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More U.S. Schools Institute Mask Mandates as COVID Cases Rise
More schools across the United States are putting mask mandates in place as COVID-19 cases continue to rise. Before winter break, districts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania announced they would temporarily be requiring masks among students and staff members amid a surge of respiratory illnesses.
Now schools in Massachusetts and Michigan are following suit while Chicago schools are asking students to take rapid tests before classes start.
Chelsea Public Schools in Boston announced in a letter to the community that the decision was due to Suffolk County designated as “high risk” for COVID-19 transmission as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, Ann Arbor Public Schools in Michigan said it was instituting a two-week mandate starting on Monday, Jan. 9, and ending Friday, Jan. 20.
Facebook and Instagram to Restrict Advertisers’ Access to Teenagers’ Data
Facebook and Instagram are to tighten restrictions around the data available to firms to target ads at teenage users, the platforms’ parent company, Meta, has said.
From February, advertisers will no longer be able to see a user’s gender or the type of posts they have engaged with as a way of targeting adverts to them. Under the enhanced restrictions, only a user’s age and location will be used to show them advertising, Meta said.
The social media firm also confirmed that new controls would be introduced in March enabling teenagers to go into the settings in both apps and choose to “see less” of certain types of adverts.
Many online safety campaigners say social media platforms need to do more to control the types of advertising shown to younger users, saying inappropriate ads can cause as much harm as offensive or abusive content posted by others.
China’s Increased Surveillance Capacity Could Be Dangerous
News from China in the past several weeks has come at a dizzying pace. First, there were once-in-a-generation protests, then a loosening of coronavirus restrictions, and now the terrible toll of the virus itself on a large and vulnerable population.
Yet, amid this extraordinary turn of events, other less dramatic but highly consequential stories have emerged about how the Chinese government has used the pandemic to dramatically increase its surveillance capabilities.
Surveillance may not seem like the main story in China these days, but history indicates that growing state surveillance warrants attention. Surveillance is a mode of state power that operates to protect the state itself, unlike the policing of crime, which is ostensibly to protect society, and historically surveillance projects have expanded well beyond their intended targets. Surveillance is insidious, secret, often silent — and incredibly dangerous, with the potential to tear societies apart.
What is new now is the unprecedented deployment of technology and the ability of states such as China, but also the United States and others, to conduct surveillance not only on dissidents or suspects but everyone.
New Jersey, Ohio Join Other States in Banning TikTok From State Devices
New Jersey and Ohio said on Monday they were joining other states in banning the use of the popular video app TikTok on government-owned and managed devices.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in addition to banning the short-video app owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance from state devices he also was banning software vendors, products, and services from more than a dozen vendors including Huawei, Hikvision, Tencent, ZTE and Kaspersky Lab.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said in his order “these surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to users of these applications and platforms and the devices storing the applications and platforms.”
Europe Turns on TikTok
In the United States, TikTok is a favorite punching bag for lawmakers who’ve compared the Chinese-owned app to “digital fentanyl” and say it should be banned.
Now that hostility is spreading to Europe, where fears about children’s safety and reports that TikTok spied on journalists using their IP locations are fueling a backlash against the video-sharing app used by more than 250 million Europeans.
As TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew heads to Brussels on Tuesday to meet with top digital policymaker Margrethe Vestager amid a wider reappraisal of EU ties with China, his company faces a slew of legal, regulatory and security challenges in the bloc — as well as a rising din of public criticism.
One of the loudest critics is French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called TikTok “deceptively innocent” and a cause of “real addiction” among users, as well as a source of Russian disinformation. Such comments have gone hand-in-hand with aggressive media coverage in France, including Le Parisien daily’s December 29 front page calling TikTok “A real danger for the brains of our children.”
Microsoft Reportedly Closing in on $10 Billion Investment Into ChatGPT Creator OpenAI
Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind the viral artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT are in discussions for a deal that would value the latter at $29 billion, according to several reports, as the legacy technology giant throws its weight behind the latest viral sensation and encroaches on its longtime rival Google.
Microsoft has discussed making a $10 billion investment into OpenAI, Semafor reported late Monday, citing people with knowledge of the discussions.
The deal, which would eventually net Microsoft a 49% stake in the upstart firm, also includes a clause that Microsoft would receive three-quarters of OpenAI’s profits until it recovers its investment, according to Semafor, with additional investors taking 49% and OpenAI retaining the remaining 2% in equity.
BioNTech Acquires Tunisian-Born and U.K-Based AI Startup InstaDeep for £562M
German-based biotech company BioNTech SE is set to acquire InstaDeep, a Tunis-born and U.K.-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup InstaDeep for up to £562 million (~$680 million) in its largest deal yet.
Per The Financial Times, the German vaccine maker intends to use InstaDeep’s machine learning (ML) to “improve its drug discovery process, including developing personalized treatments tailored to a patient’s cancer.”
In 2019, InstaDeep formed a multi-year strategic collaboration with BioNTech to launch a joint AI innovation lab where they would deploy the latest advances in AI and ML to develop novel immunotherapies. This acquisition is a result of this long-term partnership that has seen InstaDeep become the centerpiece of a growing portfolio of initiatives around AI and ML at BioNTech.
China Halts Visas for Japan, South Korea in COVID Spat
Chinese embassies suspended issuing new visas for South Koreans and Japanese on Tuesday in apparent retaliation for COVID-19 testing requirements recently imposed by those countries on travelers from China. The embassies in Tokyo and Seoul announced the suspensions in brief online notices.
The Seoul notice, posted on the embassy’s WeChat social media account, said the ban would continue until South Korea lifts its “discriminatory entry measures” against China. The announcement covered tourist, business and some other visas.
China’s Foreign Ministry threatened countermeasures last week against countries that had announced new virus testing requirements for travelers from China. At least 10 in Europe, North America and Asia have done so recently, with officials expressing concern about a lack of information about rapidly spreading virus outbreaks in China.
It wasn’t clear why South Korea and Japan were targeted, and whether the suspensions would be expanded to other countries that have imposed virus testing on passengers from China.
South Africa Not Tightening COVID Rules Over China, Subvariant
South Africa does not see the need to implement any new COVID-19 restrictions either at home or for arrivals over an infection surge in China and the detection of the first case of Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 locally, its health minister said.
“The dominant variant of concern in China and in the world remains Omicron, and the immunity of South Africans from vaccination and natural immunity is still very strong,” Minister Joe Phaahla told reporters on Tuesday.
So far the country has only confirmed one case of the XBB.1.5 subvariant and there is no evidence that it is spreading, although the subvariant is believed to be highly contagious, Phaahla said.
