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U.S. Court Split in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers

Reuters reported:

A U.S. appeals court panel seemed divided on Wednesday over whether a civilian Navy employee can challenge President Joe Biden‘s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers in court or must first go through an administrative process.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard arguments in a bid by the worker, Jason Payne, to revive his lawsuit claiming the requirement to receive the vaccine or face termination violates federal employees’ constitutional rights.

A federal judge in Washington, DC, ruled in May that because Payne’s claims related to workplace conditions, he was required to go through an administrative complaint process for federal civil servants before taking the case to court.

Circuit Judge Justin Walker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, seemed more sympathetic to Payne’s lawyer, Gene Hamilton’s arguments. Walker repeatedly pressed Daniel Winik of the U.S. Department of Justice, who is defending the vaccine mandate, on whether federal workers have any ability to challenge policies that violate their rights before they take effect.

White House Insists It’s Not Using Facebook Censorship Portal Despite Jen Psaki’s ‘Flagging’ Admission

New York Post reported:

The White House doesn’t use a secretive Facebook portal to request the removal of alleged “misinformation,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday when asked about a bombshell report laying out how government officials get tech firms to squelch online speech — despite her predecessor Jen Psaki saying last year the White House was “flagging” Facebook posts it didn’t like.

When pressed by The Post, Jean-Pierre said firmly that “no,” the White House does not use the recently exposed portal to request the removal of Facebook or Instagram posts.

The Intercept on Monday revealed the existence of the portal — facebook.com/xtakedowns — through which users with a government or law enforcement email address can submit content for deletion.

The revelation prompted outrage from civil libertarians who said the mechanism violated the spirit — if not the letter — of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.

Soccer Fans, You’re Being Watched

Wired reported:

This fall, more than 15,000 cameras will monitor soccer fans across eight stadiums and on the streets of Doha during the 2022 World Cup, an event expected to attract more than 1 million football fans from around the globe. Qatar’s World Cup organizers are not alone in deploying biometric technology to monitor soccer fan activity. In recent years, soccer clubs and stadiums across Europe have been introducing these security and surveillance technologies.

In Denmark, Brøndby Stadium has been using facial recognition for ticketing verification since 2019. In the Netherlands, NEC Nijmegen has used biometric technology to grant access to Goffert Stadium. France’s FC Metz briefly experimented with a facial recognition device to identify fans banned from Saint-Symphorien Stadium. And the U.K.’s Manchester City reportedly hired Texas-based firm Blink Identity in 2019 to deploy facial recognition systems at Etihad Stadium.

So how accurate are these systems? Over the years, there have been cases where things have gone wrong. In 2017, facial scanning technology mistakenly identified more than 2,000 people as possible criminals at the 2017 Champions League final in Cardiff, U.K. The system was scrapped following a court decision, only to be redeployed earlier this year.

Slowly but steadily, ubiquitous biometric technology systems have come to represent a new normal for stadium infrastructure in which “health securitization” is incorporated into systems for public safety and marketing.

Some Universities Require Bivalent COVID Booster — Harvard and Yale Are Among the Few Schools That Make Latest Booster Mandatory

MedPage Today reported:

As the U.S. braces for the possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases, some colleges and universities are requiring their students to receive the new bivalent booster shot.

Among those schools are Harvard University, Tufts University, and Wellesley College in Massachusetts; Yale University in Connecticut; and Fordham University in New York City.

Notably, there have been reports of pushback regarding bivalent booster requirements at colleges and universities, according to Inside Higher Ed. It also appears that few other institutions have enacted such a requirement.

These Cruise Lines Just Dropped Their COVID Testing Rules

Travel + Leisure reported:

Several major cruise lines have dropped COVID-19-related testing protocols ahead of the holiday season, returning to what it was like before the pandemic swept the world.

Starting this month, cruise lines including Disney Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Virgin Voyages have simplified or removed COVID-19-related pre-boarding rules entirely, joining a growing trend in the cruise industry. It comes weeks after Norwegian Cruise Line became one of the first cruise lines to eliminate pandemic-related rules entirely, including for testing, vaccines, and masks.

This month, Disney will drop the requirement for travelers to get tested for COVID-19, regardless of their vaccination status, according to the company. Currently, the cruise line requires all unvaccinated guests to get tested one to two days before they sail. The new rule will go into effect starting Nov. 14.

China Officials Admit Fault for Boy’s Death as Anger at Lockdown Mounts

Newsweek reported:

Chinese health officials released a statement on Thursday apologizing for the death of a 3-year-old boy whose father wasn’t able to get him to a hospital during a COVID-19 lockdown.

