Antisemitism Watch: A bi-partisan group of US lawmakers has announced the launch of an inter-parliamentary task force to combat online antisemitism. The new body will bring together legislators from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Israel.
According to Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), the task force will focus on “establishing consistent messaging and policy from legislatures around the world” in regards to identifying and eliminating online antisemitism. Deutch’s statement made explicit references to such tech leaders as Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.
The Jewish state will be represented by Blue and White party lawmaker Michal Cotler-Wunsh, who hailed the initiative. “By working with multi-partisan allies in parliaments around the world, we hope to create best practices and real change in holding the social media giants accountable to the hatred that exists on their platforms. It is imperative that we work together to expose the double standards,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
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A world-class Iranian chess referee who recently made headlines by announcing that she would not return home following an international championship as she would no longer accept being forced to wear a hijab has revealed her Jewish roots.
Shoreh Bayat, 33, told the Telegraph newspaper that she kept her heritage hidden while in Iran. Now in Britain, where she is seeking asylum, she less than two weeks ago was able to celebrate her first-ever Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year.
“All my life was about showing a fake image of myself to society because they wanted me to be an image of a religious Muslim woman, which I wasn’t,” Bayat emphasized.
Israeli researchers have developed a prototype of a wearable device that uses a machine-learning algorithm to predict epileptic seizures up to an hour before onset.
About 30 percent of epilepsy patients do not respond adequately to drugs, meaning that they live in fear of impending seizures that could cause significant injuries.
Epiness, a first-of-its-kind device, was developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The technology has been licensed to NeuroHelp, which plans to begin clinical trials later this year.
