Day: March 1, 2023

Duncan McCann, a father of three and a campaigner with the 5rights Foundation, has filed an official complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), accusing YouTube of gathering data about the videos children watch, where they are watching and what device they are watching it on.

YouTube says it had invested in protecting families and offering YouTube Kids, which it says is “family friendly” and uses automated filters and parental feedback to protect children.

The ICO said it had received the complaint and will carefully consider it. The office has up to three months to decide whether to initiate an investigation on the matter.

The British media quoted a YouTube spokesperson, saying: “We remain committed to continuing our engagement with the ICO on this priority work, and with other key stakeholders including children, parents and child-protection experts.“

McCann says plenty of children watch YouTube content on family devices, where viewing data can be gathered by default because it is not registered as a children's account.

His complaint is believed to be the first test of the ICO children's code, which was introduced in 2020, when tech firms were given one year to comply with it.

According to the UK’s communication watchdog Ofcom, 89 percent of children in the UK used the video platform in 2021.

YouTube had faced a similar accusation in the US, where campaigners accused the firm of collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent. The case resulted in the firm being fined to $170m in 2019. YouTube did not admit responsibility but it did pay the fine.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Long hours of admission periods at emergency departments of British hospitals have caused 23,000 excess deaths in 2022, information shared by the National Health Service (NHS) has revealed.

The health workers’ unions have long been criticizing the way the issues surrounding NHS are being handled by the government, saying that there is a huge workload on the staff, whom are unhappy with the working conditions and financial status of their jobs.

The government acknowledges staff shortages but do not necessarily agree that excess death numbers are definitively accurate.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has reportedly sent freedom of information requests to the NHS for its latest data on accident and emergency waiting times, discovering more than 1.6 million patients had to wait longer than 12 hours in the department from the moment they walked in until the time they left.

The requested information was being sought to find out the number of people who waited more than half a day at the A&E department. The medical college then worked out the mortality rates linked to the long waits, which had frequently made the headlines in the country last year.

Addressing the issue at the NHS Recovery Forum last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the long waits at the accident and emergency departments are among the issues “that are forefront on everyone’s mind.”

In the recent industrial action by the health workers, especially the ambulance staff, many hospitals reported deaths linked to long waiting times. In the West Midlands region alone, a total of 37 people died after lengthy ambulance waiting times in the first nine months of 2022, compared to only one patient dying in 2020, which saw hundreds of fatalities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to information provided to the BBC by the West Midlands Ambulance Service, the longest time an ambulance had to wait to hand over a patient to a hospital was 21 hours. Various hospitals in the region also recorded waiting times of up to 15 and 19 hours.

Once an ambulance arrives at hospital, the patient then waits to be taken out of the vehicle, depending on availability of the staff and beds in hospital.

Sharon Graham, the secretary general of Unite, one of the largest trade unions, said their voices are not being heard and accused the government of “criminal negligence.” The union said the government had months to intervene to end the dispute and prevent the strike.

“The shocking statistics from West Midlands Ambulance Trust tell the real story. Where were the government’s ‘well-rehearsed contingency plans’ when people were dying in the West Midlands because the crisis in the ambulance service meant an ambulance couldn’t get to them on time?” Graham asked, adding that the strikers are “actually trying to save the service.”

Source: Anadolu Agency

The US on Tuesday welcomed the Brussels-facilitated talks between Serbia and Kosovo to normalize ties.

"The United States welcomes the leaders’ talks under the EU-facilitated Dialogue on Feb. 27 and strongly supports the process of normalization of their relations," State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Although Monday's meeting was "a good step forward," he said "difficult work remains."

“Agreement on the implementation annex is essential to normalization under the EU proposal,” he noted.

"Progress towards establishing the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities remains critical to building Kosovo’s future as a sovereign, multiethnic and independent country integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures.”

Launched in 2011, the EU-led Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue aims to find a mutually agreeable solution for the disputes in the framework of a legally binding agreement.

Following a flareup in border tensions last summer, the EU Special Representative for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, presented the bloc's latest proposal on normalizing relations in September.

The EU requires Kosovo and Serbia to reach a final agreement that can resolve issues between the two countries for progress in the integration process.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, with most UN member states including the US, the UK, France, Germany and Türkiye recognizing it as a separate autonomous country from its neighbor. But Belgrade continues to regard it as its territory.

Lately, the parties have been negotiating what is popularly known as the Franco-German proposal, supported by the US and all EU members.

Source: Anadolu Agency

US President Joe Biden lashed out Tuesday at House Republicans who want to cut the deficit, saying it would explode the deficit and damage the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.

“For millions of Americans, healthcare hangs in the balance,” he said in Virginia Beach, where he delivered an address to highlight his administration’s healthcare plans.

Noting that “MAGA” Republicans in Congress want to cut the deficit, he said their plans would add $3 trillion to it in the next 10 years.

“How are they going to make the numbers add up? What are they gonna cut? That’s the big question,” he said.

Biden accused Republicans who are part of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement started by former President Donald Trump of “trying to undo the Affordable Care Act,” also known as Obamacare, since it passed 13 years ago.

“They voted to change or repeal the act…more than 50 times in four years,” he said.

“If MAGA Republicans try to take away people’s healthcare by gutting Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, I will stop them,” he stressed.

Biden's remarks came as the White House is preparing to send the budget for the next fiscal year to Congress next week. US House Republicans insist that the Biden administration cut spending as part of a deal to raise the debt limit.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Turkish authorities reopened the Istanbul Strait to ships early Wednesday after hours of suspension due to heavy fog.

Two-way ship traffic was suspended through the strait as of 10.27 a.m. local time (0727GMT). The fog grew more dense in the morning, cutting down visibility for sea travel.

Maritime traffic was reopened in the north-south direction as of 00.10 local time.

The strait connects international ship traffic from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and further on to the Mediterranean Sea.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The US administration is taking "every step" to protect Americans' data amid the ban of popular Chinese social media app TikTok, a White House official said Tuesday.

"We've been clear about our concerns about apps like TikTok," said spokeswoman Olivia Dalton. "The Biden administration is focused on the challenge of certain countries, including China, seeking to leverage digital technologies and Americans' data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks."

"That's why we're taking every step we can within the executive branch authority, including enacting the first ever presidential directive defining additional national security factors for CFIUS to consider in line with this administration's national security priorities like protecting Americans' sensitive data," she added.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is an inter-agency committee authorized to review certain transactions involving foreign investment in the US to determine the effect of such transactions on national security.

The Office of Management and Budget, the largest within the executive office of the US president, issued a memorandum Monday for the heads of executive departments and agencies to develop standards and guidelines requiring the removal of TikTok from federal information technology and directed agencies to remove the app from federal devices and providing instructions and deadlines for that removal.

"Last year, President (Joe) Biden put forward an executive order to protect American sensitive data from collecting collection and utilization. So we'll continue to look at other actions that we can take and that includes how to work with Congress on this issue," said Dalton.

Several US states have already banned TikTok on government-issued devices amid potential security risks.

*Michael Hernandez from Washington, D.C. contributed to this report

Source: Anadolu Agency