The Boston City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to pass a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by city government. The move makes Boston the second-largest U.S. city after San Francisco to enact a ban. The city joins several other Massachusetts communities that passed similar bans, including Cambridge, Springfield, Northampton, Brookline and Somerville. “Boston should not use racially discriminatory technology that threatens the privacy and basic rights of our residents,” At-Large Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu said in a statement. “Community trust is the foundation for public safety and public health.” The push against the technology is being driven both by privacy concerns and after several studies have shown current face-recognition systems are more likely to err when identifying people with darker skin. “While face surveillance is a danger to all people, no matter the color of their skin, the technology is a particularly serious threat to Black and brown people,” Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union-Massachusetts has been pushing a bill on Beacon Hill that aims to establish a statewide moratorium on the government use of facial surveillance and other remote biometric screening technologies until the Legislature imposes checks and balances to protect the public’s interest. The Boston measure is now sent to Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh’s desk. If he takes no action in 15 days, it will automatically become law.
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Day: June 24, 2020
Recent research finds that women are more likely than men to produce trustworthy news reports on the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The Factual, a technology company in San Mateo, California, that measures the credibility of hundreds of news outlets.Phillip Meylan, a political analyst at The Factual, said he began crunching data on coronavirus reporting early in the pandemic and started to notice that many of the top-rated articles had been written by women.“Why are eight of them female out of 10? And so if you see that once, it’s kind of incidental. You think, okay, well, that, you know, it’s just random. It’s what I chose. But we saw it over and over and over again,” he told VOA.So he started to look at the data FILE – Marine One arrives on the White House South Lawn as CBS journalist Paula Reid and others prepare for President Donald Trump to board the presidential helicopter, May 14, 2020, in Washington.The Factual uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to determine credibility, based on the publication’s history of trustworthiness, the author’s work, the sources used and the tone of the story. Anything with a rating of 75 percent or above is considered very credible.“What those numbers tell us overall is just that, at least when it comes to coronavirus, female journalists have been more neutral in their tone,” Meylan said. “They’ve been better resourced, and they’ve overall just produced better articles.”Female reporters tend to score more highly than their male counterparts on other kinds of reporting as well, though not by such a significant margin. But allowing for the fact that they are outnumbered by the men, the number of women in the top ranks “does suggest that female journalists on average are more credible.”Meylan said the findings did not suggest that “you should go just read female journalists on coronavirus. But we saw it as an inroad to looking at why female journalists are underrepresented when it comes to anywhere in journalism, and how that may be affecting our news quality overall.“So if female journalists face challenges, face more obstacles, basically, when going out to do stories, whether it’s on coronavirus or the recent protests, how is this affecting our news output? And how is it affecting the overall narratives?” he said.To put the findings into a wider context, The Factual contacted gender equality expert Lucina Di Meco in San Francisco. Di Meco told VOA that in many fields, including journalism and political leadership, women have to be “as prepared or even overprepared to hold the same jobs that men hold, sometimes being paid less for those jobs, and are not afforded any mistakes.”“So it doesn’t surprise me that if we look at issues that are so crucial, women would really be especially careful in their approach, and female journalists in particular would be especially careful in the kind of news that they deliver,” she said.Different approach to leadershipDi Meco is the author of #ShePersisted, a study of the relationship between women and men in politics and social media globally. She said women take an approach to leadership that is “more participatory, that’s more careful, that tries to take into consideration a broader set of stakeholders.“And those are some of the same skills that are needed for a journalist to really shape a very good story that takes into account all the dimensions. So I definitely see parallels here.”FILE – A view of young mother pushing a stroller during the coronavirus pandemic on May 20, 2020, in Bethesda Fountain, Central Park in New York City.“The treatment that female politicians receive is very similar to the treatment that female journalists receive,” she said. “And that’s having to do with the fact that they are public figures.“And there are some groups of the population and some groups of interest [who] just don’t want to see women holding those leadership positions and being thought leaders in our society.”Di Meco noted that the pandemic was negatively affecting women in other ways as well, including greater job losses and an increase in domestic violence.She said policymakers have a responsibility to ensure that the needs of women and girls are taken into account in any decisions on how to deal with the effects of the pandemic, including the economic recovery.
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Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers, bringing it in line with a European Union directive intended to reduce the amount of plastic garbage that pollutes the environment.The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to end the sale of plastics including single-use cutlery, plates, stirring sticks and balloon holders, as well as polystyrene cups and boxes by July 3, 2021.Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said the move was part of an effort to move away from “throw-away culture.” Up to 20% of garbage collected in parks and other public places consists of single-use plastic, mainly polystyrene containers.Plastic takes decades to degrade and microscopic particles have been found inside the bodies of fish, birds and other animals.
