Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine works well outside of clinical trials, study finds

Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is proving as effective in real-world settings as it did in clinical testing, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers.

The study looked at data on more than 500,000 people who received the vaccine in Israel between December 20, 2020, and February 1, 2021 and compared it with a similarly sized group of people who were not vaccinated. The vaccine was 94% effective against symptomatic illness a week after the second dose, according to the findings. It was also 92% effective against severe disease. The data were collected through Clalit Health Services, a research arm of Israel’s largest health care provider.

“In all studies of vaccine effectiveness, a major challenge is to ensure that those we are comparing to identify the vaccine’s effect are similar in the other characteristics that may predict whether they get infected or ill,” said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, and a co-author of the NEJM paper, in a February 24, 2021, New York Times article. “Clalit’s extraordinary database made it possible to design a study that addressed these challenges.”

In a February 25, 2021, Time article, Lipsitch said the study findings are “close to the best possible news.” Yet, he said, many important questions remain, including how long immunity from the vaccine lasts.

Miguel Hernán, Kolokotrones Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, was also a co-author of the NEJM paper.

Read the New York Times article: The Pfizer vaccine’s initial success holds up in wider use, a study finds

Read the Time article: COVID-19 Vaccines Work. Here’s the Real-World Proof

UNSETTLED —
TikTok agrees to proposed $92 million settlement in privacy class action

Class members can get compensation, as long as most don't file for it.

KATE COX - 2/26/2021, 



TikTok parent company ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million deal to settle class-action lawsuits alleging that the company illegally collected and used underage TikTok users' personal data.

The proposed settlement (PDF) would require TikTok to pay out up to $92 million to members of the class and to change some of its data-collection processes and disclosures going forward.


FURTHER READING TikTok accused of breaching US child privacy regulations

The suit, which rolled up more than 20 related lawsuits, mostly filed on behalf of minors, alleged that TikTok violated both state and federal privacy laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Video Privacy and Protection Act, through its use of data.

TikTok uses "automated software, proprietary algorithms, AI, facial recognition, and other technologies to commercially profit from" its users, the complaint (PDF) alleged. The data that TikTok allegedly collects, shares, and uses for machine learning training goes surprisingly deep, the suit added, including users' "identities, unique identifying information, biometric data and information, images, video and digital recordings, audio recordings, clipboard data, geolocation, names, email addresses, passcodes, social media accounts, messaging services, telephone numbers, and other private, nonpublic, or confidential data and information."

Additionally, the suit cited concerns that private and personally identifiable user data TikTok collected could have been shared with Chinese government entities, echoing the Trump administration's concerns in its failed attempts to ban TikTok from operating in the US.

TikTok denied any specific wrongdoing. "While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community," the company said in a statement.Advertisement

Money for the taking—unless everyone asks

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs touted the settlement as "one of the largest ever achieved" in such a case. Inasmuch as their assertion is true, it comes out as far more damning of the state of US privacy laws than complimentary of this particular case.

The total class, as defined in the settlement, includes 89 million US users. The attorneys ask for a collective payment "not to exceed 33.33% of the settlement fund," leaving $61 million for the class members to collect. On top of that, however, the proposed deal is structured such that each member of the "national" class can claim a share, and Illinois users can claim six shares.


FURTHER READING 

FTC kicks off sweeping privacy probe of nine major social media firms

TikTok identified 1.4 million users who would qualify in the Illinois subclass, leaving about 87.6 million other class members nationwide. According to the settlement, if every qualified member of the class filed for a claim, most users could expect to reap about $0.96 and Illinois users could get as much as $5.75.

In the filing, however, attorneys make clear that they do not expect a high percentage of the class to file claims, instead describing likely payouts for hypothetical claims rates from 1.5 percent ($383.33 for Illinois, $63.89 for everyone else) to 20 percent ($28.75 for Illinois, $4.79 for everyone else) of the class.

Of course, money isn't everything; lawsuits such as this class action often seek injunctive relief as well—that is, requiring the company not to do the bad thing anymore. This agreement is no different. Under the proposed terms, TikTok will implement a "companywide data privacy training initiative" to instruct employees and contractors to comply with data privacy laws.

As for its collection, storage, and use of sensitive data, TikTok does not actually say in the settlement that it will stop those activities, but it says instead that it will update its privacy policies to make sure those activities are more clearly disclosed "and in compliance with all applicable laws."

