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SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — After three straight losses, including back-to-back blowouts , the San Francisco 49ers needed a get-right game. The Chicago Bears helped provide just that. Brock Purdy carved up Chicago's defense to lead San Francisco to its best offensive output of the season and the defense dominated the Bears in a 38-13 win Sunday that looked a lot more like the team that went to the Super Bowl last season than the one that has struggled in 2024. “I think just the biggest thing was just getting some energy and momentum,” Purdy said. “This league is hard. It’s tough. If you don’t have momentum or energy and belief within a building, it can be really tough.” The problem for San Francisco (6-7) is it might be too late to salvage its playoff hopes. Three blown fourth-quarter leads to division rivals and the lopsided losses at Green Bay and Buffalo the previous two weeks leave the Niners two games out of the playoffs with only four games to go. They might need to win out to get back to the postseason for a fourth straight season, and even then they could need some help because their three division losses will make it tough to win any tiebreakers in the tightly packed NFC West. “If we win every single game, I think we’ve put ourselves in a very good position to either win the division or somehow sneak our way into playoff contention,” tight end George Kittle said. “I thought everyone’s focused on this one week. ... Forget the whole season whether you’ve played like crap the entire season, whether you’ve had missed opportunities, or whether you have a bunch of touchdowns. Whatever it is, flush all that and just focus on this one game.” Big plays. The Niners repeatedly gashed the Bears for big plays as the passing game looked as good as it has all season. Purdy had eight completions go for at least 20 yards — tied for the most in any game for the 49ers since at least 1991 — with Kittle catching four of them, Isaac Guerendo two and one each for Deebo Samuel and Jauan Jennings. Kickoffs. Jake Moody attempted two line-drive kicks as San Francisco tried to pin Chicago deep instead of allowing a touchback. But both kicks landed shy of the landing zone at the 20, giving the Bears the ball at the 40. DL Yetur Gross-Matos. The Niners have been struggling to generate a pass rush with Nick Bosa sidelined, but Gross-Matos made a big impact on Sunday. He had a career-high three sacks in the game after coming into the game with just one this season. S Ji'Ayir Brown. The second-year safety lost his starting job with the return of Talanoa Hufanga from a wrist injury. Brown played 15 defensive snaps in a spot role and was beat on a TD pass to Rome Odunze in his limited action. Guerendo has a sprained foot and will be evaluated later this week to see if he can play. ... OL Ben Bartch will likely go on IR after suffering a high ankle sprain Sunday. ... LB Dre Greenlaw could return this week for the first time since tearing his Achilles tendon in the Super Bowl. ... DL Nick Bosa (hip, oblique) and LT Trent Williams (ankle) will be evaluated this week but there is no timeline on when they will return. ... LG Aaron Banks cleared the concussion protocol and should play this week. ... LB Dee Winters (ankle), S Malik Mustapha (chest, shoulder) and LB Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles are day-to-day. 305 — The 49ers outgained the Bears by 305 yards in the first half for the ninth best advantage in a first half since at least 1991. The 319 yards for San Francisco were the most by any team in a first half this season and the 4 yards allowed were the fewest. The 49ers host the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
Democrats seem to be not happy with Joe Biden pardoning his son Hinter in the fag end of the Presidential tenure. While some of them have directly hit out at Biden over his choice, some of them feared it was due to fear of President-elect Donald Trump's political vendetta once he takes charge. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday he had pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, reversing his earlier pledge to leave the legal proceedings entirely up to the judicial system. Hunter Biden had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges and faced upcoming sentencing, as per a Reuters report. The Democratic president's pardon comes as Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to go after his political opposition, prepares to take office January 20, Reuters reported. Also Read : Fearing attack on reproductive rights by Donald Trump, many women in America are undergoing sterilization, only option they say Democratic Governor of Colorado Jared Polis said, "While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son." Office Productivity Advanced Excel Course - Financial Calculations & Excel Made Easy By - Anirudh Saraf, Founder- Saraf A & Associates, Chartered Accountant View Program Data Science MySQL for Beginners: Learn Data Science and Analytics Skills By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Finance Financial Literacy i.e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By - CA Rahul Gupta, CA with 10+ years of experience and Accounting Educator View Program Entrepreneurship Marketing & Sales Strategies for Startups: From Concept to Conversion By - Dr. Anu Khanchandani, Startup Coach with more than 25 years of experience View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) ChatGPT Mastery from Zero to Hero: The Complete AI Course By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Entrepreneurship Boosting Startup Revenue with 6 AI-Powered Sales Automation Techniques By - Dr. Anu Khanchandani, Startup Coach with more than 25 years of experience View Program Office Productivity Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By - Study At Home, Quality Education Anytime, Anywhere View Program Office Productivity Mastering Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and 365 By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Office Productivity Mastering Google Sheets: Unleash the Power of Excel and Advance Analysis By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Astrology Vastu Shastra Course By - Sachenkumar Rai, Vastu Shashtri View Program Web Development Mastering Full Stack Development: From Frontend to Backend Excellence By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) AI and Analytics based Business Strategy By - Tanusree De, Managing Director- Accenture Technology Lead, Trustworthy AI Center of Excellence: ATCI View Program Entrepreneurship Validating Your Startup Idea: Steps to Ensure Market Fit By - Dr. Anu Khanchandani, Startup Coach with more than 25 years of experience View Program Marketing Performance Marketing for eCommerce Brands By - Zafer Mukeri, Founder- Inara Marketers View Program Web Development Intermediate Java Mastery: Method, Collections, and Beyond By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) AI-Powered Python Mastery with Tabnine: Boost Your Coding Skills By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Finance Tally Prime & GST Accounting: Complete Guide By - CA Raj K Agrawal, Chartered Accountant View Program Marketing Digital marketing - Wordpress Website Development By - Shraddha Somani, Digital Marketing Trainer, Consultant, Strategiest and Subject Matter expert View Program Web Development Django & PostgreSQL Mastery: Build Professional Web Applications By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Web Development C++ Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Entrepreneurship Startup Fundraising: Essential Tactics for Securing Capital By - Dr. Anu Khanchandani, Startup Coach with more than 25 years of experience View Program Artificial Intelligence(AI) Mastering C++ Fundamentals with Generative AI: A Hands-On By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Web Development Advanced Java Mastery: Object-Oriented Programming Techniques By - Metla Sudha Sekhar, IT Specialist and Developer View Program Democratic U.S. Representative from Arizona Greg Stanton said, "I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong. This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers." Also Read : Playing Nice: Baby swap drama’s trailer, plot and production team Democratic strategist and former senior communications aide to Biden, Meghan Hays, said, "With some of the nominations that Trump has put up, I think it probably caused a little bit of worry for him. But also I think people have to remember: the president lost two children already and he does not need to lose another one." FAQs Q1. Who is current President of USA? A1. Joe Biden is the current President of USA. Q2. What is Donald Trump's designation? A2. Donald Trump's designation is President-elect. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel )DENVER — Amid renewed interest in the killing of JonBenet Ramsey triggered in part by a new Netflix documentary, police in Boulder, Colorado, refuted assertions this week that there is viable evidence and leads about the 1996 killing of the 6-year-old girl that they are not pursuing. JonBenet Ramsey, who competed in beauty pageants, was found dead in the basement of her family's home in the college town of Boulder the day after Christmas in 1996. Her body was found several hours after her mother called 911 to say her daughter was missing and a ransom note was left behind. The gravesite of JonBenet Ramsey is covered with flowers Jan. 8, 1997, at St. James Episcopal Cemetery in Marietta, Ga. JonBenet was bludgeoned and strangled. Her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever prosecuted. The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenet competing in pageants propelled the case into one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States. The police comments came as part of their annual update on the investigation, a month before the 28th anniversary of JonBenet's killing. Police said they released it a little earlier due to the increased attention on the case, apparently referring to the three-part Netflix series "Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey." In a video statement, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said the department welcomes news coverage and documentaries about the killing of JonBenet, who would have