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San Diego School Board President Says Students Must Wear Masks or Don’t Bother Returning to School

Fox News reported:

San Diego Unified School District Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne defended the district’s decision to return to indoor mask mandates, suggesting that students uncomfortable with wearing a mask not return to school.

“They really should wear the mask,” Whitehurst-Payne said in an interview with “Good Morning San Diego” Monday, adding that students who feel uncomfortable with the mask “at that point, just not return.”

The comments come after the district announced that students enrolled in summer school will be required to wear masks indoors.

Whitehurst-Payne said that for parents concerned about the possibility of a mask mandate in the fall, there are “some options” such as “school that’s online.”

Catholic Nurse Wins Right to Be Exempted From COVID Vaccine

National Post reported:

A Catholic nurse in Ontario had a right to a religious exemption from COVID-19 vaccination because of the “quite remote” link between the shots and aborted fetuses, an arbitrator has ruled in one of the first legal pronouncements on the issue.

Arbitrator Robert Herman said Public Health Sudbury discriminated against the unnamed nurse — a member of the conservative “Latin Mass” group of Catholics — when it fired her for not being immunized.

COVID vaccination would interfere with “the exercise of her faith and her relationship with the divine,” he said.

Vaccine mandates have gradually been lifted throughout Canada and employees have always been able to at least apply for a religious exemption, with no guarantee of success. But the ruling last month, largely overlooked outside the northern Ontario city, may be the first in Canada to offer some legal clarity on when such exemptions are justified.

Los Angeles County Confirms Only 3 COVID Hospitalizations at LAC USC Medical Center as City Reinstates Masks

Fox News reported:

Los Angeles County encouraged its residents to comply with health safety measures regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in a statement released on Monday, despite confirming only three hospitalizations for COVID at the LAC and University of Southern California Medical Center.

Los Angeles County attributed the low figures at the 600-bed hospital to a high vaccination rate and underscored the importance of following health safety precautions.

“The COVID-19 pandemic remains a very serious public health threat that we must continue to fight with every tool available, including vaccines, masking, social distancing, and treatment,” LA County said in the statement.

The release comes as the LA County Department of Health announced it will be reinstating its mask mandate.

Exclusive: Hospital Staff Faces Staff Shortages Due to COVID Infections, Despite Vaccine Mandate

The Epoch Times reported:

The first hospital in America to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine for all employees is now facing a staffing shortage from infections.

Houston’s Methodist Hospital has hundreds of employees out of work because they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. At the same hospital in 2021, 153 staff members who refused to get vaccinated quit or were fired. Now Methodist leadership is trying to avert a crisis.

“What is worrisome is the climbing number of our employees who cannot work because they are home sick with COVID-19. Almost 400 employees tested positive last week,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive of Houston Methodist, wrote in an internal email on July 12 obtained by The Epoch Times.

Houston Methodist, with a workforce of around 28,000, was the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all of its employees. It also was the first system in the nation to mandate the vaccine for its private healthcare providers who are credentialed members of its medical staff. The hospital later required all its employees to get a vaccine booster by March 1.

Alberta Health Services No Longer Requires COVID Immunization for Its Healthcare Workers

Global News reported:

Alberta Health Services says it is rescinding its COVID-19 immunization policy for its workers. The agency says workers, as well as new hires and students, will no longer be required to have at least two vaccine doses.

It says vaccines continue to provide strong protection against serious effects from COVID-19, but there is emerging evidence that the shots have become less protective against infection.

Authorities in South China Apologize Over COVID Break-Ins

Associated Press reported:

Authorities in southern China have apologized for breaking into the homes of people who had been taken to a quarantine hotel in the latest example of heavy-handed virus-prevention measures that have sparked a rare public backlash.

State media said that 84 homes in an apartment complex in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district had been opened in an effort to find any “close contacts” hiding inside and to disinfect the premises.

The Liwan district government apologized Monday for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation has been launched and “relevant people” will be severely punished, it said.

COVID: European Governments Must Urgently Boost Monitoring, WHO Says

The Guardian reported:

The World Health Organization has called on European governments to urgently reinforce rather than reduce COVID-19 monitoring, warning of a potentially difficult winter as a new wave of infections sweeps across the continent.

Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said it was now “abundantly clear” that the region faced a surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.5 and that it would intensify further as indoor mixing increases in the autumn.

Kluge said vaccination uptake in the general population must be increased, second booster doses administered to all at-risk populations, and mask use and improved ventilation promoted indoors and on public transport.

Amazon Sues More Than 10,000 Facebook Group Administrators Over Fake Reviews

The Hill reported:

Amazon said it filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators for allegedly orchestrating fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products.

Amazon said in a statement that it has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Meta has already taken down more than half of those groups for policy violations as it investigates others.

The tech giant said it has 12,000 employees dedicated to cracking down on fraud, including fake reviews, and the company proactively stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020 using its monitoring and technological tools.

Facebook said it does not allow groups that facilitate or encourage fake reviews and had already removed most of the groups in question.

Twitter Wins Round 1 in Court After Flaming Musk Over His ‘Buyers Remorse’

Gizmodo reported:

Twitter’s lawyers laid into Elon Musk Tuesday with blistering, blunt language in opening arguments of the multi-billion dollar court case that will decide whether the richest man in the world will purchase one of the internet’s most influential social networks, as he agreed to months ago.

“What we are looking at is a buyer conjuring an exit plan,” Twitter’s lawyers said of the Tesla CEO’s multiform complaints. “Buyer’s remorse can be an overused phrase, your honor, but it sure looks like what we have here.”

Musk’s lawyers wasted no time in firing back, calling the company’s efforts to contravene the termination “too little, too late.”

New Internal Documents Could Bolster Antitrust Case Against Google, Amazon

Politico reported:

Internal documents from Google and Amazon provided to POLITICO show new examples of how the companies favor their own products over competitors’ — adding ammunition to the push for Congress to toughen antitrust laws.

The documents — which include emails, memos and strategy papers — were shared by the House Judiciary Committee, which obtained them as part of its long-running antitrust investigation of Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta that wrapped in October 2020 with a 450-page staff report. The documents were cited in the report but had not previously been made available.

The documents bolster the committee’s claims that the internet giants illegally favor their own products, a practice that pending legislation to update antitrust laws would make more difficult.

Canada-Based Researchers Use Artificial Intelligence Tool for Detecting Rare Birth Defects

The Daily Wire reported:

Canadian researchers recently developed a deep-learning algorithm using Artificial Intelligence-based tools to identify and diagnose potentially fatal cysts on a baby during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Researchers out of the Ottawa Hospital have demonstrated such models can detect benign tumors that form a fluid-filled sac-like structure in the baby’s head and neck area known as cystic hygroma. The tumor blocks the lymphatic system, which causes fluid to build up underneath the skin that could result in a stillbirth or miscarriage.

Dr. Mark Walker at the University’s Faculty of Medicine said the ground-breaking experiment could apply to many other fetal anomalies identified by ultrasonography after further development, including large multi-site dataset testing and outside review.

TikTok Has Been Accused of ‘Aggressive’ Data Harvesting. Is Your Information at Risk?

The Guardian reported:

Cybersecurity experts have warned Australian TikTok users that the Chinese government could use the app to harvest personal information, from in-app messages with friends to precise device locations.

The warnings follow a report by Australian-U.S. cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, which found the most popular social media app of the year collects “excessive” amounts of information from its users.

Here’s what you need to know about TikTok’s data harvesting, and how to keep your information safe.