care of those who have had fake shots,'' Kolkata health official Debasish Barui told the news agency. Authorities also plan to conduct antibody tests on nearly 2,700 potential fraud victims, The Indian Express reported, however, in some cases it might still leave people unprotected.
- ''The test showed good antibody levels. But I don't know if I caught Covid and was asymptomatic or if the vaccine I got was genuine,'' a man who was vaccinated at one of the suspected centers said.
- India is among the nations worst hit by Covid-19, with over 30.5 million confirmed cases and more than 400,000 deaths. Over 351 million doses of vaccines have been administered in the country, with 59 million people fully vaccinated '' just above 4.3% of the population.
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- Rise of the Moors suspects involved in Wakefield highway standoff due in court Tuesday
- Crime All 11 defendants are scheduled to appear in Malden District Court on July 6.Police work on in the area of an hours long standoff with a group of armed men that partially shut down interstate 95, Saturday, July 3, 2021, in Wakefield, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)The 11 men involved in the July 3 standoff on I-95 in Wakefield are due in Malden District Court on Tuesday for their first court appearance.
- The men, identified to be from Rhode Island, New York, and Michigan, were arrested Saturday after an hours-long standoff with police. According to Massachusetts State Police, the men were armed and dressed in military fatigues and body armor, though none had a license to carry firearms, and claimed to be traveling to Maine to conduct ''training.'' Police recovered three AR-15 rifles, two pistols, a bolt-action rifle, a shotgun, and a short barrel rifle.
- All claim to be members of Rise of the Moors, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classified as an extremist group in 2020. Police said the men referred to themselves as a militia and said they adhere to ''Moorish Sovereign Ideology.''
- A screenshot from video streamed by the Rise of the Moors group during the I-95 standoff. '' Screen capturePolice released eight of the eleven names, noting that one defendant is a juvenile and two are refusing to identify themselves.
- Jamhal Tavon Sanders Latimer, a.k.a. Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey, 29, of Providence, R.I.;Robert Rodriguez, 21, of the Bronx, New York;Wilfredo Hernandez, a.k.a. Will Musa, 23, of the Bronx, New York;Alban El Curraugh, 27, of the Bronx, New York;Aaron Lamont Johnson, a.k.a. Tarrif Sharif Bey, 29, of Detroit, Mich.;Quinn Cumberlander, 40, of Pawtucket, R.I.;Lamar Dow, 34, of the Bronx, New York;Conrad Pierre, 29, of Baldwin, New York;A male juvenile, age 17;John Doe #1, refusing to identify self;John Doe #2, refusing to identify self.Every suspect was charged with the following six charges, though Hernandez, Johnson, Dow, and the juvenile were also charged with furnishing a false name to police.
- Unlawful possession of a firearm, eight counts;Unlawful possession of ammunition;Use of body armor in commission of a crime;Possession of a high capacity magazine;Improper storage of firearms in a vehicle; andConspiracy to commit a crime.All but the juvenile, who was released to parental custody, were being held on a $100,000 bail at the Billerica House of Correction, police said. Since an investigation is ongoing, including the search of the two vehicles they were traveling in, additional charges are possible.
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- Pentagon cancels $10bn 'JEDI' cloud-computing contract with Microsoft amid Amazon dispute over deal '-- RT USA News
- The US Department of Defense has canceled the £10 billion-dollar cloud-computing contract it awarded to Microsoft in 2019 that sparked a legal battle with Amazon. The Pentagon said it would rebid a multi-vendor contract.
- The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) contract, part of the Pentagon's modernization drive and worth up to $10 billion, was originally awarded to Microsoft two years ago.
- However, just a month later, the tech giant was hit by a lawsuit filed in the US Court of Federal Claims by Amazon, Microsoft's main competitor for the contract. Amazon claimed that then-US president Donald Trump's apparent bias against its CEO Jeff Bezos meant the contract had gone to Microsoft.
- Also on rt.com Amazon files suit challenging Pentagon 'war cloud' contract with Microsoft, may argue Trump 'meddled' in process In a statement on Tuesday, the Pentagon said that, ''due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.''
- Instead, the Department of Defense will tender a new multi-vendor contract dubbed the 'Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability'. It said that only Amazon and Microsoft were ''capable of meeting the department's requirements,'' but added that it would be conducting market research to see if other potential vendors could also meet its needs.
- Also on rt.com Amazon wants to 'depose' Trump over losing $10 billion Pentagon contract In April, Amazon was told it could proceed with its claim, as a Federal Claims Court judge refused to throw the case out as requested by both the government and Microsoft. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith's ruling meant Amazon could potentially seek legal testimony from Trump and former defense secretary Jim Mattis.
- Just a month earlier, the Pentagon had warned it would reassess JEDI's future if the court did not grant its motion to disregard Amazon's bias claims.
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- China prepares to move into Afghanistan following America's departure with 'Belt and Road' program | Daily Mail Online
- While American troops were leaving their main military base in Afghanistan on Friday, China was already preparing to enter the war-torn country to fill the vacuum left by U.S. and NATO troops.
- Authorities in Kabul are considering extending a $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
- First launched in 2013 by Chinese president Xi Jinping, and written into the Chinese constitution in 2017, it is billed by Beijing officials as a global infrastructure development fund which aims to better connect China to the rest of the world.
- The Chinese entry comes amid threats from the Taliban to NATO to get out of Afghanistan by Joe Biden's September 11 deadline or face reprisals.
- Terror chief Suhail Shaheen said his men would not interfere with foreign diplomatic missions but that if 'occupying forces' remained the Taliban were bound to 'react.'
- More than 1,000 Afghan troops fled across the northern border into neighbouring Tajikistan on Monday after fighting with the resurgent jihadists who are recapturing swathes of land across the country after the US-led coalition quit.
- China has been waiting in the wings in order to do a deal with Kabul, and now the American's have left, they are free to do so. Pictured, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right
- Authorities in Kabul are considering extending a $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
- The Afghan deal would see China linked through a series of construction projects through neighboring Pakistan
- Taliban tell NATO - get out by September 11 or be treated as 'occupying forces'The Taliban has warned NATO to get its troops out by September 11 or be treated as 'occupying forces' as the terror group continues its sweep across the country.
- The last US troops are expected to leave within days but reports say that an 1,000-strong force could remain on the ground to protect diplomatic missions and Kabul's airport.
- They could be joined by an 'advisory group' of British Special Forces soldiers amid fears that the country will 'implode' under the weight of the Taliban. An MoD source told MailOnline that Britain remained committed to supporting the Afghan army.
- Joe Biden's symbolic exit date to mark 20 years since 9/11 '' which sparked the invasion '' has been axed by NATO over fears that the jihadists are rapidly filling the power vacuum left throughout the hinterland and marching ever closer to the cities.
- Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said that seizing Kabul was 'not Taliban policy,' but warned that no foreign troops should remain in the capital after September 11 because it might force them to 'react.'
- Speaking to the BBC from the group's Qatar HQ, Shaheen said: 'If they leave behind their forces against the Doha agreement then in that case it will be the decision of our leadership how we proceed.
- 'We would react and the final decision is with our leadership.'
- He claimed that the terror group would not target any embassies, diplomats or foreign charity workers.
- 'We will not pose any threat to them,' Shaheen added.
- He also hailed the US withdrawal from Bagram airfield last week, once America's main fortress in Afghanistan, as an 'historic moment.'
- China's new billion dollar scheme in Afghanistan, aimed to be completed by 2049, is one of a number of targeted infrastructure projects which Beijing has rolled out from Africa to Europe, offering colossal loans and gaining footholds in territories once overseen by the West.
- One project being discussed is the building of a major road between Afghanistan and the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
- 'There is a discussion on a Peshawar-Kabul motorway between the authorities in Kabul and Beijing,' a source told The Daily Beast.
- 'Linking Kabul with Peshawar by road means Afghanistan's formal joining of CPEC.'
- China had been attempting to extend its BRI to Afghanistan for at least the last five years but with the U.S. so heavily involved in the Afghani government, Kabul was hesitant to approve any deals fearing upset in Washington.
- But now American troops have left Bagram Airbase, China is about to be welcomed with open arms.
- 'There has been continuous engagement between the Afghan government and the Chinese for the past few years'... [but] that made the U.S. suspicious of president Ashraf Ghani government,' a source told the Beast.
- 'Ghani needs an ally with resources, clout and ability to provide military support to his government.'
- Chinese foreign ministry's spokesperson Zhao Lijian confirmed last month China was having discussions with third parties, including Afghanistan.
- China is hoping that through its BRI strategy it can connect Asia with Africa and Europe through land and maritime networks that would span across 60 countries.
- The strategy would enhance China's influence across the world with an estimated value of $4 trillion.
- Afghanistan could give China a strategic foothold in the region for trade with the country acting as a central hub connecting the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe.
- 'The Chinese have very carefully cultivated many political leaders to buy political support for the projects in Afghanistan at the same time. The Chinese government can ill afford to see Afghanistan not webbed through the BRI,' the source continued.
- 'Certainly, the investment that would be injected into the economy will employ many people'... and in the absence of other economic activities people may welcome it.
- The program would see a direct land corridor between Afghanistan and China through northwest Pakistan constructed
- A building stands under construction at a development site, operated by China Overseas Ports Holding Co., near Gwadar Port in Gwadar, Balochistan, Pakistan. The construction is similar to what could happen in Afghanistan should a deal be made with the country
- On Sunday, the Taliban captured another area of southern Kandahar and announced further gains in Helmand, provinces where the blood of hundreds of US and British troops was spilled over the last two decades
- 'But the political landscape in Afghanistan stands divided, and there will be some ethnic leaders who will oppose BRI, not because they see disadvantages, but because external actors want to stop it.'
- America's departure from the country would give added impetus for Beijing to restart talks over the idea of having Kabul to join the BRI.
- 'Washington's departure from Afghanistan gives Beijing a strategic opportunity,' Michael Kugelman, an expert in South Asian affairs told the Beast.
- 'There will certainly be a vacuum to fill, but we shouldn't overstate China's capacity to fill it. With Afghanistan's security situation sure to spiral out of control, there's only so much China will be able to do to deepen its footprint.
- 'It will depend in great part on whether China reaches an understanding with the Taliban, which will see its influence continue to grow whether it holds power or not. If the Taliban is okay with China building out infrastructure and other projects in Afghanistan, Beijing will be in a much better place.'
- An Afghan National Army soldier stands guard at the Bagram Air Base gate, just north of the capital Kabul, Afghanistan. After nearly two decades, the US military has left the Bagram Airfield in central Afghanistan and has handed it over to Afghan National Defense and Security Forces
- American troops have finally departed their main military base in Afghanistan and handed it over to the Afghans
- 'China could well bring the Taliban on board with BRI. The insurgents have said they will support development projects if they serve Afghan national interests,' Kugelman suggested.
- China's Belt and Road program would really depend on a lasting peace in what has traditionally been one of the most unstable regions on the planet.
- Beijing has supposedly already offered infrastructure and energy projects worth billions of dollars to the Taliban in return for peace in Afghanistan.
- 'The Taliban isn't the only challenge to overcome,' Kugelman noted. 'There are many sources of violence, both anti- and pro-state, in Afghanistan. So China will still face an extremely insecure environment, even if it gets Taliban buy-in for its projects.'
- In any deal, there remains the air of unpredictability with lasting peace uncertain with Afghan Taliban militants, pictured, likely to make a resurgence in the region
- Violence has been raging throughout Afghanistan in the weeks since President Joe Biden announced troops would withdraw unconditionally
- A newly built Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT), a metro project planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), drives through on a track after an official opening in the eastern city of Lahore, Pakistan, last October
- The modern day answer to the 'Silk Road' or a dangerous worldwide 'debt-trap' scheme?: What is China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) It has been billed as China's modern day answer to the famous Silk Road - a series of trade routes which acted as the main connection between east and west for nearly 2,000 years.
- China now wants a new 'Silk Road' - many in fact - and it is willing to dip deep into its pockets to pay for it.
- Enter China's 'Belt and Road Initiative' - otherwise known as the BRI scheme.
- First launched in 2013 by president Xi Jinping, and written into the Chinese constitution in 2017, it is billed by Beijing officials as a global infrastructure development fund which aims to better connect China to the rest of the world.
- Aimed to be completed by 2049, China has been offering huge loans to the countries in order to support them in creating better infrastructure.
- Sounds great, right? So what's the catch?
- Well, the scheme has been criticized, primarily by western powers, as an attempt by China to engage in neo-imperialism through 'debt trap diplomacy'.
- Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has previously warned countries against taking up BRI projects, because the terms of repayment are too harsh.
- In some countries, such as Montenegro, governments have signed up to deals in which China will be able to seize land if debts can't be paid.
- Earlier this year, concern was raised in Kenya that China may try to seize the port of Mombasa if the country defaults on its loan from China used to finance the loss-making Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).
- In March, Kenya's National Treasury cabinet secretary Ukur Yatani attempted to calm such fears, by saying that the port had not been offered as collateral.
- But western powers are growing increasingly concerned about the scheme, so much so that the US, along with Japan and Australia, launched their own project - The Blue Dot Network - in 2019.
- A report by US publication Forbes, meanwhile, recently compared China's BRI scheme, and Beijing's use of it, to 'mob' style tactics.
- The publication reported on the situation in Malaysia, whose rejected a proposal for a BRI deal, but were then subjected to political and economic pressure to take it.
- Despite its critics, a 2020 report by Chatham House - the Royal Institute of International Affairs - found 'limited evidence' that China's BRI scheme was engaged in 'debt-trap' diplomacy.
- Breaking: Atlanta houseless community forms union, gather at City Hall to serve demands - The Mainline
- On Sunday night, The Mainline received a tip that members of Atlanta's houseless community, who now self-identify as the ATL Homeless Union, have gathered and formed an encampment outside of City Hall on the lawn at Central and Mitchell, as pictured above. Sources tell us they will remain at City Hall ''until their demands are met'' and will host a rally every day at noon that ''people are encouraged to come to.'' Photo credit: The Mainline/2021.ATLANTA '-- On Sunday night, members of Atlanta's houseless community notified local press that members of the city's houseless community have unionized and that union camps have formed in the lawn in front of City Hall.
- Sources on the ground tell us that there are currently 30 people at the encampment, explaining they intend to ''be here until their demands are met.'' The community, who identify as the ATL Homeless Union, will host a rally every day at 11:30 a.m. that ''people are encouraged to come to.''
- In their official press release sent out to reporters throughout the city, including The Mainline, unhoused leaders from across Atlanta say that, ''Nobody else that's not walking in our shoes gonna tell us what to do. Teach us how to fish, and we'll eat forever. The homeless have unionized, and we're here for what we deserve.''
- Data collection from last year found there are approximately 3,200 houseless people in the City of Atlanta's 130 square-mile footprint.
- ''We are not satisfied with the limited shelters that treat us less-than human, a warming station in the winter, and some blankets,'' the ATL Homeless Union explain in their press release. ''We are also not satisfied with the lack of healthcare treatment we receive at Grady. No more bandaid solutions. We need homes. We need water.''
- The full demands are listed as follows, as delivered to us in the official press release announcement:
- We demand homes. With the millions of dollars we spend on shelters and services, we can house every unhoused person in the City. The City should convert vacant and City-owned properties into permanent homes for those who are unhoused. We demand that the City invest pandemic relief funds in long-term housing solutions. We demand healthcare. We need primary care access so that we don't have to go to the emergency room every single time we need basic healthcare. Preventive care saves lives and taxpayer money. All unhoused people should have access to regular preventive medical care.We demand water. The City controls the Water Department. Especially during this pandemic, we need water to stay sanitary. The City should guarantee showers, bathrooms, and handwashing stations for unhoused people. We demand a seat. The City is busy talking to everyone except us about what we need. We deserve a seat at the table. We need to be consulted about the policies that will impact our lives. The City should follow our leadership. ''If the City is serious about addressing homelessness, this is what it'll take. If the City is not serious about ending homelessness, the powers that be will continue doing what they're doing: money to hotels, warming centers, handouts. Someone benefits from those incremental proposals. And it's not us '... We're not gonna go for it anymore. We are here and we are here to stay.''
