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Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

In photos: Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day – All Photos – UPI.com

Israelis observe a 2-minute standstill in Jerusalem on April 28, 2022 as a siren sounds to commemorate the memory of 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust in World War Il.
— Read on www.upi.com/Top_News/World/Photos/Israel-marks-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day/fp/13138/

Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds – The New York Times

Tens of millions of denials are issued each year for both authorization and reimbursements, and audits of the private insurers show evidence of “widespread and persistent problems related to inappropriate denials of services and payment,” the investigators found.

The report echoes similar findings by the office in 2018 showing that private plans were reversing about three-quarters of their denials on appeal. Hospitals and doctors have long complained about the insurance company tactics, and Congress is considering legislation aimed at addressing some of these concerns.

In its review of 430 denials in June 2019, the inspector general’s office said that it had found repeated examples of care denials for medical services that coding experts and doctors reviewing the cases determined were medically necessary and should be covered.

Based on its finding that about 13 percent of the requests denied should have been covered under Medicare, the investigators estimated as many as 85,000 beneficiary requests for prior authorization of medical care were potentially improperly denied in 2019.

Elon Musk doesn’t understand free speech – or Twitter – at all | Siva Vaidhyanathan | The Guardian

Twitter, like every Starbucks, McDonalds, shopping center, and radio station, has other obligations and interests. Those spaces must maintain order, decorum, cleanliness, and comfort to keep revenue flowing and customers or audiences happy. That’s why the US constitution protects us only from the censorious power of government, not the needs of private entities to restrict expression that might harm their core missions. US law, Musk might be frustrated to learn, not only allows but encourages digital platforms to moderate the content that flows across them.

Twitter is an advertising company. But it’s also a forum for expression. So its rules and design are, understandably, built to consider both the commercial and expressive desires of advertisers and users. That’s a difficult balance to maintain. No social media company has come close to protecting users and fully satisfying advertisers while also allowing for full range of expression in more than 100 languages around the world. Content moderation at a global scale is impossible to do well, but it can always be done better.

Musk’s pledge to limit Twitter’s content moderation to that which the law of any nation demands leaves, in the US anyway, vast arrays of distracting, destructive, and dehumanizing expression able to flow freely to their targets. For years, women who have expressed themselves freely on Twitter have done so expecting and experiencing threats, the exposure of private information, and constant harassment. This phenomenon – one caused by the proliferation of expression – impedes the ability of millions of Twitter users to express themselves confidently and have their ideas taken seriously.

Trolling is expression that crushes expression. It undermines the ability of groups of people to think collectively and productively about serious issues. Musk knows this. He’s the richest troll in the history of the world. And he’s frighteningly unserious.

Some Musk fans have found their accounts suspended for violating clear Twitter rules against, for instance, deadnaming and misgendering transgender people. Musk himself has mocked the practice of clarifying one’s preferred pronouns.

Source: Elon Musk doesn’t understand free speech – or Twitter – at all | Siva Vaidhyanathan | The Guardian

Don’t be the last person|آخرین نفر نباش

A Voice from Iran

“113th story”

First published: Oct.17.2019

In the 1960s Barbara was driving on a very stormy night. She was exhausted and hungry when she felt a flat tire. Barbara parked beside the road and stood by her car for help.

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She waved to every vehicle that was passing, but none of them stopped to help Barbara. She was there for almost an hour, and it was freezing when a rusty old car parked behind her car.

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A young man walked out of the vehicle; Barbara got a little scared. The young man said: “It is frigid, go and sit in the car while I change the tire.”

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Barbara got very happy. When the young man changed the tire knocked on the window, Barbara walked out of her car, thanked him, and handed him a bill of fifty.

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The young man refused and said: “I didn’t do it for money, just promise…

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2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach

  • The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.
  • Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.
  • The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.
  • The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning. 

Source: 2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach