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The New York State Child Protection Act has been enacted.

According to New York State, the related bill (S.7695B/A.8149A) signed by New York Governor Cathy Hokule on June 20 last year went into effect on the 20th after a one-year grace period.

The New York State Child Protection Act is essentially prohibiting advertising, collecting, using, sharing, and selling personal information of children and adolescents under the age of 18 on the Internet. However, prior consent is an exception; children under the age of 13 must have parental consent.

The state attorney general has the authority to crack down, and if a violation is discovered, the social media company (platform company) in question can be fined up to $5,000 per case and a restraining order can be issued. Damage can also be claimed against the company.

Assembly member Neely Logic, who led this bill, added, “Protecting children’s information online is no longer optional,” and “Now in New York State, it is illegal to collect, use, share, or sell personal information of children under the age of 18 without consent.”

Waymo, a self-driving taxi company, has reportedly begun operating in New York City.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company that operates Waymo, announced on the 18th that it had applied for a Waymo operating permit in New York City to the New York City Department of Transportation. However, it was reported that this application was submitted on the condition that the vehicle would be operated in autonomous driving mode with a safety manager in the driver’s seat, not unmanned operation.

Alphabet explained, “Waymo is not yet ready to provide a smooth autonomous transportation service throughout New York City, but we plan to gradually expand the service starting with a pilot operation.”

Waymo previously collected data in manual driving mode in some areas of New York City in 2021. Waymo’s car-hailing service, ‘Waymo One’, is currently operating 250,000 trips per week in LA, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, unmanned autonomous driving is currently prohibited in New York State.

The salvage operation for the luxury yacht Bayesian, which sank off the coast of Sicily, Italy last summer, has been successfully completed.

Attention is being paid to whether the cause of the accident, which took the lives of seven people including Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who was called the “British Bill Gates,” and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, will be solved.

According to Italian daily Corriere della Sera on the 22nd (local time), Bayesian, which was raised to the surface the previous day, was moved to Termini Imerese Port in Palermo, northern Sicily, on the same day. Once the work of placing the hull on a special support is completed, a full-scale investigation into the cause of the accident will begin.

The 56m-long Bayean reportedly capsized in just 15 seconds in strong winds exceeding 130km/h and sank, but Italian investigators are investigating the possibility of a human disaster. Authorities are considering several possibilities, citing the fact that other nearby ships were floating on the sea without sinking despite the strong storm at the time of the accident. There is also interest in what information is contained in the hard drive reportedly stored in a waterproof safe inside the yacht.

CNN reported that the hard drive may contain “sensitive” information that foreign governments such as Russia and China would be interested in. Lynch, a British IT industry magnate, had relationships with American and British intelligence agencies through several companies, including the cybersecurity company Darktrace, which he founded.

Accident survivors testified that Lynch “did not trust cloud services” and carried data storage devices inside the yacht whenever he sailed. The Bayesian, owned by Lynch’s wife’s company, sank about 700 meters off the Porticello Port in Palermo, Sicily, on the morning of August 19th last year.

Of the 22 passengers on board (12 passengers and 10 crew members), only 15, including Lynch’s wife and a one-year-old baby, were rescued. The passengers had gathered to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal on fraud charges that he had inflated the value of Autonomy when it was sold to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the United States for $11 billion 2011.

To celebrate his acquittal, Lynch invited those who had fought with him in court to a luxury yacht trip, but it ended up being a “death voyage.” The Bayesian was originally scheduled to be salvaged last month, but the salvage schedule was completely suspended on May 9th when one of the divers died while working underwater.

Accordingly, the Italian authorities reviewed safety issues and revised the plan to use unmanned diving equipment, delaying the salvage operation by about a month.

Amidst protests the immigration authorities’ strong crackdown on illegal immigrants across the U.S., including in LA, New York, and Washington, it has been reported that the immigration agency’s illegal immigrant arrest team has been focusing its activities in Northern Virginia, including Annandale and Sterling, as well as Maryland.

