Covid-19 updates

Jacinda Ardern has been re-elected as New Zealand’s prime minister in a landslide election. Ardern’s Liberal Labour Party received 49% of the vote. The opposition Conservative National Party received 27%.

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Ardern’s party won 64 parliamentary seats, while 61 seats are required to form a government alone. This election is the first time a party has won an outright majority since New Zealand introduced the Mixed Member Proportional system in 1996.
New Zealand went 102 days without any community spread of coronavirus from May to August. Since Oct. 7, the country has not reported any new COVID-19 cases.
Ardern gained popularity for her handling of COVID-19 and her compassionate response to gunman’s massacre of 51 worshippers at two mosques.

Some COVID-19 related updates:

The U.S. reported 64,000 new coronavirus cases Friday, the highest daily number since late July, according to WaPo.
Over 1,000 current and former CDC officers signed an open letter expressing concerns about the politicization of the U.S. response to COVID-19. The letter stated: "The absence of national leadership on COVID-19 is unprecedented and dangerous."
The WSJ reported that around 40% of daycares in the U.S have closed due to the pandemic. The number of children in the daycares that are open is less than 50% of pre-pandemic levels. Quarterly revenue for child daycare services decreased from $13b in Q1 2020 to $8.5b in Q2 2020.
Italy reported 10,010 new coronavirus cases Friday, its highest daily count this year. One regional governor said he is planning to impose a curfew on the night of Halloween to prevent further viral spread. "Halloween is this huge stupidity. A huge American stupidity which we have imported into our country," he said.

Twitter reversed course Friday and said it would no longer block the sharing of an unconfirmed article about Hunter Biden published in the New York Post. Twitter, which earlier blocked the sharing of the article, citing policy violations, said information from the story could no longer be considered private since it has now spread across the internet.

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Twitter updated its hacked materials policy, stating that it will remove hacked content only when it is shared by hackers or someone acting "in concert with them."
Sen. Josh Hawley said that the Judiciary Committee must subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Unlike Twitter, Facebook didn't ban the link, but it reduced its spread by flagging that the article needs to be fact-checked. The company has not made any updates since.
FCC chairman Ajit Paid said yesterday that he will move forward with a rulemaking to clarify the meaning of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which grants tech companies broad legal immunity over user content. You can read a previous round-up on Section 230 here.

Daily mindfulness can be improved by getting just a little extra sleep each night, according to a study out of the University of South Florida. The research studied 61 nurses and found that those who had better quality sleep were more mindful the next day, and less sleepy during the day as a result.

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Researchers found that mindfulness improved with both better sleep quality and an additional 29 minutes per night.
Nurses who showed "greater mindful attention" were less likely to experience insomnia during the two weeks they were studied.
Subjects answered questions through a phone app three times per day on their state of mindfulness and the previous night's sleep quality. They also wore an Actiwatch Spectrum device to measure sleep patterns.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside Meditation. You can read the full issue here.

The U.S. currently lacks a "whatever it takes" attitude to become the world leader in AI, according to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who chairs the National Security Commission on AI. During Thursday's Politico AI Summit, Schmidt noted that advancing AI has been a uniquely bipartisan issue for U.S. lawmakers as they seek to counter China and other global AI powers. Along with AI commission co-chair Robert Work, he recently stressed that the U.S. is in an unprecedented "innovation competition" and needs more aggressive actions to develop and incorporate AI.

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Schmidt said the goal is to have America – or at least the Western world – research and invent AI technologies. He stressed the need for peer collaboration among democracies like the U.K., Canada, and Israel to advance AI and fight against what he's called "high tech authoritarianism."
Schmidt has been warning about the U.S. lagging behind in AI development since at least 2017 when he predicted that China would take the lead in AI starting in 2022.
Earlier this week, Schmidt's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence released its latest report and third-quarter recommendations on how the U.S. can strengthen its AI and work with partners. These include strengthening the "triangular alliance" for AI R&D in academia, government, and industry and establishing new career fields, certifications, grants, and more for AI development and the workforce. [Note: We covered many of the recommendations in Wednesday's Inside AI, which is available for Premium subscribers.]
Schmidt has previously referenced China's development plan to become the global leader in AI by 2030.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside AI. You can read the full issue here.

QUICK HITS

Coca-Cola said that it is retiring its first diet Soda – Tab – which was introduced in 1963.
French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has called for solidarity against extremism following the beheading of a teacher in the suburb of Paris, which he described as an "Islamist terrorist attack."
ABC's town hall event with former Vice President Joe Biden attracted 14.1 million viewers, more than the 13.5 million viewers of President Trump's town hall event, televised through NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC.
As Apple device adoption grows in the enterprise, organizations are looking for ways to seamlessly manage and secure devices while extending the world-class Apple experience users expect.*

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