been 34 this year, as a way to generate possible new leads. He said the department is committed to solving the case but needs to be careful about what it shares about the investigation to protect a possible future prosecution. "What I can tell you though, is we have thoroughly investigated multiple people as suspects throughout the years and we continue to be open-minded about what occurred as we investigate the tips that come in to detectives," he said. The Netflix documentary focuses on the mistakes made by police and the "media circus" surrounding the case. A police officer sits in her cruiser Jan. 3, 1997, outside the home in which 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered Dec. 26, 1996, in Boulder, Colo. Police were widely criticized for mishandling the early investigation into her death amid speculation that her family was responsible. However, a prosecutor cleared her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and brother Burke in 2008 based on new DNA evidence from JonBenet's clothing that pointed to the involvement of an "unexplained third party" in her slaying. The announcement by former district attorney Mary Lacy came two years after Patsy Ramsey died of cancer. Lacy called the Ramseys "victims of this crime." John Ramsey continued to speak out for the case to be solved. In 2022, he supported an online petition asking Colorado's governor to intervene in the investigation by putting an outside agency in charge of DNA testing in the case. In the Netflix documentary, he said he advocated for several items that were not prepared for DNA testing to be tested and for other items to be retested. He said the results should be put through a genealogy database. In recent years, investigators identified suspects in unsolved cases by comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes and to DNA testing results shared online by people researching their family trees. In 2021, police said in their annual update that DNA hadn't been ruled out to help solve the case, and in 2022 noted that some evidence could be "consumed" if DNA testing is done on it. Last year, police said they convened a panel of outside experts to review the investigation to give recommendations and determine if updated technologies or forensic testing might produce new leads. In the latest update, Redfearn said that review ended but police continue to work through and evaluate a "lengthy list of recommendations" from the panel. Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly!
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Technology has eliminated many jobs over the years. Buggy whip makers have been out of business since McKinley was in the White House. The iceman hasn’t made home deliveries in nearly as long. And there’s just not as much call these days for switchboard operators as there once was. Oh, and knocker-uppers have vanished from British streets as well. Wait, what? This story is a reminder of the fundament truth in George Bernard Shaw’s quip that “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” In Brit Speak, to “knock someone up” is slang for waking them up. The name derives from knocking on a bedroom door to rouse a sleeper. Here on this side of the pond ... well, let’s just say “knocking someone up” involves something completely different and leave it at that. Getting back to our British cousins, there’s more involved than just a simple phrase. From the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century up to World War II, people in the U.K. were actually paid to be “knocker uppers.” As large factories and business offices began appearing, people suddenly had to show up for work by a specific time, often early in the morning. That could be difficult for sound sleepers in that era long before alarm clocks. (And when they were invented, many early models were unreliable.) Being late too many times carried the very real possibility of losing a much-needed job. What to do? Enter the knocker uppers. For a few pennies a week, they would come around to homes and make sure working-class people were awake. They did so by utilizing a variety of methods. Most common was the use of a long, thin pole, similar to a fishing rod. They would lift it up and rap on a bedroom window until the party inside got out of bed. Sometimes, rattles were used. Some enterprising people even used peashooters to hit the glass windows and awaken their clients. They were especially popular in industrial cities like Manchester but were also commonly found in most metro areas. So, just who were the knocker uppers? Poor retirees, mostly. Older men and women looking for extra money to help them scrape by. Moms-to-be, frequently not allowed to work during pregnancy, did it to help replace their lost wages. Sometimes, police officers walking the beat would supplement their meager income by performing the service. Children were occasionally employed, though not often due to their fondness for oversleeping. In England’s coal country, miners sometimes hung slate boards on the outer walls of their houses and wrote the times they were to be awakened. They eventually gained the nicknames “knocky-up boards” or “wakeup slates.” And the