- We will continue to report on this story as it develops.
- Will the torturing to death of a vocal critic lead to the ousting of Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine's de facto dictator? '-- RT Op-ed
- Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV. Director of 'Steal of the Century: Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe'. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
- Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV. Director of 'Steal of the Century: Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe'. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
- As demonstrations against the Palestinian Authority president grow, security forces are resorting to ruthless tactics to prop him up, including beating and killing dissenters, and stealing explicit photos of female protesters.
- ''I saw with my own eyes how [the security forces] were using explicit photos, from the girls' phones they stole, as blackmail,'' a Palestinian journalist tells me, speaking anonymously, hoping to expose a scandal. If true, it adds to the long list of damning accusations which seem to be leading inexorably to the downfall of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
- Palestinians have rallied across the West Bank for five days straight, condemning the authority which partially rules the occupied territory for having tortured to death one of its most vocal critics, Nizar Banat. Banat, 44, a father of four and an outspoken political activist, was arrested in the early hours of June 24. Two hours later he was dead, his body bearing signs of torture and beating.
- When news of his death became known, supporters took to the streets. Met with the full might of the PA's police forces, they have been beaten, teargassed and arrested, yet are continuing to organize further protests calling for President Mahmoud Abbas to resign.
- Plain-clothed PA officers have been filmed and photographed attacking demonstrators, a tactic often used by Israel's ''Arabist'' units, which seek to use the element of surprise to their advantage. The PA officially denies that it deployed these forces in civilian clothing, yet it is well documented that they were there.
- According to 'Reporters Without Borders', during last weekend's unrest, PA forces had assaulted 12 Palestinian journalists, five of whom were women. The phones of arrested activists were also reportedly seized in many cases, with allegations having spread that private photographs from the phones of female demonstrators had been shared on social media by men belonging to the Palestinian Authority forces. In one case specifically, allegedly commenting on a photo that had been posted, a PA loyalist is said to have written ''curse [protesters], long live the men of Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas.''
- All of this previously fell under the category of distant allegations, until I was contacted by a trusted Palestinian journalist who had, like many, been covering the anti-PA demonstrations. He spoke only under the condition that his identity would be shielded, for fear that he may be arrested if identified. He claims to have seen a private Whatsapp group run by men belonging to the PA's Preventative Security Services (PPS), due to having a friendship with a member. He was able to discover the information, but unable to act against what he sees as a clear injustice.
- ''A friend of mine who works for them [PPS], showed me the messages sent in a private group chat,'' he explained. ''They were sharing the explicit photos of the girls that they had taken from their phones and amongst each other were calling the girls whores, along with various other insults.''
- The journalist said that his PPS friend who showed him this group chat looked as if he felt guilty for being involved with such an incident. ''They are just young women protesting for their country and against the silencing of critics, how is this legal or honorable to do this to them for standing up for their own rights?'' the Palestinian journalist told me.
- Also on rt.com Israeli police clash with Palestinians trying to prevent demolition of Arab-owned shop in East Jerusalem ''I was told that these photos were being used to blackmail the girls, so that they would not come back to the demonstration and that other sensitive information was collected from their phones. I felt disgusted and began to feel even worse when I realized that I couldn't even report on it.''
- Especially for conservative households in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, the shame that can be brought on a young woman who is exposed like this can be overwhelming and lead to huge family disputes.
- ''All I want now is for people to know what is being done to these women, they are not bad people and their private property was stolen,'' the journalist told me. ''I just don't understand why people claiming to work for us would do this to their own people.''
- The Palestinian Authority is an organization, funded and trained by the United States and EU, which maintains a partial control over the occupied West Bank and manages the domestic security situation in the territory's largest cities. It was set up as a product of the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. According to prominent Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, the PA ''works for Israel,'' and is characterized often wrongly as being completely independent from Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
- Earlier this year, the PA's President Abbas, whose term in office technically expired in 2009, pledged to hold the first democratic elections in more than 15 years, but canceled them abruptly. Abbas claims that Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian voters to cast their ballots in East Jerusalem was the reason for the cancellation of both the legislative and presidential elections, but he is accused by many Palestinians of having done so out of a fear of losing to his rival party, Hamas.
- The recent events in the West Bank have led many prominent Palestinians, including scholar Joseph Massad, to conclude that the Palestinian Authority's days are numbered. With growing anger towards it, the PA has resorted to requesting crowd control equipment from Israel, showing that they anticipate further tensions in the future and fear an attempt to physically oust them from power.
- Also on rt.com 'Go away, Abbas': Thousands protest in the West Bank after funeral of critic of Palestinian Authority (VIDEOS) These allegations that members of the security services have been using sensitive information and photos of Palestinian women in order to shame and blackmail them must be investigated. The seizure and theft of private material from mobile phones is a serious matter, but using that material in this way is even more egregious. But given the constant harassment, torture and beatings dished out against vocal critics of the PA, this would be but only one in a sea of offenses committed against their own people.
- The anger against the PA, which provides Israel with most of its intelligence on Palestinians inside the West Bank, helping them foil attacks against Israeli military targets and settlers, has been steadily building. With the cancellation of Palestine's democratic elections, making Abbas a de facto dictator, and now the killing of a prominent dissident, followed by a brutal crackdowns and threats issued to people opposed to his rule, it seems that the legitimacy of the authority is at its lowest point.
- Palestinians do not feel as if they are protected by their rulers, who enrich themselves while acting as traitors who serve to protect the security interests of Israel. This is being shown to be true, as the protests are confronted violently and more dissidents are arrested. Abbas's day may be numbered.
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- The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
- 83% of North American Manufacturers Are Likely to Reshore Their Supply Chains in 2021 [Report]
- Welcome to Thomas Insights '-- every day, we publish the latest news and analysis to keep our readers up to date on what's happening in industry. Sign up here to get the day's top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
- According to the latest 2021 Thomas State of North American Manufacturing Report, 83% of manufacturers are planning to add North American suppliers to their supply chains within a year, a significant increase from 54% in March 2020.
- Thomas' groundbreaking report leverages the platform's unique qualitative and quantitative intelligence on production and sourcing trends through its Industrial Survey Panel and anonymized and aggregated data from Thomasnet.com®'s 1.6 million monthly industrial buyers.
- While the report reveals numerous shifts in domestic sourcing trends and supply chain demands, the key takeaway is the industry's growing prioritization of reshoring in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Potential Economic Impacts of Rising Reshoring Interests in the U.S.What happens when four in five manufacturers add North American suppliers to their supply chain in the next 12 months?
- From Thomas' research, manufacturers add an average of 11 suppliers (n=538) to their supply chains on a yearly basis. If 83% of the 579,811 manufacturers in the USA bring on one new supplier (single contract) at an average of $921,247 per contract (n=288), it amounts to a potential $443 billion injection into the U.S. economy.
- To understand the potential downstream impacts, let's look at the types of products and services that are going through a growth spurt for Q1 2021. Thomasnet.com's year-over-year sourcing data reveal a meaningful increase in demand in Q1 2021 versus 2020 for raw materials, traditional manufacturing services, and advanced manufacturing technologies across key sectors:
- For raw materials: A surge in demand for aluminum (up by 63% for Aerospace & Defense), steel (up by 92% for Construction), chemicals (up by 142% for Healthcare & Medical), and paper (up by 3,906% for Agriculture). For traditional manufacturing output: A 179% growth in sourcing activities for valves and 89% in pumps (Manufacturing).For advanced manufacturing technologies, additive manufacturing sourcing activities are up by 4,255% and batteries up by 565% (Automotive).From Just-in-Time to Availability OptimizationThe supply chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic have become a wake-up call for businesses to look beyond cost-saving and just-in-time inventory management. 94% of the manufacturers surveyed listed 'Availability' and 'Lead Times' as the most important factors when vetting new suppliers, instead of the generally anticipated answer 'Price per Unit.' One of our respondents commented, ''We need more U.S. manufacturers and the supply chain needs to be strengthened. Just-in-time does not work in a boom.''
- If there's anything positive that came as a result of the intense past year and a half, it's that many in the industry are calling for more introspection, investment, and support for the wider manufacturing ecosystem and sustainable solutions to future-proof supply chains.
- A Different Take on Supplier Relationship ManagementIn terms of how manufacturers can reap the benefits of the pent-up consumer demand, they can leverage Thomas Industrial Data, as demonstrated by the insights from this report, to stay ahead of supply chain bottlenecks for the fastest-growing sourcing categories across the following key sectors:
- Aerospace & DefenseAgricultureAutomotiveConstructionEnergy & UtilitiesFood & BeverageHealthcare & MedicalManufacturing
- Some of the most notable sourcing category trends that have been observed by sector include:
- Automotive: Additive manufacturing up 4,255% year-over-year (illustrated above)Aerospace: Hardware manufacturing up 4,117% year-over-yearConstruction: Lumber (raw materials) up 116% and aluminum up 318%Medical and Healthcare: While PPE demand is still leading this sector, compared to last year the sharpest growth is seen on cleaning compounds and chemicals, which are up 2,190%. There is also massive growth in the nutraceutical vertical. Vitamin and supplement manufacturing demand are up by 285% and 350% respectively.Manufacturers can work on improving product availability and turnaround time for the categories highlighted above, as this is where Thomas forecasts increased spend in North America.
- To find out more, download the full 2021 State of North American Manufacturing report. To look beyond a snapshot of Thomas Industrial Data, you can also contact the Thomas team for more information.
- Manufacturing Industry Outlook for 2021 and BeyondOne thing is clear: the pandemic is an impetus for the reframing of manufacturing as a growth machine for North America and an equity driver for our collective future. Manufacturing has the highest multiplier effect of any economic sector, according to Deloitte. For every $1.00 spent in manufacturing, another $2.74 is added to the economy.
- Here are two key areas I call for the industry to work together on:
- I. Reverse Industry Technical Debt in the USAThe Association of Manufacturing Technology estimated that the United States will need to invest $400-600 billion in manufacturing technologies to improve our trade deficit with our largest importers, such as China. To become competitive, it's high time the United States increased investment in skilled labor and manufacturing technologies from both operational and technological perspectives.
- II. The Future of Our Skilled Labor ForceIn collaboration with the Manufacturing Institute, Deloitte released an analysis of the fastest-growing manufacturing occupations for the next decade. It reveals that although it took six years for the manufacturing industry to add 600,000 jobs to the workforce pre-pandemic, the outbreak wiped out a whopping 1.4 million of those jobs. As it stands today, 41% of the jobs have yet to be recovered.
- The silver lining of it all is that five out of six of these occupations require a skill set that spans human and technology aspects, and it often does not require formal post-secondary education.
- To this end, we can work toward diversity and inclusivity to create environments that promote innovation. 70% of Black professionals surveyed by the Deloitte Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) study believe that their company should do more to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. The Thomas 2020 Women in Manufacturing Benchmark Study shows that only one in three manufacturing professionals and one in four manufacturing leaders are women, although we are half of the population. Studies have shown that bringing together talent with different skill sets and backgrounds is good for business.
- Let's work together to help more talent understand that manufacturing is an incredible career choice, because it really is.
- Let's encourage Gen Z, the makers and the dreamers from all backgrounds, to realize and pursue these exciting opportunities. If you work in the industry and would like to get in touch to chat about this study or share your thoughts, please feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn or use the 'Feedback' tab on this page to say hi. I promise we read all feedback and enjoy hearing from you.
- Access the Complete 2021 State of North American Manufacturing ReportClick here to download the full 2021 State of North American Manufacturing report.
- You can participate in and receive our future surveys by signing up for the Thomas Industrial Survey Panel.
- Report MethodologyThe results of the latest State of North American Manufacturing Report are gleaned from two sources:
- The Thomas Industrial Survey Panel: 709 respondents and 542 responses qualified for our survey facilitated by Thomas via Qualtrics. Participating suppliers were manufacturers from a variety of industrial sectors with revenues spanning from less than $4.9 million to over $500 million.
- Thomasnet.com Sourcing Activity Data: Sampled and anonymized sourcing data from active industrial buyers by sector on Thomasnet.com between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021 was assembled for this report. Aggregated Sourcing Activities include all behavioral events that indicate the propensity to source, including company profile views, contact initiation activities such as a phone call or click, and a Request for Information (RFI) submission.
- Image Credit: Wang An Qi / Shutterstock.com
- More from Industry Trends
- Bill Cosby Shreds Mainstream Media, Blames Them For January 6 - Conservative Brief
- OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion
- No matter what one thinks about Bill Cosby his recent comments about the mainstream media, what it does and the power it wields are spot on.
- The former sitcom star and comedian took to his Twitter, and his spokesman, after his release from prison, and laced into the media and how it is to blame of the events at the Capitol on January 6, Deadline reported.
- ''This (sic) mainstream media are the Insurrectionists, who stormed the Capitol. Those same Media Insurrectionists are trying to demolish the Constitution of these United State of America on this Independence Day,'' the statement by spokesman Andrew Wyatt said. ''No technicality '-- it's a violation of ones rights & we the people stand in support of Ms. Phylicia Rashad.''
- ''Mainstream media has irresponsibly, egregiously and inexcusably misled the public with out of context coverage regarding Bill Cosby's deposition testimony. This shall serve as a grave reminder of the consequences that come with lying to the American people to satisfy an agenda,'' he said on Twitter.
- He went on to defend himself from the charges he was convicted of in his case, which was later overturned because he had a deal with the previous district attorney that said his testimony in a civil case would not be used against him in a criminal case.
- ''In response to the rhetoric that the media keeps pushing, Bill Cosby never admitted in his deposition testimony, or anywhere else, to nonconsensual sexual contact with any woman and/or the drugging of anyone '-- he has never admitted to spiking drinks, as the media would like you'...'' he said.
- '''The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.' ' Malcolm X,'' his said to finish his Twitter thread.
- As far as the events of January 6, it appears that House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi will have to go it alone, with only Democrats and one lone Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney the anti-Trumper, to form her committee to investigate.
- Punchbowl News reported that McCarthy will reportedly strip any Republican member of committee assignments if they serve on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's January 6 committee.
- ''During a closed-door meeting with freshman House Republicans, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said: If they do, 'they better be ready to get all their committee assignments from her,'' the outlet reported.
- Last week, Pelosi named Cheney to her new select committee to investigate the January 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
- Cheney said in a statement that she is ''honored'' to serve on the committee and that ''Congress is obligated to conduct a full investigation of the most serious attack on our Capitol since 1814.''
- Under the resolution to create the panel, Pelosi would appoint eight members and McCarthy would name five.
- Pelosi knows this is all about politics, so she may select a Republican who is vehemently against Donald Trump to serve on the committee so she appears ''bipartisan.''
- For her part, Cheney has refused to back down in her feud with Donald Trump.
- Back in May, House Republicans removed Cheney as GOP conference chair over her opposition to Trump.
- ''If you want leaders who will enable and spread [Trump's] destructive lies, I'm not your person, you have plenty of others to choose from,'' Cheney said at the time before the vote.
- According to a report, Cheney ''secretly orchestrated'' an op-ed in the Washington Post from all living former secretaries of defense slamming Trump's handling of the military in January, according to the New Yorker.
- A good friend of Cheney's, Eric Edelman, reportedly told the New Yorker that Cheney had personally met with all 10 living former defense secretaries, including Trump's first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, urging them to participate in the op-ed.
- ''She was the one who generated it because she was so worried about what Trump might do,'' Edelman told the magazine. ''It speaks to the degree that she was concerned about the threat to our democracy that Trump represented.''
