● 08.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 24/08/2023: CMA Continues Blocking a Microsoft Takeover

Posted in News Roundup at 7:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

• We’re sitting around the dinner table discussing what happened at school today and it leads us to the subject of counting to ten.

• Realizing everyone in the family can count to ten in a language unique to them at this moment in their life, we go around the table to do it (youngest to oldest).

• The case dates back to April 8th 2021, when Weimar District Family Court judge Christiaan Dettmar ruled that two schools in the district a) could not enforce mask mandates, b) must continue in-person classes and c) could not force pupils to test for “Covid”.

Science

• If Chandrayaan-3 succeeds, analysts expect India’s space sector to capitalise on a reputation for cost-competitive engineering. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had a budget of around just $74 million for the mission.

• The unmanned craft reached lunar orbit on August 5, and released the lander and rover on August 17, which descended to the Moon’s surface.

• Now, it has finally reached its target destination: the lunar south pole, a region covered in craters permanently shadowed from the Sun and encrusted with ice. The achievement makes India the fourth country to land on the Moon after the US, Russia, and China, and the first to land on the lunar south pole.

• I enjoyed a quick visit to the Science Museum at the weekend, and here are a few of the interesting things I saw.

• “When their bones suffered the effects of the high temperatures caused by the pyroclastic waves and magma currents, the victims had already died, probably from inhaling toxic gasses,” said Llorenç Alapont, an archaeologist at the University of Valencia and the study’s lead author, in a university release.

• The ash then cooled and hardened, and the bodies buried beneath its layers decomposed, leaving only the victims’ bones. Flash forward to the late 19th century, when Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli developed a technique to pour plaster into voids left in the hardened ash by the bodies’ final positions. The casts showcase details of the victims’ faces, teeth, and even preserved folds in their clothing.

• The Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover touched down on the lunar surface at 8:34 a.m. ET (6:04 p.m. local time in India), adding India to a short list of countries who have been able to achieve a soft landing on the Moon. It’s now the fourth country to have landed on the Moon following the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China, and the first to land on the lunar south pole.

Education

• Techno Friends was born, nurtured by a belief that the earlier girls start honing a skill, the better. Children as young as first grade now take part in the classes.

• So the long and short of my career is this: My perspective and the actions it inspired have basically created a vicious cycle that is making me miserable. This has happened because when I am presented with a problem that requires a solution of some sort (usually in the form of code), I tend to figure out what the best abstract version of that solution could be and then get to work trying to build that thing.

• That part isn’t the problem. That’s exactly what a professional coder is supposed to do. However the problem arises further down the line after that abstract vision is complicated, dumbed down and made less palatable because of pre-existing considerations, personal bias and conflicting opinions that tend to result in the many compromises our solutions have to endure and ingest before they can be built and unleashed upon the world.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The government of Victoria, Australia, has agreed to pay about $5 million (about $3.2 million U.S.) to settle a lawsuit brought by residents of Melbourne public housing who were forced into a hard 14-day COVID-19 lockdown with no warning in July 2020. Some 3,000 people may be eligible for compensation.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• All of that was before the generative-AI boom. Compared with many other things we use online, ChatGPT and its brethren are unique in their power usage. AI risks making every search, scroll, click, and purchase a bit more energy intensive as Silicon Valley rushes to stuff the technology into search engines, photo-editing software, shopping and financial and writing and customer-service assistants, and just about every other digital crevice. Compounded over nearly 5 billion [Internet] users, the toll on the climate could be enormous. “Within the near future, at least the next five years, we will see a big increase in the carbon footprint of AI,” Shaolei Ren, a computer scientist at UC Riverside, told me. Not all of the 13 experts I spoke with agreed that AI poses a major problem for the planet, but even a moderate emissions bump could be destructive. With so many of the biggest sources of emissions finally slowing as governments crack down on fossil fuels, the [Internet] was already moving in the wrong direction. Now AI threatens to push the web’s emissions to a tipping point.

• The Silicon Valley company’s products, called graphics processing units, or GPUs, are used to create the vast majority of A.I. systems, including the popular ChatGPT chatbot. Tech companies ranging from start-ups to the industry’s giants are fighting to get their hands on them.

Windows TCO

• It’s been eight and half years since I first wrote about the need for security leadership representation in the boardroom. I then revisited the topic last year, when the SEC initially proposed amendments to its rules to enhance and standardize disclosures regarding cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident reporting.

• Now, as the SEC cyber incident disclosure rules come into effect, organizations will finally be forced to seriously consider giving security leaders a seat at the table. It’s the next logical step to be able to comply with the disclosure and oversight requirements as the new guidelines detail.

Security

• Eight in 10 web servers run on Linux.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (mediawiki and qt4-x11), Fedora (java-17-openjdk, linux-firmware, and python-yfinance), Red Hat (kernel, kpatch-patch, and subscription-manager), SUSE (evolution, janino, kernel, nodejs16, nodejs18, postgresql15, qt6-base, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (inetutils).

• A laptop containing confidential information was allegedly stolen from the offices of a private hospital’s blood bank, police here said on Tuesday.

• According to a complaint filed by Dr Sangeeta Agarwal, head of blood bank at the Fortis Memorial Research Institute, the laptop was stolen from her office on August 5.

• A Defence Forces investigation is under way into another data protection breach of the military’s electronic health record system.

• The latest investigation centres on the alleged actions of a healthcare worker at a military medical facility.

• The Defence Forces has said it is the third alleged breach in relation to the electronic military medical records system Socrates in five years.

• A court has found an 18-year-old from Oxford was a part of an international cyber-crime gang responsible for a hacking spree against major tech firms.

• Arion Kurtaj was a key member of the Lapsus$ group which hacked the likes of Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games.

• A court heard Kurtaj leaked clips of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto 6 game while on bail in a Travelodge hotel.

• On Friday, August 18, 2023, CloudNordic, a leading provider of cloud services, fell victim to a serious ransomware attack. The hackers took control of all systems, resulting in extensive downtime and data loss for both the company and their customers.

• The attack was discovered at 04:00, and since then CloudNordic’s IT experts have been working intensively to regain control. Unfortunately, it has proven impossible to recover the lost data, which means that the majority of their customers have lost all data that was stored with CloudNordic. The incident has been reported to the police.

• The Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) has discovered that a former employee, who served as a practical nurse within the district, breached the privacy of nearly 1,000 patients.

• The case was confirmed by HUS Administrative Chief Medical Officer (AVMO) Teppo Heikkilä, who said the nurse gained access to the files through the Apotti patient record system. […]

• On Tuesday, the Hospital District issued a statement regarding two additional suspected, but smaller, breaches. These incidents involved unauthorised access to the medical records of “several dozens or hundreds” of patients.

• The FBI is warning cryptocurrency companies of recent blockchain activity connected to the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Over the last 24 hours, the FBI tracked cryptocurrency stolen by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) TraderTraitor-affiliated actors (also known as Lazarus Group and APT38). The FBI believes the DPRK may attempt to cash out the bitcoin worth more than $40 million dollars.

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission released its final rule, effective Sept. 5, 2023, on cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident disclosure. Investors, registrants, and other market participants should take special notice of two key terms in the regulations: “materiality” and the “reasonable investor.”

• The SEC has deemed disclosures, cybersecurity risk management, and governance to be material to both the market and to a reasonable investor.

• A close look at these terms—and how the SEC and courts have interpreted them—will be a useful guide to those affected by the new rule.

Privacy/Surveillance

• The fine is valid as Meta is not respecting European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), said Hanne Inger Bjurstroem Jahren, a lawyer representing the regulator, Datatilsynet.

• “There is no discussion on whether the company is in violation of these rules … Today Meta breaks GDPR rules,” she told the court, speaking on the last day of a two-day hearing.