A judge will have to approve the proposed settlement before it goes into effect; the process is expected to take several months.

In Shamima Begum Case, UK Supreme Court Dismisses Rights and Overlooks Potential Victimhood

Begum, stripped of UK citizenship, will remain in inhumane conditions in a Syrian camp indefinitely.


by Sarah St.Vincent

February 26, 2021


In a decision with potentially sweeping consequences for due process rights in national security cases, the UK Supreme Court unanimously held Friday that Shamima Begum, a former UK schoolchild who traveled to a part of Syria then controlled by the Islamic State (IS) in 2015, does not have a right to return to Britain while she challenges the government’s decision to strip her of citizenship. The Court held that security concerns can override people’s right to “fair and effective” proceedings—while overlooking the critical and badly under-examined fact that Begum may be a victim of child marriage and human trafficking.

The Court’s startling conclusion that an individual’s alleged dangerousness can justify weaker procedural rights is likely to attract the most attention in legal circles. The Home Office had argued before the Court that Begum “is assessed to pose a real and current threat to national security,” remains “aligned with” IS, and is desensitized to violence. The Supreme Court maintained that the Court of Appeal had overstepped its bounds when it found that the government was overstating the risks Begum might pose to public safety. It went on to declare that “if a vital public interest – in this case, the safety of the public – makes it impossible for a case to be fairly heard, then the courts cannot ordinarily hear it”—potentially shutting the courthouse doors to a wide range of people the government suspects of posing some kind of threat.

However, if Begum is a victim of exploitation, this fact would render it all the more urgent for the UK government to approach her circumstances with a view to support, rights protections, and rehabilitation instead of exclusion. It should also obtain independent evaluations from medical professionals or other trauma specialists before concluding that she poses a threat to others.

Begum, who flew to Syria at age 15, has been harshly criticized in the UK press, which has depicted her as an “ISIS bride.” The Court of Appeal, too, described Begum as someone who “married an ISIL fighter” in the opening paragraphs of its July 2020 judgment. In its official justifications for its decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship in 2019, the Home Office has largely restricted itself to general allegations, such as that she “aligned [sic] with ISIL” in Syria; however, her purported marriage has loomed large in how the public, and presumably the Home Secretary and the courts, view her.

In an astute forthcoming report on gender and State efforts to prevent terrorist violence (A/HRC/46/36), UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (also an executive editor at Just Security) has critiqued the purported gender-blindness—and actual gender bias—of governments’ national security activities. “Women … are immediately presumed to be suspect by virtue of familial or communal association with particular men,” she writes. While Ní Aoláin was discussing excessive surveillance, her observation is just as applicable in Begum’s case, in which influential press outlets have defined a woman’s identity by reference to her supposed marriage (and by the man’s ideology). Similarly, the Home Office’s assessments of her dangerousness seem to rest on few factors that would suggest an individualized analysis of Begum as a distinct human being.

In reality, Begum’s relationship may have been no marriage at all—and may instead have been part of an episode of child trafficking. In both Syria and the UK, Begum would have been below the legal minimum age for marriage at the time of the supposed wedding in Syria. Additionally, under the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings—to which the UK is a party—”[t]he recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child” under 18 “for the purpose of exploitation” qualifies as human trafficking. The exploitation need not be sexual; it could involve forced labor or other compelled activities. However, sexual exploitation explicitly counts for the purposes of the trafficking definition found in the treaty.

The Supreme Court’s failure to consider whether Begum is a victim who needs and is entitled to support, rather than a past or potential perpetrator, is partly a result of the questions before it. But the Home Office has no such excuse: the UK has an official “National Referral Mechanism” for identifying trafficking victims, and many Home Office agencies have the authority to refer people to it. Home Office officials therefore have every reason to be aware of legal definitions of trafficking and of the need to approach survivors with a view to offering support, not imposing punishment or making conclusory findings about dangerousness.

