Blinken: deep concern about Russia plotting against Moldova

 Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the US has “deep concern” about Russia's efforts to destabilize the government of Moldova.

This comes as Moldova President Maia Sandu said earlier this week that Russia was plotting a coup in Moldova.

“We have deep concern about some of the plotting that we’ve seen coming from Russia to try to destabilize the government,” Blinken said at a meeting with Sandu in Germany on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We stand strongly with Moldova in support of its security, its independence, its territorial integrity, the very important reform efforts that the president and the government are making."

Sandu described 2022 as an “incredibly difficult year for Moldova” and thanked the US for its support with its myriad challenges, including with energy, the economy and security.

Why Moldova is important: Moldova, situated between Ukraine and Romania, was previously part of the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a handful of “frozen conflict” zones in eastern Europe emerged, including a slither of land along Moldova’s border with Ukraine known as Transnistria.

The territory declared itself a Soviet republic in 1990, opposing any attempt by Moldova to become an independent state or to merge with Romania. When Moldova became independent the following year, Russia quickly inserted itself as a so-called “peacekeeping force” in Transnistria, sending troops in to back pro-Moscow separatists there.

This supposed “peacekeeping” presence, which has in practice seen the Kremlin prop up a puppet state that seeks to undermine Moldova’s sovereignty, has also mirrored Moscow’s pretext for invasions in Georgia and Ukraine.

Alarm bells in Moldova and the West grew louder following familiar refrains from the Kremlin that the rights of ethnic Russians were being violated in Transnistria – another argument used by Putin to justify his February 2022 invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, which contained two breakaway Russian-backed statelets.

In the context of the war today, the Russian-backed separatist enclave at the southwestern edge of the country could now present a potential bookend to any Russian assault westwards from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-2-17-23/h_8f34adf61218c3e1654b736437a5f611

Top Pentagon Official Arrives For Rare Tight-Lipped Taiwan Visit

 A top Pentagon official has arrived in Taiwan Friday, after departing Mongolia where he was meeting with partner military leaders. Michael Chase is deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, and the Pentagon presented his trip in the context of ongoing "support for Taiwan and military relations with Taiwan" which is in "response to the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China."

While dozens of civilian-side admin officials as well as Congressional members have visited the self-ruled island in the past couple years, including a highly provocative visit by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August, a visit by a high-ranking Pentagon official remains very rare.

"Chase is the first senior US defense official to travel to the island since the 2019 visit of Heino Klinck, deputy assistant secretary for east Asia, who in turn was the most senior Pentagon official to visit Taiwan in four decades," writes FT. 

Even the Taiwan side has remained tight-lipped about it, with Taiwan’s defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng saying he would not comment, but only stressing he welcomes anyone friendly to Taiwan who is willing to give "favorable advice" on defense operations.

The defense minister explained, "If any team that is friendly to us want to visit, they will let us know. Suggestions that are beneficial to Taiwan’s defense operations are very good, and they are all good opportunities. Details are not confirmed yet, I will not explain more." He added: "For some matters, if I am not sure about who my subject is, and I am uncertain about it, I won’t make an explanation before I am officially notified."

The provocative stopover comes amid the balloon shootdown saga. China has insisted all along that the balloon shot down by a US jet off the South Carolina coast earlier this month was nothing other than a benign weather research vehicle. Beijing has also highlighted that the US routinely sends spy balloons into its airspace, but that it doesn't result in any dramatic military operations by China to down them.

Beijing in response this week hit America's top two defense contractors with sanctions: Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, while charging Washington with deliberately exaggerating the 'balloon threat'.

A scathing Thursday statement from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress charged that US lawmakers "took advantage of the issue and fanned the flames, fully exposing their sinister intention to oppose China and contain China."

Michael Chase's visit also comes after the Biden administration ramped up weapons deals with Taipei, however, GOP leaders are demanding bigger commitments, also as some reports have said the US is seeking to make Taiwan the "Ukraine of the East." 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/top-pentagon-official-arrives-rare-tight-lipped-taiwan-visit

New Medical Codes For COVID Vaccination Status Raise Concerns

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New medical diagnosis codes for COVID-19 immunization status have been added in the United States.

One code is for being “unvaccinated for COVID-19.”

That code “may be assigned when the patient has not received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which implemented the new codes in 2022, states in a document outlining the codes.

Another code is for being partially vaccinated or having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine but not having received enough doses to meet the CDC’s definition of fully vaccinated.

The goal of the codes is “to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized,” according to the CDC.

Experts say the codes don’t fit with the International Classification of Diseases, which has diagnoses for diseases and reasons for health care visits.

“They’re treating nonvaccination as if this is a hazardous exposure that therefore merits being recorded as a medical exposure,” Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times. “That’s never been done to my knowledge.”

The CDC did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Proposal

The CDC proposed adding the codes to the international classification in September 2021.

“People have now been having immunizations for a number of months, and these provide protection for people who are immunized, but there has been interest expressed in being able to track people who are not immunized or who are only partially immunized,” Dr. David Berglund, a CDC medical officer, said during a meeting that went over the proposal.

