Five Things Facebook Has to Worry About After Whistleblower Disclosures

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The past several weeks have been difficult for the social media behemoth Facebook, with a series of whistleblower revelations demonstrating that the company knew its signature platform was exacerbating all manner of social ills around the globe, from human trafficking to sectarian violence.    The tide shows no sign of receding. New revelations this week have demonstrated that the company’s supposed commitment to freedom of expression takes a back seat to its bottom line when repressive governments, like Vietnam’s, demand that dissent be silenced. They showed that Facebook knew its algorithms were steering users toward extreme content, such as QAnon conspiracy theories and phony anti-vaccine claims, but took few steps to remedy the problem.   In statements to various media outlets, the company has defended itself, saying it dedicates enormous resources…
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Florida Manatees Dying Off in Record Numbers

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Wildlife officials and environmental groups in Florida are raising an alarm over the unprecedented die-off this year of manatees, the large, slow-moving sea animals that are the southeastern U.S. state's official marine mammal.  The latest figures from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission show that as of October 15, 974 manatees have been found dead, more than twice the number that died all of last year and more than any other year on record. The number represents more than 10% of the total population of manatees in the state.  Officials fear the onset of winter and colder weather could bring another wave of deaths.  Environmental officials say there is no real mystery for the die-off. They say over the past 10 years, seagrass, the primary food for the animals, has…
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International Police Operation Cracks Down on Illegal Internet Drug Vendors

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U.S. federal law enforcement agencies and Europol announced dozens of arrests to break up a global operation that sold illegal drugs using a shadowy realm of the internet.  At a Department of Justice news conference Tuesday in Washington, officials said they arrested 150 people for allegedly selling illicit drugs, including fake prescription opioids and cocaine, over the so-called darknet. Those charged are alleged to have carried out tens of thousands of illegal sales using a part of the internet that is accessible only by using specialized anonymity tools.  The 10-month dragnet called "Operation HunTor" — named after encrypted internet tools — resulted in the seizure of 234 kilograms of drugs, including amphetamines, cocaine and opioids worth more than $31 million. Officials said many of the confiscated drugs were fake prescription…
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UK’s Queen Elizabeth Pulls Out of COP26 Following Advice to Rest

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Britain's Queen Elizabeth has pulled out of the COP26 conference in Glasgow next week after she was advised by doctors to rest, Buckingham Palace said on Tuesday, in a blow to the United Nations climate summit. A palace source said the decision to not attend had been taken as a "sensible precaution" and to let everyone know in advance. The queen remains in good spirits and wants COP26 to be a success, the source added. "Following advice to rest, The Queen has been undertaking light duties at Windsor Castle," Buckingham Palace said. "Her Majesty has regretfully decided that she will no longer travel to Glasgow to attend the Evening Reception of COP26 on Monday, 1st November." The 95-year-old queen, the world's oldest and longest-reigning monarch, stayed overnight in hospital last…
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FDA Panel Considers Pfizer COVID Shot for US Kids

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's independent advisory committee is meeting Tuesday to consider giving emergency approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. While it is considered rare for younger children to become seriously ill or die from COVID-19, FDA vaccines chief Dr. Peter Marks told the panel Tuesday that 1.9 million children in the 5 to 11 age group have tested positive and 8,300 have been hospitalized in the United States. Of those hospitalized, one-third needed intensive care and nearly 100 died.  If the children's dose of the vaccine is approved as expected, officials say they hope it will help close a major gap in the U.S. vaccine campaign that has worried parents, educators and public health leaders. Last week, the White House said…
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Climate Holdout Australia Sets 2050 Net Zero Emissions Target

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Coal-rich Australia unveiled a much-delayed 2050 net zero emissions target Tuesday, in a plan that pointedly dodged thorny details or near-term goals ahead of a landmark UN climate summit.  Widely seen as a climate laggard, Australia is one of the world's largest coal and gas exporters.    For the last eight years, its conservative government has resisted action to reduce emissions, routinely approving new coal projects and peddling skepticism about climate change.  Under domestic and international pressure, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced a shift in approach and acknowledged the "world is changing," Australians want policy that "does the right thing on climate change", he said, adding the phenomenon "is real, it's happening. We understand it and we recognize it."  Just how Australia will get to net zero by 2050 carbon emissions remains unclear, with…
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Moderna Says its COVID-19 Vaccine Safe for Children Between 6 and 11