Worse, conditions in Roj, the camp in northeast Syria where Begum is now living, are so poor that multiple United Nations experts have called for all States to bring their nationals home immediately. In 2020, Rights and Security International—the organization I now direct—found that people in the camps, which are administered by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, suffer from serious deprivation and danger. Ní Aoláin and other top U.N. human rights experts have stated that people in Roj and al-Hol, the camp where Begum was initially held, “are exposed to violence, exploitation, abuse and deprivation in conditions and treatment that may well amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international law.” Begum’s own infant son became ill and died in the camps—one of three children she bore and whose deaths she has endured during her time in Syria.

Begum and her lawyers claim that while in the camps, Begum has not been able to participate sufficiently in the legal struggle for her rights, such as by joining hearings virtually; RSI’s research suggests that women in the camps can be punished if caught with a mobile phone. Her inability to participate in her own case was a major part of her argument that the government should give her leave to enter the UK while she appealed the deprivation of her citizenship.

In Begum’s case, the UK’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a lower tribunal that handles appeals from people deported under certain provisions, accepted that conditions in Roj amount to inhuman or degrading treatment. However, the Supreme Court left undisturbed the Home Office’s conclusion that any risk that Begum might experience mistreatment in the camps did not depend on whether her British citizenship was restored or remained canceled. The Court, therefore, did not grapple with the practical risk that refusing to allow Begum to enter the UK to pursue her citizenship deprivation appeal will result in continued exposure to torture or other harm—a risk that raises complex and important questions about the UK’s obligations under the Convention against Torture and other international laws.

Begum attracted intense controversy in 2019 after making comments to a reporter that seemed to support the Islamic State and justify violence, and it appears likely that these comments have influenced the courts’ treatment of her appeals against the Home Office’s decision to bar her from the UK. The Court of Appeal recounted Begum’s claim to the journalist that her first glimpse of a severed head in Syria had not bothered her. (The Court of Appeal did not delve into whether trauma experts might cast doubt on such a claim of indifference.)

However, if Begum is a victim of trafficking or other violations of international law, any comments she has made do not affect this status. In the domestic violence field, scholars and advocates have long pointed out that women who do not fit a stereotype of a passive—and White—victim are often regarded with suspicion and denied help. But if Begum is a survivor of trafficking, torture, or other trauma in need of support and treatment, then that’s what she is—regardless of anything she may have said.

The Home Office has argued that Begum could claim Bangladeshi citizenship due to her family origins, and that its decision to remove her British citizenship—which she has had from birth—therefore does not leave her stateless. However, Bangladesh has said Begum is not a citizen and will not be allowed to enter the country. Friday’s UK Supreme Court judgment therefore has the practical effect of leaving Begum stranded in the camps indefinitely, vulnerable to further exploitation, despite a theoretical right to continue pursuing her appeal against the deprivation of her citizenship from outside the UK.

The judgment also closes the door on other British adults in the camps who have been stripped of their citizenship, as well as their family members in the UK who have been searching for a remedy.

This case likely is not over: Begum could bring her arguments to the European Court of Human Rights, or—if possible—try to reapproach the UK courts later. Regardless of her next steps, the UK Supreme Court’s decision is a grievous one for rights—and an example of purportedly gender-neutral national security decision-making that harms women.

•  

  Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies in Syria

  It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

  By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com  Feb 26, 2021, 
  Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies in Syria

It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

By Alex Ward@vox.com  Feb 26, 2021

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Budget Committee chair, arrives to a hearing regarding wages at large corporations on February 25. One day later, he came out against President Joe Biden’s Syria strike.

 Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

President Joe Biden is facing heat from fellow Democrats and law experts over his Thursday airstrikes against targets in eastern Syria tied to Iranian-backed militias, namely because they say he had no real legal justification for the attack.

The administration said the seven 500-pound bombs dropped on facilities two militias used to smuggle weapons were designed as a message: Attack US troops in the region and you risk retaliation. Over the past two weeks, Iranian proxies have fired rockets at anti-ISIS coalition forces outside Erbil, Iraq — killing a Filipino contractor and injuring US troops — and near the US Embassy in Baghdad.

“President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement hours after the strikes, calling them a “proportionate military response.” As of now, no deaths have been confirmed — the Pentagon is still assessing that — though US officials said they suspect the strikes possibly killed a “handful” of people.

Congressional Democrats denounced the strikes almost immediately, saying the US is not at war with Syria and that lawmakers didn’t authorize any attack on Iranian-backed militants. As a result, they essentially argue Biden ordered an illegal launch.

“Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a longtime advocate for bolstering Congress’s role in authorizing military operations, said in a Friday statement. “Our Constitution is clear that it is the Congress, not the President, who has the authority to declare war,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) added on Friday.

Criticism continued in the House. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a leading progressive foreign policy proponent, stated, “There is absolutely no justification for a president to authorize a military strike that is not in self-defense against an imminent threat without congressional authorization.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) also highlighted a 2017 tweet from current White House press secretary Jen Psaki that criticized then-President Trump’s decision to bomb Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack. “What is the legal authority for strikes?” Psaki asked, noting “Syria is a sovereign country.”

“Great question,” Omar tweeted in response on Thursday night.

Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator, also questioned Trump’s 2018 bombing of Syria after another chemical weapons attack, tweeting, “I am deeply concerned about the legal rationale for last night’s strikes.”

While many Republicans showed their support for the attack, the pushback over Biden’s first known strike reflects a decades-long debate over what the president can and can’t do with the largest military in the world. Biden’s decision in Syria just provided the latest flashpoint.

It’s therefore worth looking at each side’s main arguments. They’ll dominate not only the discussion about this strike but future ones over the next four years, too.

The Syria strikes reanimated the presidential vs. congressional war powers fight

A National Security Council spokesperson told me the administration has two main legal arguments for why Biden had the authority to retaliate against Iranian-backed proxies operating on the Syria-Iraq border. Both of them rely on the idea that responding to the last two weeks’ attacks on coalition facilities counts as self-defense.

Regarding domestic law, the spokesperson said, “the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to defend U.S. personnel.” Simply put, Article II of the Constitution names the president as the commander in chief, thereby giving him ultimate authority over all military matters.

US troops were endangered by the proxies’ actions in recent weeks, and so he had every right to defend them from future attack, the argument goes. Importantly, the White House isn’t claiming it had the authority to drop bombs on Syria, just that the US had a pressing need to act in self-defense.

As for international law, the spokesperson said “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense, as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.” That article states, in part, that nothing in the UN’s laws “shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” (We’ll come back to the full first sentence in a moment.)

By citing this provision, the administration is basically making the same argument as it did in domestic law: The proxies threatened US troops, and so America has the right to use force to defend them.

Congressional Democrats (and some Republicans) aren’t buying those arguments, though. Their case, based mostly in domestic law, stems from Article I of the Constitution, which states that only Congress can declare war or authorize military operations. There are some situation-dependent caveats to this, but that’s the main point.

Over the decades, Congress has abdicated that authority, rarely taking war votes while allowing the president to wield the military as he sees fit. The Korean and Vietnam wars, for example, were conducted without congressional approval. And the 2001 authorization passed to greenlight operations against al-Qaeda after 9/11 continues to be cited for counterterrorism operations around the world, even when al-Qaeda wasn’t the target.

Lawmakers have slowly begun to claw back their authority. In 2019, Congress passed a “War Powers Resolution” to block Trump from involving the US military in Yemen. Trump vetoed the bill, however, and without the supermajorities needed to overrule that veto, those offensive operations continued until Biden stopped them earlier this month. Still, it was a signal that Congress would rise against a president abusing his legal mandate.

Also in disagreement with Biden’s team are some law of war experts.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame and co-author of Self-Defense Against Non-State Actors, told me she agrees that the president should come to Congress when there is time to seek authorization. There was in this case, she contends, as the aggressions weren’t happening now but rather occurred over the past two weeks.

That’s something Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) picked up on in his Friday statement.

“Retaliatory strikes, not necessary to prevent an imminent threat, must fall within the definition of an existing congressional authorization of military force,” he said. “Congress should hold this administration to the same standard it did prior administrations, and require clear legal justifications for military action, especially inside theaters like Syria, where Congress has not explicitly authorized any American military action.”

But O’Connell’s main critique is that the White House got the international law wrong. As promised, here’s the first sentence of the UN Charter’s Article 51 in its entirety: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

O’Connell said the attack wasn’t on the American homeland, and the US surely had enough time to work with UN Security Council partners to punish Iran using diplomacy — not force. That means Biden’s team either willingly misread what that provision says or didn’t comprehend its true meaning.

“They are citing the correct sources of law,” O’Connell said, but “they are wildly misinterpreting them.”