practice wasn’t limited to England. Although the custom didn’t catch on in this country, knocker-uppers were also used in Ireland and the Netherlands. But nowhere was the practice as widespread as it was in Britain’s working-class neighborhoods. All good things must eventually come to an end, and so it was for the knocker-uppers. Alarm clocks became both more affordable and dependable after World War II. Most knocker-uppers stopped making their rounds in the 1950s, with a few isolated pockets carrying on into the 1970s. A woman named Molly Moore claimed to be the last practitioner of the trade, as was her mother before her. Both women favored the peashooter approach to making sure their clients greeted the new day. It’s a quaintly picturesque image today: An old man or woman wandering down a street in the morning’s first light, reaching up and gently tapping on a window, then moving on down the block and repeating the process until finally, with the sun inching higher overhead, a whistle blows, and the workday begins anew once more.Guideline Announces Vincent Mifsud as CEO
This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West. This is the last of a three-part series. Read the first and the second parts. Fidaa Maksour, a dispatcher with the White Helmets, a volunteer organisation that operates largely in the war-torn northwestern region of Syria, was on duty in the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, when the ground began to shake. It was a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest ever to hit the border region between Syria and Turkey Calls started pouring into the operation room’s emergency WhatsApp lines soon after. There were “many people under the rubble, many people under collapsed buildings”, Maksour told Rest of World . In Syria alone, the earthquake and its aftershocks destroyed an estimated 10,000 buildings and killed more than 5,500 people . By that time, Syria had already suffered through more than a decade of civil war. Government bombardments had destroyed much of the opposition-controlled northwestern region. Residents couldn’t call for help through regular emergency numbers. So instead, in times of crisis, they turn to the WhatsApp-based emergency response system set up by the White Helmets, who are often the only first responders available. Maksour fielded the WhatsApp calls as best he could, relaying information between ambulances ferrying victims to overwhelmed hospitals and rescue crews attempting to reach those still trapped under the rubble. The White Helmets’ WhatsApp system dates back to 2021, when a Turkish-Syrian project restored power lines to the northwest and a patchwork of satellite and broadband providers helped bring back widespread access to internet services. WhatsApp quickly became the default means of communication. “The whole population – every family, every household in the northwest – is using WhatsApp,” one of Maksour’s colleagues told Rest of World . In recent months, Maksour has received emergency WhatsApp calls reporting everything from a serious car accident to unexploded ordnance. He dispatched ambulances and disposal teams for these instances, respectively. Messaging apps have become indispensable tools for civilians in conflict and disaster zones like Syria, and WhatsApp, with its more than 2 billion daily users, is the most popular among them. The app’s compression algorithm, which in part allows it to function in areas with poor connectivity, makes it particularly useful. Humanitarian organisations use it to coordinate emergency responses; refugees turn to it as a lifeline; and journalists use it to relay reporting from conflict zones. “We’ve talked to a variety of humanitarian NGOs,” WhatsApp’s director of global communications, Christina LoNigro, told Rest of World . “A lot of the things that we are concerned with is how they can use our app to get their information out most effectively ... How do they get information out to affected populations in a place where they already are? How do you message where they are? And a lot of times, they are on WhatsApp.” A volunteer of the Syria Civil Defence looks at her mobile phone as she rides in a vehicle, in Idlib province in March 2023. Credit: Reuters. Historically, the flow of information in conflict and disaster areas has been limited. In the 20th century, government and aid organisations often turned to radio or television broadcasts to get critical messages out. Sometimes, they just used cars with loudspeakers. Meanwhile, victims of conflict often had no way to speak to each other, or the outside world. As recently as 2006, a report from Denmark-based nonprofit International Media Support described the radio as “the principal means of communication for most of the population in conflict areas”. In Indonesia after 2006 and Sudan in 2009 , radio sets were distributed as part of aid packages. But by the beginning of the 2000s, digital messaging systems started taking on more importance. Skype, launched in 2003, became one of the only ways to reach Syrian activists and volunteers in opposition-controlled areas in the early days of the conflict. Then WhatsApp launched in 2009, Viber in 2010, and Telegram