Facebook threatens to block Australian publishers from sharing news stories

The social network said the Australian move would force it to pay arbitrary and theoretically unlimited sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service

Facebook threatened to block Australian publishers and individuals from sharing news stories on its platform in reaction to an Australian measure that could require it to compensate media organisations for its use of their stories. The social network said the Australian move would force it to pay arbitrary and theoretically unlimited sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service.

The measure would force Facebook to choose between either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits, the company’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, wrote in a blog post. No business can operate that way. Campbell Brown, a former NBC and CNN anchor who now serves as Facebook‘s vice president of global news partnerships, said the cutoff threat has nothing to do with our ongoing global commitment to journalism.

Brown’s post, which cited a variety of individual Facebook programs intended to support news organizations, was titled Our Continued Commitment to Journalism. Google, meanwhile, issued an open letter that cast the proposed Australian law as a potential threat to individual privacy and a burden that would degrade the quality of its search and YouTube video services, but did not threaten a cutoff.

Mark Zuckerberg is happy to let Facebook be a tool to spread misinformation and fake news, but is apparently fine with Facebook dropping real news altogether, John Stanton, co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, said in a statement. Regulators need to reign in the tech giants’ total domination of the online marketplace before it’s too late.

Moderna Covid vaccine appears to work as well in older adults: Study

The latest data from an early Phase I study includes an analysis from 20 additional people detailing how the vaccine performed in older adults

International News: (Reuters) – Moderna Inc said on Wednesday its experimental COVID-19 vaccine induced immune responses in older adults similar to those in younger participants, offering hope that it will be effective in people considered to be at high risk for severe complications from the coronavirus.

The company is one of the leading contenders in the race to develop a vaccine against the virus that has killed more than 820,000 people worldwide. Its candidate, mRNA-1273, is already in late-stage human trials testing its ability to safely prevent infection. The latest data from an early Phase I study includes an analysis from 20 additional people detailing how the vaccine performed in older adults.

The analysis looked at subjects given the 100-microgram dose being tested in the much larger Phase III trial. Moderna said the immune responses in those aged between ages 56 and 70, above age 70 and those 18 to 55-years-old were similar. Health officials have been concerned about whether Corona vaccine candidates would work in older people, whose immune systems typically do not respond as strongly to vaccines.

Moderna shares, which have more than tripled in value this year, rose about 6% after the data’s release. The company has so far enrolled over 13,000 participants in its late-stage study. About 18% of the total participants are Black, Latino, Native American or Alaska Native, groups that have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, and are often under represented in clinical trials…

US court grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft’s Pentagon deal

The Pentagon, which had planned to start work on the contract on Friday, said it was disappointed in the ruling.

A US judge on Thursday granted Amazon.com Inc’s request to temporarily halt the US Department of Defense and Microsoft Corp from moving forward on an up-to-$10 billion (£8 billion) cloud computing deal that Amazon says reflected undue influence by President Donald Trump.

Amazon, which had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, filed a lawsuit in November just weeks after the contract was awarded to Microsoft. Trump has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticized the company. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith issued a preliminary injunction but did not release her written opinion. She also ordered Amazon to post $42 million in the event the injunction was issued wrongfully.

The Amazon lawsuit said the Defense Department’s decision was full of “egregious errors,” which were a result of “improper pressure from President Donald Trump, who launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” to steer the contract away from Amazon “to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos. Bezos also owns the Washington Post, whose coverage has been critical of Trump and which has frequently been a target of barbs by Trump about the news media…