• In 2022, noyb continued its longstanding fight for users’ right to privacy. Although the GDPR always foresaw a strong role for non-profits in this regard, we still see a lack of enforcement by data protection authorities (DPAs). That’s why our main effort in 2022 has been to push forward our nearly 800 preexisting cases, which were filed in previous years but often didn’t result in a DPA decision. This means that we have invested a lot of work in clarifying procedural issues and challenging DPAs’ inaction across Europe.

• The groups are asking the FTC to use its investigative authorities to determine if Google’s behavior has violated federal children’s privacy law as well as an agreement it reached with the agency in 2019 over previous alleged violations.

• Documents submitted as part of the request for investigation detail research conducted independently by Fairplay that raises the possibility Google may be personalizing ads placed on videos from “made for kids” channels, potentially contradicting the tech giant’s claims it does not target children.

• Sensitive data as defined in the DSA refers to a broad range of attributes, including sexual orientation, religion, health history and political persuasion. “Just eliminating this type of data from the profiling of users for targeted advertising is going to be a very difficult task, regardless of the size of the company,” Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, vice president for global privacy at the Future of Privacy Forum, told CyberScoop.

Defence/Aggression

• For well over a decade, we were used to nightly shots on our television news of British and US forces, in heavy combat gear, storming across desert landscapes in cloud of dust or firing heavy machine guns over the top of mud walls.

• We speak to the author of a new Human Rights Watch report that details how border guards in Saudi Arabia have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers — many of whom are fleeing human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Tigray region — trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi border since March 2022. The report documents Saudi border guards shooting women and children, firing explosive weapons at migrants and “executing” people at close range. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday that it will conduct a joint investigation with the Saudi government, but Saudi Arabia has previously denied similar allegations. “I don’t have any faith that they would conduct an independent investigation on these mass killings,” says Nadia Hardman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report, titled “’They Fired on Us Like Rain.’”

• We look at the 70th anniversary of the August 19, 1953, U.S.- and U.K-backed coup in Iran, which took place two years after Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry that had been controlled by the company now known as British Petroleum. “If nationalization in Iran of oil was successful, this would set a terrible example to other countries where U.S. oil interests were present,” explains Ervand Abrahamian, Iranian historian and author of Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’Etat and The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations. While the CIA has historically taken credit for Mosaddegh’s overthrow, “the British have not admitted their leading role,” notes Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani, whose documentary film Coup 53 uncovers the influence of MI6 agents who sought to preserve their imperial-era access to Iranian oil and pulled in the Americans by promising a “slice.” Seventy years later, says Amirani, “We are still living with the ripples of this disastrous event.”

• This week, as another presidential election approaches, what is likely the final chapter in that case is unfolding in the same rural county as the governor’s vacation home. Three men — Michael Null and William Null, who are twin brothers, and Eric Molitor — are on trial on a charge of providing material support for a terrorist act. Prosecutors said the plot had been fueled by anti-government sentiment, militia activity and anger over pandemic lockdowns.

• [...] The board of the Estonian Police and Border Guard said the project involves the installation of six digital cameras and radar checkpoints, expanding the number of monitoring points to 15. [...]

• In 2017, the first documented cash transfers from the Islamic State to the ADF took place. Two years later, the Islamic State announced the debut of the Islamic State Central Africa Province affiliate, which included the ADF. The U.S. government imposed sanctions in 2021 on the ADF, calling it an Islamic State affiliate.

• It’s simple: If a candidate is on the stage in Milwaukee, that candidate has signed the Republican National Committee’s “loyalty pledge,” promising to support the eventual Republican presidential nominee. Agreeing to something like that when the most likely GOP nominee right now is former president and current out-on-bond criminal defendant Donald Trump should be disqualifying.

• After all, who in their right mind would pledge – sign their name and everything – to support a guy facing more than 90 state and federal felony charges, a guy who isn’t even attending the debate and wouldn’t sign the pledge if he were? Heck, Trump will be getting booked at a Georgia county jail on Thursday, the day after the debate, on charges he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election!