in 2013. These apps had features as simple as sending an SMS or making a phone call, but were not bound by bundled message allowances, character limits, or borders. Shergo Ali, a humanitarian worker originally from the Syrian city of Qamishli, spent nearly eight years in the northeastern region of his home country as well as the Sinjar and Mosul areas of Iraq. “At that time, in 2015, 2016, 2017, it was more Skype and SMS messages,” he told Rest of World . “But not much WhatsApp or other apps.” The aid sector is often cautious about adopting new technology to avoid introducing operational risks, but by the mid-2010s, messaging apps had become critical tools to some organisations. John Warnes, senior innovation officer with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told Rest of World that responding to the influx of Syrian refugees to West Asia and Europe, who were generally highly connected, required a change of approach. “UNHCR has been engaging with communities through digital channels such as messaging apps for a number of years,” Warnes said. “This accelerated particularly in the early 2010s as adoption rates of mobile devices grew in many parts of the world in which UNHCR was active.” WhatsApp was not the only application the agency used. In Mexico, personnel used Facebook Messenger as a way to speak with refugees and migrants. The popularity of different messaging apps varied across regions. A 2017 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross noted Viber’s popularity in war-torn Ukraine – the company that operates Viber, Rakuten, claims the service is installed on 98% of Ukrainian mobile phones . In Niger, which has been wracked by years of violence between the military and armed Islamist groups, Viber was also popular, along with Facebook Messenger and Imo, a US-owned messaging platform with over 200 million users. Before the fall of 2023, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees relied on phone calls, emails, and in-person meetings to communicate with its staff in Gaza, UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma told Rest of World . Then, on October 7 that year, Hamas attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people. Israel responded with a massive and ongoing military campaign that has since killed more than 44,000 Gazans , according to health authorities, displaced most of the around 365-square-km strip’s 2.3 million residents, and destroyed at least half of the area’s buildings. Cell towers, along with power and internet infrastructure, were hit early on in the conflict, causing a near-total blackout in Gaza within weeks. “People couldn’t speak to each other. They couldn’t call each other. They were cut off from one another in the middle of a war zone, and they were cut off from the rest of the world,” Touma told Rest of World . “We were communicating with one staff member through one satellite phone that barely worked but we got cut off from the rest.” UNRWA turned to WhatsApp. The agency had previously used the service for sending messages to communities about things like school events or information on vaccination campaigns. Now, the app was suddenly much more important. “I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that WhatsApp can be life-saving,” Touma said. UNRWA, she said, is now almost completely dependent on WhatsApp to speak with staff in Gaza. Before the war, writer Amal Helles lived in Gaza’s Khan Yunis city, and mostly used WhatsApp to speak with friends and family. Shortly after the Israeli military campaign began, she started reporting for The Times and WhatsApp became indispensable for her work, she told Rest of World. To cover the aftermath of airstrikes or the desperate daily search for water and food, she and other journalists came to rely on data-only eSIMS that could connect to the outer edges of Egyptian or Israeli networks. She climbed to exposed and dangerous high points in search of a phone signal. The connection was typically too weak to connect for email, but WhatsApp functioned. Thanks to WhatsApp’s compression algorithms, she was able to send voice notes, videos, and documents to her colleagues in London. “Whatsapp was the only – the base – application that we used during the war,” Helles said. Helles and her children eventually escaped Gaza, but she still continues to remotely cover the violence wracking her home and relies on WhatsApp to reach people there. Helles messages her family often, too, including her husband, who is still in Gaza and also works as a journalist. One day this past August, she read of a strike near the entrance of a hospital where her husband regularly reports. She sent him a WhatsApp message right away but only saw a single gray tick indicating her message had been sent but not received. She tried to call his cell but it wouldn’t connect, and his colleagues couldn’t reach him either. An agonising hour passed before he finally logged on. “I heard his voice in a voice note via WhatsApp,” she said. “And my heart was reassured.” Ahmad, who requested a pseudonym to speak with Rest of World out of concern for his safety, spent about a year working as an interpreter with British forces