- Bill Cosby Offers His Own Independence Day Speech With Attack On Howard University, Media '' Deadline
- If anyone thought a now-free Bill Cosby was going to lay low for a bit after having his rape conviction and sentence suddenly overturned last week, think again. The much-accused actor once known as ''America's Dad'' chose America's Independence Day to prove them wrong.
- In a somewhat confusing, scattered statement today, Cosby lashed out at Howard University's rebuke of his former on-air spouse Phylicia Rashad after her enthusiasm at the disgraced actor's release from prison. Going from bad to worse, Cosby also decried the bloody attempted coup at the Capitol in January as the fault of the mainstream media, and not MAGA morons. It was not a good look, to put it mildly, for the 83-year-old once legally labeled ''sexually violent predator.''
- Related StoryPhylicia Rashad Sends Apology Letter To Howard University Students And Parents''Howard University you must support ones Freedom of Speech (Ms. Rashad), which is taught or suppose to be taught everyday at that renowned law school, which resides on your campus,'' the statement declared, speaking of the fictional Claire Huxtable's real-life assertion of support for Cosby's release on June 30. The actor was let go last week on a technicality after serving over two years of an up-to-10-year sentence for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004.
- Then, the legally blind Cosby, who fashioned himself in a long line of political prisoners during his stint in Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution at Phoenix, went supernova in his latest public remarks.
- ''This (sic) mainstream media are the Insurrectionists, who stormed the Capitol. Those same Media Insurrectionists are trying to demolish the Constitution of these United State of America on this Independence Day,'' the statement put out by Cosby's longtime spokesman Andrew Wyatt added. ''No technicality '-- it's a violation of ones rights & we the people stand in support of Ms. Phylicia Rashad.''
- Not quite Bill Pullman's Independence Day speech in the 1996 blockbuster of the same name, if you know what I mean.
- Ex-President Bill Pullman Stumps For Unity '' And Beer '' Ahead Of A Unique Independence Day
- Whatever Cosby might think of the Donald Trump-stroked violent siege of Congress, as then VP Mike Pence and a joint House of Representatives and Senators gathered to formally confirm Joe Biden's electoral college victory, the postulation by the actor likely will only further his isolation and toxicity.
- Also, Cosby, who is hinting at going out on a comedy tour, is taking a very particular POV on Rashad and her much-criticized comments on her old co-star's exit from jail and a criminal record.
- As a firestorm erupted over Rashad's comments, the now-Howard dean tried to pour cold water on the outrage.
- Within hours, Rashad tweeted that she ''fully support[s] survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth '...My heartfelt wish is for healing.''
- The HBCU, which counts Vice President Kamala Harris, the late Chadwick Boseman, Jessye Norman, Toni Morrison and Black-ish's Anthony Anderson among its illustrious alumni, replied with a comment of its own after Rashad's initial post of ''a miscarriage of justice is corrected!'' at Cosby's release thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
- The remarks that ''victims must be heard and believed, '' and that Rashad's first tweet ''lacked sensitivity'' left no doubt where the school was coming down in the controversial matter.
- Not finished with her apology tour, Rashad penned a letter to Howard students and their parents late on July 2. ''My remarks were in no way directed towards survivors of sexual assault,'' the new-ish College of Fine Arts Dean said. ''I vehemently oppose sexual violence, find no excuse for such behavior, and I know that Howard University has a zero-tolerance policy toward interpersonal violence.''
- As for Cosby himself, after staying silent during a hyped press conference hours after his release last week, the actor has kept his pronouncements to social media and drops by his communications team and defense lawyers.
- Also, even though the Keystone State's top court vacated Cosby's sentence because of a 2005 deal with the then-Montgomery County D.A. not to press criminal charges in the rape of Temple University employee Constand, the actor is far from being declared innocent of the charges.
- For one thing, Cosby paid Constand millions in a civil settlement over 15 years ago. Secondly, Cosby admitted in 2005 depositions to giving Constand several Benadryl pills on the night of the alleged assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion in 2004. Still, The Cosby Show creator-star has insisted through various investigations, two trials and the sentencing hearing that the encounter was totally consensual.
- Additionally, more than 60 women have claimed that Cosby drugged and assaulted them over the decades with a cocktail of pills and alcohol. A number of those women were among the onlookers at the two trials and the sentencing hearing in the fall of 2018. Also Judge Steven O'Neill permitted D.A. Steele to have five other accusers, including ex-America's Next Top Model judge Janice Dickinson, take the stand in the second trial and tell their stories of being assaulted by Cosby.
- After Apple Tightens Tracking Rules, Advertisers Shift Spending Toward Android Devices - WSJ
- After the tracking change took effect in April, many users of Apple's iOS operating system have received a high volume of prompts from apps asking permission to track them'--requests that most have declined. Less than 33% of iOS users opt in to tracking, according to ad-measurement firm Branch Metrics Inc.
- As a result, the prices for mobile ads directed at iOS users have fallen, while ad prices have risen for advertisers seeking to target Android users. Those shifts come after many in the digital-ad industry warned that Apple's changes, which the tech giant framed as part of a broader user-privacy crackdown, would limit advertisers' access to data about consumers and hurt their business.
- Digital advertisers say they have lost much of the granular data that made mobile ads on iOS devices effective and justified their prices. In recent months, ad-buyers have deployed their iOS ad spending in much less targeted ways than were previously possible, marketers and ad-tech companies say. The shortage of user data to fuel Facebook Inc.'s suite of powerful ad-targeting tools reduces their effectiveness and appeal among some advertisers, ad agencies say.
- Apple, for its part, sells ads only in a handful of its own apps and doesn't take a cut of ad revenue in third-party iOS apps. While advertisers have shifted their spending habits across the ad products of Apple's large rivals Facebook and Google'--which depend much more heavily on ad revenue'--it isn't clear yet how the change has affected overall spending across the digital-ad giants.
- The effects of Apple's change were slow to appear in marketers' data after the company mandated compliance with its new tracking rules in April. The delay was in part because users wouldn't see the prompts until they upgraded their devices to a recent version of Apple's operating system. As of June 22, more than 70% of iOS devices had been upgraded to a version that requires the tracking prompt, according to Branch Metrics, allowing advertisers to begin assessing the impact.
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- As more of that information has emerged, advertisers have adjusted their buying strategies. Spending on iOS mobile advertising has fallen by about one-third between June 1 and July 1, according to ad-measurement firm Tenjin Inc. Android spending rose 10% over the same period, Tenjin said.
- An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
- Digital-ad agency Tinuiti Inc. has seen a similar pattern in its clients' spending, research director Andy Taylor said. When iOS users opted out of tracking, Tinuiti advertisers couldn't bid on them, he said. That dearth of iOS users drove up demand'--and ad prices'--for Android users. About 72.8% of smartphones world-wide use the Android operating system, and about 26.4% use iOS, according to Statcounter.
- Tinuiti's Facebook clients went from year-over-year spend growth of 46% for Android users in May to 64% in June. The clients' iOS spending saw a corresponding slowdown, from 42% growth in May to 25% in June. Android ad prices are now about 30% higher than ad prices for iOS users, Mr. Taylor said. Tinuiti clients' overall spending on Facebook increased'--Android users gained a greater share of it, Mr. Taylor said.
- When iOS users opt out of tracking, it restricts the flow of data Facebook gets from apps to build user profiles. Those profiles allow Facebook's advertisers to target their ads efficiently, both for ads in Facebook's own apps and in third-party apps.
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- Tinuiti said it saw an even steeper slide in spending for Facebook's Audience Network tool, which lets advertisers buy ads in non-Facebook apps using Facebook user data, where Tinuiti clients spend about 1% of their Facebook budgets.
- Tinuiti advertisers were allocating about 50% of their Audience Network spending to iOS users at the start of April. By the end of June, they were spending about 20% on iOS users, Mr. Taylor said. Advertisers have typically spent more per iOS user, seeing them as bigger spenders than Android users.
- Facebook has been among the most vocal critics of Apple's new tracker-blocking and warned in August 2020 that the change could lead it to shut down Audience Network. Facebook doesn't disclose the size of the Audience Network business within its nearly $70 billion digital-ad empire. Ad-tech consulting firm Jounce Media has estimated that Audience Network would bring in $3.4 billion in 2021.
- ''Third-party data tends to be unreliable and not representative of our business,'' a Facebook spokesman said. ''While we expect iOS 14.5 to be a headwind for the remainder of the year, the impact on our business will be manageable. What's most concerning is the impact to the smaller developers and businesses who rely on personalized advertising.''
- Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in March that ''it's possible that we may even be in a stronger position'' after Apple's change, particularly if it encourages ''more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms, by making it harder for them to basically use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms.''
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- In many foreign countries, most Facebook users are Android users, according to a person familiar with the matter, so Facebook could benefit from higher Android ad prices.
- Many advertisers have also shifted their spending on Facebook's owned-and-operated apps'--Instagram and its namesake social network, which form the core of its business, Mr. Taylor said. Spending to reach iOS users on Instagram and Facebook also slid since Apple's change, he said, but by less than on third-party apps.
- Since the switch, Facebook has significantly altered its Audience Network, which has relied heavily on device identifiers. The company told advertisers in an email last week that it was adding the capability to place contextual ads'--which consider factors like time of day and the app's content'--as a way to continue providing relevant ads when certain identifiers aren't available.
- ''Showing contextual ads in addition to personalized ads is part of our efforts to help support publishers'' amid Apple's change, the email said.
- Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com
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- RS in chaos: Nearly 35 million tax returns are STILL unprocessed | Daily Mail Online
- The Internal Revenue Service is facing a backlog of 35 million unprocessed tax returns, according to a government watchdog, as the pandemic and economic relief efforts combined to overwhelm the agency and force some people to spend hours chasing their overdue refunds.
- The National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) submits two reports to Congress each year: an Annual Report, delivered in January, and an Objectives Report, delivered in June.
- In its most recent report, the NTA states: 'It was perhaps the most challenging filing season taxpayers, tax professionals, and the IRS have ever experienced.'
- One of their most important phone lines - the 1040 customer support lines for individual tax returns - reported that only three per cent of the 85 million callers got through to a human being.
- The NTA published in June their most recent report, showing how the IRS is performing. The government watchdog found that the IRS had been confronted by a 'perfect storm' of pandemic problems, increased demands placed upon it, and budget cuts
- Erin Collins, the National Taxpayer Advocate, is seen in May speaking before a Congressional committee - the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee hearing on 'Internal Revenue Service: Narrowing the Tax Gap and Improving Taxpayer Services'. In her report she strongly criticized the IRS's current performance
- The NTA found that about 17 million paper tax returns are still waiting to be processed and approximately 16 million additional returns have been placed on hold because they require further review manually.
- Another 2.7 million amended tax returns have not been processed.
- Michelle Singletary, a Washington Post columnist, said the IRS was 'critically malfunctioning'.
- She said that she had been trying to resolve a problem since November.
- 'The agency is a hot mess. You are right to be mad as hell when you can't reach somebody to help explain why your filing or refund hasn't been processed,' she wrote.
- 'And, yes, I cussed, because the time to be polite and forgiving for the failures at the IRS is so over.'
- The IRS has been tasked with dolling out stimulus checks and overseeing new child benefit policies, plus coping with an increase in unemployment claims - all during a pandemic, and on a reduced budget
- The backlog is four times that of 2019, when the IRS had 7.4 million unprocessed returns.
- The authors noted, however, that the data was up until May, and so the backlog may have reduced since then.
- The delay means that millions of people are left waiting for their returns - 70 per cent of individual income tax returns included refunds, the NTA found, with an average of $2,800.
- 'Processing delays matter greatly because most taxpayers overpay their tax during the year via wage withholding or quarterly payments and are entitled to receive refunds,' said Erin Collins, the taxpayer advocate, in her report.
- The IRS on Wednesday took issue with the NTA's findings, saying it does 'not reflect the current situation at the IRS.'
- It said: 'Phone demand has been at historically high levels, never seen before.
- 'Our ability to answer phone calls reflects the amount of staffing available.'
- The statement also said some of the returns counted by the advocate 'does not necessarily reflect unprocessed tax returns,' citing as many as 2.1 million individual and business tax returns are related to identity theft cases.
- The IRS backlog, as of May, amounts to 35 million filings
- Charles P. Rettig, the IRS commissioner (pictured on June 8 in Congress) has defended the work of his organization
- IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig also told the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month that the agency had processed more than 137 million individual income returns and sent refunds totaling more than $281 billion.
- The overwhelming majority of the 35 million unprocessed returns are for the 2020 filing season that were filed in 2021.
- The IRS has been facing what the NTA described as 'a perfect storm'.
- Despite severe cuts over the last decade, the IRS had to issue a third round of economic relief payments, implement new rules affecting unemployment benefits, and new guidelines for eligibility around other tax credits.
- The IRS is also now responsible for new child benefits - despite, between 2010 and 2019, the IRS' budget falling 20 per cent, with the number of full-time employees dropping by a similar amount.
- John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, said the IRS did not have sufficient manpower or funding to do its job.
- 'It's a problem, but nobody should be surprised,' he told The Washington Post.
- John Koskinen, a former head of the IRS, is seen testifying before Congress in May 2016
- 'You can't keep loading more things on an agency without enough people and expect things to go smoothly.
- 'The problem is not with IRS employees who work very hard. It's with Republicans in Congress who have refused to provide adequate funding for 10 years.'
- Republicans led the cuts to the IRS budget, but Joe Biden has pushed to increase the agency's funding by as much as $80 billion to crack down on tax cheats.
- A bipartisan infrastructure deal reached with the White House earlier this month includes as much as $40 billion in additional funding for the agency, although it is unclear when that may pass.
- Israel uses first-ever AI drone swarm in battle to hunt down and blitz Hamas terrorists with NO human input
- ISRAEL used the first ever drone swarm deployed in battle to hunt down Hamas terrorists, it was reported.
- The drones have no human input but instead link together using artificial intelligence to seek out their targets.
- Palestinians fired thousands of rockets at Israel Credit: Reuters 5
- Israeli Defence Forces drones were deployed in swarms Credit: IDFHamas began firing rockets into Israel after protests by Palestinians in May, prompting an 11 day conflict in which 256 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
- During the violence the Israeli military says that more than 4,300 rockets were fired from Gaza towards towns and cities.
- Israel retaliated with air strikes and artillery but didn't deploy ground forces in its battle with the terrorists.
- It now emerged Israeli forces used drone swarms in to target Hamas, New Scientist reports.
- Arthur Holland of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research said that ''if confirmed, they are certainly a notch up in the incremental growth of autonomy and machine-to-machine collaboration in warfare".
- Drones have previously been directed by a single operator who 'fly' the aircraft from a remote base.
- But in recent years, militaries have been working on developing Artificial Intelligence that allows the drones to work together without the need for an operator.
- The swarms targeted Hamas terrorists Credit: Reuters 5
- Israel hit back with air strikes and artillery Credit: AFPThe basic idea of a drone swarm is that its machines are able to make decisions among themselves.
- The swarm continue its mission, even if loses some drones during its mission.
- The machine learning system is fed with data sourced from satellites, other reconnaissance drones, and aerial vehicles, as well as intelligence collected by ground units.
- Unit 8200 of the Israel Defence Forces Intelligence Corps has developed algorithms using geographical, signal, and human intelligence data to identify these strategic strike points.
- The IDF have been using AI and supercomputers to identify locations of Hamas activity and plan strikes to remove any strategic advantage.
- The IDF has not confirmed any specifics of the autonomous swarm attack on Hamas targets.
- As well as Israel, several countries including the UK, Russia, the United States and China have been working on drone swarms.
- The use of autonomous weapons has, however, led to concerns about whether the swarms AI means they will commit war crimes.
- Human Rights Watch is running a campaign called Stop Killer Robots.