According to local media outlets such as WUSA9 and Annandale Today on the 12th, agents from the Law Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been arresting immigrants one after another who appeared for their case hearings at immigration courts in Sterling and Annandale.

According to the media, four people were arrested at the Annandale immigration court on the 10th, 10 people were arrested at the Sterling immigration court on the 11th, and five people were arrested in Maryland on the 10th.For those arrested in Sterling, they were between 18 and 41 years old and their nationalities were Haiti, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Peru, and it is unknown whether there were any Koreans. The ages and nationalities of those arrested in Annandale have not been confirmed.

An official from the Legal Aid Justice Center, which helps immigrants with legal issues, said, “In the case of Annandale, the immigrants who were arrested were people who had appeared in immigration court to have their cases heard,” and “Unfortunately, they were arrested by immigration agents inside the courthouse.”

Meanwhile, MSNBC reported that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to deploy a tactical response team to five major Democratic strongholds, including Northern Virginia, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and Philadelphia, indicating that the crackdown on illegal immigrants is expected to continue for a while.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security is carrying out a nationwide crackdown, including raids at workplaces, with a goal of arresting 3,000 illegal immigrants per day, heightening concerns and anxiety in the immigrant community.

A federal court has put the brakes on President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.

On the 13th, the federal court in Massachusetts issued an injunction blocking President Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for new voter registration until the outcome of the lawsuit is decided.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order to reform the election system requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections. However, the court handling the opposition lawsuit filed by several Democratic-leaning states, including California, issued an injunction blocking the implementation of the main provisions of the executive order.

Judge Dennis Casper, who issued the injunction, wrote in his order that “the Constitution does not grant the President specific authority over elections.”

Judge Casper also blocked the executive order’s provisions that would have forced the deadline for mail-in ballots to be Election Day and withheld federal funding from states that fail to comply.

However, the Trump administration has consistently argued that the requirements outlined in the executive order are necessary to combat election fraud, so an appeal is likely.

The Mexican government has expressed concern after confirming that many of its citizens have been arrested in the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

According to the Washington Post (WP), Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced at a hospital opening ceremony on the 8th (local time) that 35 Mexican nationals were among the immigrants recently detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles (LA). President Sheinbaum said that the Mexican government is contacting the families of the detainees through the consulate general.

President Sheinbaum said, “Mexicans living in the United States are men and women of good character,” and “they are honest people who came to the United States to find a better life for themselves and to support their families. They are not criminals.”

The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement the day before, expressing “deep concern” over the U.S. immigration crackdown. The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has stepped up efforts to inform Mexican immigrants in the U.S. of their rights if they are arrested by immigration authorities.”

The government respectfully, yet firmly, urges U.S. authorities to conduct all immigration procedures in accordance with due process and to respect human rights and the rule of law,” the ministry said.

The Israeli media reported on the 8th (local time) that the United States and Israel have agreed to suspend the activities of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The daily Israel Hayom reported that the Donald Trump administration decided to suspend the UNIFIL operation for cost-cutting reasons, and the Israeli government agreed, citing multiple sources in Israeli politics and security circles.

Israel has reportedly recently concluded that it is cooperating effectively with the Lebanese government forces, but UNIFIL is not playing a substantial role in disarming the pro-Iranian armed group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The Jerusalem Post also reported that it had independently confirmed this information.

UNIFIL’s period of operation is extended every August through a UN Security Council resolution. If the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, actually pushes ahead with this policy in August, UNIFIL’s operation will come to an end after 47 years since 1978.However, Israel Hayom predicted that if France, another permanent member of the Security Council that has supported UNIFIL’s operation, shows a different opinion, a compromise could be reached to gradually reduce UNIFIL’s operation.