The boy’s father wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that he had been unable to leave his housing compound in Lanzhou because of the country’s strict coronavirus restrictions, according to the Agence France-Presse. He claimed that it took over an hour to break out of his housing compound and get his son, who had carbon monoxide poisoning, to a hospital via taxi.

“We sincerely accept criticism and supervision from the media and netizens, and are determined to rectify [mistakes],” the officials said, reportedly admitting that it took 90 minutes for an ambulance to be sent after the boy’s father called first responders.

The outlet reported that the incident sparked a backlash against China’s COVID policies online with the statement “three years of the COVID pandemic have been his entire life,” spreading widely on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

Chinese COVID Testing Firms Report Big Profits as Virus Fight Intensifies

Reuters reported:

Several of China’s largest medical testing companies have posted big increases in profit for the first three quarters of the year, as the country’s strict zero-COVID policy boosts spending in a minority of sectors while depressing the broader economy.

Over the past two weeks, at least six such companies have reported a soaring jump in earnings. Shanghai Labway (301060.SZ) reported a 241% year-on-year increase in net profit between January and September to 604 million yuan ($82.70 million) while Guangdong Hybribio (300639.SZ) recorded a 130% increase over that same period to 1.49 billion yuan, according to stock exchange statements.

TikTok Makes Clear European Data Can Be Accessed by China-Based Employees

CNN Business reported:

TikTok updated its privacy policies for European users on Tuesday, adding explicit disclosures that personal data from the app may be viewed by employees in China.

The update aligns with what TikTok executives have said publicly. But the addition reflects the intense scrutiny TikTok has faced over its international data flows.

The announcement, which TikTok said was aimed at providing greater transparency, applies to users in the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland — not the United States, though TikTok said it does store European users’ data in the U.S. and in Singapore.

U.S. policymakers have grown increasingly vocal about concerns the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, to hand over users’ personal data under the country’s national security laws.

Meta Is the S&P 500’s Worst Performer of 2022 as Losses Near 75%

Forbes reported:

Shares of Facebook parent Meta overtook the dubious honor as the biggest loser on the S&P 500 this week as the Silicon Valley giant bleeds money to fund its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision and underscores big tech’s 2022 downfall.

Meta stock has faltered all year but crashed 25% last Thursday after reporting concerning quarterly earnings and is down a further 11% this week to a seven-year low of below $90. The social media titan is down 73.7% year-to-date and nearly 80% from its 2021 high of $384.

Musk Agrees to Restore Twitter Content-Moderation Tools This Week

Bloomberg reported:

Twitter Inc.’s new owner Elon Musk promised civil rights leaders he will restore content moderation tools that had been blocked for some staff by the end of the week, according to three leaders who met with Musk on Monday.

Musk made the commitment during a Zoom meeting with the heads of some of the country’s leading racial justice organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

The civil rights groups had raised concerns about Musk’s plans to relax speech protections on the platform and restore the accounts of users who had been removed. Last week, Twitter dramatically limited the number of people with access to the dashboard of tools that allow Twitter’s Trust and Safety team uses to enforce policy actions, Bloomberg reported.

TikTok Glorifies Weight Loss Among Teens, Young Adults: Study

Axios reported:

Health and dieting trends on TikTok glorify weight loss and may contribute to disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction, particularly in adolescent and young users, according to a University of Vermont study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One.

Why it matters: It is the first study to assess content related to nutrition and body image at scale on the social app for short video.

What they’re saying: “Each day, millions of teens and young adults are being fed content on TikTok that paints a very unrealistic and inaccurate picture of food, nutrition and health,” Lizzy Pope, the senior researcher of the study and an associate professor at the University of Vermont, said in a statement.

“Getting stuck in weight loss TikTok can be a really tough environment, especially for the main users of the platform, which are young people,” she added.

‘Unleash All This Creativity’: Google AI’s Breathtaking Potential

Axios reported:

Google‘s research arm on Wednesday showed off a whiz-bang assortment of artificial intelligence (AI) projects it’s incubating, aimed at everything from mitigating climate change to helping novelists craft prose.

Why it matters: AI has breathtaking potential to improve and enrich our lives — and comes with hugely worrisome risks of misuse, intrusion and malfeasance, if not developed and deployed responsibly.

Driving the news: The dozen-or-so AI projects that Google Research unfurled at a Manhattan media event are in various stages of development, with goals ranging from societal improvement (such as better health diagnoses) to pure creativity and fun (text-to-image generation that can help you build a 3D image of a skirt-clad monster made of marzipan).

The big picture: Fears about AI’s dark side — from privacy violations and the spread of misinformation to losing control of consumer data — recently prompted the White House to issue a preliminary “AI Bill of Rights,” encouraging technologists to build safeguards into their products.