- "There are serious doubts that fully autonomous weapons would be capable of meeting international humanitarian law standards,'' it says.
- These include ''the rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, while they would threaten the fundamental right to life and principle of human dignity''.
- 'Social explosion' imminent in Lebanon, as nation teeters on brink of economic collapse '' caretaker PM '-- RT World News
- Lebanon's caretaker prime minister has warned diplomats that the country is days away from a ''social explosion'' and called for help from the international community, as the nation tries to avert catastrophe.
- Speaking after a meeting with ambassadors and diplomats in Beirut, Hassan Diab told officials that Lebanon was facing a ''painful and dark reality,'' due to the social and economic impact of its financial crisis.
- During his address, Diab declared that the combined challenges meant ''the country [was] a short distance from social explosion,'' adding, ''I call on the world to save Lebanon.'' He paired his plea with a request not to punish his people for the actions of ''corrupt'' political figures.
- Diab urged the diplomats in attendance to support his economic recovery plan, which has been developed and is ready to be implemented. Lebanon had been in talks with the International Monetary Fund over a $10 billion bailout, but that fell through over concerns about its financial sector.
- Also on rt.com Lebanon security chief faces prosecution over fatal Beirut Port blast Alongside his remarks to foreign officials, Diab called on his nation to support the creation of a new government, allowing it to begin the process of addressing the challenges it faces, rebuilding its economy, and stabilizing its society.
- The warning about the situation in Lebanon comes months after the chairman of its works committee stated that the country could be forced into darkness, as money to purchase fuel and run the electrical grid was running out.
- Lebanon has been battling an economic crisis since at least 2019, which was exacerbated by the 2020 Beirut port blast that killed more than 200 and destroyed a large section of the city. That, combined with the Covid pandemic and civil unrest over allegations of government corruption, has left it struggling to address a slate of issues that have crippled its economy and hurt its population.
- Hassan Diab submitted his resignation as prime minister in the wake of the deadly explosion and is serving in a caretaker capacity until a successor can form a permanent government. So far, months of talks led by Saad Hariri, who was tasked by the president with establishing a new administration, have failed to result in an agreement, resulting in political stalemate.
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- Testing New York's Excelsior Pass | MIT Technology Review
- On June 20, about 20,000 fans gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York City for a Foo Fighters concert. The venue was at full capacity for the first time since the start of the pandemic, but it wasn't a full return to normalcy: To get in, ticket holders needed to show proof that they'd been vaccinated'--in the form of either a paper card or the state's Excelsior Pass, a much-debated smartphone app that launched earlier this year.
- The pass now has about 2 million downloads, which represents just 10% of fully vaccinated New Yorkers. Implementation has been rocky'--marked by persistent glitches, privacy concerns, and outrage over the state government's failure to prioritize the material needs of working-class communities of color'--and businesses that require vaccination proof are already seeing backlash. Despite these concerns, though, it's becoming more commonplace across the city to require such proof, and other states have expressed interest in launching similar passes. (You can read more about those with our vaccine passport tracker.)
- So what is it like to use?
- In anticipation of attending my first comedy show in years, at Union Hall in Brooklyn, I registered for the Excelsior Pass. Spoiler: It did not go smoothly.
- Downloading the app to my iPhone was simple enough. But like many users, I was greeted with an error message when I tried to register on the website. Many people have been unable to use the pass because it cannot verify their vaccination status. The system works by tapping into state immunization records, but database errors can cause problems, especially if there were data entry errors at vaccine sites. A misspelled name or wrong birthdate can mean that the Excelsior system can't pull up your record. So when the pass couldn't verify my identity, I followed the suggestions on the error page and dug up my paper vaccination card to ensure that I was entering vaccine site information correctly. After three attempts, in which I reentered the same information each time, it worked.
- After three attempts, in which I reentered the same information each time, it worked.
- Limited useAlthough I found a use for the pass, it's been essentially confined to sporting events, gyms, and other high-end leisure venues'--which means the pool of users is limited. For working-class New Yorkers who lost low-wage jobs and remain unemployed in the face of mounting debt, entry to a pricey concert or basketball game is well out of reach.
- That raises concerns about whether it's a wise use of resources. The state has spent $2.5 million on the system so far, and under the contract signed with IBM, which developed the platform, it could cost anywhere from $10 to $17 million over the next three years in a scenario where driver's license information, proof of age, and other data might be added to the pass.
- ''This passport program feels like a continuation of all the state government's and Governor Cuomo's policies around the pandemic,'' says Sumathy Kumar, campaign organizer at Housing Justice for All, a statewide coalition of organizations fighting for tenants. ''They just want life to go back to normal for people with tons of disposable income.''
- And if the pass does get more widespread use'--becoming a requirement to enter job sites or essential shops, for example'--that raises questions about privacy.
- Experts question security Users must enter their name, date of birth, zip code, and phone number to verify their vaccination status or covid-19 test results. New York State's website tells users that Excelsior data is safe and secure, while the privacy policy says it does not store the information sent via the app, or use location services to track people's location. IBM assures users that their data is kept private and secure using blockchain and encryption technologies.
- But experts claim the privacy policy is woefully inadequate. Albert Cahn, executive director of the Stop Technology Oversight Project (STOP), which opposes local and state surveillance in New York, points out that businesses use a separate app to scan the pass; when he tested it, he found that a user's location could potentially be tracked by those scanners. As a result, the comedy club I go to might have a log of my visits there'--and to any bars I go to afterwards that require proof of vaccination. Neither New York State nor IBM responded to requests to clarify whether scanning information could be collected or tracked.
- The lack of transparency is a problem, says Cahn. ''I have less information on how the Excelsior Pass data is used than the weather app on my phone,'' he says. Because the pass is not open source, its privacy claims cannot easily be evaluated by third parties or experts.
- ''If IBM's proprietary health data standard catches on, they could make huge sums of money... Transparency can threaten their entire business plan.''
- Albert Cahn, STOPBut there's little incentive to be more transparent. In developing Excelsior, IBM used its existing Digital Health Pass, a system it could sell in customized forms to customers from state governments to private companies seeking to reopen their offices.
- ''If IBM's proprietary health data standard catches on, they could make huge sums of money,'' Cahn says. ''Transparency can threaten their entire business plan.''
- Privacy and security questions become more urgent if the pass becomes more widely used. The pass is intended to build trust, allowing people to feel comfortable in crowds, yet for many it instead evokes fears of how it could be used against them.
- Vulnerable to surveillanceMany groups have genuine, well-founded concerns over tracking and government surveillance. Historical precedent shows that the use of such technologies, even if limited initially, tends to spread, with especially damaging results in Black and brown communities. For example, anti-terrorism legislation passed in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks expanded surveillance, detention, and deportation of undocumented Muslim and South Asian immigrants.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties organization, has adopted a strong stance in opposition to vaccine passports. ''Mostly these apps are a waste of time and money,'' said Alexis Hancock, director of engineering at EFF. ''Governments really need to consider the resources they have in place and allocate them toward getting the public to a better place after the pandemic, not putting people in a position of more paranoia and privacy concerns.''
- Imran, an undocumented immigrant from Bangladesh who spoke to me for this story, says he has no practical use for the pass at the moment. ''This app isn't for poor people like me,'' he says. Imran was unemployed during the height of the pandemic, but now he works two jobs'--at a hotel and an office'--to support himself and his family in Bangladesh. He would not consider downloading the pass, which he said would be ''anxiety-inducing'' to him as an undocumented immigrant who can face deportation if detained by immigration authorities.
- Jamie Garcia, a nurse and organizer with the STOP LAPD Spying Coalition, a group in Los Angeles that campaigns for the end of surveillance in policing, says that even small pieces of information can be used to criminalize Black and brown people. The data ''seems sparse,'' she says, ''but when you take into consideration the layers upon layers of data they have on you, whether crime or location data, data from your cell phone, every bit of your life has become data-fied.''
- Advocates in New York have proposed legislation to prevent vaccination records from being shared with local law enforcement or immigration authorities, but it was not passed in the legislative session that recently concluded. (We're watching state policies, plans, and legislation related to vaccine passports in all 50 states.)
- Experts also worry it's not fair to require proof of vaccinations that not all groups have been able to access equally: Black and Latino communities in New York lag behind other groups, including white and Asian communities, in vaccination rates. Although the pass can also be used to show a negative covid test, transportation and financial challenges mean those tests are not much easier for many people to obtain than the vaccines themselves.
- The pass could become yet another unfair hurdle for communities hit hardest by the pandemic, according to community organizers. ''The idea that we need to restore trust is so much deeper than just outreach and public relations,'' says Farihah Akhtar, an organizer at CAAAV, a community group for poor and working-class Asian communities in New York. ''It's a matter of who the system prioritizes and cares about. Will working-class people ever be prioritized?''
- National implicationsDespite all these concerns, a 2021 study by the Institute for Technology and Global Health found that 66.5% of respondents in the US were supportive of digital vaccine credentials, raising the question of whether other states will adopt a system similar to New York's. Most respondents felt that it was most appropriate for businesses to require them as opposed to schools or other venues. The survey was conducted online, in English, with 1,000 respondents who were considered nationally representative in terms of age, race, and gender. Respondents were not representative in terms of income or class, factors that play a major role in vaccination rates.
- To Stop LAPD Spying's Garcia, digital vaccine passports are just another example of techno-solutionism, where technology is celebrated as the singular solution to complex problems. Contract tracing apps, likewise, were initially touted as a means to mitigate the spread of covid but ultimately struggled to do so.
- A vaccine passport ''doesn't resolve covid,'' Garcia says ''Variants will come our way too. There won't be a time when we won't experience them. Unless we're all safe, internationally, none of us are safe.''
- This story is part of the Pandemic Technology Project, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
- Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna covid jabs to be renamed Comirnaty, Vaxzevria and Spikevax
- Over the coming months, millions of Australians will roll up a sleeve to get the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, just as millions have done for the AstraZeneca shot already.
- But if you take a look at the vial before the syringe goes in, you may notice something curious '' the lack of the actual Pfizer name on the label.
- The most prominent name on the pack is one few Aussies will have seen before. That name is ''Comirnaty''.
- Similarly, when the US-produced Moderna vaccine heads our way, the vials will likely say ''Spikevax''.
- It's OK '' they're all the real deal. You're not getting an Aldi-esque version of a vaccine, where the pack looks similar to a big name but it's a different brand.
- Rather, all the big vaccine companies are trying to dial down their corporate names as the Covid-19 shot is rolled out. And if you look closely, there are some secret messages in these new names.
- At the moment, most of the big covid vaccines are chiefly known by the companies or organisations that developed and produce them: Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson etc.
- But that's a bit of an issue because all these companies produce lots of products, not just a single inoculation.
- So having the ''Pfizer jab'' is a bit like a big Japanese automaker calling its newest product the ''Toyota car'' despite it having a whole raft of other vehicles.
- Pfizer, for instance, produces large numbers of vaccines. The US firm has one for pneumococcal disease, one for meningococcal disease and another for a tick-borne encephalitis.
- Similarly, AstraZeneca develops and produces flu vaccines. If they were all called the ''Pfizer shot'' or the ''AstraZeneca vaccine'', it would all get very confusing.
- The various drug companies have therefore been busy dreaming up names that they can slap on their covid shot vials that, at the very least, reduce the prominence of their company brand.
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- Ideally, development of the vaccine and its unique brand would have happened hand-in-hand. But the pandemic priority was protecting people, not thinking up natty names.
- According to IP Australia, the government body that assesses and registers trademarks, Pfizer was the first company off the blocks.
- The name ''Comirnaty'' was registered at the end of October.
- It was created by US company Brand Institute which is somewhat prolific in this field, having also produced the alternative names for the AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs too.
- Speaking to pharmaceutical news site Fierce Pharma late last year, Brand Institute executive Scott Piergrossi said the goal in naming drugs was to overlap various ideas and layers of meaning into a simple but very unique brand.
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- Secret lurking in Comirnaty name
- Pfizer themselves were keen on the concept of community, which was the starting point.
- But the consultancy came up with an Easter egg, subtly shoehorning the letters mRNA into the new name which is the family of vaccines the Pfizer shot belongs to.
- ''The name is coined from Covid-19 immunity, and then embeds the mRNA in the middle, which is the platform technology, and as a whole the name is meant to evoke the word community,'' said Mr Piergrossi.
- Breaking Comirnaty down, the ''Co'' is for covid, MRNA is hidden in the central five letters and then it ends with ''ty'', which could represent both community and immunity. Overall, the name sounds a bit like ''community''.
- ''It was a challenging project because there's so much invested in this product '-- from a global economy standpoint, from a health and emotion standpoint,'' Mr Piergrossi said.
- Pfizer also trademarked a number of other brands that didn't make the cut including Covuity, Kovimerna and RNXtract.
- AstraZeneca and Moderna's new names
- More recently, UK-Swedish firm AstraZeneca trademarked the brand ''Vaxzevria'' in Australia.
- Vaxzevria is slowly being rolled out after also getting the green light as an acceptable brand from European health authorities in March.
- The Indian produced version of AstraZeneca is called ''Covishield''.
- Moderna has plumped for the jaunty name ''Spikevax''. A trademark application for Spikevax was received by IP Australia in May and is currently being mulled over.
- The Brand Institute also coined that name. It's notable for having fewer syllables and being less of a tongue twister than other pharmaceutical names.
- ''At two syllables with a vax suffix, that's considered a big win from a branding standpoint in the pharma and vaccine industry,'' Mr Piergrossi told Fierce Pharma last month.
- The simple explanation behind its name is that it combines ''spike'' from the virus' spike protein and ''vax'' for vaccine.
- Johnson & Johnson is a bit behind its rivals in coming up with a snappy moniker for its jab. But it's looking at Jycovson, Jcovsen and Jycovden as possible marques.
- All the brands have to be approved by local regulators. In the US none of the new brands have been okayed yet, so there the company names are still used.
- Mr Piergrossi said it might be a while before the new names catch on, given we've all been talking about Pfizer and AstraZeneca for months.
- ''It's going to take some time for the vaccine brand names to establish traction, understanding and awareness in the market,'' he said.
- However, the speed at which the world went from talking about the ''Indian variant'' to ''Delta'' might mean we'll go from ''Pfizer'' to ''Comirnaty'' quicker than expected.
- Black TikTokers go on STRIKE and refuse to create viral dances as white creators 'fail to credit' | Daily Mail Online
- Black TikTokers have gone on strike and are refusing to create viral dances because they say white creators don't credit them and become overnight stars with the stolen moves.
- The no-dance strike erupted when Megan Thee Stallion released her new song 'Thot S**t' on June 11 - something that would typically lead to the creation of a viral dance circulating on the social media app as happened with her song 'WAP' with Cardi B.
- By Tuesday morning - almost one month on from the song's release - there were around 487,000 videos on TikTok set to the song but no dance trend has yet emerged.
- TikTok is known for its viral dance crazes, which black creators say are often choreographed by them before the trend is picked up by white creators.
- Several black creators say the white creators then fail to credit them for their work and benefit from copying them - sometimes even taking the credit for its creation.
- Black TikTokers have gone on strike and are refusing to create viral dances because they say white creators don't credit them and become overnight stars with the stolen moves. The no-dance strike erupted when Megan Thee Stallion (pictured) released her new song 'Thot S**t'
- Erick Louis, a 21-year-old black TikTok star, posted a video on June 17 appearing to initiate the boycott.
- The video has 'Thot S**t' playing in the background, with the caption: 'If y'all do the dance pls tag me, it's my first dance on Tik tok and I don't need nobody stealing/not crediting.'
- Louis starts moving to the music with the words 'MADE A DANCE TO THIS SONG' above his head.
- But, instead of breaking into dance, Louis flipped the bird at the camera while the words above him changed to: 'SIKE. THIS APP WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT BLACK PEOPLE.'
