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NYC Won’t Rehire Unvaccinated Workers, Mayor Says
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that his administration would not rehire unvaccinated city workers.
Around 1,400 city employees were fired earlier this year for failing to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Adams said, during a news conference at Citi Field, he did not plan to rehire them. “Not at this time,” he said, according to The Wall Street Journal, “We are not reviewing if we are going to bring [them] back.”
He also thanked the more than 340,000 city employees who have been vaccinated, recognizing them for “[standing] up and [doing] the right thing.”
Nets’ Kyrie Irving Says He Stands ‘for Freedom’ by Not Getting COVID Vaccine
After his long-awaited first home game at Barclays Center — where he was previously restricted from playing due to New York City’s private sector vaccine mandate — Kyrie Irving said his decision not to get vaccinated was to make sure he stands on what he believes in.
“I’m standing for freedom, so that’s in all facets of my life. There’s nobody that’s enslaving me. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do with my life, and that’s just the way I am, and if I get tarnished in terms of my image and people slandering my name continually because those aren’t things that I forget,” said Irving.
Irving never wavered in his stance to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this season. He became the NBA’s only part-time player, available exclusively in road games and not at home due to the City’s vaccine mandate. The Nets initially ruled Irving ineligible to play on the road or practice at home at the beginning of the season, but then reversed course on that decision in mid-December.
Unvaccinated United Airlines Employees Return to Work
Unvaccinated United Airlines employees who sought medical or religious exemptions will be able to return to work Monday, according to an internal memo.
More than 2,000 employees with an approved request for reasonable accommodation (RAP) and who have been out on unpaid leave will be able to return to their normal positions, United Vice President of Human Resources Kirk Limacher said in a memo, reviewed by FOX Business.
As part of the airline’s comprehensive vaccine policy, about 67,000 U.S.-based employees faced a deadline last September for getting vaccinated or risk losing their job — barring some exemptions.
In October 2021, the company fired more than 230 employees that refused to get vaccinated against the virus by the carrier’s deadline. Those fired did not seek an exemption, a United Airlines spokesperson previously told FOX Business.
Supreme Court Restores Pentagon’s Authority Over Deployment of Unvaccinated SEALs
The Supreme Court on Friday granted an emergency request from the Defense Department to restore its authority over the deployment of unvaccinated Navy SEALs and other special warfare service members amid a pending legal challenge to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The court’s move temporarily blocked a January ruling by a federal judge in Texas. That judge halted the department from considering vaccination status in deployment decisions affecting Navy special forces operators who have refused to comply with the military’s mandate on religious grounds.
The ruling marks the latest twist as the Pentagon fights to be able to enforce its mandate against the plaintiffs in the case, who argued that the mandate violated their religious rights.
Spotify Rolls out COVID Disclosures Two Months After Joe Rogan Boycott
Spotify is rolling out a COVID content advisory tab on podcasts and other content that mentions the coronavirus.
Spotify promised the feature, a small blue tab that directs to its COVID-19 information hub, nearly two months ago. It comes after a handful of musicians and creators boycotted the platform for its airing of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which they say spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
Spotify had been under fire for hosting the episodes. It bought the exclusive streaming rights to “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in a deal reportedly worth at least $200 million.
Convoy Protesting COVID Mandates Rolling on to California
A group of truck drivers protesting COVID-19 mandates on roads and highways around the Washington, DC, area in recent weeks will head to California next, an organizer announced Sunday night.
During a livestream of the People’s Convoy nightly rally Sunday, organizer Mike Landis read a list of measures aimed at controlling COVID-19 in California, The Herald-Mail reported.
“I think stopping those is more important at this point in time than getting the emergency declaration repealed because that’s already in place and we need to stop stuff like these bills from getting in place,” Landis said, “otherwise, the rest of us that don’t live in California are going to end up subject to the same situation.”
Landis did not say when the group would leave, but he invited people to convoy Monday to a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before they pack up and head West, and hinted at a possible return.
