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Politics

Put up-Roe Resolution, Abortion Tablet Suppliers Work to Broaden Entry

This company and others who are caring for patients who are 11 or 12 weeks pregnant can legally do so at their doctor’s discretion, as studies suggest that abortion pills are safe and effective at this stage. The World Health Organization supports medical terminations of pregnancy up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

dr Daniel Grossman, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, said medical abortion is safe and effective late in the first trimester, but “there is a slightly higher risk of some complications, including heavy bleeding.” , and an additional dose of misoprostol is often required to fully expel the tissue.

Some services, including abortion telemedicine, automatically send a second round of the four misoprostol tablets to patients undergoing a late first trimester abortion.

Reproductive health experts said patients should be cautioned that expelled tissue earlier in pregnancy resembles a heavy period, but may appear more like a fetus at 10 weeks. dr Abigail RA Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas, Austin who leads a medical abortion research group, said preparing patients for what the tissue might look like could also help them protect themselves from legal risks in states that allow abortions forbid – for example , in a situation where a patient is surprised by what he sees and “then you expose that to someone who’s like, ‘Well, I’ll report you.'”

Joann, 23, a single mom, was 10 weeks pregnant when she decided to have an abortion, so she contacted Abortion Telemedicine. She said she initially intended to carry her pregnancy to term, but then her 3-year-old son was diagnosed with autism and her employer, the US military, decided to transfer her to another state. Joann, who asked to be identified by her first name only to protect her privacy, was in Colorado at the time, where abortion is legal but her community was conservative.

The service nurse told her that since she would be taking the pills after the 10th week of pregnancy, she would have to expect more pain and bleeding, advising that the tissue that was expelled might resemble a fetus “so I would be prepared.” . said John.

Categories
Politics

Congressional Committee Presses Cable Suppliers on Election Fraud Claims

The legislature’s letter asked companies: “What steps have you taken before, on and after the November 3, 2020 elections and January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor the spread of disinformation, respond to it, and them? including encouraging or inciting violence through channels your business distributes to millions of Americans? “

“Are you planning to keep Fox News, OANN and Newsmax on your platform now and after the renewal date?” The letter goes on. “If yes why?”

Blair Levin, who served as the FCC’s chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, said a hearing could be a first step towards meaningful action. “You have to establish a state of affairs that in both the election and Covid, millions of Americans believe things that are just factually not true, and then try to figure out, ‘What is the appropriate role of government in changing these dynamics? ? ‘”Said Mr. Levin.

Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group focused on telecommunications and digital rights, suggested that lawmakers may not have easy ways to influence Fox, Newsmax, or OAN.

“You have a lot of people who are very angry about it, you have a lot of people who want to show that they are very angry about it, but you still don’t have a lot of good ideas about what to do about it,” he said.

Currently, defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation, which is being broadcast on some cable channels.

Last month, Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that played a prominent role in conspiracy theories about voting in 2020, sued two Trump legal representatives, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, in separate lawsuits, each more than $ 1 billion claimed in damages. Both appeared as guests on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax and OAN in the weeks following the election.

On Monday, Dominion sued Mike Lindell, the managing director of MyPillow, on the grounds that he defamed Dominion with unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud on its voting machines.

Categories
World News

How Parler deplatforming exhibits energy of Amazon, cloud suppliers

Andy Jassy, ​​CEO of Amazon Web Services.

CNBC

Launching Amazon Web Services is rare, but it has enormous consequences.

It came this week when Amazon dropped Parler, a social network that caught on with conservatives after Twitter banned President Donald Trump and included content that encouraged violence. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon in federal district court to prevent Amazon from suspending Parler’s account, and Amazon pushed back, asking the court to deny Parler’s motion.

The incident shows a kind of power that Amazon wields almost uniquely because so many companies rely on it to provide computers and data storage. According to estimates by technology research firm Gartner, Amazon controlled 45% of cloud infrastructure in 2019, more than any other company. The app survived without being listed in the Apple and Google app stores. However, by sending from the Amazon cloud, Parler is not represented on the Internet for days.

Parler’s engineering team had developed software that relied on computer resources from Amazon Web Services, and the company had spoken to Amazon about introducing a proprietary AWS database and artificial intelligence services, the company said in a court case on Wednesday With.

It would take some time to figure out how to perform similar functions on Parler’s own servers or a cloud other than AWS. And in the case of Parler, time is of the essence as the service gained attention and new users after the Trump ban on Twitter.

Parler’s engineers could learn to use other computing infrastructures, or the company could hire developers who already have this knowledge. However, since no cloud provider is as popular as Amazon, Oracle’s clouds, for example, are not as easy to find as those who know how to build on AWS.

The warnings were there

The speed with which Amazon acted shouldn’t come as a shock. Companies have been posting details of their dealings with Amazon for years warning of such sudden crashes.

In 2010, DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics said that “if Amazon Web Services disrupted the services we rely on to deliver ready-made genomic data to our customers, our customers would not receive their data on time.”

Gaming company Zynga warned its AWS foundation could quickly disappear when it filed for prospectus for its IPO in 2011. At the time, AWS was hosting half of the traffic for Zynga’s games like FarmVille and Words with Friends.

“AWS may terminate the agreement without giving reasons with 180 days ‘notice in writing and terminate the agreement with 30 days’ notice in writing for good cause, including all material failures or violations of the agreement by us that we do not within the 30th – Time of day, “said Zynga.

AWS may even immediately terminate or suspend its agreement with a customer in certain circumstances, as was the case with Wikileaks in 2010, indicating violations of the AWS Terms of Service.

Parler began using AWS in 2018, long after the Wikileaks incident and the first company disclosures about the possibility of cloud disruptions.

When AWS announced to Parler that it was planning to block Parler’s AWS account, Parler repeatedly violated the rules, including by not owning or controlling the rights to its content.

Over the course of several weeks, AWS Parler drew attention to cases of user content that led to violence, Amazon said in a lawsuit. Additional content emerged after protesters stormed the Washington Capitol on January 6, disrupting Congress’ confirmation of the electoral college’s results in the 2020 presidential election. AWS said that Parler had not done enough to quickly remove this type of information from its social network.

Parler could have protected himself better. Large AWS customers can sign up for broader agreements that give more customers time to comply when they break the rules.

Gartner analyst Lydia Leong explained this difference in a blog post: “Thirty days is a common time frame specified as a curing period in contracts (and the curing period in the AWS Standard Corporate Agreement), but it is click-through agreements from cloud providers (e.g., because the AWS customer agreement) does not typically have a curing period, action can be taken immediately at the provider’s discretion, “she wrote.

Other cloud providers have their own set of conditions that their customers must follow. AWS now has millions of customers and holds more of the cloud infrastructure market than any other provider. As a result, if they don’t behave according to Amazon’s standards, many companies could be exposed to the type of treatment Parler has received, rare as it is.

Parler recognized the drawbacks of being committed to a cloud provider, but ultimately the flexibility offered by the clouds was too attractive to ignore. “Personally, I’m very much against the cloud and anti-centralization, even though AWS has its place for high-frequency traffic,” wrote Alexander Blair, Parler’s chief technology officer, in a post about the service.

Parler and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CLOCK: Apple pulls Parler out of the App Store while cracking down on violent posts