- The video, which had more than 132,000 likes as of Tuesday morning, marked the beginning of the strike.
- Louis slammed what he described as 'digital colonizing' and 'exploitation of labor' of black TikTok creators and said the strike could go on indefinitely.
- 'We make the trends... and when we remove ourselves from the equation... it's nothing left but mediocrity,' he told the LA Times.
- 'I can't tell you how long it's going to last, but I do want to say that I think this is an indicator of how frustrated the black community is. I feel like this isn't the last time something like this will happen.'
- Louis said it is part of a bigger issue of 'anti-blackness' on TikTok and that the platform needs to show its black creators it values their content.
- Erick Louis, a 21-year-old black TikTok star, posted a video on June 17 appearing to initiate the boycott. The video has 'Thot S**t' playing in the background, with the words 'MADE A DANCE TO THIS SONG' above his head
- But, instead of breaking into dance, Louis flipped the bird at the camera while the words above him changed to: 'SIKE. THIS APP WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT BLACK PEOPLE'
- 'I know for me personally, this is a much wider issue outside of this digital colonizing. TikTok has a really big issue with just black leaders and anti-blackness,' he said.
- 'What's kind of flown over people's heads is this issue concerning the exploitation of labor on the app.'
- TikTok star Challan T., who has more than 4 million followers, said usually there would be a viral dance 'within the hour' when Megan Thee Stallion released a song.
- 'I was scrolling and noticed that everyone was flailing their arms under the sound,' she added.
- She tweeted her support of the strike, writing: 'Not Black TikTok on strike from making dances PLEASE LMFAOOOO.
- 'Not Black TikTok on strike from making dances PLEASE LMFAOOOO.'
- She told the Times there have been several occasions where she hasn't been credited for her work, which she believes comes down to 'racism'.
- 'People just don't want to give black people credit for the things that we make,' she said.
- 'Because there's a lot of times where a white creator will make a dance, and I'll see that credit in the caption every time.
- TikTok star Challan T. said there have been several occasions where she hasn't been credited for her work
- Challan, who has more than 4 million followers, tweeted her support of the strike
- 'If it's a black person, it's invalid automatically to some people, and they just don't even want to attempt.'
- However she said she is concerned about pushback if she were to demand being credited for her work.
- Another TikTok star Herecia Grace told the Times she was joining the strike even though it was tempting to create a dance to Megan Thee Stallion's new song.
- 'Without black creators, things aren't created on this app. Pop culture really moves behind us when we move it,' Grace said.
- 'TikTok definitely gets to decide what goes viral, and I think they just don't choose us. I think that the beauty standards have something to do with that.'
- She said she hopes the strike will 'shake the table a little bit, because it seems like it actually made a difference this time.'
- 'People were actually like, 'Whoa, I didn't realize how much you guys do on the app.''
- Fellow TikToker Keon Martin said the pushback was 'very long overdue.'
- 'Black creators are just really tired of our dances and our trends being stolen,' he said.
- TikTok is known for its viral dance crazes, which black creators say are often choreographed by them before the trend is picked up by white creators without crediting them
- 'We're not given credit, but a white person can do our trend and walk out with 100,000 followers.'
- He posted a video in June on the app mocking the lack of any viral dances emerging due to the boycott.
- 'Yt people under this sound because a Blk Person didn't make a dance yet,' read the TikTok.
- Raven Maragh-Lloyd, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, told CNN the issue is part of a wider problem with cultural appropriation.
- However, the format of TikTok makes copying other people's work standard practice, Maragh-Lloyd said.
- 'TikTok is a new kind of player in that it was specifically built, I would argue, to copy and share content without credit to the original author,' Maragh-Lloyd said.
- 'The whole point of TikTok is to copy.'
- 'I think TikTok is in strange waters when it comes to appropriation.'
- Both TikTok and its white creators have been called out in the past over their treatment of black content creators.
- Fellow TikToker Keon Martin said the pushback was 'very long overdue' and posted a video on the app mocking the lack of any viral dances emerging due to the boycott.
- Last February, white TikToker Charli D'Amelio became one of the most famous teen stars when she performed the viral 'Renegade' dance to K-Camp's 'Lottery'.
- However, it then emerged that D'Amelio had not created the dance.
- Instead, it was black teen Jalaiah Harmon who choreographed the world famous dance but received no credit for it.
- This revelation sparked an uproar with calls for Harmon to be credited for her work.
- D'Amelio later uploaded a performance of herself performing the dance with Harmon and crediting her for 'the original choreography that she made.'
- A similar incident happened earlier this year when white TikTok star Addison Rae performed a dance to Cardi B's 'Up' on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
- The dance had been choreographed by two black teens Mya Johnson and Chris Cotter.
- Johnson told Teen Vogue back in April this was part of an ongoing trend.
- Last February, white TikToker Charli D'Amelio became one of the most famous teen stars when she performed the viral 'Renegade' dance to K-Camp's 'Lottery' (above)
- However, it then emerged that D'Amelio had not created the dance. Instead, it was black teen Jalaiah Harmon who choreographed the world famous dance but received no credit for it. D'Amelio later uploaded a performance of herself performing the dance with Harmon (center)
- 'This isn't the first time this has happened, and I don't want it to continue,' she said.
- 'I feel like it is very important for us to get our credit because we are very good creators that are very overlooked in what we do.'
- Last June, when calls for racial justice grew in the wake of George Floyd's murder, black creators staged a blackout refusing to post content on the app and accusing TikTok of suppressing content that spoke out against racism and oppression.
- TikTok later apologized saying it 'welcome the voices of the Black community wholeheartedly.'
- The company told the Times in a statement about the latest strike that it cares 'deeply' about the experience of its black stars and about people being credited for their work.
- 'We care deeply about the experience of Black creators on our platform and we continue to work every day to create a supportive environment for our community while also instilling a culture where honoring and crediting creators for their creative contributions is the norm,' the company said.
- Denver Zoo will start vaccinating animals for COVID-19 as early as next week '' The Denver Post
- The Denver Zoo will start vaccinating some of its animals for COVID-19 as early as next week. Zoologists say they have yet to formulate a specific plan for which animals will be vaccinated first, but they are working with the veterinary vaccine company Zoetis to receive doses for its animals.
- ''It's very important to us to provide protection for our animals,'' said Dr. Scott Larsen, the vice president of animal health at the Denver Zoo. ''Our primates and carnivores will be at the top of the list.''
- The veterinary vaccine is being developed separate from the ones for human use. The Zoetis vaccine is designed primarily for mammals. Though transmission is rare between humans and other species, there have been several documented cases of COVID-19 in large cats, monkeys, and certain rodent populations. In Denmark, mink farmers were forced to euthanize millions of mink because of a coronavirus outbreak among the population there.
- ''We know some of those animals like gorillas and tigers, mink otters can all be infected. But for a lot of these others, we don't know what the susceptibility is,'' said Larsen. ''For animals, we want to be able to protect them similar to we're trying to protect people.''
- At this point, veterinary scientists do not believe that common house pets like cats or dogs are in significant danger of catching COVID-19. As millions of families quarantined with their pets over the past year, cross-species transmission was low.
- For more on this report about COVID-19 vaccinations at Denver Zoo, visit thedenverchannel.com.
- Nikole Hannah-Jones declines UNC tenured position and will join Howard University - CNN
- (CNN) Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has announced that she declined the University of North Carolina's offer of tenure and a teaching position with the school and has instead accepted a faculty role at Howard University.
- She made the announcement on "CBS This Morning" with Gayle King on Tuesday.
- Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates will take on faculty roles at Howard University, the school announced, while also founding a brand new Center for Journalism and Democracy.
- The move is a significant one for Hannah-Jones, given the recent controversy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her tenure was initially denied by the UNC system's board of trustees. On June 30 -- after protest from alumni, faculty and students -- that decision was flipped.
- With the additions, Coates, a Howard alum, will become a faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences, the school said in a news release. Meanwhile, Hannah-Jones will become a tenured member of Howard's school of communications, filling the newly created position as Knight Chair in Race and Journalism. She will also found the Center for Journalism and Democracy, which will focus on training students in investigative journalism, the school said.
- Howard University announced that Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates will take on faculty roles at the school.
- "We are at a critical juncture in our democracy, and yet our press does not reflect the nation it serves and too often struggles to grasp the danger for our country as we see growing attacks on free speech and the fundamental right to vote," Hannah-Jones said in a statement. "In the storied tradition of the Black press, the Center for Journalism and Democracy will help produce journalists capable of accurately and urgently covering the challenges of our democracy with a clarity, skepticism, rigor and historical dexterity that is too often missing from today's journalism."
- Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick praised the appointments of Coates and Hannah-Jones in a statement, calling them "two of today's most respected and influential journalists."
- "At such a critical time for race relations in our country, it is vital that we understand the role of journalism in steering our national conversation and social progress," Frederick said in a statement. "Not only must our newsrooms reflect the communities where they are reporting, but we need to infuse the profession with diverse talent. We are thrilled that they will bring their insights and research to what is already a world-class, highly accomplished team of professors."
- Coates is known for his racial commentary on the US, gaining notoriety with his 2014 article in The Atlantic called "The Case for Reparations." He is also the author of the best-selling book "Between the World and Me."
- Hannah-Jones is a renowned journalist focusing on racism in the US. Her most well-known piece of work is the "1619 Project," a deeply researched piece of journalism that recontextualizes the history of the US around August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived. Her work has won her numerous accolades, including the coveted MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant.
- The news of the recent additions comes just over a month after the university announced it will name its newly reestablished College of Fine Arts after Chadwick Boseman, with actress Phylicia Rashad, known for her role on "The Cosby Show," set to lead as the dean of the college.
- Fourth Georgia County To Undergo Investigation Over Missing Ballot Forms - Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN)
- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last month revealed that Fulton County is under investigation by Raffensperger's office for failing to produce all ballot drop box transfer forms for absentee ballots used in the 2020 general election.
- Raffensperger announced the investigation on Twitter after a lead story by the Georgia Star News reported that a Fulton County election official admitted ''a few forms are missing'' and ''procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.''
- ''New revelations that Fulton County is unable to produce all ballot drop box transfer documents will be investigated thoroughly, as we have with other counties that failed to follow Georgia rules and regulations regarding drop boxes,'' said the secretary of state. ''This cannot continue.''
- Through an open records request, the Star News was able to access information revealing that Fulton County has failed to generate 385 transfer forms out of the estimated 1,565 transfer forms. The 385 transfer forms correspond to an estimated 18,901 absentee ballots placed into 37 drop boxes placed across the county.
- ''Seven months after the election, Fulton County has been unable to produce 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms according to their own documentation. Those 385 transfer forms represent 18,901 absentee ballots placed into 37 drop boxes placed throughout Fulton County,'' The Star News reported. ''The number of transfer forms and the absentee ballots they represent are about 25 percent of the total transfer forms and absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in Fulton County during the November 2020 election '' significantly greater than 'a few,' by any objective standard.''
- In July last year, the State Election Board passed an emergency rule for the 2020 general election mandating every county in Georgia ''use and maintain transfer forms to document the critical chain of custody for absentee ballots collected from those drop boxes and delivered to designees of the county registrar,'' as reported by Breitbart. Furthermore, approximately 300 drop boxes were used in the 2020 general election in Fulton County, which available for use from September 24 to November 3.
- Fulton County is the fourth county to undergo an investigation over absentee ballot transfer forms. In April, Raffensperger launched an investigation into Coffee, Grady, and Taylor counties because they ''failed to do their absentee ballot transfer forms in violation of Georgia Rules and Regulations,'' according to the press release.
- Since the November election, Raffensperger has been convinced that Georgia had ''safe, secure, and honest elections,'' according to the Georgia-based outlet. Meanwhile, the Georgia GOP convention censured Raffensperger for ''dereliction of his Constitutional duty,'' which involved, ''undermining the security of our elections by allowing mass mailings of absentee applications by his office and third parties which created opportunities for fraud and overwhelmed election offices; rendering accurate signature matching nearly impossible; allowing ballot drop boxes without proper chain of custody; and ignoring sworn affidavits and disregarding evidence of voter fraud.''
- Secretary of State Raffensperger is up for re-election in 2022, although President Donald Trump has endorsed his challenger Rep. Jody Hice.
- ''One of our most outstanding Congressmen, Jody Hice, has announced he is running for Secretary of State in the Great State of Georgia. Jody has been a steadfast fighter for conservative Georgia values and is a staunch ally of the America First agenda,'' Trump said of Hice in a statement issued by his Save America PAC. ''Unlike the current Georgia Secretary of State, Jody leads out front with integrity.''
- Kaseya hackers demand $70 million in massive ransomware attack - Axios
- Russia-linked hackers suspected in this weekend's mass attack on software provider Kaseya, which could affect thousands of companies worldwide, demanded $70 million to restore data they are holding for ransom, Reuters reports.
- Why it matters: The hack is the latest and most dramatic in a series of high-profile ransomware attacks this year, exposing the pandemic-style threat that this type of cybercrime poses to companies and governments around the world.
- Details: Hundreds of companies were directly hit by the supply-chain attack on Kesaya's VSA software, which provides IT services to small and medium-sized businesses, according to CNET. At least 36,000 companies were indirectly impacted.
- The Coop, one of Sweden's largest grocery chains, had to close 800 of its stores, according to the New York Times.Kaseya said in a Sunday night update that its executive committee will meet Monday morning "with a goal of starting the restoration process to bring our datacenters online by end of day on July 5," though it cautioned that this timeline could change.What they're saying: "This is without a doubt going to turn out to be the biggest most destructive ransomware campaign that we've seen so far," tweeted Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
- "Huge number of victims all over the world. Entire networks encrypted. No way to decrypt today without paying millions per network of any significant size."The latest: The $70 million ransomware demand was posted to a dark-web blog typically used by REvil, the Russia-linked cybercrime gang behind the attack that crippled the U.S. operations of meat processor JBS.
- The White House said in a statement Sunday that President Biden has "directed the full resources of the government to investigate this incident," and urged businesses to adopt recommendations released last month to shore up their cyber defenses.The FBI asked businesses to report whether their systems have been compromised, but cautioned that it may not be able to respond to each victim individually "[d]ue to the potential scale of this incident."Our thought bubble: Coming just two weeks after President Biden's personal warning to Vladimir Putin during the Geneva summit, the attack looks like the Russians thumbing their nose at the tough talk.
- "The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government, but we're not sure yet," Biden told reporters on Saturday. "If it is either with the knowledge of and/or a consequence of Russia, then I told Putin we will respond."Go deeper: The ransomware pandemic
- Sun erupts with biggest solar flare in 4 years in early Fourth of July fireworks (video) | Space
- The sun erupted with a surprise solar flare on Saturday (July 3), the largest since 2017, in an early explosion of cosmic fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July.
- The solar flare occurred from a sunspot called AR2838 at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) on Saturday and registered as a powerful X1-class sun event, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) tracking the sun's weather. It caused a brief radio blackout on Earth, center officials said in an update.
- A video of the solar flare from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the flare erupting from the upper right limb of the star as seen by the spacecraft, one of many used to monitor the sun's weather.
- In Photos: The Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History
- The sun erupts with a powerful X1.5-class solar flare on July 3, 2021, the most powerful in 4 years, in this view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The flare appears at the top right of the view. (Image credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA)X-class solar flares are the strongest kind of eruptions on the sun. When aimed directly at Earth, the most powerful ones can endanger astronauts and satellites in space, as well as interfere with power grids on Earth. More moderate M-class solar flares can also supercharge Earth's auroras with dazzling displays.
- The sunspot AR2838 that shot off Saturday's flare is new active region on the sun.
- "This sunspot region developed overnight and was also responsible for an M2 flare (R1 - Minor Radio Blackout) at 07:17 UTC on 03 July," SWPC officials wrote in the update.