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Twitter has launched a new prompt to fight gender-based violence in response to a surge in sexual assaults and domestic attacks during lockdown, a company official said on Wednesday.
The social network said the feature, currently available in 11 countries, directs users to local helpline services if they search for terms such as “domestic violence” or “sexual assault.”
“This is the first time that this notification prompt has been made available in multiple locations in multiple languages,” said Kathleen Reen, a senior director of Twitter in Asia-Pacific.
The prompt was introduced across Asia last week, then expanded to the United States on Wednesday, with notifications in English and Spanish. Next step: Europe and Latin America.
“Twitter is a very popular service during crisis. People come to find out what’s happening, what’s breaking and to get key information on real-time basis,” Reen told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The initiative came after the United Nations warned there had been a “horrifying global surge” in domestic violence, with calls to helplines doubling or tripling in some countries, as lockdowns trapped many women indoors with their abusers.
The feature is an expansion of Twitter’s #ThereIsHelp initiative, which provides similar notifications on issues such as suicide prevention and vaccinations.
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has called on governments to take urgent measures to tackle the spike in domestic violence and make it a part of national response plans for COVID-19.
More than 240 million women and girls aged 15 to 49 worldwide have faced sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner over the past 12 months, U.N. figures show.
It says the figure is likely to increase due to health and money worries ratcheting up tensions at home.
“Violence against women and girls across Asia-Pacific is pervasive but at the same time widely under-reported,” said Melissa Alvarado, a manager at the U.N. Women Asia-Pacific, which partners with Twitter on the latest feature.
“Connecting women who are feeling fearful or in danger is critical for their safety,” she added in a statement.
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Google is tweaking its privacy settings to keep less data on new users by default. The search giant said that starting Wednesday, it will automatically and continuously delete web and app activity and location history for new users after 18 months. Settings for existing users won’t be affected but the company will send reminders about the feature.The change comes after Google added new controls last year that allow users to effectively put an expiry date on their data, by providing the option to auto-delete location history, search, voice and YouTube activity data after three or 18 months. The company is also making it easier to toggle in and out of incognito mode while using its Search, Maps and YouTube mobile apps by doing a long press on the profile photo. In incognito mode, Google doesn’t remember any activity during online browsing. In another change, users will get easier access to their controls when doing Google searches. If they’re signed into their Google accounts and search for terms like “Google Privacy Checkup,” they will see a box only visible to them with their privacy and security settings.
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Правда о трахнутом чвк вагнер, новое вооружение США для АРМИИ И ФЛОТА Украины, операция Турции в Ираке, подбитые индийского вертолёта военными Китая и провал обиженного карлика пукина в Ливии, а также F-16 и армия Египта в деле
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За последние десять дней произошел ряд знаковых событий, играющих немаловажную роль в сфере безопасности для Украины. Вашингтон активно помогает повышать обороноспособность Украины и создавать некомфортные условия для чрезмерной активности путляндии с целью вернуть карлика пукина в рамки международного правового поля
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Зелений карлик володимир олександрович біля розбитого корита. Свіжа соціологія.
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Последние новости путляндии и мира, экономика, бизнес, культура, технологии, спорт
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Росстат опубликовал блок макростатистики за май, который показал ещё большее ухудшение в состоянии российской экономики после апрельского обвала
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The Trump administration’s recent decision to roll back civil rights protections for transgender people in health care has outraged civil rights activists and organizations advocating for transgender rights. The administration move comes as the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling protecting gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. Now, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization says it will sue the administration over its decision to roll back health care protections. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.Camera: Yuriy Zakrevskiy
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Ждем ответа от Госдепа США о коррупционерах авакова!
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Складывается впечатление, что обиженного карлика пукина держат где-то долго взаперти, потом выпускают для какого-то интервью или пресс-конференции, где он наговорит очередной бред о собирании земель или о том, почему он должен царствовать вечно, а потом пытаются предать высказанному бреду адекватности
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Украинская боевая машина СТРАЖ для штурма укреплений обиженного карлика пукина !
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Уже 25 червня в Україні проведуть перше у цьому році зовнішнє незалежне оцінювання (ЗНО) з математики. Водночас обов’язкову державну підсумкову атестацію (ДПА) для одинадцятикласників скасували. Зміни з’являються чи не щодня, і школярам та їх батькам доводиться витрачати чимало часу, аби зорієнтуватися у процесах та організаційних питаннях. Напередодні першого тесту ми пояснюємо особливості проведення ЗНО і ДПА у цьому році
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Українське питання у скандальній книзі Болтона про Трампа Карти відкрито!
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