• A 50% spike in fatalities linked to militant Islamist groups in the Sahel and Somalia over the past year eclipsed the previous high in 2015 when Boko Haram was at its most lethal phase according to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS).

• Armed terrorist groups operating in Niger have intensified their attacks since the July 26 coup d’état, causing over 100 deaths, including those of around 30 military personnel, in just three weeks. One of the arguments put forward by the coup leaders for their seizure of power was the failure of the government to combat jihadist terrorism and the need for a different approach, but the policies of dialogue, community negotiation and reinsertion implemented by ousted President Mohamed Bazoum were beginning to yield results with a decrease in attacks registered in 2022 and 2023. In the three weeks following the military uprising, that dynamic appears to have been broken.

• Hundreds, possibly even thousands, of Ethiopian migrants were allegedly shot dead or seriously injured by Saudi Arabia’s border guards between March 2022 and June 2023, according to a report by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW).

• HRW has been documenting killings of migrants at the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, but the past few months appear to have seen an escalation in both the numbers and types of targeted killings, the human rights organization writes in its report which was published earlier this week.

• A video reported to show trucks transporting Russian ballistic missiles in Niger has been widely circulating amongst West African Facebook and TikTok users since August 11. It turns out, however, that the video was filmed in the Republic of the Congo, not Niger, and shows trucks transporting storage tanks.

Environment

• Superintendent Leadriane Roby announced the schedule change Wednesday afternoon, citing soaring temperatures in the decision to release students early.

• “With the humidity and air temperatures in the forecast tomorrow, it will simply be too warm in some of our buildings as we move into the afternoon,” Roby said. “It’s a difficult call to make so early in the school year but when temperatures reach such high levels it raises a safety concern.”

• Generally, aircraft may experience some performance issues above 86ºF (30ºC). More specifically, this depends on the type of aircraft. For example, a Boeing 737 can operate at a maximum air temperature of 125.6ºF (52ºC), and an Airbus A320 can operate at a maximum air temperature of 122ºF (50ºC), according to the manufacturer’s specifications.

• Whether a plane can fly or not doesn’t only rely on air temperature, though. Another factor to take into account is the length of the runway. As we’ve stated above, in hotter weather, aircraft engines and wings may work less efficiently, and airplanes may require more lift than usual to take off.

• Thus, some runways may not be long enough to allow aircraft to achieve the necessary speed (and lift) to take off, especially at higher altitudes, where the air is already less dense. In areas where hot weather is the norm (such as in the Middle East), airports are built with longer runways for this reason.

• It marked the first time a U.S. court has ruled that “young people have a fundamental right to a climate system that is safe and stable for their lives,” said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and executive director of Our Children’s Trust. The nonprofit law firm represented the youth in the first-of-its-kind trial.

• Tropical forests are home to roughly half of known species on Earth and they play an essential role in the health and stability of the global climate. While this lush biome is known for its balmy temperatures, tropical leaves start to die off at temperatures exceeding about 46.7°C (or 116.1°F) because they can no longer perform photosynthesis, which is the basic metabolic process of converting sunlight to energy that powers plants.

• Climate impacts such as dry, hot summers reduce the growth and increase the mortality of trees in the Black Forest because they negatively influence the climatic water balance, i.e., the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. That is the central finding of a long-term study of the influence of climate and climate change on trees in the Black Forest conducted by Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Kahle and Prof. Dr. Heinrich Spiecker, who are both professors of forest growth and dendroecology at the University of Freiburg.

Energy/Transportation

• “We estimate an average discounted investment requirement of US$3 billion per year, generating potential profits of over US$5 billion per year from increased yields to smallholder farmers, as well as significant food security and energy access co-benefits,” explains Giacomo Falchetta, lead author of the study and a researcher in the Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program.

• “Reducing the irrigation gap with cost-effective solar pumps can boost food production and improve nutrition, contributing to SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). Furthermore, surplus electricity generated by these systems could serve other energy needs, aligning with SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy).”

