The website Fight Health Insurance allows people who have had insurance claims rejected to use their AI to help them write an appeal against the denial. AI scans the paperwork and helps draft an appeal. To discourage people from even trying to appeal, insurance companies make the process unnecessarily complicated and hard.
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An article posted by FAIR, DC Station Rewrites Gas Exposé After a Word From Its Sponsor, describes how a gas utility company squelched reporting by WUSA in Wash. DC. The reporting was about the effects of gas burning stoves on air polluted with nitrogen dioxide from gas burning in homes.
For the grassroots group, called the Beyond Gas Coalition, the most pressing message to get to families was how to lessen their exposure to NO2 by keeping windows open during and even after cooking with gas stoves.WUSA, in fact, produced no less than three stories on the day of the report’s release (Heated, 11/27/24). Unfortunately, WUSA’s stories were quickly followed by an about-face.WUSA’s trio of pieces began running on the morning of November 21, but by that evening, two of the three links to its stories were broken.When [Beyond Gas] called up WUSA to inquire, they say the message they received from the producer who worked on the story was that the station made the decision at the behest of the utility company, choosing to pull the story down and hide the video from its YouTube channel until it could include a statement from Washington Gas.
Of course, Washington Gas was under no obligation to ever give a statement.
“[WUSA] essentially told Washington Gas, ‘We’ll kill the story, and let you decide when and whether we republish it,’” Mark Rodeffer, a member of Sierra Club’s DC chapter, told Heated‘s Emily Atkin. “It’s shocking to me that they’re letting one of their advertisers dictate stories.”
It is shocking that anyone nowadays is shocked that advertisers influence news reporting.
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Trade restrictions are having an impact. China has banned exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony in response to chip sanctions:
China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry announced the move after the Washington expanded its list of Chinese companies subject to export controls on computer chip-making equipment, software and high-bandwidth memory chips. Such chips are needed for advanced applications.
The ratcheting up of trade restrictions comes as President-elect Donald Trump has been threatening to sharply raise tariffs on imports from China and other countries, potentially intensifying simmering tensions over trade and technology.
China’s Foreign Ministry also issued a vehement reproof.
“China has lodged stern protests with the U.S. for its update of the semiconductor export control measures, sanctions against Chinese companies, and malicious suppression of China’s technological progress,” Lin Jian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in a routine briefing Tuesday.
That doesn't sound good. Those minerals are necessary for electronics.
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U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack -- FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers. Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers. The hacking campaign, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and it has not yet been fully remediated. .... The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant, Greene said, that it was “impossible” for the agencies “to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full eviction.”
That "salty hurricane" mega-hack sounds like a real whopper. Fortunately, my e-communications aren't worth hacking. I'm a very low value target, worth about the value of a medium sized turnip. Ew, “full eviction” sounds nasty.
Walmart Buys Vizio to Use Its TVs as a New Way to Blast You With Ads -- Walmart paid $2.3 billion for Vizio with its SmartCast OS along with the 19 million accounts it can advertise to.
Getting blasted with ads sounds like lots 'o fun!
State board approves Bible-infused curriculum -- A majority of the Texas State Board of Education gave final approval Nov. 22 to a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings. Eight of the 15 board members voted to approve Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year. The curriculum will become available in the spring, with schools that choose to adopt the materials expected to begin using them at the start of the 2025-26 school year. .... Members also said politics in no way influenced their vote and that they supported the materials because they believed it would best serve Texas children.
In the past, stunts like this would get shot down by the USSC. But with an aggressive Christian nationalist goal of de-secularizing public schools and a radical Christian nationalist supreme court, all bets are off. We can expect a USSC decision on this possibly in May or June of 2026 unless lower courts drag it out until the USSC's term starting in Oct. 2027.
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