“They are undermining their attempt at becoming a leadership team for the international community in promoting good order, stability, and the rule of law,” she concluded.

Of course, the president had more than legal argument on his mind when making his decision to drop bombs. As president, it’s his responsibility to protect Americans wherever they are. He also surely didn’t want Iran to believe it could threaten US troops with impunity. Risking Congress denying an authorization request might send Tehran that exact signal.

But even Kirby, the Pentagon spokesperson, couldn’t define what imminent threat US forces faced in Syria or Iraq, except to say the Thursday attack was meant to deter future Iranian assaults on Americans.

Which means the debate over when a president can authorize a strike by himself and when he must ask lawmakers for permission is alive and well during the Biden years. It’s raging already, and will surely continue in the years to come.

From a 360-degree panorama of the dusty landscape to a cheeky rover selfie: NASA's most stunning shots of Mars from Perseverance's first week on the Red Planet

• More than 5,000 images have been sent back to Earth by the NASA Perseverance rover from the Red Planet
• The images include thousands of the entry, descent and landing stage of the mission including the parachute
• There are 23 cameras on board the $2.2 billion Mars vehicle covering science, landing and engineering 
• As well as capturing images of the Martian sunset, the desert-like landscape and the rover itself, the cameras will be used to better understand the planet and guide the rover over difficult and rocky Martian terrain 

Released Monday was the mission's first panorama of the rover's landing location, taken by the two Navigation Cameras located on its mast

SEE THE REST HERE

NASA's Perseverance's most stunning shots of the Red Planet from its first week on Mars | Daily Mail Online

WHAT IS THE SNOW MOON?

According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, each Full Moon of the year goes by several names. The February Full Moon is most commonly called the Snow Moon. Other names include Bear Moon, Eagle Moon, Raccoon Moon, Groundhog Moon, and Hunger Moon.

As for why February's Moon is called the Snow Moon, the Almanac says:

 "February is typically a time of heavy snowfall."

This graphic collects all the relevant data about each Full Moon of 2021, including their popular names, whether they are a 'super' or 'micro' Moon, a perigee or apogee Full Moon, and whether they are remarkable in some other way (Blue Moon or Harvest Moon). Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Scott Sutherland

Most of these Full Moon names are simplifications or loose translations of names and phrases from First Nations peoples. According to Western Washington University's Spanel Planetarium, many First Nations tribes had names for the February Full Moon. Some named them after animals, such as the goose (the Haida and the Omaha), the rabbit (the Potawatomi), the crow (the Shawnee), the coyote (the Shoshone), or the black bear (the Tlingit). There are references to cold (the Lakota and Wishram), ice or frost (the Algonquin and Arapaho), and sleet (the Comanche). The Kalapuya of the Pacific Northwest referred to it as "atchiulartadsh" — which translates to "out of food" — and could be a possible reference to 'Hunger Moon'.

Does it live up to the name Snow Moon, though?

There is certainly an abundance of snow on the ground across Canada right now. Also, plenty of that snow fell during storms that swept across parts of the country during the month of February.

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, however, at least over the past 30 years, January has been the month of the year when most Canadians see the highest snowfall amounts.

"February may not be the month where the most snow falls in a year, but because it comes at the end of the season, and at a time when temperatures for most places average below zero, you probably see more snow on the ground since you've had your best chance to build up snowpack," says Weather Network meteorologist Michael Carter.

The Weather Network - Three fun facts about tonight's Full Snow Moon

'Spooky' AI tool brings dead relatives' photos to life

  

By Umberto Bacchi
MEDIA INDUSTRY
FEBRUARY 26, 2021 

(Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Like the animated paintings that adorn the walls of Harry Potter’s school, a new online tool promises to bring portraits of dead relatives to life, stirring debate about the use of technology to impersonate people.

Genealogy company MyHeritage launched its “Deep Nostalgia” feature earlier this week, allowing users to turn stills into short videos showing the person in the photograph smiling, winking and nodding.

“Seeing our beloved ancestors’ faces come to life ... lets us imagine how they might have been in reality, and provides a profound new way of connecting to our family history,” MyHeritage founder Gilad Japhet said in a statement.

Developed with Israeli computer vision firm D-ID, Deep Nostalgia uses deep learning algorithms to animate images with facial expressions that were based on those of MyHeritage employees.