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U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Moderna says a clinical trial shows that a low dose of its COVID-19 vaccine is safe for children between 6 and 11 years old.  The company says it inoculated more than 4,700 children with its two-dose vaccine about 28 days apart, with each shot about half the strength given to adults. Preliminary results show the antibody levels in the children were the same levels as those seen in young adults who received a full dose of the vaccine.  Moderna says the children suffered mild side effects from the vaccine such as fatigue, headache, fever and pain at the site of the injection.  The number of test subjects was too small to detect any rare side effects such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, which has been detected mostly…
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Rental Car Company Hertz Announces Purchase of 100,000 Teslas 

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Car rental company Hertz says it will buy 100,000 electric cars from Tesla.  Hertz interim CEO Mark Fields said the Model 3 cars could be ready for renters as early as November, The Associated Press reported.  Fields said the reason for the move was that electric cars are becoming mainstream, and consumer interest in them is growing. "More are willing to try and buy," he told AP. "It's pretty stunning."  All of the cars should be available by the end of 2022, the company said. When all are delivered, they will make up 20% of the company’s fleet. Hertz, which emerged from bankruptcy in June, did not disclose the cost of the order, but it could be valued at as much as $4 billion, according to some news reports.  The…
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In Face of Hack Attacks, US State Department to Set Up Cyber Bureau

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The U.S. State Department plans to establish a bureau of cyberspace and digital policy in the face of a growing hacking problem, specifically a surge of ransomware attacks on U.S. infrastructure.  State Department spokesperson Ned Price said a Senate-confirmed ambassador at large will lead the bureau.  Hackers have struck numerous U.S. companies this year.  One such attack on pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline led to temporary fuel supply shortages on the U.S. East Coast. Hackers also targeted an Iowa-based agricultural company, sparking fears of disruptions to Midwest grain harvesting.  Two weeks ago, the Treasury Department said suspected ransomware payments totaling $590 million were made in the first six months of this year. It put the cryptocurrency industry on alert about its role fighting ransomware attacks.    ...
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Facebook Whistleblower Presses Case with British Lawmakers 

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told British lawmakers Monday that the social media giant "unquestionably" amplifies online hate.  In testimony to a parliamentary committee in London, the former Facebook employee echoed what she told U.S. senators earlier this month. Haugen said the media giant fuels online hate and extremism and does not have any incentive to change its algorithm to promote less divisive content. She argued that as a result, Facebook may end up sparking more violent unrest around the world. Haugen said the algorithm Facebook has designed to promote more engagement among users “prioritizes and amplifies divisive and polarizing extreme content” as well as concentrates it.  Facebook did not respond to Haugen's testimony Monday. Earlier this month, Haugen addressed a Senate committee and said the company is harmful. Facebook rejected…
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Amazon Rain Forest Turning into Carbon Source, UN Agency Warns

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The battle to stem climate change may be lost as new information indicates the Amazon rain forest is turning from a carbon sink – or area that absorbs CO2 – into a source of carbon dioxide, the World Meteorological Organization warns.  The latest edition of the WMO's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide once again broke all records last year. The U.N. agency's report warns the concentrations of these greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere are driving climate change. It says carbon dioxide, the single most important greenhouse gas, accounts for approximately 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate. The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, says about half of CO2 emissions remains in the atmosphere for centuries. He says…
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WHO Chief: Barriers to Vaccination Goal are ‘Politics and Profit’

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The director-general of the World Health Organization said Sunday that unless countries use existing tools in the fight against the pandemic effectively, there will be no end in sight. “The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it,” Tedros said addressing World Health Summit, a global forum held in Germany. “We have all the tools we need — effective public health tools and effective medical tools. But the world has not used those tools well,” Tedros said, addressing participants drawn from 100 countries online. The barriers to fulfilling WHO’s goal of vaccinating 40% of every country’s population against the coronavirus are “politics and profit,” the WHO chief said, “not production.” “The countries that have already reached the 40% target, including all G-20 countries, must give their place in…
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Microsoft Discloses New Russian Hacking Effort

