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Nets’ Kyrie Irving Says Decision to Be Unvaccinated Against COVID Cost Him Millions
Kyrie Irving missed more than half of his third season with the Brooklyn Nets because of mandates that kept him off the court unless he was vaccinated against the coronavirus. Irving refused to take the COVID-19 shot and instead wait until the mandates were lifted. Irving was able to play in road games and later made his first home appearance of the season on March 27.
The star point guard vigorously defended his position to avoid the vaccine and told reporters during Nets media day on Monday his decision cost him millions.
“I gave up four years, 100-and-something million deciding to be unvaccinated and that was the decision. It was contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated and there’s a level of uncertainty with your future whether you’re gonna be in this league, whether you’re gonna be on this team,” Irving explained.
Irving has been very vocal about his stance when it comes to being unvaccinated. He also was open in his disagreement with New York City Mayor Eric Adams for keeping the vaccine mandate among city workers.
Marines Dismiss Case Against Japan-Based Lance Corporal Who Refused COVID Vaccine
The Marine Corps has dismissed its case against a lance corporal who faced special court-martial charges stemming from her refusal to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
Lance Cpl. Catherine Arnett, 24, of Fort Worth, Texas, was not charged with refusing the vaccine, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing spokesman Maj. Rob Martins told Stars and Stripes in July. The court-martial came from her refusal “to board multiple flights to complete the separation process which occurred after she refused the COVID-19 vaccine,” he wrote.
Arnett said she would not board those flights because the orders stemmed from the 2021 Defense Department mandate on COVID-19 vaccination, which she considers unlawful.
“In weighing the considerations for both the Marine Corps and the Marine, within the context of the most recent injunction for COVID-19 vaccine refusal cases, the commanding general has decided to dismiss [Arnett’s] COVID-19 related charges,” Martins, the wing spokesman, said in an email Monday.
NYC to Appeal Judge’s Vaccination Enforcement Ruling, Until Then NYPD Will Comply With Order
New York City will enforce a judge’s order barring enforcement of the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the largest police union while the decision is appealed.
In a letter shared with the Daily News, the city Law Department confirmed that the “New York City Police Department has been notified that no member of the Police Benevolent Association may be placed on leave without pay or terminated due to their non-compliance with the vaccine mandate.”
Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank ruled on Friday that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s vaccination mandate couldn’t be used to fire or put PBA members on leave.
The city vowed an immediate appeal to Frank’s order. In the same letter, Assistant Corporation Counsel Lora Minicucci indicates that the city “dispute(s) the contentions” in the decision and “reserve all their rights and defenses in connection therewith.”
“We are appealing the entire court ruling. The city’s appeal puts the portion of the decision calling for the reinstatement of unvaccinated officers on hold until the appeal is decided. For technical legal reasons, the part of the ruling which prevents the NYPD from terminating or placing unvaccinated officers on leave without pay is in effect until the court decides the appeal,” said spokesman Nicholas Paolucci.
Mark Zuckerberg Is No Longer One of the 10 Richest Americans
For the first time since 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t one of the 10 richest people in America.
Zuckerberg has lost more than half his fortune — a staggering $76.8 billion — since September 2021, dropping him from No. 3 on The Forbes 400 list of the U.S.’ wealthiest people to No. 11.
Worth $57.7 billion on this year’s list, which used stock prices from September 2, Zuck trails Walmart heir Jim Walton, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and other tech moguls such as ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. No one in America has lost as much money over the past year as Zuckerberg.
He has the cratering stock price of Meta (formerly Facebook) to thank for his exit from the top 10. Shares have plunged 57% since last year’s Forbes 400, which used stock prices from September 3, 2021. Tech stocks are generally in a slump with the market downturn, but Meta’s fall outpaces both the Nasdaq (-9.8%) and the S&P 500 (-13.5%), as well as Microsoft’s 14% decline, Google-parent Alphabet‘s 25% drop and Amazon’s 27% dive.
Truckers, Lawmaker Push for U.S. to Drop Foreign Visitor Vaccine Requirement
A group representing truck drivers in North America and a New York lawmaker on Monday asked the Biden administration to rescind a requirement for foreign visitors to be vaccinated.
The United States in June rescinded its requirement that people arriving in the country by air test negative for COVID-19 but has not lifted vaccination requirements for nearly all foreign visitors arriving by air or at land ports.
Canada said Monday it will drop all COVID-19 restrictions for travelers starting Oct. 1, including vaccination and masking requirements for flights and trains.
Representative Brian Higgins, a Republican who represents a New York district on the Canadian border, said Monday “the end of restrictions is overdue. Canada’s decision is the right one. The U.S. should follow immediately.”
