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China’s CCP Warns Elon Musk Against Sharing Wuhan Lab Leak Report
A Chinese state-run newspaper issued a warning to Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk after he shared reporting on the U.S. Department of Energy’s “low confidence” assessment that the global COVID pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported Tuesday morning on the warning from the social media pages of the Global Times, the English-language subsidiary of the CCP-controlled People’s Daily. The Global Times warned Musk that he could be “breaking the pot of China” after the Tesla and Twitter CEO responded to tweets that asserted that the COVID pandemic originated in a Wuhan research laboratory.
The saying is akin to the idiom “to bite the hand that feeds you,” Yoon reported. Tesla has an expansive factory campus in Shanghai, and China is the electric vehicle manufacturer’s second-largest market.
The governing Chinese Communist Party has been highly sensitive to the matter, especially as it courts outside investment after months of zero-COVID lockdowns prompted nationwide protests, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported.
House Panel to Vote on Bill Empowering Biden to Ban TikTok
A powerful House committee is set to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make it easier to ban TikTok from the United States and crack down on other China-related economic activity, amid vocal objections from civil liberties advocates who argue the proposal is unconstitutionally broad and threatens a wide range of online speech.
The legislation — introduced Friday and fast-tracked by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul — would empower the Biden administration to impose a nationwide TikTok ban under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The bill’s text specifically names TikTok and its parent, ByteDance, and requires President Joe Biden to impose penalties against the companies, up to and potentially including a ban, if the administration determines they may have knowingly transferred TikTok’s user data to “any foreign person” working for or under the influence of the Chinese government.
Sanctions would also be required if the Biden administration finds the companies helped the Chinese government engage in surveillance, hacking, censorship or intelligence-gathering; facilitated election meddling in the United States or in another democratic ally; or helped the Chinese government influence U.S. policymaking, among other things.
Father of Cellphone Sees Dark Side but Also Hope in New Tech
The man credited with inventing the cellphone 50 years ago had only one concern then about the brick-sized device with a long antenna: Would it work? These days Martin Cooper frets like everybody else about his invention’s impacts on society — from the loss of privacy to the risk of internet addiction to the rapid spread of harmful content, especially among kids.
“My most negative opinion is we don’t have any privacy anymore because everything about us is now recorded someplace and accessible to somebody who has enough intense desire to get it,” said Cooper, who spoke with The Associated Press at the telecom industry’s biggest trade show in Barcelona, where he was receiving a lifetime award.
Still, Cooper said he’s “not crazy” about the shape of modern smartphones, blocks of plastic, metal and glass. He thinks phones will evolve so that they will be “distributed on your body,” perhaps as sensors “measuring your health at all times.”
Smartphone use by children is another area that needs limits, Cooper said. One idea is to have “various internets curated for different audiences.” Five-year-olds should be able to use the internet to help them learn, but “we don’t want them to have access to pornography and to things that they don’t understand,” he said.
Final State Emergencies Winding Down 3 Years Into Pandemic
California’s coronavirus emergency officially ends Tuesday, nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order and just days after the state reached the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths related to the virus.
As California’s emergency winds down, such declarations continue in just five other states — including Texas and Illinois — signaling an end to the expanded legal powers of governors to suspend laws in response to the once mysterious disease. President Joe Biden announced last month the federal government will end its own version May 11.
Illinois’ order will end in May alongside the federal order, while the governors of Rhode Island and Delaware recently extended their coronavirus emergency declarations. In New Mexico, public health officials are weighing whether to extend a COVID-19 health emergency beyond its Friday expiration date.
Texas, meanwhile, hasn’t had any major coronavirus restrictions for years, but Republican Gov. Greg Abbott keeps extending his state’s emergency declaration because it gives him the power to stop some of the states’ more liberal cities from imposing their own restrictions, like requiring masks or vaccines. Abbott has said he’ll keep the emergency order — and his expanded powers — in place until the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passes a law to prevent local governments from imposing virus restrictions on their own.
