Latest news with #RobynBeck
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US News releases 2025 Best States Rankings: Washington and Oregon drop, Idaho rises
States in the Pacific Northwest moved around a few places in the 2025 Best States Rankings from U.S. News & World Report, but they largely remained in line with their positions from the previous year. Washington ranked 10th in the newest edition of the Best States Rankings, down from eighth in 2024. Oregon ranked 35th, down from 31st the previous year. And Idaho had them both beat, ranking as the third-best state in the U.S., up from its fifth-place showing the year prior. U.S. News bases its rankings on over 70 metrics across eight categories, including crime, education, fiscal stability, health care, infrastructure, opportunity, the economy, and the natural environment, according to the media outlet. The best state in the nation, according to U.S. News? That honor goes to Utah, which received high marks for its corrections outcomes, fiscal health, and transportation and internet infrastructure. Here's more on Washington's place in the rankings and the Deep South state that ranked at the bottom of the list. A ship is seen in the harbor on October 16, 2024 in Port Angeles, Washington in Clallam County. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images) ROBYN BECK, AFP via Getty Images Why did Washington place 10th on US News' Best States Rankings? The Evergreen State scored highly in the infrastructure, natural environment, and education categories of the Best States Rankings, according to U.S. News. According to the report, the state's average commute time is 27 minutes, compared to the national average of 25 minutes. Nearly 30% of its roads are in "poor condition," higher than the national average of 17.5%. Regarding the natural environment, Washington ranked fifth in the country for its air and water quality and 15th in pollution threats, according to the report. The state was also noted for its smarts. It ranked third in the nation in the higher education subcategory, which "comprises metrics reflecting the share of citizens in each state holding college degrees, as well as college graduation rates, the cost of in-state tuition and fees, and the burden of federal student loan debt carried by recipients." What is the worst state in the US, according to US News? Louisiana ranked 50th in U.S. News' Best States Rankings for 2025. It held the same rank in 2024. Full US News Best States Rankings list Utah New Hampshire Idaho Minnesota Nebraska Florida Vermont South Dakota Massachusetts Washington Colorado North Dakota North Carolina Iowa Connecticut Virginia Wisconsin Delaware New Jersey Maryland Georgia New York Wyoming Rhode Island Kansas Montana Maine Hawaii Texas Arizona Missouri Tennessee Indiana Nevada Oregon Illinois California Ohio Kentucky South Carolina Pennsylvania Oklahoma Michigan Arkansas Alabama West Virginia New Mexico Mississippi Alaska Louisiana This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: US News releases 2025 Best States list: See where Washington ranks
Business Mayor
04-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Ireland fines TikTok 530 million euros for sending EU user data to China
Global Economy May 2, 2025 The TikTok logo is seen outside the Chinese video app company's Los Angeles offices on April 4, 2025 in Culver City, California. Robyn Beck | AFP via Getty Images TikTok has been fined 530 million euros ($601.3 million) by Ireland's privacy regulator for sending user data to China. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) — which leads on privacy oversight for TikTok in the EU — said Friday that TikTok infringed the bloc's GDPR data protection law over transfers of European user data to China. The regulator ordered TikTok to bring its data processing into compliance within six months and said it would suspend TikTok's transfers to China if processing is not brought into compliance within that timeframe. 'TikTok's personal data transfers to China infringed the GDPR because TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data of EEA users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,' Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the DPC, said in a statement Friday. 'As a result of TikTok's failure to undertake the necessary assessments, TikTok did not address potential access by Chinese authorities to EEA personal data under Chinese anti-terrorism, counter-espionage and other laws identified by TikTok as materially diverging from EU standards,' he added. The DPC said it also found TikTok had provided inaccurate information to its inquiry when it claimed it hadn't stored European users' data on servers located in China. TikTok informed the regulator this month that it discovered an issue in February where limited European user data had been stored on servers in China, contrary to its prior statements. The DPC takes the issue 'very seriously' and is considering what further regulatory action may be warranted in consultation with its fellow EU data protection authorities, Doyle said. TikTok said it disagrees with the Irish regulator's decision and plans to appeal in full. In a blog post Friday, Christine Grahn, TikTok's head of public policy and government relations for Europe, said the decision failed to take into account Project Clover, a 12-billion-euro data security initiative aimed at protecting European user data. 'It instead focuses on a select period from years ago, prior to Clover's 2023 implementation and does not reflect the safeguards now in place,' Grahn said. 'The DPC itself recorded in its report what TikTok has consistently said: it has never received a request for European user data from the Chinese authorities, and has never provided European user data to them,' she added. TikTok has previously acknowledged that staff in China can access user data. In 2022, it said in an update to its privacy policy that employees in countries where it operates — including China, Brazil, Canada and Israel — are permitted access to users' data to ensure their experience is 'consistent, enjoyable and safe.' Western policymakers and regulators are concerned TikTok's transfers of user data could lead to Beijing accessing the data to spy on users with the app. Under Chinese law, tech companies are required to hand over user data to the Chinese government if requested to assist with vaguely-defined 'intelligence work.' For its part, TikTok has insisted that it has never sent user data to the Chinese government. In 2023, TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew said in written testimony for a U.S. Congress hearing that the app 'has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government.' READ SOURCE