“At the current time, there can be considered to be a significant modifiable risk factor for morbidity and for mortality and it can be of interest for clinical reasons, as well as being a value for public health reasons, to be able to track this.”

COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates are higher among the unvaccinated, according to data published by the CDC. The data do not take into account key factors such as age or prior infection, and other figures show the vaccinated being hospitalized or dying at higher rates in some states.

The proposal was backed by meeting participants during the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting.

“I definitely think we would support this,” Kristin Balint, a supervisor at Trinity Health, said. “We are currently seeing physicians documenting unimmunized for COVID-19 in our records.”

Jeanne Yoder, representing the Defense Health Agency, envisioned adding additional codes later to indicate if a person was not vaccinated against each successive variant.

The organizations of the people who backed the proposal either did not respond to requests for comment or declined inquiries.

Codes Added

Three codes were added to the classification system on April 1, 2022.

Z28.310 is for being unvaccinated. Z28.311 is for being partially vaccinated. Z28.39 is for “other underimmunization status.” All fell under a new sub-sub category, “Underimmunization for COVID-19 status.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/new-medical-codes-covid-vaccination-status-raise-concerns-among-experts

"Every Parent's Nightmare": TikTok Offering Child Predators An Easy Path To Contacting Kids

 by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

TikTok is turning into a major platform for child sexual exploitation in the United States, according to law enforcement officials, with predatory adults increasingly finding it easier to contact and manipulate minors through the Chinese app.

Since the advent of the internet, child predators have had an easy option to get in touch with minors for sexual relationships. However, TikTok is said to be worsening this problem due to its massive popularity among youngsters. Over 50 percent of American minors are estimated to use TikTok at least once every day. “The audience that’s following these children, a lot of them are adult males that have a sexual interest in children,” Jon Rouse, police veteran who heads a group targeting child sex offenders for Interpol, said to The Wall Street Journal.

“Child sex offenders will gravitate toward where there are children. Pedophiles prefer looking at videos,” he added. Billions of videos are uploaded to the app every month, with numerous minors doing all kinds of things, including talking about personal lives.

TikTok officially only allows individuals who are 13 and older to open an account. Users younger than 16 years are also not allowed to use the direct messaging feature which allows people to converse with each other privately. However, children can still falsify their age and gain access to such features.

For instance, Grady Moffett Sr., 42, is currently in a county jail in Fort Worth, Texas, on charges related to alleged sexual assault. He was able to strike up romantic conversations with a 14-year-old girl.

Both of them professed love for each other in public comments at the platform. The duo communicated with each other using TikTok’s direct messaging feature, he admitted to The Wall Street Journal.

The teen girl’s mother said that the situation was “every parent’s nightmare.” The girl told her mother that she loved Moffett because he understood her. “I felt like he kind of groomed her,” the mother told the media outlet.

TikTok’s Failure to Implement Robust Safeguards

Seara Adair, a TikTok content creator, is worried about child sexual content proliferating across the platform. In March last year, Adair was tagged with a video of a pre-teen who was completely naked and doing “inappropriate things,” she said to Forbes.

Adair reported the video for “pornography and nudity.” However, the app later alerted her that “we didn’t find any violations.” This happened despite the fact that TikTok claims as a policy that it has “zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and sexualized content of minors (any person under the age of 18).”

“There’s quite literally accounts that are full of child abuse and exploitation material on their platform, and it’s slipping through their AI,” Adair said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to TikTok for comment.

On TikTok, many teens opt to not make their accounts private in a bid to gather likes. They also use features allowing them to post videos together with strangers side by side.

“You have young kids dancing and showing their lives all over TikTok,” Joseph Scaramucci, a police detective in Waco, Texas, told The Wall Street Journal. “It makes it a one-stop shop for people looking to exploit them.”

Promoting Sexual Content to Kids

In September 2021, The Wall Street Journal published the results of an investigation that used 100 fake TikTok accounts, including 31 accounts registered as users aged 13–15.

The research uncovered that teenage accounts were exposed to over 100 videos from other profiles which recommended porn content. Thousands of videos, which creators had marked adults-only, were also fed into feeds of the teenage accounts.

In an interview with Fox in December, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called for banning TikTok, pointing out that the app is exposing minors to “violent, depraved, degrading sexual material,” material that Beijing would “never” let Chinese teenagers watch. He also insisted that TikTok is a threat to data security and privacy.

“If you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, why in the world would we allow a Chinese-owned company, which has to answer to the Chinese communists, to be one of the largest media platforms in our country?” Cotton stated.

“Would we ever have allowed Soviet Russia to own a major newspaper or a major broadcast network during the Cold War? Of course, we wouldn’t have.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/every-parents-nightmare-tiktok-offering-child-predators-easy-path-contacting-kids

Israeli-Owned Tanker Reportedly Attacked By Iranian Drones In Persian Gulf

 Israeli media on Friday revealed a major incident in the Persian Gulf involving an alleged attack on an Israeli owned oil tanker. The BBC's Persian language service was the first to allude to it, while the Saudi newspaper Elaph also reported it, and the reports indicate it occurred last week but is only now being revealed.

"Foreign officials said on Friday evening that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps launched a Shahed 136-type drone in the Persian Gulf towards the Campo Square oil tanker, which is owned by Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer," Israel National News Arutz Sheva reports.

The tanker sails under the Liberian flag, but Israeli defense officials presented the attack as a retaliation attempt for past alleged Israeli operations against Iran, and described no injuries. 

It's not the first instance of such an alleged Iranian drone operation against tankers in these waters, with a November incident also believed an IRGC military operation to target Israeli shipping. 

The Islamic Republic and Israel have long been in a de facto state of war, especially given prior years' mysterious sabotage incidents of military sites inside Iran, as well as assassinations of top Iranian nuclear scientists.

Concerning the November incident wherein a projectile hit a tanker off the coast of Oman, the AP noted at the time, "While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Iran. Tehran and Israel have been engaged in a years long shadow war in the wider Middle East, with some drone attacks targeting Israeli-associated vessels traveling around the region."

Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, previously explained, "the risk of attacks against shipping and energy infrastructure in the wider region is rising mainly due to the lack of progress in U.S.-Iranian nuclear diplomacy and the decision by Washington to apply further sanctions pressure on Iran." Soltvedt continued: "Since 2019, Iran has consistently responded to new US sanctions with covert military action in the region."

He added: "There is not just an increased risk of disruptive attacks against energy infrastructure in the region, but also a growing risk of a wider military confrontation with more serious consequences for world energy markets."

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israeli-owned-tanker-reportedly-attacked-iranian-drones-persian-gulf

Pentagon to allow up to 3 weeks of leave to service members for abortion travel

 The Pentagon will allow service members up to three weeks of leave to travel for abortions and other noncovered reproductive health care, according to a slate of new policies announced on Thursday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin first announced in October that the Defense Department would provide leave to and reimburse service members for travel required to access reproductive health care. The three policies released on Thursday provide additional details and guidance on how these directives will function.

Service members can take up to 21 days of leave to receive or accompany a military spouse or dependent to receive noncovered reproductive health care, which includes abortions and assisted reproductive technology. 

However, they are limited to the minimum number of days required to receive care and travel in the “most expeditious means” possible. Reimbursements are similarly limited to the costs associated with traveling to the closest available medical facility that provides the procedure.

Commanders and other authorities are urged to grant the requests for leave, unless it interferes with the “proper execution of the military mission,” and act promptly and with discretion given the time-sensitive nature of the reproductive services.

“Commanders or approval authorities are expected to display objectivity, compassion, and discretion when addressing all health care matters, including reproductive health care matters, and have a duty to enforce existing policies against discrimination and retaliation in the context of reproductive health care choices,” the policy noted.

They also cannot require service members to complete additional obligations, such as meeting with religious advisers or other counselors and undergoing medical testing, in order to receive their approval.

The new policies come in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last June. As some states crack down on abortion access, service members and their families may be stationed in locations where the procedure is no longer allowed.

“The practical effects of recent changes are that significant numbers of Service members and their families may be forced to travel greater distances, take more time off from work, and pay more out of pocket expenses to receive reproductive health care,” Austin said in his October memo.

“In my judgment, such effects qualify as unusual, extraordinary, hardship, or emergency circumstances for Service members and their dependents and will interfere with our ability to recruit, retain, and maintain the readiness of a highly qualified force,” he added.

https://thehill.com/policy/3862386-pentagon-to-allow-up-to-3-weeks-of-leave-to-service-members-for-abortion-travel/

Reported HIPAA complaints and breaches shot up from 2017 to 2021: HHS

 A report released on Friday found that HIPAA complaints and breaches spiked between 2017 and 2021, with the agency in charge of handling the notices saying it lacks sufficient resources to properly respond.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to submit an annual report to Congress regarding HIPAA complaints, including how many the agency has received and resolved as well as how many complaints were settled monetarily.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stated that an audit for report was not performed in 2021 due to a lack of financial resources.

According to the report, the number of large HIPAA breaches rose by 58 percent between 2017 and 2021, and the number of complaints rose by 39 percent. The agency defines large breaches as ones that affect at least 500 individuals.

HHS generally defines HIPAA breaches as any disclosure that “compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information” of an individual. Entities that are subject to the HIPAA Privacy Rule include insurance providers, health billing services, health care providers and facilities.

In the years that were scrutinized, 2020 saw the largest increase in large HIPAA breaches — 61 percent. While complaints and breaches rose, the agency noted in its report that appropriations did not.

“These factors have combined to cause a severe strain on OCR’s limited staff and resources. This lack of necessary funding limits OCR’s HIPAA enforcement activities during a time of substantial growth in cybersecurity attacks to the health care sector,” the report stated.

Of the more than 34,000 alleged HIPAA violations that HHS received in 2021, OCR said it resolved 78 percent of them before initiating an investigation. Another 13 complaints were resolved through investigations and monetary settlements totalling $815,150. Two investigations were resolved with civil money penalties totaling $150,000.

Many of the complaints that were resolved monetarily were for instances in which OCR determined that providers had failed to take “timely action” in response to patients’ requests for records.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3863724-reported-hipaa-complaints-and-breaches-shot-up-from-2017-to-2021-hhs/