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Los Angeles City Council Votes to End COVID Vaccination Policy for City Employees
Los Angeles city employees who left or were fired because of noncompliance to the city’s 2021 vaccination policy can now reapply for their positions.
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to establish a pathway back to employment to assist some 86 employees who were affected.
The council also voted Tuesday to lift the city’s policy requiring municipal employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19.
Council members unanimously approved an ordinance to end the vaccination policy for all current and future city workers retroactive to June 2, as recommended by the city’s Executive Employee Relations Committee.
Mobile Driver’s Licenses Are Coming to New York State Starting June 11
New York has become the next state to introduce a mobile ID program, giving residents the option to digitize their driver’s license or non-driver ID.
Beginning today, the New York Mobile ID app is available from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The app can be used for identity verification at airports. A physical license, permit, or non-driver ID is required to activate a mobile ID; you’ll need to take a photo of the front and back with your phone during the enrollment process.
But there are inherent privacy concerns that surround digital IDs: they can potentially be tracked and leave a more detailed trail of where you’ve been (and for what purpose) than traditional physical IDs. Storing all of that data with a contracted third-party vendor comes with its own set of risks, and privacy advocates have called for safeguards like strong encryption and giving residents tight control over what data is shared where.
In January, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter asking the DMV to pause any potential pilot of a mobile ID program and calling for more transparency, saying that the department’s efforts have largely been out of public view and warrant greater scrutiny.
“The perceived need for any program should be debated in public forums and include plans for technical and legal safeguards, including comprehensive privacy protections,” the group said. “Digitizing any identification system requires particular scrutiny and immense care, based on the harms we have seen across the country and beyond.”
Mastercard’s Biometric Checkout Program Arrives in Europe
Mastercard is rolling out its biometric retail payments for the first time in Europe. The company will be piloting its Biometric Checkout Program in Poland in collaboration with local fintech company PayEye which will provide its iris and face biometric technology.
From June 10th, shoppers will be able to pay by scanning their irises in five stores across Poland owned by bookstore chain Empik. Another partner in the scheme is Planet Pay.
The stores will be equipped with PayEye’s eyePOS terminals. The process requires precise calibration to avoid the risk of accidentally looking at the terminal and paying, the company says in a release. The eyePOS 3 terminal, which uses a fusion of facial and iris biometrics, received its Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification last year.
The global payments giant says it chose Poland as its first European country to pilot the program because of its receptiveness to new technologies. According to their survey, four out of five Polish people say that they use or have used biometric technology while among the 18–25-year-olds category, almost all are familiar with using biometrics.
U.S. Health Dept Says UnitedHealth Can Notify Patients of Data Breach
U.S. healthcare providers can ask UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) to notify people whose data was exposed during a hack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit in February, according to an update on the health department’s website.
The news comes as a relief for U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers that had urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to shift the notification responsibility to UnitedHealth and its unit.
U.S. law states data breaches must be reported to individual patients within 60 days of discovery.
Earlier in May, the healthcare conglomerate’s CEO Andrew Witty told a Congressional committee that hackers potentially stole a third of Americans’ data in the Feb. 21 cyber attack that led to disruptions in processing medical claims. The company is still trying to fix the processing snags.
NIH Scrambled After ZeroHedge Report on Fauci Beagle Experiments, Scrubbed Database, Then Fed WaPo Disinformation
Last week, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene took a detour from grilling Anthony Fauci over COVID-19, to confront him with photos of beagles who had been subjected to animal testing experiments widely reported to be funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following a 2021 investigation series by the group White Coat Waste Project.
“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene told Fauci. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison,” she continued, adding “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”
This opened up a can of worms which includes a response from White Coat Waste, and triggered the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler to do a deep dive into ‘Beaglegage’ in an effort to debunk Greene.
Only to discover that the NIH appears to have lied about funding the experiment, which involved beagles between 6 and 8 months old obtained from the kennels of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. In the study, the beagles were sedated and then exposed to hundreds of sand flies that had been deprived of food for 24 hours. This exposure took place as part of research into zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL), a disease carried by sand flies that can affect dogs and humans.
When the story broke in 2021, the NIH scrubbed it from its database and then fed WaPo disinformation.
AI-Powered Apple Overtakes Microsoft as World’s Most Valuable Company
Apple once again became the world’s most valuable company on Wednesday, dethroning Microsoft from the top spot, as the iPhone maker pushed ahead in a race to dominate artificial intelligence technology.
Its shares (AAPL.O) jumped nearly 4% to a record $215.04, giving it a market valuation of $3.29 trillion. Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) market capitalization stood at $3.24 trillion, falling behind Apple for the first time in five months.
Apple shares had added more than 7% in the previous session, a day after it unveiled a range of AI-enabled features and software enhancements for its devices, a move that several analysts said would power iPhone sales.
Hundreds of Snowflake Customers May Have Been Hit by Breach That Stole ‘Significant’ Data
The number of organizations who have had their sensitive data stolen following the recent Snowflake breach is likely in the hundreds, new research has claimed.
A report from Mandiant, which is currently investigating the breach, says the two companies have notified 165 organizations — but as the attack is ongoing, the total number of victims will probably rise further.
Snowflake is a major cloud storage firm with almost 10,000 corporate customers. News of a security incident at the company first started emerging in late May 2024, when Ticketmaster reported losing sensitive information on more than 500 million people.
Sage Steele Sues CAA Over Alleged Conflict of Interest in Free Speech Standoff With ESPN
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
After suing ESPN for allegedly suspending her in retaliation for comments she made on a podcast regarding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, former ESPN host Sage Steele has filed a lawsuit against CAA and her agents over their handling of the standoff.
Steele, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses the agency of breach of fiduciary duty for failing to properly advocate for her. She points to statements from her agent Matthew Kramer, CAA’s co-head of sports media, in which he neglected to demand that Steele not be required to apologize for criticizing Disney’s vaccination policy and lied to the ex-ESPN anchor about having the “head of CAA legal” review her contract regarding the mandate, instead sending the document to a junior attorney.