TikTok Can Keep Operating in U.S. Under Deal Being Worked out With Biden
Millions of Americans share data daily on the video-streaming app TikTok — data the federal government considers a national security risk because the app is owned by China, a foreign adversary. Now it has been left up to President Joe Biden to figure out a way to minimize the national security risks without forcing the sale of TikTok or taking away one of America’s favorite apps, as former President Donald Trump tried and failed to do in 2020.
Today, The New York Times reported that Biden may be close to arriving at a potential solution to the TikTok problem. “Four people with knowledge of the discussions,” told NYT that over the past few months, the Biden administration has drafted a preliminary agreement with TikTok “to resolve national security concerns.”
Because the negotiation is confidential, all sources requested anonymity, and not much is yet known about the terms. However, there are three main areas of change in the current draft. The first focuses on preventing China-based employees from accessing American data by storing all TikTok data solely on U.S. servers.
The second is designed to block Chinese propaganda or disinformation campaigns by granting U.S.-based Oracle power to monitor what’s recommended by algorithms. The last provides some oversight by forming a TikTok board of security experts that oversees TikTok’s U.S. operations and reports directly to the U.S. government. (Oracle declined to comment to NYT and did not immediately respond to Ars.)
Amazon’s Robots Are Getting Closer to Replacing Human Hands
In 2019, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that within a decade, robotic systems will be advanced enough to grasp items with the dexterity of a human hand. Three years later, Amazon looks to be making progress toward that goal.
A recent video published on the company’s science blog features a new “pinch-grasping” robot system that could one day do a lot of the work that humans in Amazon warehouses do today. Or, potentially, help workers do their jobs more easily.
At the rate it’s going in the video, Amazon says the robot could handle more than 1,000 items an hour, meaning it could pick and stow items at rates several times faster than a human worker could. From a box of crayons to a container of what looks like garlic powder to a whisk broom, each item is grasped and moved with no human direction.
The robot utilizes multiple cameras to help it “see” the assortment of items in front of it, as well as machine learning to help it decide the best way to pick up a given item, and motion-planning algorithms to help the robot navigate the crowded scene without bumping or damaging any of the goods. Preliminary tests also found that the robot damages certain products at a much lower rate than other manipulation robots Amazon has tested.
Molly Russell: Posts Left Psychiatrist Unable to Sleep — Inquest
A child psychiatrist was “not able to sleep well” after seeing self-harm material viewed on social media by a 14-year-old girl who went on to take her own life, an inquest has heard. Molly Russell engaged with thousands of such posts before her death in 2017.
Giving evidence at North London Coroner’s Court, Dr. Navin Venugopal said the “very disturbing” content Molly had engaged with would “certainly affect her and made her feel more hopeless.”
Under questioning from coroner Andrew Walker, the psychiatrist said: “This material seems to romanticize, glamorize and take the subject of self-harm, take it away from reality and make it seem almost unreal, take away from these terrible acts any kind of consequence.”
Molly used her Instagram account up to 120 times a day.
How to Advocate for Data Privacy and Users’ Rights
Your Facebook is no longer a naked-to-the-public firehose of information about your family and social life. Your mobile phone is as do-not-track as you’re able to function under. You cover your webcam lens when it’s not in use.
In short, you’ve done what you can to mitigate the way the current world seeks to share and expose your personal information. It takes energy and knowledge to break away from the default settings of digital devices, social networks and retailers seeking more, more, more information. But you’ve done it, at least what you can. You feel pretty good about safeguarding some (but not all) of your private data and being proactive about it.
So what’s this nagging feeling in the back of your skull? Do you sometimes feel like you could be doing even more in the battle to protect citizens from the overreach of data scrapers and tech moguls who value monetization over individual rights?
It takes a lot of committed people to fight these battles in courtrooms, in the digital marketplace and on the platforms themselves (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others) that have become battlegrounds for our data. You could be one of these people: an advocate for data privacy who is actively involved in helping protect us all.
China Alleges U.S. Spy Agency Hacked Key Infrastructure and Sent User Data Back to Headquarters
China accused a top U.S. spy agency of stealing Chinese user data and infiltrating the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, according to a report published Tuesday, which lays out details of the alleged cyberattack method.
Chinese state media last week first reported on an alleged attack by the U.S. National Security Agency on China’s government-funded Northwestern Polytechnical University and promised that more details would follow.
Tuesday’s report from China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and cybersecurity company 360, lays out the specific ways the alleged attack was carried out.
The report adds further tension between the U.S. and China in the cyber sphere. Beijing has for years accused Washington of carrying out cyberattacks, but rarely discloses details of specific incidents. This new report is a change in approach from China.