Some of the company’s users took to Twitter on Friday to share the animated images of their deceased relatives, as well as moving depictions of historical figures, including Albert Einstein and Ancient Egypt’s lost Queen Nefertiti.

“Takes my breath away. This is my grandfather who died when I was eight. @MyHeritage brought him back to life. Absolutely crazy,” wrote Twitter user Jenny Hawran.

While most expressed amazement, others described the feature as “spooky” and said it raised ethical questions. “The photos are enough. The dead have no say in this,” tweeted user Erica Cervini.

From chatbots to virtual reality, the tool is the latest innovation seeking to bring the dead to life through technology.

Last year U.S. rapper Kanye West famously gifted his wife Kim Kardashian a hologram of her late father congratulating her on her birthday and on marrying “the most, most, most, most, most genius man in the whole world”. WHY SHE DIVORCED HIM

‘ANIMATING THE PAST’

The trend has opened up all sorts of ethical and legal questions, particularly around consent and the opportunity to blur reality by recreating a virtual doppelganger of the living.

Elaine Kasket a psychology professor at the University of Wolverhampton in Britain who authored a book on the “digital afterlife”, said that while Deep Nostalgia was not necessarily “problematic”, it sat “at the top of a slippery slope”.

“When people start overwriting history or sort of animating the past ... You wonder where that ends up,” she said.

MyHeritage acknowledges on its website that the technology can be “a bit uncanny” and its use “controversial”, but said steps have been taken to prevent abuses.


“The Deep Nostalgia feature includes hard-coded animations that are intentionally without any speech and therefore cannot be used to fake any content or deliver any message,” MyHeritage public relations director Rafi Mendelsohn said in a statement.

Yet, images alone can convey meaning, said Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

“Imagine somebody took a picture of the Last Supper and Judas is now winking at Mary Magdalene - what kind of implications that can have,” Hussain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Similarly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) animations could be use to make someone appear as though they were doing things they might not be happy about, such as rolling their eyes or smiling at a funeral, he added.

Mendelsohn of MyHeritage said using photos of a living person without their consent was a breach of the company’s terms and conditions, adding that videos were clearly marked with AI symbols to differentiate them from authentic recordings.

“It is our ethical responsibility to mark such synthetic videos clearly and differentiate them from real videos,” he said.


Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi in Milan; Editing by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit news.trust.org

Exclusive: Lilly Singh Explains Why Canada Categorizing The Proud Boys As A Terrorist Organization Is A Turning Point

© Provided by ET Canada

Lilly Singh is sharing an exclusive new video with ET Canada, and she's got an important point to make.

In the video, the star of "A Little Late with Lilly Singh" begins by expressing her appreciation for being able "to talk about important things and have conversations that I believe matter."

She's been thinking about "the power of words and language, because if you think about it, some words and how we understand them can change our entire view of the world."

RELATED: Lilly Singh Talks To Drew Barrymore About Being The Only Female Daily Late-Night Host

A big example of that, she explained, is the word "terrorist," which "as long as I can remember has been an insult toward Muslim people," something that took on an even more racist component after 9/11.

This, she explained, is present in the way gun violence and other types of terrorist attacks are characterized by the media, depending on whether the person who commits that act is white or a person of colour. The former, she said, are always described as terrorists, while the latter are usually described using other terms, such as "gunman."

However, she pointed to Canada's recent designation of the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization as a major turning point.

"It's like somebody turned off the gaslight for two seconds and thought, 'If they walk like a terrorist, and talk like a terrorist, and attack like a terrorist, maybe they're more dangerous than your Muslim neighbour who'll come over and drink sparkling grape juice instead of have a drink with you,'" she said.

RELATED: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh Gets Quizzed By Lilly Singh On Strange Canadian Laws

"Congratulations Proud Boys on breaking terrorism's glass ceiling," she added.

“A Little Late With Lilly Singh” 

Proud Boys leader throws pals under the bus for attacking Capitol during CNN interview

Tom Boggioni RAW STORY February 26, 2021


CNN screenshot

In an interview with CNN's Sara Sidner, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio admitted that, although he encouraged members of his far-right group to attend the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan 6th that led to a riot at the Capitol building, he doesn't believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump -- and then added that members of the Proud Boys who entered the building broke the law.

