China tightens screws on tech firms

Beijing:

Chinese regulators are to exercise greater control over the algorithms used by the country’s technology firms to personalise and recommend content online.

The move is the latest in a regulation spree across China’s internet sector.

The country’s internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has released a draft proposal of “algorithm recommendation management regulations” aimed at managing how technology companies use algorithms when providing services to consumers.

The move expands the crackdown on the internet sector in China, as regulators seek to strengthen data privacy and consumer rights and curtail anti-competitive practices to curb the outsized influence of technology companies.

Under the draft regulations, companies must disclose the basic principles, purpose and operation mechanism of its algorithm recommendation services, and must include convenient options for users to turn these off.

Algorithms should also not be used in ways that may cause addictive behaviours in users, or induce them to spend excessively. It is not clear how this would be enforced.

Copenhagen:

The

Danish government has said it will no longer consider Covid-19 a socially critical disease in Denmark, citing the large number of vaccinations in the Scandinavian country.

Health minister Magnus Heunicke said: “The epidemic is under control. We have recordhigh vaccination rates.”

He said that, starting on September 10, “we can drop some of the special rules we had to introduce in the fight against Covid-19”.

In practice, that would mean partially phasing out vaccination card requirements for some major events, like concerts, and in nightclubs.

Mr Heunicke said that 80 per cent of all people over the age of 12 in Denmark had been vaccinated.

Wellington:

New Zealand’s government has extended a strict nationwide lockdown as it tries to quash its first outbreak of the coronavirus in six months.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday the government expects to keep Auckland, where most of the cases have been found, in full lockdown for at least two more weeks.

But she expects most other parts of the country can ease restrictions slightly from Wednesday.

Whatcom County:

Officials in Washington state said that they had destroyed the first Asian giant hornet nest of the season, which was located near the town of Blaine along the Canadian border.

The Washington state Department of Agriculture said it eradicated the nest on Wednesday.

The nest was located in the base of a dead alder tree in rural Whatcom County, about two miles from a nest the agency eradicated last October and about a quarter of a mile from where a resident reported a live sighting of an Asian giant hornet on August 11.

The Asian giant hornets are sometimes called murder hornets because they prey on other bees and their nests.