• When you lose mains power, the PiPower will seamlessly switch from using mains power to its connected battery. When power finally comes back, the PiPower will switch to using mains power and begin charging its battery.

Wildlife/Nature

• An estimated 20,000 Muusoctopus robustus octopuses, also known as pearl octopuses, occupy this 823-acre site. While the Octopus Garden is clearly a breeding ground and nursery, scientists were initially puzzled about why such an unprecedented number of octopuses had selected this particular spot to reproduce.

Finance

• The platform also shared that there are more than two million paid subscriptions to Substack writers, while its network has more than 35 million active subscriptions in total.

• Dozens of jobs are on the chopping block at BioWare, as the Edmonton-based video game developer restructures its business.

• In a blog post on Aug. 23, Gary McKay, the company’s general manager, said approximately 50 roles are being eliminated.

• “In order to meet the needs of our upcoming projects, continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality, and ensure BioWare can continue to thrive in an industry that’s rapidly evolving, we must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio,” McKay said.

• BioWare, the video game developer most known for its RPG titles like the Mass Effect franchise, is eliminating “approximately 50 roles” to “shift towards a more focused studio,” the company’s general manager Gary McKay said in an official statement on Wednesday, Aug. 23.

• The mass layoffs, according to BioWare, will allow its developers to “iterate quickly” and “unlock more creativity.” The Canadian studio said the layoffs were necessary to ensure its upcoming game Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is “outstanding” and the next Mass Effect game is successful.

• The idea of a “basic income,” a stipend that a government provides its citizens to ensure their livelihood, is an old one, often traced back to ancient Rome and Publius Clodius Pulcher’s establishment of a regular allotment of free grain for Roman citizens. Daniel Zamora Vargas and Anton Jäger’s aim in Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income is to provide an intellectual and social history of basic income from antiquity to the present. A fundamental question emerges from their historical accounting: They show that a surprising range of people—from neoliberals (Milton Friedman), neoconservatives (Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and racist reactionaries (Charles Murray) to continental philosophers (Michel Foucault) and civil right leaders (most notably Martin Luther King Jr.)—have all embraced some version of the basic income. Indeed, the idea has proved attractive not only to certain Marxist thinkers but also to tech moguls like Mark Zuckerburg.

• The company that saw a surge in its growth during the pandemic will slow down its operations in some of the countries it invested in.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Ms Raimondo will carry a message that the US is not seeking to decouple from China.

• The trip by Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, comes at a tense moment for the U.S.-China relationship and the Chinese economy.

• The trip comes as the Biden administration rolls out a framework to ban certain US investments in China.

• Former President Donald Trump has agreed to turn himself in to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face 13 felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His bail is set at $200,000. Trump has now been indicted four times this year, even as he continues to dominate the Republican field for the 2024 presidential nomination. In Atlanta, we speak with independent journalist George Chidi, who helped expose the Trump campaign after witnessing a secret meeting of Republican operatives at the state Capitol in 2020. The gathering was part of a scheme to use fake electors to claim the state’s Electoral College votes for Trump despite his loss to Joe Biden. Chidi was recently subpoenaed to testify before the Fulton County grand jury in the Trump investigation but did not end up testifying. We also speak to Chidi about Atlanta’s efforts to build the massive Cop City police training complex.

• UN experts say one million children have been separated from their families.

• The EU is seen as the global leader in tech regulation, with more wide-ranging pieces of legislation – such as the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act – on the way. The bloc’s success in implementing such laws will influence the introduction of similar rules around the world.

• During the meeting, Cortizo announced the facility’s construction to house the known Digital Hub for Government Innovation and Technology, which will be a transforming milestone for Panama, as it will become one of the first buildings of its kind in the region dedicated exclusively to boosting innovation and government technology.

• Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the United States have designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. The European Union, which has sanctioned the IRGC for years over its ‘malign activities’ — designed to sow discord, manipulate public information or disrupt markets — is also considering adding the IRGC to its list of designated terrorist organizations.