in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. That made him a target for the Taliban and other militant groups. He received a death threat in 2019, and was stabbed and shot in an apparent assassination attempt a few months later. So when the Taliban took Kabul in 2021, he fled. He first went to Iran and then made the arduous trek across the mountains of the Turkish border. Ahmad was already familiar with WhatsApp – he used it to avoid exorbitant Afghan telecom fees. But as he escaped Afghanistan, it also became his only link to home. “When I was traveling, my family had concerns about my journey,” he told Rest of World . “I was sending some of my pictures home [to say] I’m okay, I’m fine ... I had contact with my family and I was always giving them my updates.” Ahmad reached Istanbul, and applied for a humanitarian visa and to a UK immigration program. In the meantime, he spent months in a cramped and crowded basement apartment hiding from the police sweeps for illegal migrants, venturing out only to work long shifts in a textile factory for around $50 a week. International calls would have been prohibitively expensive, so Ahmad turned to WhatsApp. “It was the only way that I contacted my family,” he said. “I used to share pictures, selfies, voice notes.” After an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle himself to Europe, Ahmad was deported back to Afghanistan, where he lives today in hiding. WhatsApp is how he keeps in touch with the few people he trusts. He depends on the app’s end-to-end encryption to keep the Taliban from finding him. “It’s more safe than a phone call,” he said. “Mobile phones, SIM cards, voices – these three can be tracked easily.” He has been trying to reach Europe once again, this time via legal pathways. His lawyer insists that they communicate only through Signal , an open-source, privacy-focused messaging app but Ahmad is confident that WhatsApp is safe enough. “I think the Taliban are not that much developed that they can track WhatsApp very easily,” he said. WhatsApp has its faults and weaknesses, even for those dependent on the service in conflict and disaster areas. The service has been criticised for a relative lack of privacy and the potential for surveillance by more sophisticated actors. Meta collects a variety of data on users, including IP addresses, device information, and profile images that it shares across its companies. In May, The Intercept reported on the contents of an internal WhatsApp threat assessment, which discussed potential vulnerabilities that could allow government agencies to work out a user’s contacts, group membership, and potential location. Meta told The Intercept that there was no evidence of security vulnerabilities on WhatsApp. Signal is often cited by security professionals as harder to surveil for even the most advanced intelligence apparatuses. But that has not yet translated into mass uptake. Signal does not release specific usage data but its active users are estimated to number in the tens of millions – a tiny fraction of that of WhatsApp. When Ali, the Syrian humanitarian worker, arrived in Ukraine last February to start a new role as area manager for the east of the country with German NGO Welthungerhilfe, colleagues instructed him to download Signal immediately. Aside from general information sharing and travel, the NGO uses Signal for security and safety communications, including instructions on how to react to air raid alarms and airstrikes, Ali said. “I’d never used Signal before,” he said. “We’ve had staff who arrived new after me, and they didn’t have Signal. We asked them to download it.” After a 2021 data protection analysis of potential risks, the ICRC instructed its employees to use Signal internally, and, where possible, externally, Rebeca Lucía Galindo, an adviser at the ICRC on communication with communities, told Rest of World . But if that is not possible, then the organisation uses the safest viable alternative. WhatsApp is aware of how its services are relied upon in dangerous areas and is trying to address concerns, LoNigro said. She described various privacy-boosting additions made to the app after discussions with NGOs, including disappearing messages and the ability to lock specific chats with a PIN or biometric identification. Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, underscored the capacity of messaging apps to inflame tensions and incite violence during times of crisis. He described incidents in the ongoing war in Sudan, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces sent out large batches of WhatsApp messages announcing an impending attack on a given location, causing panic and displacement. That is echoed in the findings of a report by the multi-donor initiative Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility. It concluded that in South Sudan, social media – particularly WhatsApp – had been used to spread propaganda and also as a means to plan and coordinate attacks and ambushes. Research consortium PeaceRep has also noted the connection between WhatsApp groups and revenge killings in Somalia. But WhatsApp is now so ubiquitous that it will inevitably continue to be a critical tool in conflict