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Djokovic Will Likely Miss Indian Wells and Miami Open Due to U.S. COVID Vaccine Mandate
Tennis star Novak Djokovic is likely to miss the Indian Wells and Miami Open tournaments for the second year in a row as the 21-time Grand Slam winner, who has refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine, will not be able to enter the U.S. after the Transport Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to extend its vaccine mandate for all foreign travelers until at least April 10.
Djokovic has not discussed his vaccination status recently but has previously said he is careful about everything that goes into his body and he had decided not to take the COVID-19 shot based on all information available to him.
The Serbian tennis star is currently playing in the Adelaide International tennis tournament in Australia, his first tennis event in the country after he was dramatically deported last year due to his vaccination status.
Djokovic’s participation in the U.S. Open will depend on when U.S. officials decide to lift the vaccine mandate. The former world number-one player missed last year’s final Grand Slam event due to the vaccine mandate. The U.S. now remains the only Grand Slam host nation with a rule banning the entry of unvaccinated foreign visitors.
Meta’s New Year Kicks off With Over $410M+ in Fresh EU Privacy Fines
Meta is kicking off the New Year with more privacy fines and corrective orders hitting its business in Europe. The latest swathe of enforcement relates to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints over the legal basis it claims to run behavioral ads.
The Facebook owner’s lead data protection watchdog in the region, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), announced today that it’s adopted final decisions on two of these long-running inquiries — against Meta-owned social networking site, Facebook, and social photo-sharing service, Instagram.
The DPC’s press release today announces financial penalties of €210 million (~$223M) for Facebook and €180M (~$191M) for Instagram — and confirms the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)’s binding decision last month on these complaints that contractual necessity is not an appropriate basis for processing personal data for behavioral ads.
These new sanctions add to a pile of privacy fines for Meta in Europe last year — including a €265M penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach; €405M for an Instagram violation of children’s privacy; €17M for several historical Facebook data breaches; and a €60M penalty over Facebook cookie consent violations — making for a total of €747M in (publicly disclosed) EU data protection and privacy fines handed down to the adtech giant in 2022.
TSA Quietly Extends COVID Vaccine Requirement to Enter U.S.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has quietly extended the requirement for visitors to the United States to have proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
The United States is the only Western country and one of the few remaining countries worldwide to require such proof of entry. The latest TSA security directive is effective from Jan. 9 to April 10, 2023.
It requires foreign aircraft operators to require each non-U.S., nonimmigrant citizen to present a paper or digital documentation for “proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” or documentation proving the person is excepted from taking the vaccine, before boarding a flight to the United States.
Europe’s Hot Mess Response to China’s COVID Surge
Pandemic politics is back. Three years into the COVID-19 crisis, which upended lives across the globe and led the EU to promise to work better together when the next health crisis emerged, countries have once again been involved in a political tug-of-war.
China’s decision to lift its zero-COVID policy has led to a surge in cases that has alarmed the world. But early attempts at a joint EU response were dashed when Italy announced its own border control measures on arrivals from China.
While the EU is now inching toward a coordinated approach on travel measures for arrivals from China — including pre-departure testing, masks on flights and testing wastewater for possible new variants — and is set to hold a meeting of its crisis response body on Wednesday, it comes after countries one-by-one announced unilateral measures for travelers arriving from China.
Social Media Triggers Children to Dislike Their Own Bodies, Says Study
Three out of four children as young as 12 dislike their bodies and are embarrassed by the way they look, increasing to eight in 10 young people aged 18 to 21. The findings come from a major new study warning that social media represents a significant risk to the current and future health of today’s young generations.
The findings come from a new survey of 1,024 children and young people aged 12 to 21 years old by stem4, the youth mental health charity. Based on the findings, the charity says that urgent action is needed.
Twitter Lifting Ban on Political Ads
Twitter on Tuesday announced plans to scale back its ban on political ads and allow more “cause-based” advertising on the platform.
“We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate a public conversation around important topics. Today, we’re relaxing our ad policy for cause-based ads in the U.S. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks,” the company’s Safety team Tweeted.
“Moving forward, we will align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets,” Twitter said.
Twitter Files Tip of Iceberg for Needed Church-Style Committee
The Twitter Files have revealed in stunning detail a largely successful bid by the U.S. national security apparatus to manipulate public opinion at a mass scale by imposing a censorship regime on social media platforms.
This scandal — a conspiracy to police speech in violation of the First Amendment — deserves a congressional probe to reveal the full extent of the collusion between myriad government agencies and Big Tech companies, hold the malefactors to account, and propose laws to prevent it in the future.
Yet this scandal is just one of many perpetrated by the Deep State in recent years. Numerous federal agencies have demonstrated a level of politicization and weaponization so systemic and far-reaching that it demands an expansive investigation — one that could bring about a radical restructuring of the entire security apparatus.
Apple Joins Amazon as Second Company to Lose $1 Trillion in Value in 2022
In a year marked by economic downturns and layoffs plaguing tech, two of the industry’s biggest heavyweights both lost more in terms of valuation than any other company before it. First came Amazon, and now, Apple. Combined, the two companies have shed roughly $2 trillion worth of valuation in around 12 months. If they were a country, Amazon and Apple’s recent stock valuation dip would surpass the combined GDPs of Sweden, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Argentina.
Apple’s recent valuation plunge, as reported on by Axios and elsewhere, marks an abrupt shift from the beginning of 2022, when the iPhone maker briefly became the first company in history to ever cross over the vaunted $3 trillion valuation goalpost.
Though pandemic disruptions in China, supply chain constrictions and rising inflation all took a toll on Apple over the year, the company’s already bleeding wound was sliced wide open Tuesday following a new report suggesting Apple internally expects less demand for its gadgets and gizmos this year. The ensuing investor panic led Apple’s stock to decline by more than 4%.
Google Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ Mode Might Not Keep You so Hidden
Google Chrome and almost all other web browsers offer an “incognito” mode, or private mode, designed to allow you to browse the web privately. As a result, any websites you visit in incognito mode will not appear in your browsing history, nor will your personal information be remembered. However, when using incognito mode, are you actually browsing completely incognito?
While using Incognito mode on Chrome, recent reports have shown that Google can still: track every search you make on Google; track every suggested link you click on; navigate you to a URL; just as buildings and houses have a street address, webpages also have unique addresses to help people locate them. On the Internet, these addresses are called URLs.
This is all because your IP address (or your unique address that identifies a device on the internet or a local network) is not concealed when using incognito mode, so your internet service provider (ISP) still handles all your Domain Name System (DNS) requests. DNS translates human-readable domain names (for example, www.amazon.com) to machine-readable IP addresses (for example, 192.0. 2.44).
This means that even though your browsing history might not show up in the history toolbar while in incognito mode, your ISP still has a detailed account of every site you visit and keeps a database of your web history. Making it possible for a third-party source, including the government, to access your browsing history.