• Established in the wake of Iran’s 1979 revolution, the IRGC is a branch of the Iranian armed forces, with its own army, navy, air force and intelligence agency. The IRGC is independent from Iran’s regular army, and is tasked with protecting the country’s Islamic system.

• New research follows increased prevalence of data-driven articles post-pandemic.

YouTube

Censorship/Free Speech

• “These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Blinken said in a statement.

• “We urge PRC authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

• Janine Jackson: In the 1980s, when we at FAIR would talk about how the goals of journalism as a public service, and of information as a public good, were in conflict with those of media as a profit-driven business, we were often met with the contention that the internet was going to make that conflict meaningless, by democratizing access to information and somehow sidelining that profit motive with—technology!

• Well, now we’re here, and much of our lives are online. It’s where many get news and information, how we communicate and learn. But power is still power, and the advertising model that drives so much fear and favor in traditional journalism is still in effect.

• So, while much is different, there are still core questions to consider when you’re trying to figure out why some kinds of news or “content” is in your face, like it or not, and why some perspectives are very hard to find, and why there’s so much garbage to get through to get to any of it.

• But in a surprise ruling late July, the High Court refused the application, saying that an injunction would not be useful and would cause “chilling effects” on free expression.

• The government appealed the decision, and on Wednesday judge Anthony Chan — who had presided over the denial last month — gave it the green light to be heard.

• Sources close to the Karami family told Radio Farda that during the raid, not only were family members taken into custody, but all of their electronic devices, including laptops and mobile phones, were confiscated.

• The film, linked to in the Radio Free Asia article, is apparently this: [...]

• The film, titled “Don’t Expect Anything,” portrays the message that it is meaningless to worship Buddha images or pagodas, and instead it’s important to follow Buddha’s teachings.

• This is true not just in Muslim lands. In Europe, too, those who are accused of insulting Muhammad are threatened with death, a threat that Muslims sometimes manage to carry out. Think only of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, Theo van Gogh, Lars Vilks, the staff of Jyllands-Posten, Salman Rushdie, and many others who were threatened with, or actually became the victims of, violent attacks, or were even murdered by Muslim fanatics. Even in India itself, where Muslim mobs are swift to inflict their “justice” against “blasphemers,” they are apparently unafraid of being apprehended by the police force.

• “I knew they would not spare me, so I had to say farewell to my instruments and leave the country,” he says. Some musicians tried to sell their instruments, he adds, while others destroyed them rather than letting them fall into the hands of the Taliban. “I buried my instruments in the fields.”

• It was foresight that saved Farhan’s life. Some of his colleagues, such as the folk singer Fawad Andarabi, were less fortunate, murdered by the Taliban just weeks after the group seized power.

• Since taking over, the Taliban have imposed their rigid [sic] interpretation of Islam, restricting and even criminalising music and arts – some of the most integral aspects of Afghan culture.

• Then, on Friday, authorities say, 27-year-old Ikeguchi shot and killed Laura Ann Carleton, a mother of nine – after shouting slurs and ripping down the Pride flag she flew outside her small store in the Cedar Glen neighborhood of Lake Arrowhead, a resort town in the mountains east of Los Angeles. Soon afterward, Ikeguchi was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies not far from the store.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Sure, she was many of these things, at least some of the time. But we can also see that she was a tart-tongued firebrand, not just feisty in the face of adversity but downright impassioned.

• The police raid may have led to Meyer’s death. It most certainly did not break her spirit or misdirect her moral compass.

• One hundred and fifty years ago, on Aug. 23, 1873, The Detroit News made a humble and low-tech debut when founder James E. Scripps rolled a few thousand copies off a small printing press in rented space on Shelby Avenue. James E. Scripps James E. Scripps

• Scripps envisioned a newspaper for the masses. So at a time when most other papers cost a nickel and served an elite audience, he charged just two cents for The News. He ordered his staff “to write the paper as people talk in conversation.”

