Iowa Governor Bans COVID Vaccine Requirement for Students
Colleges, K-12 school districts and daycare centers in Iowa cannot require students and children to be immunized from COVID-19 under legislation signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Kim Reynolds.
The bill was among 10 signed into law Tuesday by the governor. Iowa schools, by state law, require eight types of immunizations by age 5.
Immunization from COVID-19 will not be added to that list, thanks to House File 2298, which passed the Iowa Legislature mostly on party-line votes, with Republicans supporting the proposal and Democrats opposing.
Cross-Border Trucker Vaccine Mandate Among COVID Rules Still in Place
Truckers looking to cross the Canada-U.S. border will still need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the federal government lifting other health measures for travelers Tuesday.
Starting June 20, domestic and outbound international travelers will no longer need to show proof of vaccination before boarding an airplane or train. The vaccine mandate for workers in those federally-regulated travel sectors will also be removed.
But when asked whether Tuesday’s decision will affect vaccine rules for truckers at the Canada-U.S. border, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said the mandate remains an “important tool” to protect Canadians against the virus.
He said the government remains open to revisiting the policy in the future, but noted the U.S. has a reciprocal policy in place mandating vaccinations for Canadian truckers entering the country.
Lawmakers Want Social Media Companies to Stop Getting Kids Hooked
Scrutiny of kids, particularly teens, and screens has intensified over the past months. Last fall, former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower Frances Haugen told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that the company’s own research showed that some teens reported negative, addiction-like experiences on its photo-sharing service, Instagram. The damage was most pronounced among teenage girls. “
We need to protect the kids,” said Haugen in her testimony. Proposals to “protect the kids” have sprung up across the U.S., attempting to curb social media’s habit-forming allure on its youngest users.
Social media’s negative impact on children and teens has worried parents, researchers, and lawmakers for years. But this latest surge in public interest seems to be ignited in the peculiar crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic: Parents who were able to shelter at home watched as their children’s social lives and school lives became entirely mediated by technology, raising concerns about time spent on screens.
The fear and isolation of the past two years hit teens hard and has exacerbated what the U.S. surgeon general recently called “devastating” mental health challenges facing adolescents.
Hospitals Have Become Less Safe During the Pandemic. So Why Does the Government Want to Suppress Hospital Safety Data?
There’s little question that U.S. hospitals — up against COVID, patient surges and labor and supply shortages — have become less safe for patients during the pandemic, as preventable events and complications have become more common.
Leaders with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said as much, earlier this year, in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine: “Many indicators make it clear that healthcare safety has declined,” they wrote, noting, “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our healthcare system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.”
Despite such frank assessments, CMS is now at odds with public safety advocates about whether to make some of the hospital-specific data behind those trends publicly available. The data would capture the rate of potentially preventable adverse events at hospitals during the tumultuous period.
Last month, in a shock to many of those advocates, the agency proposed, in the language of federal rules, to “suppress” data from 10 such measures (collectively known as the Patient Safety and Adverse Events Composite, or PSI 90) for the pandemic period, including those which track postoperative complications such as respiratory failure, blood leakage, sepsis and events like pressure ulcers (i.e., severe and especially harmful bedsores) and falls resulting in hip fractures at hospitals.
WHO Convenes Experts to Decide if Monkeypox Is an Emergency
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee of experts to determine if the expanding monkeypox outbreak that has mysteriously spread outside Africa should be considered a global health emergency.
Declaring monkeypox to be an international health emergency would give it the same designation as the COVID-19 pandemic and mean that WHO considers the normally rare disease a continuing threat to countries globally.
The U.N. health agency does not recommend mass vaccination, but advises the “judicious” use of vaccines. It said controlling the disease relies primarily on measures like surveillance, tracking cases and isolating patients.
The Supreme Court Could Shake up the Nation With Upcoming Landmark Decisions on Abortion, Guns and Religion
As a blockbuster Supreme Court term nears its end, the justices are expected to roll out highly anticipated decisions on abortion, guns and religion that could drastically shake up American law — and life.
The court is set to release two dozen rulings by the end of June or early July before it recesses for summer. A handful of them are high-profile disputes, poised to have dramatic implications and unleash widespread public reaction. Here are those closely followed cases.