areas. Maksour, the White Helmets dispatcher in Syria, said it would be “very, very difficult” to do his job without WhatsApp. “The civilians have only WhatsApp to communicate with us and to communicate an emergency to the operations room.” John Beck is an award-winning journalist based in Istanbul. This article was originally published in Rest of World , which covers technology’s impact outside the West.MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin public worker and teachers unions scored a major legal victory Monday with a ruling that restores collective bargaining rights they lost under a 2011 state law that sparked weeks of protests and made the state the center of the national battle over union rights. That law, known as Act 10, effectively ended the ability of most public employees to bargain for wage increases and other issues, and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. Under the ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power would have it restored to what was in place prior to 2011. They would be treated the same as the police, firefighter and other public safety unions that were exempted under the law. Republicans vowed to immediately appeal the ruling, which ultimately is likely to go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That only amplifies the importance of the April election that will determine whether the court remains controlled 4-3 by liberal justices. Former Gov. Scott Walker, who proposed the law that catapulted him onto the national political stage, decried the ruling in a post on the social media platform X as “brazen political activism.” He said it makes the state Supreme Court election “that much more important.” Supporters of the law have said it provided local governments more control over workers and the powers they needed to cut costs. Repealing the law, which allowed schools and local governments to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits, would bankrupt those entities, backers of Act 10 have argued. Democratic opponents argue that the law has hurt schools and other government agencies by taking away the ability of employees to collectively bargain for their pay and working conditions. The law was proposed by Walker and enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in spite of massive protests that went on for weeks and drew as many as 100,000 people to the Capitol. The law has withstood numerous legal challenges over the years, but this was the first brought since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023. The seven unions and three union leaders that brought the lawsuit argued that the law should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal, have already been upheld by other courts, and that the case should be dismissed. But Frost sided with the unions in July, saying the law violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into “general” and “public safety” employees. He ruled that general employee unions, like those representing teachers, can not be treated differently from public safety unions that were exempt from the law. His ruling Monday delineated the dozens of specific provisions in the law that must be struck. Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he looked forward to appealing the ruling. “This lawsuit came more than a decade after Act 10 became law and after many courts rejected the same meritless legal challenges,” Vos said in a statement. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business lobbying organization, also decried the ruling. WMC President Kurt Bauer called Act 10 “a critical tool for policymakers and elected officials to balance budgets and find taxpayer savings." The Legislature said in court filings that arguments made in the current case were rejected in 2014 by the state Supreme Court. The only change since that ruling is the makeup of Wisconsin Supreme Court, attorneys for the Legislature argued. The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. The law was the signature legislative achievement of Walker, who was targeted for a recall election he won. Walker used his fights with unions to mount an unsuccessful presidential run in 2016. Frost, the judge who issued Monday's ruling, appeared to have signed the petition to recall Walker from office. None of the attorneys sought his removal from the case and he did not step down. Frost was appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who signed the Walker recall petition. The law has also led to a dramatic decrease in union membership across the state. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said in a 2022 analysis that since 2000, Wisconsin had the largest decline in the proportion of its workforce that is unionized. In 2015, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature approved a right-to-work law that limited the power of private-sector unions. Public sector unions that brought the lawsuit are the Abbotsford Education Association; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Locals 47 and 1215; the Beaver Dam Education Association; SEIU Wisconsin; the Teaching Assistants’ Association Local 3220 and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 695.
