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Biden Honors Springsteen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling

U.S. President Joe Biden made an observation when conferring the National Medal of Arts on rocker Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday:

“Bruce, some people are just born to run, man.”

Springsteen and a host of actors, authors, singers and other artists joined Biden in the White House East Room where they received either a National Medal of Arts or National Humanities Medal for their contributions to American society.

Comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose “Veep” show made light of the vice presidency — an office Biden once held — was also honored.

“She embraces life’s absurdity with absolute wit, and handles real life turns with absolute grace. A mom, a cancer survivor, a pioneer for women in comedy, she is an American original,” Biden said.

Actress Mindy Kaling, a main character on the long-running television show, “The Office,” set in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, received a medal as well.

When Biden introduced author Colson Whitehead to the crowd, he noted that Whitehead had won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes for his books and gave a hint of his own ambitions.

“I’m trying to go back to back myself,” said Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection in 2024.

Singer Gladys Knight, the “empress of soul,” was an honoree, along with clothing designer Vera Wang, historian Walter Isaacson and authors Amy Tan, Ann Patchett and Tara Westover, among others.

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‘Winnie the Pooh’ Slasher Film Pulled from Hong Kong Cinemas

Public screenings of a slasher film that features Winnie the Pooh were scrapped abruptly in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions over increasing censorship in the city.

Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” on Thursday had been canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macao.

In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was notified by cinemas that it could not show the film as scheduled, but didn’t know why. The cinema chains involved did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

For many residents, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful taunt of China’s President Xi Jinping and Chinese censors in the past had briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country. In 2018, the film “Christopher Robin,” also featuring Winnie the Pooh, was reportedly denied a release in China.

The film being pulled in Hong Kong has prompted concern on social media over the territory’s shrinking freedoms.

The movie was initially set to be shown in about 30 cinemas in Hong Kong, VII Pillars Entertainment wrote last week.

The Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration said it had approved the film and arrangements by local cinemas to screen approved films “are the commercial decisions of the cinemas concerned.” It refused to comment on such arrangements.

A screening initially scheduled for Tuesday night in one cinema was canceled due to “technical reasons,” the organizer said on Instagram.

Kenny Ng, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s academy of film, refused to speculate on the reason behind the cancellation, but suggested the mechanism of silencing criticism appeared to be resorting to commercial decisions.

Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to China’s rule in 1997, promising to retain its Western-style freedoms. But China imposed a national security law following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, silencing or jailing many dissidents.

In 2021, the government tightened guidelines and authorized censors to ban films believed to have breached the sweeping law.

Ng said the city saw more cases of censorship over the last two years, mostly targeting non-commercial movies, such as independent short films.

“When there is a red line, then there are more taboos,” he said.

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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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TikTok Updates Rules; CEO on Charm Offensive for US Hearing

TikTok went on a counteroffensive Tuesday amid increasing Western pressure over cybersecurity and misinformation concerns, rolling out updated rules and standards for content as its CEO warned against a possible U.S. ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. 

CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to appear Thursday before U.S. congressional lawmakers, who will grill him about the company’s privacy and data-security practices and relationship with the Chinese government. 

Chew said in a TikTok video that the hearing “comes at a pivotal moment” for the company, after lawmakers introduced measures that would expand the Biden administration’s authority to enact a U.S. ban on the app, which the CEO said more than 150 million Americans use. 

“Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok. Now, this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you,” said Chew, who was dressed casually in jeans and a blue hoodie, with the dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington in the background. 

“I’ll be testifying before Congress this week to share all that we’re doing to protect Americans using the app,” he said. 

The TikTok app has come under fire in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, where a growing number of governments have banned TikTok from devices used for official business over worries it poses risks to cybersecurity and data privacy or could be used to push pro-Beijing narratives and misinformation. 

So far, there is no evidence to suggest this has happened or that TikTok has turned over user data to the Chinese government, as some of its critics have argued it would do. 

Norway and the Netherlands on Tuesday warned that apps like TikTok should not be installed on phones issued to government employees, both citing security or intelligence agencies. 

There’s a “high risk” if TikTok or Telegram are installed on devices that have access to “internal digital infrastructure or services,” Norway’s Justice Ministry said without providing further details. 

TikTok also rolled out updated rules and standards for content and users in a reorganized set of community guidelines that include eight principles to guide content moderation decisions. 

“These principles are based on our commitment to uphold human rights and aligned with international legal frameworks,” said Julie de Bailliencourt, TikTok’s global head of product policy. 

She said TikTok strives to be fair, protect human dignity and balance freedom of expression with preventing harm. 

The guidelines, which take effect on April 21, were repackaged from TikTok’s existing rules with extra details and explanations. 

Among the more significant changes are additional details about its restrictions on deepfakes, also known as synthetic media, created by artificial intelligence technology. TikTok more clearly spells out its policy, saying all deepfakes or manipulated content that show realistic scenes must be labeled to indicate they’re fake or altered in some way. 

TikTok had previously banned deepfakes that mislead viewers about real-world events and cause harm. Its updated guidelines say deepfakes of private figures and young people are also not allowed. 

Deepfakes of public figures are OK in certain contexts, such as for artistic or educational content, but not for political or commercial endorsements. 

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Science & Health
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Superbug Fungus Cases Rose Dramatically During Pandemic

U.S. cases of a dangerous fungus tripled over just three years, and more than half of the country’s 50 states have now reported it, according to a new study. 

The COVID-19 pandemic likely drove part of the increase, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the paper published Monday by Annals of Internal Medicine. Hospital workers were strained by coronavirus patients and that likely shifted their focus away from disinfecting some other kinds of germs, they said. 