- In photos: The Sun's Monster X9.3 Solar Flare of Sept. 6, 2017
- This graphic from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction group shows a powerful X1-class solar flare from the sun on July 3, 2021 (left) and the region of Earth that experienced a short radio blackout from the event. (Image credit: Space Weather Prediction Group)Spaceweather.com, a website that tracks space weather events, reported that the sunspot's big flare registered as a class X1.5 on the scale used to track sun events and has now rotated around to the far side of the sun.
- "As quickly as it appeared, the sunspot is already gone," Spaceweather.com reported today. "On July 4th it rotated over the sun's northwestern limb, and will spend the next two weeks transiting the far side of the sun."
- The sun's weather follows an 11-year cycle with active phases and years of relative solar quiescence. The current cycle, called solar cycle 25, began in 2020.
- Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
- A Twitter Addict Realizes She Needs Rehab - The Atlantic
- I'd rather have gone out on a champagne bender or bet the house on a poker game than let myself be undone by an addiction to social media.
- Getty / The Atlantic About the author: Caitlin Flanagan is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Girl Land and To Hell With All That.
- I'm almost 60, and in these many decades I've seen people'--some of them good friends'--taken down by all kinds of things. Alcohol and drugs, mostly. A few years ago, I lost someone to heroin, and hundreds of us sat at his funeral in wordless communion. I know a couple of people who couldn't shake gambling, and many plagued by food and sex and all the other great distractions. But in all these years'--almost 60! '--I haven't had trouble with any of those things. Until now. You know what finally took me down? Fucking Twitter.
- The indignity of it! Couldn't I have gone out on a champagne bender or bet the house on a poker game, or even clogged my heart with so much gelato and fried chicken that the life force was squeezed out of me midway through a slice of cheesecake? Why did it have to be this common, embarrassing habit that just about everyone on Earth knows is a scourge?
- I know I'm an addict because Twitter hacked itself so deep into my circuitry that it interrupted the very formation of my thoughts. Twenty years of journalism taught me to hit a word count almost without checking the numbers at the bottom of the screen. But now a corporation that operates against my best interests has me thinking in 280 characters. Every thought, every experience, seems to be reducible to this haiku, and my mind is instantly engaged by the challenge of concision. Once the line is formed, why not put it out there? Twitter is a red light, blinking, blinking, blinking, destroying my ability for private thought, sucking up all my talent and wit. Put it out there, post it, see how it does. What pours out is an ungodly sluice of high-minded opinions, sharp rebukes, jokes, transactional compliments, and mundane bulletins from my private life (to the extent that I have one anymore).
- Read: How Twitter fuels anxiety
- The simplest definition of an addiction is a habit that you can't quit, even though it poses obvious danger. How many people have lost their jobs over ill-considered tweets? How can a wry observation, unexamined and fired off during an adrenaline high, possibly be worth the risk? It's madness.
- God knows my heroes wouldn't have gone down this road. George Orwell on Twitter? I doubt it.
- 6 a.m.: An Elephant is rampaging through the bazaar. I'm asked to help. What the Hell can I do about it? I will go take a look.
- Noon: Lunch was a tin of kippers sent by @Mimsy207. Thanks, Mimsy! Felt like we were at the same table. Come to Burma? Please?
- 10 p.m.: Can't get that damn elephant out of my mind.
- Surely Joan Didion has confronted her share of aggravations (cucumber slices not adhering to tea sandwiches; Lynn Nesbit calling during NewsHour; latest Celine sunnies too big for tiny, exquisite face). But would she ever take to Twitter to inscribe these frustrations onto the ticker tape of the infinite? Of course not. She would either shape them into imperishable personal essays or allow them to float past her and return to the place from which they came.
- For a few years now, my family's attitude toward my habit has been'--depending on whom you asked'--concerned, grossed out, or disappointed. My employer had given up and adopted a sort of ''It's your funeral'' approach. There were days when I stared at the screen thinking, It's only a matter of time. Could I kick the addiction without having to reach what alcoholics refer to as rock bottom? Could I save myself before the inevitable catastrophe?
- It was time for Twitter rehab.
- It was to be a battle of wills between one aging, chemo-addled brain and the daisy-fresh minds of the world's most talented coders, ultimate-frisbee players, and ruthless businessmen. You can't fight an addiction alone, so I engaged the assistance of one of my sons, Patrick. He is not on any social media, admires the work of the technology ethicist Tristan Harris, and is an all-around helpful and generous person. He was more than willing to change my password and not tell me what it was for 28 days.
- If you don't have Twitter, or if you're a casual user, this saga must seem absurd. Just close your account, you're thinking. What I'm trying to tell you is: I couldn't.
- Read: Quit social media every other day
- Patrick made me sign a contract asserting that no matter what I said, he was not to give me the password. I scrawled my signature and posted a Tweet saying I'd be back in 28 days. And then I passed him the laptop. He tapped for a few seconds, and Twitter went dark.
- The grid was down, but I didn't feel anxious; that came later. I felt elated, free. I thought of a maxim I'd once read in a book about business: A 99 percent commitment is hard; 100 percent is easy. I was 100 percent off Twitter. Which would have made an excellent tweet.
- I floated downstairs and out to the garden to do some reading. I was excited about this particular book: the last volume of Kevin Starr's magisterial history of California. I sat down and almost immediately I was returned to myself. For the past few years, I've felt a strange restlessness as I read, and the desk in my bedroom is piled with wonderful books I gave up on long before the halfway mark. I had started to wonder if we were in a post-reading age, or if reading loses its pleasure as we age'--but I knew that wasn't really true. Reading that book took me out of my own time and place, and I found myself once again wandering in a created world. I felt the old sensation of trying to slow down, so that the book would last a long time. I had suspected for a while that my reading problems had something to do with Twitter, and several times I'd tried leaving the phone in another room'--but it was no good. Twitter didn't live in the phone. It lived in me.
- And that's when I realized what those bastards in Silicon Valley had done to me. They'd wormed their way into my brain, found the thing that was more important to me than Twitter, and cut the connection.
- We know on an intellectual level that social-media platforms are addictive. Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, admitted as much in 2017 when he confessed that the site had been designed to exploit human ''vulnerability'' and to ''consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.'' We know this; we talk about it; we worry about children, or Cambridge Analytica, or Q, or any other damn thing except for ourselves. We don't want to admit that each one of us has given a huge corporation untrammeled access to the delicate psychology that makes us who we are.
- On the other hand '... after about a week I wanted back in. I knew the place was still hopping, because friends would email me updates that drove me wild with the need to comment. The writer Naomi Wolf was permanently banned from Twitter for her imperious anti-vaxxing during my absence. It was as though Twitter had thrown a cloth over her parrot cage'--the chattering suddenly stopped, and she was silent. But I had thrown a cloth over my own parrot cage, so I couldn't crow about it. Someone sent me news that the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had written about ''leprechaun economics'' and the Irish ambassador to America had taken the bait and complained. It was a cultural moment that (in my opinion) screamed out for Caitlin Flanagan, but where was she? I texted the editor of this magazine: ''Paul Krugman's after me lucky charms!'' The editor texted back, ''I wish I knew what this meant.'' I tried patching through to Old Media, sending the Times a letter to the editor in which I directed Krugman to W. B. Yeats's Fairy and Folktales on the Irish Peasantry and its menacing description of leprechauns as ''sluttish, slouching, jeering, mischievous phantoms,'' suggesting that he should watch his back. Crickets from the Times. Did I even exist anymore?
- I tracked down Patrick. He was in his room, logging meal counts into a spreadsheet (he works for a food bank and majored in philosophy, the full catastrophe). I gave him a very rational description of Twitter's important role in a journalistic career, and how it keeps one's perspective fresh in readers' minds. He listened in an apparently nonjudgmental way, and then turned his swivel chair in the direction of his bookcase and pulled out a thick volume. ''I think you should read William James's essay on habits,'' he said, handing me a copy of The Principles of Psychology.
- I couldn't very well throw the book through his open window, in the manner of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair (a book I actually finished, having encountered it during the infancy of Mark Zuckerberg). I had to respond as one reader to another, uplifted by the suggestion.
- James believed that when it comes to the forming or breaking of habits, there is no such thing as a neutral action. Each time you don't look at Twitter, you are taking the trickle of this new behavior and helping it become a mighty river. But this framework does not take into consideration newer thinking about addiction, and how willpower is useless against it. I brought this point up to Patrick over dinner, but suddenly I was on the downhill slope of a conversation about Aristotelian virtue ethics, and how virtue must be trained, etc. etc.
- I started dreaming about Twitter. One night I found a secret entrance, a gate that was grown over with trailing vines, and I slipped inside. The dream Twitter was magnificent. Each post was two or three stories tall, and they were arranged in some majestic pattern that I couldn't figure out. I was so happy to be there, walking among the giant links, looking at what was trending, what my friends and enemies were tweeting about, what pileup I could throw my pixelated self upon. But my pleasure was tinged with anxiety: What if someone found out I was there; what if someone discovered me lurking? And then I did it. I impulsively reached out and pressed one of the giant ''Like'' buttons, and that was it. I knew I would be caught. The Twitter dream melted into the next one, but in the morning the tone of the dream'--the anxiety and the pleasure'--stayed with me.
- From the September 2017 issue: Have smartphones destroyed a generation?
- There was nothing to do except keep writing (freed from the story budget of Twitter, I actually had some interesting ideas) and keep reading. My other son, Conor, gave me a copy of Pnin and again the world fell away. He gave me Tolstoy's Family Happiness, which I realized I'd read when I was young and which was so interesting to revisit from the perspective of age. Janet Malcolm died, and I was inspired to mark the occasion by rereading her greatest book, The Journalist and the Murderer, which offered the double consolation of its excellent tale and the renewed company of Janet Malcolm. But I was not able to tweet out this virtuous and highbrow response to her passing, so it was (until now) a private act, which I pondered in my heart as Mary did the Annunciation.
- And then'--at last!'--the 28 days were up. I did it! I even added a few more'--29 days, then 30, 31'--just to prove to myself that I wasn't a rabid dog. I found Patrick in the family room. I handed him my laptop and told him to get me back in the game. He looked at me skeptically. Why would I want to go back? I told him that I had a plan all worked out, and that I would go on the site for only half an hour a day, as a means of furthering my career. ''The bargaining phase,'' Conor said, without looking up from his book.
- Patrick disappeared and came back with a collection of Simone Weil essays. He said I should read ''On the Abolition of All Political Parties,'' but every time I saw the word parties, I should replace it with Twitter. He demonstrated, reading a paragraph aloud:
- ''The mere fact that Twitter exists today is not in itself sufficient a reason for us to preserve it. The only legitimate reason for preserving anything is its goodness. The evils of Twitter are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: Does it contain enough good to compensate for its evils and make its preservation desirable?''
- Jesus Christ! I just wanted to shit-talk Naomi Wolf and make leprechaun jokes. How did we get into these deep waters?
- Because that's where Twitter lives.
- Twitter is a parasite that burrows deep into your brain, training you to respond to the constant social feedback of likes and retweets. That takes only a week or two. Human psychology is pathetically simple to manipulate. Once you're hooked, the parasite becomes your master, and it changes the way you think. Even now, I'm dopesick, dying to go back.
- Twitter did something that I would not have thought possible: It stole reading from me. What is it stealing from you?
- Japan seeks to have vaccine passports accepted by over 10 nations | The Japan Times
- Japan is making arrangements for its COVID-19 vaccination passports to be accepted by over 10 nations, including Italy, France and Greece, after the certificate program begins in late July, government sources said Sunday.
- If the agreements are reached, certificate holders will be exempt from quarantine or showing negative test results for COVID-19 when traveling from Japan to those countries, the sources said.
- But the Japanese government plans to continue requiring travelers entering Japan, including returnees, to quarantine for two weeks even if they have been vaccinated. The position has complicated negotiations with countries such as Singapore and Israel, which have called for mutual exemption, the sources said.
- So-called vaccine passports are official documents showing a person has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The certificate, to be issued by municipalities, will include the holder's name, passport number and date of vaccination.
- Business circles in Japan have been calling for the introduction of vaccine passports. The country's largest business lobby, the Japan Business Federation, known as Keidanren, proposed in late June that such certificates be in digital format.
- Japan has lagged behind the United States, Britain and Israel, among others, in its rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations. However, it has stepped up efforts to inoculate citizens ahead of the Tokyo Olympics starting on July 23.
- A quasi-state of emergency is in place for urban areas like Tokyo amid fears of the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus.
- ''Until we see the spread of the delta variant subside, it will be difficult to allow the mutual exemption of quarantine,'' a Japanese government source said.
- Japan has a sweeping ban on new entries of foreign nationals to cope with the pandemic, except those with approval given under ''special exceptional circumstances.'' Travelers entering Japan are asked to stay at home or a designated facility for 14 days after arrival.
- The European Union has its own digital vaccination passport for EU citizens and residents. Certificate holders are exempt from testing and quarantine when traveling to a different country within the bloc.
- The World Health Organization does not endorse making vaccine passports mandatory for travelers as equal access to COVID-19 vaccines has not been ensured.
- In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
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- Hackers demand $70 million to end biggest ransomware attack on record - CBS News
- Boston '-- Cybersecurity teams are working feverishly to stem the impact of the single biggest global ransomware attack on record, with some details emerging about how the Russia-linked gang behind it breached the company whose software was the conduit.
- An affiliate of the notorious REvil gang, best known for extorting $11 million from the meat-processor JBS after a Memorial Day attack, infected thousands of victims in at least 17 countries on Friday, largely through firms that remotely manage IT infrastructure for multiple customers, cybersecurity researchers said.
- REvil was demanding ransoms of up to $5 million, the researchers said. But late Sunday it offered in a posting on its dark web site a universal decryptor software key that would unscramble all affected machines in exchange for $70 million in cryptocurrency.
- Click here to view related media. click to expand
- Earlier, the FBI said in a statement that while it was investigating the attack its scale "may make it so that we are unable to respond to each victim individually." Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger later issued a statement saying President Joe Biden had "directed the full resources of the government to investigate this incident" and urged all who believed they were compromised to alert the FBI.
- Mr. Biden suggested Saturday the U.S. would respond if it was determined that the Kremlin is at all involved.
- Less than a month ago, he pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop giving safe haven to REvil and other ransomware gangs whose unrelenting extortionary attacks the U.S. deems a national security threat.
- More But the Reuters news service cited Russia's Interfax news agency as reporting Monday that the Kremlin says it hasn't been contacted by the U.S. about the attack and that Moscow wasn't aware of it.
- Wide range of victimsA broad array of businesses and public agencies were hit by the latest attack, apparently on all continents, including in financial services, travel and leisure and the public sector - though few large companies, the cybersecurity firm Sophos reported. Ransomware criminals infiltrate networks and sow malware that cripples them by scrambling all their data. Victims get a decoder key when they pay up.
- The Swedish grocery chain Coop said most of its 800 stores would be closed for a second day Sunday because their cash register software supplier was crippled. A Swedish pharmacy chain, gas station chain, the state railway and public broadcaster SVT were also hit.
- In Germany, an unnamed IT services company told authorities several thousand of its customers were compromised, the news agency dpa reported. Also among reported victims were two big Dutch IT services companies - VelzArt and Hoppenbrouwer Techniek. Most ransomware victims don't publicly report attacks or disclose if they've paid ransoms.
- CEO Fred Voccola of the breached software company, Kaseya, estimated the victim number in the low thousands, mostly small businesses like "dental practices, architecture firms, plastic surgery centers, libraries, things like that."
- Voccola said in an interview that only between 50-60 of the company's 37,000 customers were compromised. But 70% were managed service providers who use the company's hacked VSA software to manage multiple customers. It automates the installation of software and security updates and manages backups and other vital tasks.