Tarrio, who has been accused of being an FBI informant and was not on the Capitol grounds the day of the insurrection because he was in jail, (PROTECTIVE CUSTODY) stated that he had no sympathy for the terrorized lawmakers, telling Sidner, "I'm not gonna cry about people who don't give a crap about their constituents. I'm not going to sympathize with them."

"They [lawmakers] are doing the job that the people put them there to do, and if they don't like it, they can vote them out," the CNN correspondent asked. "They are still Americans, they are still human beings who felt that their lives were in danger. How can you not feel any sympathy or any empathy towards them like that?"

"I'm not going to worry about people that their only worry in life is to be re-elected," he replied which led Sidner to report that eight friends of his within the Proud Boys-- which has been designated a terrorist organization by the Canadian government -- have been taken into custody so far.

With Sidner reporting that Tarrio encouraged the Proud Boys to "show up in record numbers," she asked about the close associates of the leader -- including one in particular --who have been taken into custody.

"I condemn the actions," he replied. "I don't think that he should have done that. I think it was completely wrong, but the other seven individuals were trespassing. I think that they got caught up with the entire -- like the entire crowd, and they made a poor decision to go in there."

"Members of the Proud Boys didn't appear to just be getting caught up in this, some of them were leading this attack," the CNN correspondent pressed. "You had people removing barriers who were Proud Boys. You had someone threatening an officer, breaking the Capitol window. They weren't just following in this insurrection, it appears that some of them were leading the charge."

"Now, those three accusations, I do want to touch on those," he replied. "The breaking of the window, we've already hit."

"You think that's wrong?" Sidner interjected.

"Yeah, definitely, unequivocally, I think that's wrong. But the threatening of police officers, I didn't -- I didn't see that," he attempted.

Pilot reports unknown flying ‘object’ in airline audio of close encounter

© AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images In this file photo, an American Airlines Boeing 787-9 takes off from Los Angeles international Airport on January 13, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

Josh K. Elliott  2 days ago

An unidentified flying object reportedly whizzed past an American Airlines passenger flight over New Mexico in a close encounter captured in a radio transmission from the pilot.

The incident happened around 1 p.m. local time on Sunday, while American Airlines flight 2292 was en route from Hebron, Ky., to Phoenix, Ariz.

A 15-second audio clip captures the pilot's excited voice as he tries to make sense of something he spotted above the clouds during the flight.

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"Do you have any targets up here?" he says over the radio. "We just had something go over the top of us that — I hate to say this — looked like a long cylindrical object."

The pilot describes the object as a "cruise missile type of thing" that was "moving really fast."

He adds that the object "went right over the top of us."

Steve Douglass, an airline radio enthusiast, first captured the audio chatter for his blog. American Airlines later confirmed that the audio was authentic, and referred all further questions to the FBI.

"Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21," American Airlines said in a statement to several outlets. "For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI."

Douglass said he was listening to the airwaves on Sunday when he heard the strange tone of the pilot's voice.

“I heard this aircraft, basically, above all other aircraft because the tone in his voice was so excited," Douglass told local station ABC 7.

He added that it's unlikely that the object was a missile, because Sundays are a "day off" for the military.

No military test notifications were made ahead of time, ABC 7 reports.

White Sands Missile Range, which operates in the area, did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News.

Cockpit audio recordings have captured a handful of close encounters over the years, though some have been more obviously terrestrial than others.

Last year, for example, pilots reported seeing a man with a jetpack around Los Angeles International Airport on two separate occasions.

Nevertheless, the close encounter sparked some speculation about aliens on social media, especially given that New Mexico is the site of the infamous alleged Roswell UFO incident.

The so-called UFO involved in Sunday's encounter remains, by definition, an unidentified flying object.

The Pentagon in recent years has confirmed several recordings and encounters with UFOs, which it calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Officials say they want pilots to be more comfortable with reporting such encounters due to the potential danger they might represent.

Video: Pilot claims UFO spotted while flying over Arizona

The government recently released a vast trove of documents about UFO sightings over the past several decades, although enthusiasts are still combing over those documents for evidence of alien visitors.

U.S. defence officials have not said that UAPs or UFOs are proof of alien visitors, despite rampant speculation that the truth is out there.