Tag: Authority

Anthony Fauci on the Coronavirus and the Prospects for a Vaccine

In the video here, you can watch excerpts from New Yorker journalist Michael Specter and Fauci’s conversation, which encompassed the hard lessons of the AIDS epidemic, Americans’ fraught relationship with scientific and medical authority, and possible time lines for the development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. The key questions, Fauci told Specter, are not just when a vaccine will be…

Philippines Starts Registering Millions for National ID Cards

The Philippines began Monday registering millions of citizens for its national identification system, hoping to promote electronic payments and make it easier for low-income earners without bank accounts to access financial services. From a report: All Philippine citizens and resident foreigners are required to register such information as name, sex, date of birth, place of birth, blood type, address and nationality….

UK Ad Authority Bans Misleading Homescapes and Gardenscapes Ads

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Two misleading ads for mobile games that bear little relation to the actual product have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ads, for the Homescapes and Gardenscapes games, both come from developer Playrix. They showed a game where users pull pins in a specific order to solve a puzzle…

Pakistan Bans TikTok

Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok in the nation, citing circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.” From a report: The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the country’s telecommunication authority, said in…

Trump Cracks Down on Visas. Indian Firms May Benefit.

As the president clashes with the courts, some companies and investors say tougher limits on temporary work visas will help push jobs overseas. From a report: When President Trump suspended a raft of visa programs in June, including temporary permits for highly technical foreign workers known as H-1B visas, he portrayed the order as a victory for the American work force….

Apple Removes Two RSS Feed Readers From China App Store To Please China’s Censors

Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, said this week that their iOS apps have been removed in China over content that deemed “illegal” by the local cyber watchdog. TechCrunch reports: Apps get banned in China for all sorts of reasons. Feed readers of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, are particularly troubling to the authority because they fetch content from…

Senators Introduce Bipartisan ‘Unplug Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020,’ Preventing a President From Denying Access To the Internet

Yesterday, U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Gary Peters (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan ”Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020” (S. 4646), which would help protect Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights by preventing a president from using emergency powers to unilaterally take control over or deny access to the internet and other telecommunications capabilities. Slashdot reader…

Trump Pushes To Reap Biometric Data From Immigrants, Americans

Six million would-be U.S. immigrants face expanded collection of their biometric data, including iris scans, palm-, and voice-prints, facial recognition images, and DNA, under a proposed federal rule. The Department of Homeland Security also for the first time would gather that data from American citizens sponsoring or benefiting from a visa application. Bloomberg Law reports: Years in the making, the biometrics…

Another Source of Greenhouse Gas: Abandoned Oil Wells

The Sacramento Bee published a video showing dozens of oil tankers anchored off California’s coast as the current demand for oil plummets. But looking toward the future, they’ve also published along with it a special warning from the director of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute: California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest oil and gas producer, is the…