Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she is active on Chinese-owned TikTok because it remains a vital communication tool despite widespread concerns over privacy and national security that have prompted some governors to ban the app on state devices.
Like almost everything in life, the good often comes with the bad. Taylor Swift songs come with an annoying fan base, milkshakes come with calories, and public health emergencies deliver reduced regulations, but they give the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services more power.
Like every American disease, the obsession with “nepo babies” has infected Britain. If 2022 was, as New York magazine claimed, the year nepotism went mainstream in Hollywood, 2023 has been the year the Brits lumberingly caught up.
When SARS swept across Asia in 2003, it knew no borders. Taiwan sought to attend a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting charting a strategy to combat the disease, but Beijing vetoed its participation. China likewise impeded WHO-Taiwan cooperation against the backdrop of the 2004 bird flu epidemic. In a compromise the following year, China and WHO signed a memorandum agreeing that WHO would communicate any health-related matters first to Beijing, which then would convey the information to Taiwan. The arrangement undercut health. In one case, China informed Taiwan only after a ten-day delay that corn it imported may have been contaminated with a bacterial infection. Over the past decade, WHO has excluded Taiwan from over 70% of its technical meetings.