A US Republican lawmaker is raising concerns that America's intelligence agencies could lose thousands of workers if they do not comply with the Biden administration's vaccine deadline of Nov. 23.

There are 18 agencies that fall under America's national intelligence community.

Republican Chris Stewart of Utah, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that there are differing COVID-19 vaccination rates among those agencies, with some rates as high as 80%, and others as low as 60%.

He cited information that he says he has learned from the Biden administration, but which the administration has not yet released publicly.

"My question is, what's the impact on national security," Stewart asked of the potential of losing thousands of intelligence officers, who are typically difficult to replace because of their specialized training. Stewart is calling on the Biden administration to grant more exceptions to the vaccine mandate based on religious and medical grounds and to delay any possible terminations.

The director of the Office of National Intelligence is not announcing the overall vaccination rate for the roughly 100,000 people who work in national intelligence. But some individual agencies have already announced high vaccination rates.

The CIA says 97% of its workforce is vaccinated, while the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates US spy satellites, is reporting a 90% vaccination rate.

Employees who have not been vaccinated by Nov. 23, face the possibility of a two-week suspension, followed by termination if they do not eventually get the shot.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee say they are confident the vast majority of intelligence workers will get the vaccine by that deadline. Democratic Representative Jason Crow told a reporter, "If somebody is not willing to do what's necessary to protect their own health and the health of their unit, that actually calls into question their ability to effectively do the job."

Stewart, a former member of the Air Force, says he has gotten the vaccination himself, but, like most Republicans, opposes blanket vaccine mandates./aa

A Palestinian child was shot dead Friday by “Israeli” forces during an anti-settlement demonstration in the occupied West Bank, according to a written statement by the Palestinian Health Ministry on Friday.

The ministry statement said the child victim was heavily injured by “Israeli” soldiers while Palestinians were protesting against illegal Jewish settlements in Nablus city in the occupied West Bank, with a live round.

It said the 13-year-old child was rushed into Rafidia Governmental Hospital in Nablus, adding that despite all medical interventions the child had “fallen a martyr.”

Palestinians held demonstrations in the afternoon to protest the expansion of Jewish settlements around Nablus, according to local sources.

The head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Nablus Ahmad Jibril told Anadolu Agency that Israeli soldiers intervened Palestinian protesters in the Deer al-Hatab town of Nablus city with live bullets.

According to the “Israeli” and Palestinian estimates, there are about 650,000 settlers in West Bank settlements, including occupied Jerusalem, who live in 164 settlements and 116 outposts./agencies

The metaverse will become a digitalization of life offering users unlimited possibilities, Gamestarter CEO Andrius Miron told Anadolu Agency.

"I personally think that the metaverse will be the next big platform for fan art, moviemaking as well. It really offers unlimited possibilities," he said in an email.

Combining “meta,” or beyond, and “universe,” “metaverse” recently become a buzzword as Facebook rebranded itself Meta, with co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg steering the company toward this new reality.

While the younger generation moves away from Facebook to other platforms like TikTok, Facebook has faced controversies over charges that it exacerbates teen anxiety and depression as well as spreads misinformation.

"Facebook's basic user experience hasn't changed from its inception, it's still pretty much the same as I remember in 2008," said Miron, who runs the world’s largest NFT gaming marketplace and fundraising platform.

"Also, there's a number of shortcomings that make people move away from the platform, like heavy censorship and morality. Zuckerberg's metaverse will not be the leader,” he predicted.

“I personally think it will experience the same fate as Google's social network," he added, referring to Google+, which found itself unable to compete with WhatsApp and other competitors

Gamification key to metaverse

Metaverse, the digital concept of shared 3D spaces linked into a virtual universe, was first mentioned by American novelist Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, in which humans as avatars interact along with other software in a virtual 3D space.

In popular culture, movies and video games also have their universes to which many fans are accustomed.

From Star Wars and the Matrix to the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, popular video games such as Second Life, Minecraft, Fortnite and World of Warcraft have built their own realities and even economies, where millions of users interact by using coins and tokens as currency.

"The key to the metaverse is gamification. Games are also the key to mass blockchain adoption. So metaverse, NFTs (nonfungible tokens), digital ownership, and GameFi is a match made in heaven," said Miron.

"Metaverse economy and lifeblood will be based on games and game economy. Play-to-earn is shifting to play-to-own, which will evolve to play-to-live," he added.

Arguably the best contemporary depiction of a metaverse came in the 2018 Hollywood science fiction film Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline's novel of the same name, and directed by Steven Spielberg.

In the film, a majority of the world’s population in the year 2045 are wired in the OASIS, a virtual reality simulation. As people spend most of their everyday lives in the OASIS to escape real-world problems, there were also dangers of sinking into debt when players "zero out," losing all their tokens in that digital world.

"The winners in the metaverse, in terms of projects, will be original players, so the market has to mature to bring originality, not the copycat projects we see now,” said Miron, adding that community-directed decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) projects are needed as well.

Metaverse to integrate AI

With coronavirus pandemic-led quarantine measures paving the way for a large volume of online meetings and activities, there has never been a better time for tech companies to leap into the metaverse.