- Strategic timing Experts say it was no coincidence that REvil launched the attack at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, knowing U.S. offices would be lightly staffed. Many victims may not learn of it until they are back at work on Monday. Most end users of managed service providers "have no idea" whose software keep their networks humming, said Voccola,
- Kaseya said it sent a detection tool to nearly 900 customers on Saturday night.
- The REvil offer to offer blanket decryption for all victims of the Kaseya attack in exchange for $70 million suggested its inability to cope with the sheer quantity of infected networks, said Allan Liska, an analyst with the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Although analysts reported seeing demands of $5 million and $500,000 for bigger targets, it was apparently demanding $45,000 for most.
- "This attack is a lot bigger than they expected and it is getting a lot of attention. It is in REvil's interest to end it quickly," said Liska. "This is a nightmare to manage."
- Analyst Brett Callow, of Emsisoft, said he suspects REvil is hoping insurers might crunch the numbers and determine the $70 million will be cheaper for them than extended downtime.
- Sophisticated ransomware gangs on REvil's level usually examine a victim's financial records - and insurance policies if they can find them - from files they steal before activating the ransomware. The criminals then threaten to dump the stolen data online unless paid. In this attack, that appears not to have happened.
- How they did itDutch researchers said they alerted Miami-based Kaseya to the breach and said the criminals used a "zero day," the industry term for a previous unknown security hole in software. Voccola wouldn't confirm that or offer details of the breach - except to say that it wasn't phishing.
- "The level of sophistication here was extraordinary," he said.
- When the cybersecurity firm Mandiant finishes its investigation, Voccola said he is confident it will show that the criminals didn't just violate Kaseya code in breaking into his network but also exploited vulnerabilities in third-party software.
- It wasn't the first ransomware attack to leverage managed services providers. In 2019, criminals hobbled the networks of 22 Texas municipalities through one. That same year, 400 U.S. dental practices were crippled in a separate attack.
- One of the Dutch vulnerability researchers, Victor Gevers, said his team is worried about products like Kaseya's VSA because of the total control of vast computing resources they can offer. "More and more of the products that are used to keep networks safe and secure are showing structural weaknesses," he wrote in a blog Sunday.
- The cybersecurity firm ESET identified victims in least 17 countries, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, New Zealand and Kenya.
- Kaseya says the attack only affected "on-premise" customers, organizations running their own data centers, as opposed to its cloud-based services that run software for customers. It also shut down those servers as a precaution, however.
- Kaseya, which called on customers Friday to shut down their VSA servers immediately, said Sunday it hoped to have a patch in the next few days.
- Active since April 2019, REvil provides ransomware-as-a-service, meaning it develops the network-paralyzing software and leases it to so-called affiliates who infect targets and earn the lion's share of ransoms. U.S. officials say the most potent ransomware gangs are based in Russia and allied states and operate with Kremlin tolerance and sometimes collude with Russian security services.
- Cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch, of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, said that while he doesn't believe the Kaseya attack is Kremlin-directed, it shows that Putin "has not yet moved" on shutting down cybercriminals.
- 1 dead, 3 injured after raft overturns on water ride at amusement park - ABC News
- The inspection the day before said the ride was "in good working order."
- One person is dead and three more have been hospitalized after a raft overturned on a water ride at an amusement park.
- The incident occurred at approximately 7:35 p.m. on Saturday, July 3, at Adventureland Park in Altoona, Iowa -- part of the Des Moines metropolitan area -- when a boat on the Raging River ride overturned with six riders on it, according to a statement from Adventureland Park.
- The overturned raft caused critical injuries to three people and left one with minor injuries, the statement continued.
- ''Altoona Fire and Police were on property and responded immediately,'' said Adventureland Park in their initial statement on Saturday night. ''We want to thank them as well as Des Moines, Ankeny, Bondurant, Pleasant Hill and Delaware Township Emergency Services for their fast response '... Our thoughts are with the affected families at this time.''
- Adventureland Park said the ride had been inspected the day before and ''was found to be in good working order'' at the time of the accident. The Raging River ride will now remain closed for a more thorough inspection.
- Adventureland Park released a second statement on Sunday night after they learned of the passing of one of the injured riders.
- One person is dead and three more have been hospitalized after a raft overturned on the Raging River ride at Adventureland Park in Altoona, Iowa, on Saturday, July 3, 2021. Adventureland Park''Adventureland is saddened to learn of the passing of one Guest involved in the Raging River accident on the evening of 7/3/21,'' the park's second statement said. ''This investigation is ongoing and the ride remains closed. Adventureland is working closely with both the State and local authorities, and would like to thank them again for their efforts. At this time, we ask for your thoughts and prayers for the Guest and their family, as well as for our team members who were onsite.''
- There have been no additional updates on the conditions of the other three survivors since the initial statement.
- This, however, is reportedly not the first fatal accident to have taken place in connection with the Raging River ride at Adventureland Park.
- According to the Des Moines Register, 68-year-old Adventureland Park employee, Steve Booher, reportedly died in 2016 while he was working on the ride as he was helping riders get out of the Raging River rafts at the end of the ride but fell onto the conveyor belt and suffered a fractured skull along with a major brain injury. Booher died four days later.
- Iowa' Occupational Safety and Health Administration subsequently fined the theme park $4,500 following Booher's death, according to the Des Moines Register -- the maximum the agency could assess for that type of violation.
- The circumstances that led up to Saturday's incident are currently unclear and the investigation is ongoing and the ride will remain closed during that time.
- Submit Your Podcast To The Podcast Index
- It's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. So why would you submit your podcast to one distribution site? As we've learned all too painfully in the past month, relying too much on one platform can be dangerous. Technology goes down and we should be prepared with alternatives. And with the current boom in podcasting, it's more important than ever that you diversify your podcast distribution. There is a newer directory in particular that can enhance your podcasting world in a very good way. It's the Podcast Index, also know as The Index.
- In this post you will learn:
- what The Podcast Index is why having your podcast in The Index is important how to get your podcast in the Index What's the Podcast Index?In short, The Podcast Index is an open source podcast directory. This means that anyone can add to it, a lot like Wikipedia. How big is it? As of late June 2021, it was over 4 million podcasts big. And it's growing fast.
- But like many open source projects, it gets technical and geeky fast. So I'll be covering the basics of The Index in this post.
- Why Does the Podcast Index Matter?1. It's About Keeping Podcasting OpenPodcasting started as a space to reach listeners without gatekeepers. So, the fact that bigger podcast companies are now putting more and more content behind paywalls strays from this initial goal. They've become gatekeepers, the very role that podcasting was supposed to be without.
- But it's not just about podcasting being walled off into more expensive spaces. It's about being banned in other spaces as well. The most recent example of this is the Bandrew Scott of the Bandrew Says Podcast. His YouTube channel, which is one of his podcast distribution spaces, was shut down in June 2021 (it seems as though the ban was for criticizing YouTube's algorithms). And yes, YouTube can be a podcast distribution space, just ask Tom Webster of Edison Research. For more information, watch Bandrew's video about how the ban affected him.
- This unfortunate experience is a good reminder to the rest of us that our podcasts need to be in many distribution spaces, especially if you have funding connected to your podcast. Because he had his podcast in many distribution spaces, including in The Podcast Index, he was still able to keep publishing. And his podcast was still available.
- Who Will Monitor the Podcast Index?With freedom comes the potential for differing opinions. As with any expressive or creative medium, what is considered acceptable and unacceptable is not clean cut. Unfortunately, these content struggles transfer over to podcasting in general, and The Podcast Index, specifically. Some people say that if no one is monitoring a distribution space, then unsavory topics or ideas can't be stopped. Though I'm not going to go into this debate in depth in this post, it's important that you know it exists.
- Click, Talk, Done! Super Simple Podcast Recording & EditingAlitu records calls, solo segments, cleans up your audio, adds music & transitions, helps you edit & publishes right to your host.
- 2. And, It's About The Podcaster Getting Paid Value for Value is a crypto driven listener-to-podcaster payment system. In some ways it's a reaction to the advertising and membership spaces in podcasting, that either cost the podcaster a lot in fees, while often closing the content off to listeners who don't or can't pay for the content. It's crypto, so it's complicated. This interview that Dave Jackson did recently with Adam Curry, (The Podcast Index's founder and The Pod Father), explains more about this aspect of The Podcast Index. Don't worry if you're not that tech savvy. Dave and Adam keep the conversation understandable for us.
- What is Podcasting 2.0?Podcasting 2.0 is the name of a weekly podcast that Adam and Dave make. It's also the overall name for the movement they've started with The Index. There are many players in this space, and I'd like to briefly share their reasons for getting involved.
- Why is Podcasting 2.0 Important?Freedom of Choice''Whilst it's early days for Podcasting 2.0, it's important to focus on listener experience, creator choice and opportunity when building out this next phase of the medium. We chose to work with Dave and Adam on integrating Podcasting 2.0 tags into the Captivate hosting platform so that podcasters have the all important choice of how they want to use the tech around them to build their podcast and provide a high-quality and evolving experience for their listeners.''
- -Mark Asquith, CEO and Co-Founder of Captivate.fm
- Freedom Of Speech and Open Access''The freedom of podcasting is critical. Adam and Dave and everyone else contributing to Podcasting 2.0 are creating the infrastructure which ensures podcasting will remain free and not be held hostage by walled gardens.''
- -Jennifer Navarrete, Virtual Event Producer at Brewing Media & Founder of National Podcast Posting Month
- Freedom of Tags''The Podcast Index is a great resource for independent podcasters to find tools and services to keep their podcast running and grow their audience. As other companies are trying to lock down podcasting, it's important that we maintain free open access to the tools that up and coming podcasters need. Headliner is listed on Podcast Index's supporting apps page for our utilization of the Soundbite Tag. ''
- -Oliver, Co-Founder of Headliner
- How to Get Your Podcast Into the Podcast IndexFirst, check The Podcast Index. Many podcasts are already in the Index. If you're podcast is not in The Index, follow one of these two sets of instructions.
- Non-Techy InstructionsCheck with your podcast host. The easiest way to get your podcast into the Podcast Index is through your podcast host. Here's a list of podcast hosts and apps that support the Index.If #1 is not an option, then email your RSS feed and a quick, ''Can you please add my podcast to The Index,'' message to The Podcast Index folks at [email protected] to submit your podcast. The Podcast Index doesn't have a submission form for process yet. But, they are hoping to have one by the end of summer 2021.
- Techy InstructionsIf you're tech savvy, you can go to this page, and find the code and such to submit your podcast.
- Choose EverywhereUltimately, you don't have to choose between which directories to add your podcast to. The choice is not really about directories, it's about freedom of expression. We want you to express yourself. Your stories matter, so get them out there to as many places as possible, including The Podcast Index.
- We are all time strapped, right? When you do a new task you run the risk of not doing another task. Don't worry, we've got you. Here's a way to make the editing and production even easier. It's a production app '' Alitu '' which automates processing and helps you with editing. It'll take your interview recording, polish it up, add your theme music, allow you to easily add a spoken intro or outro, and then it'll export and publish it to your Podcast host of choice. You can also edit out any mistakes or side-tracks if you need to! So save time on production with Alitu and transfer that time saved to adding your podcast to more distribution spaces like The Podcast Index.
- Desktop Privacy Notice | Audacity ®
- Audacity Desktop AppPrivacy NoticeLast updated: 2 July 2021
- About this NoticeThis Privacy Notice (''Notice'') explains how we (as defined below) collect and use any information that, alone or in combination with other information, relates to you (''Personal Data'') when you (''you'' and ''your'') use our desktop app Audacity (the ''App''). We collect very limited Personal Data about you.This Notice also sets out the rights that you have in relation to the Personal Data that we process about you and how you can exercise them.Audacity treats compliance with its privacy obligations seriously. This is why we have developed this Notice, which describes the standards that Audacity applies to protect Personal Data.For the purposes of this Notice, WSM Group with registered office at Moskovsky pr-t,40-1301, Kaliningrad, Russia, 236004 (''Audacity'', ''us'', ''we'', or ''our'') acts as the data controller for the Personal Data that is collected via the App and through the App. As a data controller, Audacity is responsible for ensuring that the processing of Personal Data complies with applicable data protection law, and specifically with the General Data Protection Regulation.Please take the time to read this Notice carefully. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us via [email protected]What Personal Data does Audacity collect and why?The very limited types of Personal Data that we may collect about you, and the reasons why we process it, are as follows. As a general comment our App does not require you to create an account or profiles and we do not ask you to provide us with your name, contact details or any other direct identifiers.Why we collect itPersonal Data we collectLegal grounds for processing' App analytics' Improving our App' OS version' User country based on IP address' OS name and version' CPU' Non-fatal error codes and messages (i.e. project failed to open)' Crash reports in Breakpad MiniDump format' Legitimate interest of WSM Group to offer and ensure the proper functioning of the App' For legal enforcement' Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities' requests (if any)' Legitimate interest of WSM Group to defend its legal rights and interestsMinorsThe App we provide is not intended for individuals below the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old, please do not use the App.Who does Audacity share your Personal Data with?We may disclose the Personal Data listed above (your hashed IP address) to the following categories of recipients:to our staff members. We take precautions to allow access to Personal Data only to those staff members who have a legitimate business need for access and with a contractual prohibition of using the Personal Data for any other purpose.to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, or (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights;to our auditors, advisors, legal representatives and similar agents in connection with the advisory services they provide to us for legitimate business purposes and under contractual prohibition of using the Personal Data for any other purpose.to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your Personal Data only for the purposes disclosed in this Notice;to any other person if you have provided your prior consent to the disclosure.How we protect your privacyWe will process Personal Data in accordance with this Notice, as follows:Fairness: We will process Personal Data fairly. This means that we are transparent about how we process Personal Data and that we will process it in accordance with applicable law.Lawfulness: We will process Personal Data only on lawful grounds.Purpose limitation: We will process Personal Data for specified and legitimate purposes, and will not process it in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes, unless permitted by applicable data protection laws.Data minimization: We will process Personal Data that is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary to achieve the purposes for which the data are processed.Data accuracy: We take appropriate measures to ensure that the Personal Data that we hold about you is accurate, complete and, where necessary, kept up to date. However, it is also your responsibility to ensure that your Personal Data is kept as accurate, complete and current as possible by informing us promptly of any changes or errors. You should notify us of any changes to the Personal Data that we hold about you.Data security: We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the Personal Data that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your Personal Data. Specific measures we use include to-date secure network architectures that contain firewalls and intrusion detection devices and backups.Data storage, retention and deletionThe IP address will be stored in an identifiable way only for a calendar day. IP addresses are stored as a hash, the salt for which is changed daily. The salt is not stored on any database and cannot be retrieved after it has been changed. We store the hash for one year, after which, it is deleted. Other information we collect, such as OS version or CPU information is not identifiable.We may also store your Personal Data for the purpose of exercising, establishing or defending our legal rights in accordance with applicable laws.Data storage and transfers of dataAll your personal data is stored on our servers in the European Economic Area (EEA). However, we are occasionally required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA.We have put in place appropriate safeguards (which includes the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses) to ensure that whenever your Personal Data is transferred outside the EEA to countries that are not deemed adequate by the European Commission, your Personal Data receives an adequate level of protection in accordance with the GDPR.Your data protection rightsYou have the following data protection rights:If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your Personal Data, you can do so at any time by contacting via [email protected]In addition, in certain circumstances, as stipulated in the applicable data protection legislation, you can object to processing of your Personal Data, ask us to restrict processing of your Personal Data or request portability of your Personal Data. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the following contact details: [email protected]If you have a complaint or concern about how we are processing your Personal Data then we will endeavour to address such concern(s). If you feel we have not sufficiently addressed your complaint or concern, you have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your Personal Data. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here.)We respond to all requests we receive at via [email protected] from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.Linking to other websitesThe App may contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These websites have their own privacy policies and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of Personal Data you submit whilst visiting these websites.We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.Updates to this NoticeWe may update this Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material Notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.You can see when this Notice was last updated by checking the ''last updated'' date displayed at the top of this Notice.How to contact usIf you have any questions or comments, or if you wish to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us via [email protected]Additional Information for California ConsumersThe California Consumer Privacy Act (''CCPA'') provides California residents, referred to in the law as ''consumers,'' with rights to receive certain disclosures regarding the collection, use, and sharing of personal information, as well as rights to access and control personal information. Certain information that we collect may be exempt from the CCPA because it is considered public information (because it is made available by a government entity) or covered by another federal privacy law, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or the Fair Credit Reporting Act.To the extent that we collect personal information about you that is subject to the CCPA, that information, our practices, and your rights are described below.Right to information regarding the categories of personal information collected, sold, and disclosed: You have the right to obtain information regarding the categories of personal information we collect, sell, or disclose. That information is provided in this Privacy Policy. We collect the categories of information described above. The categories that we use to describe the information are those enumerated in the CCPA.We do not sell personal information.
