Tens of Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Paris to protest the introduction of the Health Pass. The Health Pass is being introduced in the country’s fight against the fourth wave of COVID-19. Only the vaccinated will be able to receive the Health Pass, and without one people will be banned from certain public spaces.
“We’re creating a segregated society and I think it is unbelievable to be doing this in the country of human rights,” said Anne, a teacher who was demonstrating in Paris. She declined to give her last name.
“So I took to the streets; I have never protested before in my life. I think our freedom is in danger.”
Already you cannot go to museums, cinemas or swimming pools without a Health Pass. In a vote this week it is expected vaccination will become mandatory for all health care workers; and the Health Pass extended to include bars, restaurants, trade shows, trains and hospitals.
Read More: France 24
President Biden has announced that he intends to nominate Rashad Hussain as the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Hussain would be the first Muslim to hold the role.
During the Obama Administration, Hussain served as U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) from 2010 to 2015.
During this time and Egyptian magazine named Hussain as an American activist working for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The December 22, 2012 story published in Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef weekly magazine claimed the six had turned the White House “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood,” a group described by the Chicago Tribune as “the world’s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group.”
Read More: Breitbart
Mark Zuckerberg is incentivizing church-goers to permanently switch to Facebook as their means of connecting with God. The tech giant is building relationships with church leaders, who have used the social media platform during the pandemic. They hope the churches will switch their church activities online.
Reportedly, Facebook and Hillsong Church, Georgia have been in discussions over the pandemic, to see what church online could look like.
“Together, we are discovering what the future of the church could be on Facebook,” said Sam Collier, Hillsong’s pastor.
Read More: Breitbart
Goldman Sachs has cut their projection for US GDP in 2022, they expect growth to slow to between 1.5%-2%.
The investment bank blamed the reduced growth forecast on the continuing Coronavirus pandemic.
“We have long expected growth to peak in a mid-year boom fueled by vaccination and fiscal support,” wrote economist Ronnie Walker. “But the subsequent deceleration now looks likely to be a bit sharper because the goods-to-services rotation is likely to be less seamless.”
Read More: Fox
Counter terrorism organization the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database, formed by some of the biggest big tech companies, like Facebook and Mircosoft, is expanding the types of content they will clamp down on.
Up until now it has targetted graphic images and videos of terrorist activities, mostly involving Islamic terrorist groups.
However, as on next month it plans to add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence.
Read More: Reuters
PayPal in partnership with non-profit organisation the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are to research how hate groups and extremist organisations use financial platforms to fund their activities.
The research will focus on the disrupting of funds to white supremacist and anti-government organizations.
It is hoped the information will then be shared to other financial organisations, law enforcement and government.
Read More: Reuters
A new cyberattack targetting iphones has been detected. The “Zero Click” attack exploits iMessage, and allows hackers to gain controls without any human interaction.
A successful zero-click attack was observed this month on a fully patched iphone 12.
“Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life, and are used to target specific individuals,” said Ivan Krstić, head of Apple security engineering and architecture. “While that means they are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users, we continue to work tirelessly to defend all our customers, and we are constantly adding new protections for their devices and data.”
Read More: Fox Buisness.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has announced the future direction of the social media giant. He is seeking to create what he calls the Metaverse. This is an interconnected set of experiences, which would span every area of society from social, work, and entertainment.
Discussing the metaverse, Zuckerberg told the Verge:
This is a big topic. The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies — the whole industry. You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet. And it’s certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers. But you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.
I think a lot of people, when they think about the metaverse, they think about just virtual reality — which I think is going to be an important part of that. And that’s clearly a part that we’re very invested in, because it’s the technology that delivers the clearest form of presence. But the metaverse isn’t just virtual reality. It’s going to be accessible across all of our different computing platforms; VR and AR, but also PC, and also mobile devices and game consoles. Speaking of which, a lot of people also think about the metaverse as primarily something that’s about gaming. And I think entertainment is clearly going to be a big part of it, but I don’t think that this is just gaming. I think that this is a persistent, synchronous environment where we can be together, which I think is probably going to resemble some kind of a hybrid between the social platforms that we see today, but an environment where you’re embodied in it.
Zuckerberg later added:
And I guess one broader point that I’d make here is, one lesson that I’ve taken from running Facebook over the last five years is that I used to think about our job as building products that people love to use. But you know, now I think we just need to have a more holistic view of this. It’s not enough to just build something that people like to use. It has to create opportunity and broadly be a positive thing for society in terms of economic opportunity, in terms of being something that, socially, everyone can participate in, that it can be inclusive. So we’re really designing the work that we’re doing in the space with those principles from the ground up. This isn’t just a product that we’re building. It needs to be an ecosystem. So the creators who we work with, the developers, they all need to be able to not only sustain themselves, but hire a lot of folks.
A group of 189 Republicans have written to the President to demand answers about the administrations “censorship program”. The initiative is a collaboration between the White House and big tech to “undermine free speech [the companies and the White House] don’t agree with.”
Read More: Breitbart
The prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes reportedly stalled the investigation until after the election, to avoid politicizing the case.
Read More: Fox News
Jen Psaki has been criticised after urging big tech to ban users who have been banned from other social media platforms for spreading “misinformation” about coronavirus.
She advised they “create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules. You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others if you are for providing misinformation out there.”
Critics have already been concerned by the Biden administration’s collaborations with big tech.
Read More: Fox
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir have released a song with a message to parents: “we are coming for your children.”
https://youtu.be/ArOQF4kadHA
The Taliban claim to have taken 85% of Afghan territory. The Government refute these claims, saying the territory taken is of little strategic importance.
It is believed the Taliban now control valuable mineral trade routes along the border with Iran. If this is the case, the Taliban will see their revenues increased.
As the US withdraw troops from the country, President Biden has said that he unwilling to allow another generation of young Americans to die in Afghanistan. However, he admitted that, “the likelihood there is going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely”.
Read More: France 24
Random Events, Free Will, Pre-destiny or Something Darker ?