Daily Archives: December 23, 2021


No More Video Games on Tesla Screens While Cars Are Moving 

Under pressure from U.S. auto safety regulators, Tesla has agreed to stop allowing video games to be played on center touch screens while its vehicles are moving.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the Internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion.  The move comes one day after the agency announced it would open a formal investigation into distracted driving concerns about Tesla’s video games, some of which could be …


Omicron Milder Than Other Coronavirus Variants, New Studies Suggest

New research from Britain and South Africa suggests the fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus is milder and results in fewer hospitalizations than other versions.   Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland unveiled a study Wednesday showing that people who had contracted omicron were at least 60% less likely to be admitted, compared to those who had been infected with the delta variant, which had been dominating the world in recent months. A separate study conducted at Imperial College London revealed that people diagnosed with omicron were 15%-20% less …


Writer Joan Didion, Chronicler of Contemporary American Society, Dies at 87 

Author Joan Didion, whose essays, memoirs, novels and screenplays chronicled contemporary American society, as well as her grief over the deaths of her husband and daughter, has died at the age of 87.    The cause of death was Parkinson’s disease, her publisher Knopf said Thursday in a statement. Didion first emerged as a writer of substance in the late 1960s as an early practitioner of “new journalism,” which allowed writers to take a narrative, more personalized perspective.    Her 1968 essay collection “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” a title borrowed from …


Pope Demands Humility in New Zinger-filled Christmas Speech

Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the “glitter of our armor” was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church’s mission. As he has in the past, Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task for their perceived moral and personal failings, denouncing in particular those pride-filled clerics who “rigidly” hide behind Catholic Church traditions rather than seek out the neediest with humility. As they have in the past, cardinals and bishops …


Australia Considers Charging Unvaccinated Residents for COVID-19 Hospital Care

A suggestion by Australia’s most populous state to charge unvaccinated people for COVID-19 medical costs has received widespread criticism. The New South Wales proposal has angered doctors and some federal politicians, who argue that health care in Australia is free and universal. The New South Wales government has said that unvaccinated patients being treated for COVID-19 have been irresponsible and have burdened taxpayers with “very substantial costs.” And they could be forced to pay for their hospital care. “There already is two classes of the hospital system because you have …


2021 on Track to Surpass 2020 as America’s Deadliest

U.S. health officials say 2021 is shaping up to be even deadlier than last year. It’s too early to say for sure, since all the death reports for November and December won’t be in for many weeks. But based on available information, it seems likely 2021 will surpass last year’s record number of deaths by at least 15,000, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death statistics. Last year was the most lethal in U.S. history, largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A CDC …


Apple Must Answer Shareholder Questions on Forced Labor, SEC Says

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple Inc. to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain.  A group of shareholders earlier this year asked Apple’s board to prepare a report on how the company protects workers in its supply chain from forced labor. The request for information covered the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many …