- Fact check: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has received COVID-19 vaccine
- The claim: The CEO of Pfizer refused the COVID-19 vaccine
- In an attempt to cast doubt on the safety and efficiency of the coronavirus vaccines, one Facebook user shared a video claiming Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla refused to take the vaccine created by his company.
- "#Pfeizer (sic) CEO Refuses to get COVID Vaccine," reads the caption of the March 24 video on Facebook with over 3,100 shares and 1,500 reactions.
- The video features a CNBC interview with Bourla in which he is asked when he will get vaccinated. In response, he says that he is 59 years old, in good health and is not working on the front lines, so he "is not recommended to get vaccinated now."
- "As soon as I can, I will. The only sensitivity here, Meg, is that I don't want to have an example that I'm cutting the line," Bourla says in the video, which also includes a clip of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
- In the second clip, Fauci tells CNN's Brianna Keilar that he would not take a coronavirus test after touching the same microphone as then-President Donald Trump because he was not experiencing any symptoms and practiced social distancing.
- Following the video of Fauci is a clip of Dr. Oz attempting to persuade television personality Wendy Williams, who says she does not trust the coronavirus vaccination or flu shots, about the safety of the vaccine.
- The video was shared by the Facebook page Tru York, which has previously shared other videos discouraging people from getting vaccinated, according to FactCheck.org. USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook page for comment.
- Fact check: Boxing champ Marvin Hagler's death not caused by COVID-19 vaccine
- Bourla has received Pfizer's vaccine
- The interview in which Bourla says he has not gotten vaccinated took place with CNBC on Dec. 14, three days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued the first emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
- Since the interview, Bourla has been vaccinated, and 28.6% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose and 15.8% have completed vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- "That report is categorically false," Pfizer spokeswoman Sharon Castillo told USA TODAY via email. "Dr. Bourla has been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine."
- Bourla told Axios on HBO that he felt "liberated" after receiving the first of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. He added that he would advise family members to get any vaccine, even if it is not the Pfizer shot.
- "If it was the case, can I get a vaccine now '' any vaccine now '' or a vaccine that I prefer two months later, I would go with whatever I can get now," Bourla said.
- On March 10, Bourla tweeted: "Excited to receive my 2nd dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech #COVID19 vaccine."
- The included video clip of Fauci on CNN saying he would not take a COVID-19 test is from March 15, 2020, very early in the course of the pandemic in the U.S. and before tests for the virus were widely available to the public.
- Later on in the interview, Fauci says, "Not everybody in the United States should take a test. I mean, I have no symptoms, there's no reason for me to take a test. If I'm in a situation where I'm at a higher risk, I will take a test."
- During that time, health officials were advising Americans to get tested for the virus only if they were showing symptoms, according to the Associated Press.
- Fauci received the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 22, and got his second dose on Jan. 19. He told CNN, "Got it. So far, so good."
- Fact check: No definitive link between AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine and blood clot incidents
- The claim that the CEO of Pfizer refused the coronavirus vaccine is FALSE, based on our research. Pfizer confirmed that Albert Bourla has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Bourla shared images of him receiving the vaccine on Twitter, and the interview clip of Bourla saying he had not yet received the vaccine is from Dec. 14.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dec. 11, 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
- Axios, March 7, "Pfizer CEO feels 'liberated' after taking COVID vaccine"
- Albert Bourla, March 10, tweet
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed March 30, COVID Data Tracker
- Sharon Castillo email to USA TODAY
- CNN, March 15, 2020, "Keilar questions Fauci over picture with Trump"
- Associated Press, March 3, "Old video used to misrepresent Fauci position on virus testing"
- USA TODAY, Dec. 22, 2020, "Dr. Fauci receives newest COVID-19 vaccine"
- CNN, Jan. 19, "January 19 coronavirus news"
- Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.
- Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.
- Scale, details of massive ransomware attack emerge
- (C) Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo The FBI said in a statement Sunday that it was investigating the attack. BOSTON '-- Cybersecurity teams worked feverishly Sunday to stem the impact of the single biggest global ransomware attack on record, with some details emerging about how the Russia-linked gang responsible breached the company whose software was the conduit.
- An affiliate of the notorious REvil gang, best known for extorting $11 million from the meat-processor JBS after a Memorial Day attack, infected thousands of victims in at least 17 countries on Friday, largely through firms that remotely manage IT infrastructure for multiple customers, cybersecurity researchers said. They reported ransom demands of up to $5 million.
- The FBI said in a statement Sunday that it was investigating the attack along with the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, though ''the scale of this incident may make it so that we are unable to respond to each victim individually.''
- President Joe Biden suggested Saturday the U.S. would respond if it was determined that the Kremlin is at all involved. He said he had asked the intelligence community for a ''deep dive'' on what happened.
- The attack comes less than a month after Biden pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop providing safe haven to REvil and other ransomware gangs whose unrelenting extortionary attacks the U.S. deems a national security threat.
- A broad array of businesses and public agencies were hit by the latest attack, apparently on all continents, including in financial services, travel and leisure and the public sector '-- though few large companies, the cybersecurity firm Sophos reported. Ransomware criminals break into networks and sow malware that cripples networks on activation by scrambling all their data. Victims get a decoder key when they pay up.
- The Swedish grocery chain Coop said most of its 800 stores would be closed for a second day Sunday because their cash register software supplier was crippled. A Swedish pharmacy chain, gas station chain, the state railway and public broadcaster SVT were also hit.
- Video: Major ransomware attack against thousands of businesses worldwide (NBC News)
- Major ransomware attack against thousands of businesses worldwide
- Post-Covid economy: Cities, mass-transit, car prices all changed by pandemic As the economy re-opens, some of the changes may be permanent, particularly in cities where housing and mass-transit have faced major downswings. NBC News Gavi CEO: 'At the moment, we're not using the Russian vaccine and the Chinese vaccine' In an interview with Meet the Press, Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, explains how the organization approves vaccines for worldwide distribution. NBC News Full Panel: 'Summer of reset' as people begin returning from Covid Kate Snow, Audie Cornish and Adam Grant join the Meet the Press roundtable to discuss the post-Covid recovery. NBC News UP NEXT
- In Germany, an unnamed IT services company told authorities several thousand of its customers were compromised, the news agency dpa reported. Also among reported victims were two big Dutch IT services companies '-- VelzArt and Hoppenbrouwer Techniek. Most ransomware victims don't publicly report attacks or disclose if they've paid ransoms.
- CEO Fred Voccola of the breached software company, Kaseya, estimated the victim number in the low thousands, mostly small businesses like ''dental practices, architecture firms, plastic surgery centers, libraries, things like that.''
- Voccola said in an interview that only between 50-60 of the company's 37,000 customers were compromised. But 70% were managed service providers who use the company's hacked VSA software to manage multiple customers. It automates the installation of software and security updates and manages backups and other vital tasks.
- Experts say it was no coincidence that REvil launched the attack at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, knowing U.S. offices would be lightly staffed. Many victims may not learn of it until they are back at work on Monday. The vast majority of end customers of managed service providers ''have no idea'' what kind of software is used to keep their networks humming, said Voccola,
- Kaseya said it sent a detection tool to nearly 900 customers on Saturday night.
- John Hammond of Huntress Labs, one of the first cybersecurity firms to sound the alarm on the attack, said he'd seen $5 million and $500,000 demands by REVil for the decryptor key needed to unlock scrambled networks. The smallest amount demanded appears to have been $45,000.
- Sophisticated ransomware gangs on REvil's level usually examine a victim's financial records '-- and insurance policies if they can find them '-- from files they steal before activating the data-scrambling malware. The criminals then threaten to dump the stolen data online unless paid. It was not immediately clear if this attack involved data theft, however. The infection mechanism suggests it did not.
- ''Stealing data typically takes time and effort from the attacker, which likely isn't feasible in an attack scenario like this where there are so many small and mid-sized victim organizations,'' said Ross McKerchar, chief information security officer at Sophos. ''We haven't seen evidence of data theft, but it's still early on and only time will tell if the attackers resort to playing this card in an effort to get victims to pay.''
- Dutch researchers said they alerted Miami-based Kaseya to the breach and said the criminals used a ''zero day,'' the industry term for a previous unknown security hole in software. Voccola would not confirm that or offer details of the breach '-- except to say that it was not phishing.
- ''The level of sophistication here was extraordinary,'' he said.
- Democrats fear Harris can't beat any GOPer in 2024, including Trump
- Officials are reportedly concerned a series of missteps and blunders by VP Kamala Harris could cost Democrats the White House in 2024. AP
- Democrats are increasingly fearful Vice President Kamala Harris' missteps will open the door for Republicans to regain the White House, a new report said Friday.
- Dems, including senior White House officials, fear that Harris will lose to any Republican she faces '-- including former President Donald Trump '-- if President Biden does not seek reelection in 2024, Axios reported.
- At 56, Harris is more than two decades Biden's junior '-- and has been considered the heir apparent to the 46th president since he selected her to be his running mate last year.
- While Harris will still be the presumptive nominee if Biden becomes the first president since Lyndon Johnson to not seek a second full term, Axios reports that a series of blunders have left officials and operatives concerned.
- Right now, one operative told Axios, the feeling among Democrats isn't '''Oh, no, our heir apparent is f'--ing up, what are we gonna do?' It's more that people think, 'Oh, she's f'--ing up, maybe she shouldn't be the heir apparent.'''
- Harris has repeatedly been criticized for her handling of the illegal immigration crisis along the US-Mexico border, a problem Biden dumped in her lap in March by tasking her to deal with the ''root causes'' of the issue.
- The vice president initially ignored calls for her to visit the area, instead traveling to Guatemala and Mexico last month. While there, she shrugged off more questions about when she would visit the border, telling NBC's Lester Holt that ''I haven't been to Europe'' before adding, ''I don't understand the point that you're making.''
- Vice President Harris was criticized when she made her first trip to the United States-Mexico border in June. White House press secretary Jen Psaki and White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain have notably praised and defended Harris. REUTERSThat moment, which at least one commentator described as worthy of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character on the HBO show ''Veep,'' was followed last week by Harris traveling to El Paso, a perfunctory visit that took her hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the border crisis. Then, earlier this week, Politico dropped a bombshell report that described Harris' office as ''chaotic'' with a ''tense and at times dour'' atmosphere.
- ''People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it's an abusive environment,'' one of Politico's nearly two dozen sources told the outlet. ''It's not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It's not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like sh''t.''
- According to Axios, several White House officials have also described Harris' office as a ''sh'--tshow,'' poorly managed, and staffed with people who don't know the vice president well.
- Much of the blame has landed at the door of Harris Chief of Staff Tina Flournoy, who is depicted as so controlling and overly protective of the VP that requests for meetings and friendly interviews languish unanswered for weeks. Flournoy has also been accused of dismissing or ignoring staff ideas and refusing to delegate responsibility.
- The Democratic officials who spoke to Axios said that in addition to Harris' ''handling of high-profile issues and political tone deafness,'' they fear she's been given bad advice by her press and communications people.
- Harris still has her defenders, including senior adviser and chief spokesperson Symone Sanders, as well as White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond, who accused unnamed people of carrying out ''a whisper campaign designed to sabotage her.''
- ''At some point it just becomes, one person says something long enough and it becomes an urban legend. It doesn't have to be credible. It doesn't have to be real. Someone says something and it can just snowball,'' Richmond told Axios, later adding: ''You'd just hope if there's a legitimate criticism they'd put their name next to it.''
- Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain offered unreserved praise for Harris, telling Axios she was ''off to the fastest and strongest start of any Vice President I have seen.''
- At a news conference Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Harris ''an incredibly important partner to the President of the United States. She has a challenging job, a hard job, and she has a great, supportive team of people around her.
- ''But other than that,'' Psaki added, ''I'm not going to have any more comments on those reports.''
- Pet owners seek to delay demolition of Florida condo tower
- An online petition has been started to halt the demolition until "all animals are safe." AFP via Getty Images
- Pet owners who lived in what still stands of Florida's partly collapsed condo tower want the structure's planned demolition delayed until any animals who might still be alive there are rescued.
- The search for human and animal survivors in the building's rubble in Surfside next to Miami Beach was suspended Saturday as officials prepare to demolish the remaining part of the 12-story structure ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa.
- But an online petition has been started to halt the demolition until ''all animals are safe'' and already garnered almost 4,300 signatures, the Miami Herald reported.
- Julie Mir", a Miami resident who signed the petition, said she also sent emails to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local emergency officials urging them to try to save any animals stuck inside the teetering building before it is knocked down.''If there were people in there, they would have found a way,'' Miro told the Herald of officials overseeing the rescue effort. ''But they don't think animals are as valuable.''
- In the first few hours after the building's collapse, firefighters rescued one fourth-floor family's dog, Rigatoni, along with the mother and daughter. AFP via Getty ImagesDahlia Kanes, director of the Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation, said her organization believes that at least several dogs and cats, a guinea pig and a few parakeets are still stuck in the structure.She told the paper that she spoke with a woman whose dog, Daisy, and two cats were in her living room when part of the building crumbled into a massive pile of rubble July 24.
- Daisy is the name of the dog in the Edgar Gonzalez family. Gonzalez, a lawyer, remains missing, while his wife, Angela, and their 15-year-old daughter, Deven, are hospitalized.
- Kanes said her office began getting calls about pets since the building collapsed but she understands that the structure is too unstable to send crews in to rescue the animals.
- Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said ''search and rescue conducted three separate searches '... And, they found no animals.'' Miami-Dade Police Department''The reality is grim. Most likely all those animals are either dead or in the rubble below,'' she said.
- On Saturday, Levine Cava said: ''Many in the community have raised this concern [about the building's pets].
- ''I want to be clear that search and rescue conducted three separate searches, a primary, a secondary and a tertiary. And, they found no animals. I was informed this morning that they did a sweep with cameras and found no animals at this time.
- ''I've also been in touch with the contractor and provided locations of animals that were given to me who might be in the building,'' Levine Cava said.
- One resident spotted their cat, Coco, on the balcony and firefighters used a cherry picker to leave food and water for the pet. AFP via Getty Images''They are aware and doing everything they might do just to make an additional search,'' she said of rescue workers. ''But I want to be very clear that they would not be doing that on-site because they are not going to be able to go into those units.
- ''It is not safe for anyone to go beyond the first floor,'' she said.
- In the first few hours after the building's collapse, firefighters rescued one fourth-floor family's dog, Rigatoni, along with the mother and daughter, the Herald reported.
- When someone saw their cat, Coco, on the balcony, firefighters used a cherry picker to leave food and water for the pet.
- The Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation believes that at least several dogs and cats, a guinea pig and a few parakeets are still stuck in the condo building. AFP via Getty ImagesLevine Cava said that as a pet owner herself, she understands many people consider their animals to be family members.''I just want you to know that additional efforts have been made and are being made,'' she said.