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The U.S. technology giant Microsoft says that the same Russia-backed hackers responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds breach of corporate computer systems is continuing to attack global technology systems, this time targeting cloud service resellers. Microsoft said the group, which it calls Nobelium, is employing a new strategy to take advantage of the direct access resellers have to their customers' IT systems, hoping to "more easily impersonate an organization's trusted technology partner to gain access to their downstream customers." Resellers are intermediaries between software and hardware producers and the eventual technology product users. In a statement Sunday, Microsoft said it has been monitoring Nobelium's attacks since May and has notified more than 140 companies targeted by the group, with as many as 14 of the companies’ systems believed to have been…
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Facebook’s Language Gaps Weaken Screening of Hate, Terrorism

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In Gaza and Syria, journalists and activists feel Facebook censors their speech, flagging inoffensive Arabic posts as terrorist content. In India and Myanmar, political groups use Facebook to incite violence. All of it frequently slips through the company's efforts to police its social media platforms because of a shortage of moderators who speak local languages and understand cultural contexts. Internal company documents from the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen show the problems plaguing the company's content moderation are systemic, and that Facebook has understood the depth of these failings for years while doing little about it. Its platforms have failed to develop artificial-intelligence solutions that can catch harmful content in different languages. As a result, terrorist content and hate speech proliferate in some of the world's most volatile regions.…
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Cameroon Says COVID Scare Drove Breast Cancer Increase 

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Health care activists in Cameroon are visiting homes, markets and farms this month, encouraging women to get free screenings for breast cancer. The central African state says the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer has risen sharply over the past year because many women delayed screenings for fear of COVID-19 infections. The push to increase screenings is part of this year's breast cancer awareness month in October. Civilians, mostly women, visit various neighborhoods in Yaoundé asking people to go to hospitals for free breast cancer screening. Each group of a dozen people includes medical staff members, representatives of healthy living organizations, cancer patients and their family members. Among those participating is 24-year-old Amin Ruth Tabi of the Noela Lyonga Foundation, a Cameroon-based NGO. The foundation's main objective is giving…
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Whistleblower Haugen to Testify as UK Scrutinizes Facebook

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Former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower Frances Haugen plans to answer questions Monday from lawmakers in the United Kingdom who are working on legislation to rein in the power of social media companies.  Haugen is set to appear before a parliamentary committee scrutinizing the British government’s draft legislation to crack down on harmful online content, and her comments could help lawmakers beef up the new rules. She’s testifying the same day that Facebook is set to release its latest earnings and that The Associated Press and other news organizations started publishing stories based on thousands of pages of internal company documents she obtained.  It will be her second appearance before lawmakers after she testified in the U.S. Senate earlier this month about the danger she says the company poses, from…
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Experts Optimistic Coral Reefs Will Survive

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“Coral reefs are amazing and beautiful, and we must conserve them,” Sam Purkis, chair of the department of marine geosciences at the University of Miami, told VOA. Although coral reefs only cover 0.1% of the ocean floor, they are a lifeline for the planet.  With the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on earth, they contain 25% of all marine life, including more than 4,000 fish species. Besides food, “corals provide economic, ecological and even cultural value,” where local communities living near the reefs bond over fishing activities, explained Robert Richmond, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii. “Corals also hold potential drugs from the sea, the vast majority of which we haven’t discovered yet,” Nancy Knowlton, scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said during an interview with VOA.…
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Australian Scientists Boost Climate Change Adaptability in Frogs

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For the first time in a laboratory, Australian scientists have produced tadpoles more tolerant of climate change. A team from the University of Western Australia has cross-bred frogs from wetter regions with other species from drier areas to make them more resilient.  Researchers in Australia want to give nature a helping hand. They have warned that climate change “poses an enormous threat to many of the world’s frogs.”  Genetic traits that allow a type of amphibian called a crawling frog to survive in regions with lower rainfall, researchers say, could be passed on through breeding. They’ve mixed frogs from drier parts of south-western Australia with others from wetter areas.    Sperm and eggs from four different crawling frog populations that occur in areas with various levels of rainfall were used in the experiment.    The effort produced tadpoles that…
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UK Plans $8 Billion Package to Boost Health Service Capacity