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Future Of Researchers In The U.S. Is In Jeopardy
UCLA students, researchers and demonstrators rally during a "Kill the Cuts" protest against the ... More Trump administration's funding cuts on research, health and higher education at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles on April 8, 2025. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and 'DOGE,' have made drastic cuts to research funding throughout the Health and Human Services agencies. The radical reductions struck the National Institutes of Health particularly hard, throwing universities and research centers into a panic and scramble to see what might be salvaged. The severe budget cuts will leave lasting harm to research projects and toe the careers and personal lives of many researchers. Here's what several researchers said about the toll on them and their research study participants. Two Yale researchers who focus on mental illness and homelessness have abruptly lost their grant funding. They and others reportedly received the same form letter: 'This award no longer effectuates agency priorities. Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness. Worse, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion ('DEI') studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, it is the policy of NIH not to prioritize such research programs.' One researcher said that what was particularly painful was what felt like a betrayal of trust to the community. Part of the grant was employing and training unhoused people. 'We were able to pay people and restore some justice. That was one of the more heartbreaking things' about losing the grant. The participants had a 'platform where they could impact the system they depend on. We set out to empower their voices, and it feels bad not to deliver on what we said.' She added that 'pulling the rug out harms that trust and our ability to approach' them in the future. Many university researchers are expected to fund their positions and staff through research grants. On a personal note, she said the loss of funding is 'terrifying as someone who is junior in my career' because these research grants are the 'trajectory to promotion.' Researchers have had to fire staff and, without their grants, are likely to lose their position with the university…and that could lead to losing their home and disrupting their children's schooling by having to move. The other researcher noted that their community partners 'are the experts in this project, and they've been dropped.' Trying to look on the bright side of this trauma, she added, 'it's forced us to be able to talk to a wider spectrum of people about why our work is important' and to think about how to convince someone that this research is worth doing. Paige Jarreau has a series, Silenced Science Stories, that is an illustrated series of portraits of other scientists whose work has been affected or who have been forced out of their research by budget cuts or firings. Harvard's Brittany Charlton, an epidemiologist and founding director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, anticipated these kinds of cuts coming well before many others did, and has long been used to being targeted, as are abortion researchers. She observed that they are in a different grief space than those who are just beginning to realize what is happening to them. Because of those experiences, she is much more outspoken and wrote an excellent article about why she is suing RFK. She notes there 'that science should not be subject to political whims,' and having certain topics fall into disfavor is a 'violation of both congressional mandates and the NIH's own strategic plan.' In our interview, she stressed that she (and others) had a five-year grant and that Congress has the authority to allocate funds under the Constitution. So having the President say, 'We're canceling your existing grants because they don't align with our executive orders' is just so illegal.' Her suit notes these were existing contracts, and breaching these violates the Constitution as well as contractual law. She had 'about $15.9 million dollars [in NIH grants], and at least another $5.9 of that still needed to be spent in order to complete' her research projects. 'All of that money was then terminated,' wasting the entirety of the funding and the years of effort. The US has already invested so much, and ' then to cut it off as maybe the least efficient thing you could think of.' While Charlton notes these grant terminations mark 'the end of my center, the end of my career,' she focused more on the losses to the community, all the study volunteers, and public health advances. The suit also targets NIH and its director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, HHS and its head, RFK, Jr. Other plaintiffs in the suit include the American Public Health Association, United Auto Workers, which represents a number of postdocs and students), Ibis Reproductive Health, professor Katie Edwards, postdoc Nicole Maphis, and Peter Lurie (president of Center for Science in the Public Interest), who all had grants canceled. The effect of these abrupt cuts in funding from HHS across each of these agencies is an exodus of researchers from the US to other countries, many of whom have been long-term rivals. The US is losing its cutting edge and ability for long-term innovative research. What each of the researchers I spoke with asked is simple—bring science-based decisions back.