Battenfeld: Origins of COVID the Latest ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Proved Right
Whether it’s the effectiveness of masks, vaccine mandates or lockdowns, new evidence suggests that what once were viewed as “debunked” theories and banned on Facebook are now grounded in reality. This week, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both reported the news that the Energy Department changed its belief about the origins of the virus, which previously was attributed to spreading by bats at live markets in Wuhan.
Now the government agency — agreeing with a conclusion by the FBI — lays the blame on researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, although it says it has only “low confidence” in the conclusion. But it was enough to start a fierce debate over censorship in social media and the erosion of trust in the U.S. government, the CDC, the Biden administration and big Pharma.
There’s no doubt that COVID-19 cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But three years after the government instituted lockdowns and vaccine mandates, there are now serious questions about whether those even worked. The new doubts about COVID measures could even seep into the 2024 presidential race where Donald Trump and Joe Biden could face off again.
Another new study from Stanford University also revealed that the lockdown and closure of schools brought more severe mental health problems like anxiety and depression to kids deprived of a proper in-person education. Teenagers’ brains actually aged faster from going through the stress of COVID-19 lockdowns, the study reported.
Feds Promise to Trim Backlog of Healthcare Investigations
Federal officials said Monday they’re working to cut down on a growing backlog of complaints lodged against healthcare providers, insurers or government agencies by patients who claim their civil rights or privacy have been violated.
Americans filed more than 51,000 complaints against health agencies last year, a number that has grown tremendously — 69% — over the last five years, the federal Health and Human Services agency announced. Some complaints can take years to investigate.
About two-thirds of the cases involve potential violations of health information privacy and security, a problem that has worsened in recent years because of data breaches and cybersecurity hacks, the agency said. In 2021, more than 700 large breaches of health information were reported.
Health insurer Anthem, for example, was forced to pay the government a record $16 million fine in 2018 after a data breach affecting about 79 million people — including names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and medical IDs.
Fran Drescher Calls for Hollywood to End ‘Bulls–t’ Vaccine Mandates in SAG Speech
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher gave a speech at the 2023 SAG Awards Sunday night urging Hollywood to use its power to end its “bulls – – t” COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“As the nation declares an end to the COVID emergency this May, I hope we will see everyone return to work in equal opportunity,” Drescher, 65, said in her speech during the telecast.
The industry’s pandemic protocols were originally set to end on Jan. 31, but will now expire on April 1. Meanwhile, more than 20 states still enforce vaccine mandates to varying degrees. Those who oppose the mandates believe that they discriminate against people who refuse to be vaccinated for religious or medical reasons.
Hong Kong to Scrap COVID Mask Mandate From March 1
Hong Kong will drop its COVID-19 mask mandate, chief executive John Lee said on Tuesday, in a move to lure back visitors and business and restore normal life more than three years after stringent rules were first imposed in the financial hub.
The measure will take effect from Wednesday, Lee told a press briefing. The special administrative region of Hong Kong is one of the last places globally that still imposes a mask mandate.
Hong Kong and Macau both followed China’s zero-COVID policy for much of the past three years. Hong Kong started unwinding its stringent COVID rules last year but mask-wearing has remained constant since 2020.
Elon Musk Is Looking Into Creating an AI Alternative to ChatGPT
A new report from The Information states that the billionaire has been reaching out to AI researchers in recent weeks about founding a new lab to challenge OpenAI, which Musk co-founded back in 2015 but is no longer involved with. The new Musk AI lab would work to create an alternative to ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral chatbot. Back in December, Musk criticized OpenAI for “training AI to be woke.”
According to The Information, Musk has his eyes set on Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Google’s DeepMind AI lab. The billionaire’s project isn’t set in stone yet, Babuschkin told The Information, and is still in its early stages. The researcher went on to say that he had not officially agreed to join Musk’s fledging lab yet.
The news comes a little more than a week after Musk expressed his displeasure at OpenAI’s relationship to Microsoft. In response to a post about the risks of AI, Musk stated that the OpenAI of today was not what he envisioned.
“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk said. “Not what I intended at all.”
