Tag: Travel

U.S. Regulation Punishes Europeans for Visiting Cuba

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Oct 5, 2022 – Several European countries have issued travel warnings to their citizens: if you go to Cuba, you’ll need to apply for a visa to visit the United States. For most Europeans, traveling to the U.S. is an easy process. They qualify for the U.S. Visa Waiver program (ESTA), meaning they just have to fill out an online form. However, U.S. law denies normally eligible individuals access to ESTA if they have visited countries on its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Cuba was added to the list last year by Donald Trump and has been kept on it by Joe Biden, even though there is no evidence Cuba sponsors terrorism.

U.S. Regulation Punishes Europeans for Visiting Cuba via Belly of The Beast Cuba

BUT WHY?! Kenya Has Zero Cases But U.S Pharmaceutical Firm To Start Vaccine Trial + WHO Issues Monkeypox Advisory to Kenya

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Video via Wongel Zelalem

Tonix will test its monkeypox vaccine in Kenya next year, and no eyes on accelerated path at FDA

The study of Tonix Pharmaceuticals’ live virus vaccine will occur at Kenya Medical Research Institute, or KEMRI, in the East African country, the partners said Thursday. While Kenya has no reported cases of the virus that leads to painful lesions, the country is close to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which had 163 cases as of July 27, according to a CDC tracker.

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Tonix has been working on monkeypox and smallpox for close to a decade, Lederman said. The company’s vaccine, dubbed TNX-801, is traced back to a research collaboration with the Department of Cell Biology at the University of Alberta.

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CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence [Turki bin Faisal Al Saud] among its investors. Google banned the company from the Play Store in June.

The CDC used the data for monitoring curfews, with the documents saying that SafeGraph’s data “has been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.” The documents date from 2021.

Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely follows the data marketplace, told Motherboard in an online chat after reviewing the documents: “The CDC seems to have purposefully created an open-ended list of use cases, which included monitoring curfews, neighbor-to-neighbor visits, visits to churches, schools and pharmacies, and also a variety of analysis with this data specifically focused on ‘violence.’” (The document doesn’t stop at churches; it mentions “places of worship.”)

Related:

Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics

Location data broker SafeGraph stops selling information on visits to abortion providers

SafeGraph Provides CDC and 1000+ Organizations With Data to Fight the COVID-19 Crisis

Google Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence Head:

On its website SafeGraph says “We believe places data should be open for all.” In April 2017, Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, invested in SafeGraph as part of a $16 million Series A funding round. SafeGraph said it had “assembled the deepest policy thinkers.” Beyond Faisal Al Saud, SafeGraph said it had enlisted the help of former U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, author Sam Harris, Meghan O’Sullivan who ran Iraq and Afghanistan policy under President George Bush, former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Obama Mona Sutphen, and former German Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, among others. Peter Thiel is also an investor in the company.

More investors: SafeGraph Raises $16 Million Series A