The metaverse, touted as the next step in the evolution of the internet, aims to offer virtual universes for meetings, movies, entertainment, concerts, and especially gaming.

It will be a global digital platform where users can interact via their avatars, or digital projections of their true selves, by using virtual reality (VR) headsets, augmented reality (AR) glasses, new software and applications and even smart clothes and gloves that are yet to be invented.

But the biggest contribution to metaverse will be the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), according to Miron.

"The metaverse will integrate AI which will be a breakthrough in this space. The AI will be kind of a glue that holds the metaverse together. Eventually 'connection' with other players will be indistinguishable from AI within the metaverse. Also, the metaverse will be the catalyst for various 'brain chips' or 'neural links'," he said.

"With the help of AI, people will have their own reality bubbles within the metaverse. Most likely most metaverses will be highly censored in terms of information freedom, as the internet is generally moving to heavy censorship. So most likely some new form of underground decentralized social media will emerge," he said./aa

The US economy added 531,000 jobs in October, coming strong to beat market estimates, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, the Department of Labor announced on Friday.

The market estimate for nonfarm payrolls was an increase of 450,000, while job additions for September were revised up by 118,000, from 194,000 to 312,000, according to data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With strong job additions, the unemployment rate decreased 0.2 percentage point to 4.6% in October, also beating the market expectation of 4.7%. It stood at 4.8% in September.

The number of unemployed individuals in the US has also continued to decline, by falling to 7.4 million last month.

The results are positive for American economy and its labor market, as strong jobs additions would accelerate recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Due to COVID-19, more than 22 million people in the world's largest economy lost their jobs in March and April 2020./agencies

Pfizer said its COVID-19 pill reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by 89%, a statement from the US pharmaceutical giant said Friday.

No deaths were reported in patients who received the company's COVID-19 oral antiviral pill PAXLOVID in the overall study population through Day 28, compared to 10 deaths in patients who received a placebo, it said.

The study was based on data from 1,219 adults who were enrolled by Sept. 29 and had a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection within a five-day period, as well as at least one medical condition associated with an increased risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19, it added.

The company said it will submit the study to the US' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization as soon as possible.

The news makes Pfizer the second company in the world to develop a pill against the coronavirus after Merck's oral antiviral treatment drug Molnupiravir, announced on Oct. 1./agencies

Due to restrictions under China's Great Firewall policy, more tech companies jumping ship from the country should come as no surprise, according to a Turkish-based digital communication expert.

Saying that technology and internet companies are not pulling out of China due to losing money, Nabat Garakhanova told Anadolu Agency that instead companies are balking at Chinese government rules for protecting people's personal data.

This week both US-based web giant Yahoo and Epic Games' popular battle game Fortnite pulled out of China.

Last month, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said it will end operations in China due to "greater compliance requirements," while Google left in 2010, and Facebook and Twitter have both been blocked for more than a decade.

The country also restricts online gaming for children under age 18 to three hours a week, and then only on the weekends.

Garakhonava said that China is a huge market with a population of 1.5 billion and 70.6% internet usage ratio, which equals a staggering 1 billion people.

Incredible penalties

Over the last two decades, China saw something akin to a revolution, when first the country brought in technology thanks to its low-cost work force then succeeded in creating its own technology environment.

"China has its own (versions of) Facebook and Twitter, so, whatever the world uses, China has an alternative, as even these world giants are fighting against these alternatives," Garakhonava explained.

In the early 2000s, China established the Great Firewall project, as if it had foreseen that the state would want to keep the internet under own control, she said.

The Chinese government compels technology and internet companies to comply with rules on personal data and imposes heavy penalties, she stressed.

Saying that the rules are the same for both foreign and domestic firms, she added that much of what happens in China is distorted through misreporting or disinformation.

She said: "If you’re an online game creator aiming to be active in China, you have to make a facial recognition program, as companies have to know whether the person playing the game is 18 or younger.

"Breaking this law means facing incredible penalties, and no foreign company wants to take this risk."

The Great Firewall was designed by China’s Public Security Ministry to monitor internet usage, or, according to some, to censor it.

The OpenNet Initiative, which investigates, exposes, and analyzes internet filtering and surveillance practices, says that China has the most sophisticated content-filtering internet regime in the world.

While several top global websites are blocked or are not active in China, alternative Chinese sites have gained great popularity.

OpenNet said China's content-control regulations cause users to self-censor themselves.

'China protects its citizens'

Garakhanova said companies speak out about internet freedom in China because they are frankly very upset that children are limited to only three hours of gaming a week.

"As Chinese service providers comply with these conditions, while world giants are afraid of sanctions and are terminating their services, could it be something as normal as governments trying to protect their people?" she asked.

She cited a 2007 incident in which Yahoo’s stance resulted in at least two dissidents being imprisoned in the country over sharing data with Chinese authorities.

"The company's co-founder Jerry Yang even apologized to the mother of journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after Yahoo shared information with Chinese authorities," she said.

Mentioning how some companies use techniques such as mining audio of users’ conversations to craft targeted ads, she said they cannot do such things in China, which means more tech firms ceasing operations in China should come as no surprise, she added./aa