• The search generated blowback from First Amendment experts, who condemned the raid and urged local law enforcement officials to return the journalists’ equipment. On Sunday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to the Marion Police Department expressing concern that the raid violated federal law. The letter was signed by more than 30 newsrooms, including The New York Times, and press advocacy organizations.

• Joan Meyer, a co-owner of the paper, died on Saturday, the day after the raid on the home she lived in with her son, Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher. Mr. Meyer said she was in shock after the raid, adding that she had trouble sleeping. Ms. Meyer, 98, refused food, and kept asking Mr. Meyer whether anyone would put an end to the clash with the authorities. She died midsentence.

• Mr. Meyer said the coroner had concluded that the stress of the searches was a contributing factor in her death.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Two years on, these assurances have been firmly demolished by the Taliban government’s actions. The suppression of women’s rights under their rule is the harshest in the world, brought in through a relentless series of religious decrees from the Taliban leadership, and regional rulings that have been steadily imposed across Afghanistan.

• During each of these moments, the BBC has been on the ground speaking to Afghan girls and women – documenting grief, fear, hope and resolve as their lives and world have shrunk.

• The so-called Hijab and Chastity Bill would impose a raft of new punishments on women who fail to wear the headscarf.

• It was drafted in response to months of mass protests triggered by the death in custody of a woman who was accused of not wearing her hijab correctly.

• Members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization have overwhelmingly voted to support signing a tentative three-year agreement with the University of Michigan less than one week before fall term classes begin.

• GEO started striking on March 27 and has previously rejected five U-M contract offers. In their bargaining platform, GEO called for expanded health care for graduate student employees, including gender-affirming care as well as pay parity for those working at all three U-M campuses. The University’s latest offer made some concessions in these areas, though in discussions last night, some graduate students were unsure if the University’s final offer sufficiently met their demands.

• Union leaders, in turn, submitted information to the university’s national accrediting body contending the university falsified student grades during the strike. The accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission, opened a review into the issue but said in a July 28 letter that it had not found “sufficient evidence” the university had been noncompliant with the accrediting body’s rules.

• The United States is to impose visa curbs on Chinese officials suspected of “forced assimilation” of Tibetan children at state-run schools, the US State Department said in a statement on Tuesday.

• The new restrictions will be applied to present and former Chinese officials responsible for the execution of the education policy in Tibet, a State Department spokesperson said, who held back further details citing the US confidentiality law on visa records.

• Despite the resumption of diplomatic dialogue between the two countries, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out China’s “coercive” policies that “seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• In the 2020-2021 school year, 95.6 percent of Michigan students surveyed by MSU researchers had some form of home internet access. A year later, it dropped to 93.2 percent, the report said.

• That is an “early warning sign” that pandemic gains in broadband access expansion in Michigan are “beginning to fade,” the report said.

Monopolies

• On Tuesday it said it would stick to its original decision to block it.

• But it will look at a separate restructured deal put forward by Microsoft, in which Activision would divest its cloud streaming rights to a third party – France’s Ubisoft Entertainment – excluding in the European Union.

• The carve-out is designed to not upset a deal with Brussels for Microsoft to license content to rival cloud services.

Copyrights

• Netflix’s DVD subscription platform will allow subscribers to keep their final delivery of DVDs as the company prepares to close its 25-year-old service, the company announced on Monday. In April, Netflix confirmed it will be shutting down its DVD mail order option, telling existing customers in a Twitter post last week that they will receive up to 10 random discs in their final shipment.

• Spanish football league LaLiga and and Telefónica-owned Movistar Plus+ have the authority to instruct local ISPs to block sites that allow people to view live matches for free, although which ones isn’t always clear. A blocklist published by a local media outlet recently suggests that, in addition to targeting streaming platforms, the companies are also trying to disrupt millions of torrents.

• Online piracy is a massive threat to Amazon but physical pirated DVDs remain a problem too. This week, the company filed a lawsuit against a group of online stores that sell pirated DVDs of key titles such as ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ and ‘The Peripheral’. While these DVDs may look real they are definitely pirated, as these series are only available on Amazon Prime.

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