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New Mexico curtailed a measles outbreak with a coordinated mass‑vaccination effort, ending with only 99 cases compared with Texas’s 762. The state saw a 55 % surge in MMR vaccinations from January to September, driven by data‑driven targeting, mobile clinics, and extensive public communication. Officials issued 12 clinician advisories, 26 press releases, and 184 social‑media posts, plus a bilingual helpline that handled over 2,000 calls. The CDC study suggests New Mexico’s approach could serve as a model for other jurisdictions.
Rep. Leigh Finke testified against Minnesota’s HF1434, a sweeping age‑verification bill that would force websites to collect government IDs or biometric data for any content deemed “harmful to minors.” The legislation’s definition of harmful speech is broad enough to encompass...
Australia’s under‑16 social‑media ban, introduced as a child‑safety measure, has produced only a marginal decline in teen usage according to Qustodio data. Most adolescents who were active on TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat before the law continue to access these platforms,...
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed it has leveraged location data harvested from the online advertising ecosystem, specifically real‑time bidding (RTB) streams, to track individuals’ phones. The practice builds on a broader government reliance on data brokers and SDKs that...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing an anonymous Jehovah’s Witness researcher, J. Doe, whose JWS Library site was targeted by DMCA subpoenas from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. The organization has a documented history of filing 72 copyright...
In this episode, host Mike Masnick and TechDirt writer Carl Bodie dissect the heated public discourse around AI, highlighting how the technology has become a flashpoint for class‑based anger and political polarization. They argue that most commentary is unnuanced, with...
A California appellate court exposed a bizarre chain of AI‑hallucinated legal citations that traveled from a Reddit blog post to a dog‑custody case and ultimately appeared in a signed court order. Both parties’ attorneys copied the fictitious cases without checking...
The Trump administration brokered a sale of TikTok's U.S. operations to a consortium that includes Larry Ellison, Silver Lake and UAE‑controlled MGX. Investors are paying a $10 billion fee to the Treasury, with $2.5 billion already transferred. The fee is far larger...
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) saw 1,477 Biden‑era grants abruptly cancelled after two junior staffers, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, used a simple ChatGPT prompt to flag projects as DEI‑related. Deposition videos released by plaintiff societies show the...
A federal judge ruled the IRS violated federal law 42,695 times by handing over taxpayer addresses to ICE using a flawed TIN Matching process that only required a zip‑code pattern, not a valid address. Of the 47,289 addresses shared, 90.3%...
Roblox has launched an AI‑powered feature that rephrases profanity in real‑time chat, turning blocked words into respectful equivalents while preserving the original intent. The system operates across all languages supported by Roblox’s translation tools and is limited to age‑checked users...
The Make America Health Again (MAHA) Institute, a D.C. think tank linked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced it wants to eliminate the entire U.S. childhood vaccine schedule until each shot is proven safe and effective. The group’s president, Mark Gorton, presented the stance...
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been buying location data from the online advertising ecosystem, allowing the agency to track individuals' movements with minute‑level precision. The practice leverages advertising identifiers (AdIDs) that link devices to real‑time bidding markets, bypassing the...
Buc‑ee’s, the Texas‑based convenience‑store chain, has filed a trademark lawsuit against rival Mickey’s, alleging that the competitor’s cartoon moose mascot and red‑dominant branding infringe on Buc‑ee’s beaver mascot and visual identity. The complaint claims the logos are confusingly similar and...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging the Fifth Circuit to keep the long‑standing server test, which holds the party controlling a server liable for infringing content, rather than shifting direct liability to those who embed links. Emmerich Newspapers argues...