The fungus, Candida auris, is a form of yeast that is usually not harmful to healthy people but can be a deadly risk to fragile hospital and nursing home patients. It spreads easily and can infect wounds, ears and the bloodstream. Some strains are so-called superbugs that are resistant to all three classes of antibiotic drugs used to treat fungal infections. 

It was first identified in Japan in 2009 and has been seen in more and more countries. The first U.S. case occurred in 2013, but it was not reported until 2016. That year, U.S. health officials reported 53 cases. 

The new study found cases have continued to shoot up, rising to 476 in 2019, to 756 in 2020, and then to 1,471 in 2021. Doctors have also detected the fungus on the skin of thousands of other patients, making them a transmission risk to others. 

Many of the first U.S. cases were infections that had been imported from abroad, but now most infections are spread within the U.S., the authors noted. 

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Arts & Entertainment/Economy & business
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Ukrainian Artists Use Their Craft to Counter Russian Messaging in Africa

Ukraine is supporting artists painting murals in Europe and Africa to counter Russian disinformation about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Dubbed ”The Wall,” a nod to the album by British rock band Pink Floyd, the project was recently launched in Kenya’s capital and also employs local artists. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Kenya footage by Jimmy Makhulo.

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Science & Health
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Biden Signs Bill on COVID Origins Declassification

President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Monday that directs the federal government to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID-19 more than three years after the start of the pandemic.

The legislation, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, directs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It cites “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic March 11, 2020. The law allows for redactions to protect sensitive sources and methods.

U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over whether a lab leak or a spillover from animals is the likely source of the deadly virus.

Experts say the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1.1 million in the U.S. and millions more around the globe, may not be known for many years — if ever.

Biden, in a statement, said he was pleased to sign the legislation.

“My Administration will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID-19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said. “In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security.”

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Science & Health
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Astronomers Sound Alarm About Satellites’ Light Pollution

Astronomers on Monday warned that the light pollution created by the soaring number of satellites orbiting Earth poses an “unprecedented global threat to nature.”

The number of satellites in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when U.S. company SpaceX launched the first “mega-constellation,” which comprise thousands of satellites.

An armada of new internet constellations are planned to launch soon, adding thousands more satellites to the already congested area fewer than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) above Earth.

Each new satellite increases the risk that it will smash into another object orbiting Earth, creating yet more debris.

This can create a chain reaction in which cascading collisions create ever smaller fragments of debris, further adding to the cloud of “space junk” reflecting light back to Earth.

In a series of papers published in the journal Nature Astronomy, astronomers warned that this increasing light pollution threatens the future of their profession.

In one paper, researchers said that for the first time they had measured how much a brighter night sky would financially and scientifically affect the work of a major observatory.

Modeling suggested that for the Vera Rubin Observatory, a giant telescope currently under construction in Chile, the darkest part of the night sky will become 7.5 percent brighter over the next decade.

That would reduce the number of stars the observatory is able to see by around 7.5 percent, study co-author John Barentine told AFP.

That would add nearly a year to the observatory’s survey, costing around $21.8 million, said Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, a firm based in the U.S. state of Arizona.

He added that there is another cost of a brighter sky that’s impossible to calculate: the celestial events that humanity will never get to observe.

And the increase in light pollution could be even worse than thought.

Another Nature study used extensive modeling to suggest that current measurements of light pollution are significantly underestimating the phenomenon.

A call to ‘stop this attack’ of light

The brightening of the night sky will not just affect professional astronomers and major observatories, the researchers warned.

Aparna Venkatesan, an astronomer at the University of San Francisco, said it also threatened “our ancient relationship with the night sky.”

“Space is our shared heritage and ancestor — connecting us through science, storytelling, art, origin stories and cultural traditions — and it is now at risk,” she said in a Nature comment piece.

A group of astronomers from Spain, Portugal and Italy called for scientists to “stop this attack” on the natural night.

“The loss of the natural aspect of a pristine night sky for all the world, even on the summit of K2 or on the shore of Lake Titicaca or on Easter Island is an unprecedented global threat to nature and cultural heritage,” the astronomers said in a Nature comment piece.

“If not stopped, this craziness will become worse and worse.”

The astronomers called for drastically limiting mega-constellations, adding that “we must not reject the possibility of banning them.”

They said that it was “naive to hope that the skyrocketing space economy will limit itself, if not forced to do so,” given the economic interests at stake.

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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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Amazon Cuts 9,000 More Jobs, Bringing 2023 Total to 27,000

Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday. 

The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, during a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector. 

Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year. 

In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas. 

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them, so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said. 

The job cuts announced Monday will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs as well as Amazon’s PXT organizations, which handle human resources and other functions. 

Prior layoffs had also hit PXT, the company’s stores division, which encompasses its e-commerce business as well as the company’s brick-and-mortar stores such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other departments such as the one that runs the virtual assistant Alexa. 

Earlier this month, the company said it would pause construction on its headquarters building in northern Virginia, though the first phase of that project will open this June with 8,000 employees. 

Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly making purchases online. 

Amazon’s workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years. But demand slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. The company began pausing or canceling its warehouse expansion plans last year. 

Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Amazon in the past few months shut down a subsidiary that’s been selling fabrics for nearly 30 years and shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care among other cost-cutting moves. 

Jassy said Monday given the uncertain economy and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future,” the company has chosen to be more streamlined. 

He said the teams that will be impacted by the latest round of layoffs are not done making final decisions on which roles will be eliminated. The company plans to finalize those decisions by mid- to late April and notify those who will be laid off. 

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