China COVID Pass System Allegedly Used to Block Protest, Sparking Furious Condemnation Online
Hong Kong Free Press reported:
Authorities in central China allegedly used the country’s powerful COVID tracking system to stop an anticipated protest, state media reported, sparking furious condemnation online on Wednesday.
China relies on a vast coronavirus surveillance infrastructure to carry out rigorous contact tracing as part of its zero-COVID strategy to stamp out all outbreaks.
Residents are required to scan codes on their smartphones to access public venues and transport nationwide. Those with red codes — either infected themselves or contacts of a COVID case — have their movement severely restricted.
Reports emerged this week of numerous disgruntled bank customers getting a red code when they attempted to travel to Henan province’s capital Zhengzhou to demand access to their money after withdrawals were frozen last month.
U.S. Defense Contractor in Talks to Take Over NSO Group’s Hacking Technology
The U.S. defense contractor L3Harris is in talks to take over NSO Group’s surveillance technology, in a possible deal that would give an American company control over one of the world’s most sophisticated and controversial hacking tools.
Multiple sources confirmed that discussions were centered on a sale of the Israeli company’s core technology — or code — as well as a possible transfer of NSO personnel to L3Harris. But any agreement still faces significant hurdles, including requiring the blessing of the U.S. and Israeli governments, which have not yet given the green light to a deal.
In a statement, a senior White House official said: “Such a transaction, if it were to take place, raises serious counterintelligence and security concerns for the U.S. government.”
If agreed, the deal would mark an astounding turnaround for NSO, less than a year after the Biden administration placed the company on a U.S. blacklist and accused it of acting “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the U.S.”
You’re Afraid of AI for All the Wrong Reasons
Artificial intelligence. It’s in your headlines and on your social media feed. AIs like Midjourney and DALL-E have filled my Twitter feed with algorithmically generated nightmare images of Tony Soprano as a Roman emperor and Big Bird participating in the January 6 riots.
Conversations about AI outpacing human artists and chatbots becoming sentient are part of a tired news cycle around AI. They also mask the actual dangers of the technology we should be watching out for.
On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose walks us through the real and imagined terrors of Artificial Intelligence.
AI Is Not Smart Enough to Solve Meta’s Content-Policing Problems, Whistleblowers Say
Artificial intelligence is nowhere near good enough to address problems facing content moderation on Facebook, according to whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Haugen appeared at an event in London Tuesday evening with Daniel Motaung, a former Facebook moderator who is suing the company in Kenya accusing it of human trafficking.
Meta has praised the efficacy of its AI systems in the past. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a Congressional hearing in March 2021 the company relies on AI to weed out over 95% of “hate-speech content.” In February this year Zuckerberg said the company wants to get its AI to a “human level” of intelligence.
But according to Haugen and Motaung, this is a smokescreen that obscures the work done by thousands of human moderators, some of whom suffer severe mental health issues they say come as a result of their work. Haugen said AI at the moment is nowhere near intelligent enough to interpret the nuances of human speech.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg Have Each Seen Their Net Worths Drop at Least $64 Billion This Year
Some of the world’s richest men and biggest names in the tech world have seen their net worths take a dive this year.
Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have seen their net worths decline by a combined $200 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, amid a larger economic downturn and fears of a potential recession.
Here’s how much each billionaire has lost on paper in 2022 so far, per Bloomberg. Musk: $73.2 billion; Bezos: $65.3 billion; Zuckerberg: $64.4 billion
Firefox Says It’s Now the Most Secure Browser in the World
The browser wars could soon heat up again following a bold declaration from Firefox. The Mozilla-owned platform has declared itself to be the most private and secure browser available across Windows and Mac following the rollout of an upgraded privacy tool that provides its “strongest privacy protection to date.”
The company’s Total Cookie Protection tool, which locks cookies only to the site where they were created rather than following a user around the web, will now be available as a default for Firefox users.
“Whether it’s applying for a student loan, seeking treatment or advice through a health site or browsing an online dating app, massive amounts of your personal information is online — and this data is leaking all over the web,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the news.