UNIFIL has been deployed to the border area between Israel and Lebanon to maintain peace since Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978, when it was fighting Palestinian militants. 11,000 troops and civilians from 48 countries are stationed there.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006 for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, stipulated that the Israeli army should completely withdraw from Lebanon and that only the Lebanese army and UNIFIL, excluding Hezbollah, should be stationed south of the Litani River in Lebanon.

Resolution 1701 also served as the basis for the ceasefire reached again in November last year through mediation by the United States and France after Israel and Hezbollah clashed again in the Gaza Strip war that broke out in October 2023. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who took office early this year and has a pro-Western stance, is cooperating with Israel to withdraw Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.

The Associated Press reported on the 29th, citing multiple senior U.S. defense officials, that the Donald Trump administration is not ruling out a reduction in the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

According to the AP, two senior defense officials who visited Singapore with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the Shangri-La Dialogue in Asia said that they are not ruling out a reduction in the number of troops deployed in South Korea as they determine the size of the troop presence needed to best check China in the region.

One official explained that while the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea has not been determined yet, the size of the future troop deployment will be optimized not only to defend South Korea from North Korea.

In this regard, a senior US Department of Defense official stated, “Deterrence against China is our priority,” and “It is essential to work with the South Korean government to modernize our alliance and calibrate the USFK posture on the Korean Peninsula to reflect the realities of the security environment in the region.”

These remarks all seem to have come in the context of pursuing “strategic flexibility” that does not limit the scope of USFK activities to the Korean Peninsula but allows them to be deployed to various geopolitical crises in Northeast Asia.

USFK has been stationed to protect South Korea from North Korean threats in accordance with the ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty, but as the US’s competition for hegemony with China intensified, it has increasingly placed emphasis on expanding strategic flexibility.

The Washington Korean Community Service Center (Jinah Kim) and the Inova Foundation are hosting a free ‘Mobile Breast Cancer & Cervical Cancer Screening’ event.

The screening event will be held on Saturday, the 7th of next month from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the parking lot of the Community Service Center’s Annandale office building. The screening will be conducted in the ‘Inova Mobile Screening’ large limousine bus, a mobile health vehicle.

The target is women residing in Virginia, and the low-income group without insurance is free of charge, and those with insurance can apply their insurance (Kaiser and some insurances are excluded).The qualifications for the mammogram test to detect breast cancer are women who are 40 years of age or older, who have not had a mammogram in the past year, and who have no breast symptoms.

The Pap smear test is for women who are 21 years of age or older and have not had a Pap smear test in the past 3 years.

In addition, a fecal immunochemical test kit for colon cancer screening is also provided for women who are 45 years of age or older.

Misuk Hair Coordinator (in charge of health and wellness programs) of the welfare center said, “If you need additional detailed examinations or tissue examinations after the test, the Innova Charity Fund will cover it if your income is low. If you have insurance, you can take both tests at the event without a referral by bringing your insurance card and ID.”

Advance reservation is required to receive the test.

For inquiries,

call (703) 354-6345 ext. 127

mhare@kcscgw.org

New Jersey is pushing for additional paid leave for workers with children to attend school events. Currently, New Jersey guarantees up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year, and workers can use that paid leave to attend their children’s school-related events and the like.

A new bill being pushed by the state legislature would add two days to the existing sick leave to give workers more freedom to attend their children’s school events. The gist of it is that businesses that provide employees with additional paid leave for the purpose of attending their children’s school events and the like would be given a tax credit equal to the cost of the payroll.

The bill is gaining more attention because it was co-sponsored by Republican State Senator Vince Polistina and Democratic State Senator Teresa Lewis.

“Parents are increasingly busy raising their families,” Polistina said. “This bill is intended to support parents to be more involved in their children’s education.” Many schools are holding major events during regular work hours, which is causing many parents to give up attending the events.

Furthermore, Rep. Pollistani said the bill, which provides more paid leave for parents attending school events, is intended to help with the difficulties of raising children. However, the bill is still in the subcommittee discussion process, so it is uncertain whether it will be finally enacted.