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British finance minister Rishi Sunak's budget this week will include an extra $8.1 billion of spending for the health service over the next few years to drive down waiting lists, the finance ministry said on Sunday.    The sum comes on top of an $11 billion package announced in September to tackle backlogs built up over the COVID-19 pandemic, the finance ministry said.    The spending is aimed at increasing what is termed elective activity in the National Health Service (NHS) -- such as scans and non-emergency procedures -- by 30% by the 2024/25 financial year.  The increase comprises $3.2 billion for testing services, $2.9 billion to improve the technology behind the health service, and $2 billion to increase bed capacity.    "This is a game-changing investment in the NHS to make sure we have the right buildings, equipment and systems to get patients the…
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Pakistan, Afghanistan Mark Polio Day Amid Optimism for Eradication 

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Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only two countries where polio still paralyzes children, marked World Polio Day (October 24) Sunday amid excitement and hopes that global eradication of the crippling disease is within reach.  The neighboring countries constitute a bloc where the disease has been endemic; but each has detected just one case of wild polio so far this year compared to 53 in Afghanistan and 81 in Pakistan in October 2020. The number of cases so far in 2021 is the lowest in history, according to World Health Organization officials. A polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan has faced challenges in particular over the past two years — due to vaccine hesitancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a five-month pause in polio immunization campaigns starting in March of 2020.…
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Report: Global Vaccine Collaboration is ‘Largely Failed’ 

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A Financial Times report says COVAX, the global collaboration established to ensure that poor countries have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, has “largely failed.”  “Wealthy countries have received over 16 times more COVID-19 vaccines per person than poorer nations that rely on the COVAX program backed by the World Health Organization,” the newspaper reported. Millions of people in the world’s poorest countries have not yet received their first shots of the vaccine, while people in the wealthiest countries have access to booster shots, following their initial inoculations. The disparity, The Financial Times warned, “could lead to a rise in cases and the emergence of more virulent strains, and hold back the global economic recovery.”  The World Health Organization’s director-general said Friday 82 countries are at risk of not meeting WHO’s goal…
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Zoom Gets More Popular Despite Worries About Links to China

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Very few companies can boast of having their name also used as a verb. Zoom is one of them. The popularity of the videoconferencing platform continues to grow around the world despite continued questions about whether Chinese authorities are monitoring the calls. Since Zoom became a household word last year during the pandemic, internet users including companies and government agencies have asked whether the app’s data centers and staff in China are passing call logs to Chinese authorities. “Some of the more informed know about that, but the vast majority, they don’t know about that, or even if they do, they really don’t give much thought about it,” said Jack Nguyen, partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City. He said in Vietnam, for example, many…
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Facebook Dithered in Curbing Divisive User Content in India

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Facebook in India has been selective in curbing hate speech, misinformation and inflammatory posts, particularly anti-Muslim content, according to leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press, even as its own employees cast doubt over the company's motivations and interests. From research as recent as March of this year to company memos that date back to 2019, the internal company documents on India highlight Facebook's constant struggles in quashing abusive content on its platforms in the world's biggest democracy and the company's largest growth market. Communal and religious tensions in India have a history of boiling over on social media and stoking violence. The files show that Facebook has been aware of the problems for years, raising questions over whether it has done enough to address these issues. Many critics and…
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250 Km/h Without a Driver: Indy Autonomous Cars Gear Up for Race

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There will be cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday but no drivers in sight as racing teams mark a milestone in autonomous vehicle development. Nine single-seaters will take part in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), a competition with a $1 million prize that aims to prove "autonomous technology can work at extreme conditions," said Paul Mitchell, CEO of co-organizer Energy Systems Network (ESN). Cars will not race on the "Brickyard" track at the same time but will start one after the other -- with the winner being the fastest over two full-speed laps. Teams are made up of students from around the world. Each group was given the same Dallara IL-15 car, which looks like a small Formula One vehicle, and the same equipment, which includes sensors, cameras,…
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UN Prepares Polio Vaccination Campaign for Children in Afghanistan 

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U.N. agencies are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign for all children under 5 in Afghanistan, a country where the potentially crippling disease persists despite a more than three-decade-long campaign that has nearly eradicated it worldwide. Vaccine doses will begin to be administered in Afghanistan on November 8 for the first time in three years, now that the country’s new Taliban government has granted approval. “This is a huge development that now we can go all across Afghanistan and deliver the vaccine house to house,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, the World Health Organization’s director of polio eradication for the Eastern Mediterranean region, told VOA. Jafari described the upcoming campaign as “a real combination of excitement and extreme fear — excitement because it looks like a real opportunity to eradicate wild polio virus finally.” Warning…
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