The Iranian film A Hero is about a man who becomes a celebrity after doing a good deed. In filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s hands, what seems to be a black and white morality tale becomes more gray.
A French privacy watchdog accused the tech giants of making it difficult for users to opt out of tracking their activity
France’s online privacy regulator has ordered Google and Facebook to cough up some €210 million ($237 million) between them, fining the firms for their questionable use of data-tracking ‘cookies’ on their sites.
The French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) announced the move in a statement on Thursday, saying Google will be made to pay €150 million and Facebook another €60 million within a period of three months, or else face additional fines of €100,000 per day.
The commission said the way the companies employ ‘cookies’ – or small amounts of data generated while users browse websites that can be used to track their activity – “affects the freedom of consent,” as Facebook and Google make it much easier for netizens to authorize that data-tracking than to decline it.
“When you accept cookies, it’s done in just one click,”said Karin Kiefer, who leads the commission’s data protection and sanctions team. “Rejecting cookies should be as easy as accepting them.”
The watchdog org added that those practices violated the French Data Protection Act, and ordered the companies to “provide Internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent.”
Both Google and Facebook issued statements vowing to work with French authorities to sort the issue, though the latter firm insisted its “cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data,” disputing the consent issues raised by the CNIL. Google, too, argued that “people trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe,” but nonetheless said it would pursue “further changes” to comply with the order.
Amid alarming reports of deadly violence in Kazakhstan, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Central Asia have called for restraint and dialogue.
Hospital bosses are ‘extremely concerned’ as the backlog of patients awaiting treatment soars
At least 24 NHS trusts in England have declared a ‘critical incident’ due to pressures caused by the Omicron variant, as rising Covid cases create a staffing shortage and hamper efforts to clear a patient backlog of 5.8 million.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Thursday that a balance was being sought between public restrictions and avoiding a situation where hospitals are “overrun” by the new wave of Covid cases. A critical incident is declared when an NHS trust reaches a point at which priority services might be under threat.
The “very real” pressure the health service is under is caused by an increase in hospitalizations at the same time as a spike in staff having to self-isolate after testing positive for coronavirus, or coming into contact with a Covid-positive person.
Shapps argued that it’s “not entirely unusual” for hospitals to “go critical” during the winter, but he said the system is under overwhelming pressure this time for multiple reasons.
The concerns about provisions of priority services come as it is revealed that the backlog of patients waiting for planned treatments in England has reached 5.8 million, and both 999 calls and A&E waiting times have hit record highs.
In a new report, the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee in the House of Commons said the NHS is facing an “unquantifiable” challenge as it tries to clear the backlog and cope with the pandemic. The report details the “catastrophic impact” on patients waiting for care and warns staff could quit if they don’t see a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
In a call to the government on Wednesday, the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system, warned that English patients face a worsening quality of care unless the government takes immediate action to address staffing issues.
Speaking to the Guardian, NHS Confederation Chief Executive Matthew Taylor claimed hospital bosses are “extremely concerned” about the growing problem of the ratio of staff to patients, forcing hospitals to allocate clinical tasks in a way that is “not normally” best practice.