Pupils Had Futures Blighted During the Pandemic: Now They Are Being Cheated Again
COVID has swept through schools once again in the past few weeks, with teachers going off sick again and desks emptying fast. The new extra-infectious variant of Omicron comes at just the wrong time for children who have already missed out on so much over the past two years and in England now face SATs, GCSEs or A-levels this spring.
A report from the Commons education select committee, whose Tory chair, Robert Halfon, has doggedly worried away at this issue for two years, recently concluded that school closures in England had been “nothing short of a national disaster for children and young people”, with pupils in the most deprived areas up to eight months behind in some subjects and the government’s “catch-up” national tutoring program (NTP) failing to deliver in precisely the places that need it most.
Shanghai Is Locking Down Over 10 Million People at a Time. Why That’s a Big Deal.
Many countries around the world have decided to live with the coronavirus, even as a new subvariant fuels another wave of infections. But China is an extremely important exception.
What’s happening: China continues to deploy “snap” lockdowns as it tries to eliminate the transmission of COVID-19 within its borders. The policy is hanging over the outlook for the global economy and financial markets, presenting more unknowns as investors scramble to assess the impacts of the war in Ukraine and surging inflation.
Starting Monday, around 11 million residents in the eastern half of Shanghai will be banned from going out for four days as mass testing kicks off. The staggered lockdown will then move to the other half of the city, which has about 14 million residents, beginning Friday.
How vital is Shanghai? The lockdown in Shanghai is a big deal not just because of the city’s scale, but also because of its deep financial and economic links.
The Government Cracking Down on Social Media Won’t Make Kids Less Sad
In his recent State of the Union address, President Biden implored Congress to hold “social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.” Following suit, a bipartisan group of eight state attorneys general launched a nationwide investigation into whether TikTok is intentionally “designing, operating, and promoting its social media platform to children” in order to cause “mental health harms.”
Though well-intentioned, these efforts are misplaced. In the name of “the children,” people have been freaking out about new arts and technologies for centuries, and social media platforms are just the latest target.
And while there likely is a mental health emergency, this moral panic allows politicians to divert attention away from the more complex causes of the problem, while not helping children at all.
Elon Musk Asks if ‘New Platform’ Needed as Twitter Slammed on Free Speech
Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked his followers on Twitter if a “new platform” is needed after he criticized the social media giant over free speech.
“Is a new platform needed?” he asked Saturday afternoon after taking a hit at Twitter and accusing the platform of “failing” to follow free speech rules. Musk, who has 7.9 million Twitter followers, on Friday said “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy” and asked his followers in a poll if they believe “Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
More than 2 million Twitter users responded to the poll in which 70 percent said the platform doesn’t adhere to free speech principles, while 29.6 percent think otherwise.
The Real Way Facebook Knows so Much About You (and How to Stop It)
Is Facebook always listening? The truth is, it doesn’t need to. Big Tech companies have far easier ways of gathering information on you. Take Google. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Google Podcasts, and an Android phone, think about every bit of information you willingly pass along. Tap or click to erase what Google knows about you.
On Facebook, your activity speaks volumes. Say you join a “buy nothing” group. Facebook might guess you value sustainability or just love saving money. This detail goes into its highly specific profile of you.
Facebook also knows what you do elsewhere because you might have connected apps sharing your data. You can stop that.
A Google Billionaire’s Fingerprints Are All Over Biden’s Science Office
As President Joe Biden granted his science office unprecedented access and power, one outside adviser to that office has attained what staffers describe as an unusual level of influence.
A foundation controlled by Eric Schmidt, the multi-billionaire former CEO of Google, has played an extraordinary, albeit private, role in shaping the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy over the past year.
Schmidt has long sought to influence federal science policy, dating back to his close ties to the Obama administration. While his spokespeople presented his efforts to help Biden as part of Schmidt Futures’ mission to “focus and mobilize these networks of talent to solve specific problems in science and society,” his foundation’s involvement in funding positions for specific figures raised repeated red flags from internal White House watchdogs.
Schmidt sits on the boards of a wide variety of technology companies, particularly those focused on artificial intelligence.
