Maryland governor signs online data privacy bills
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has signed two measures into law to better protect personal data online from Big Tech. One of the bills signed Thursday will make Maryland the second state to create strong limits on information collected on children, though the first in California has been halted in court.
Whatโs his record? KPRC 2 Investigates examines crime trends during Acevedoโs time as Houston police chief
KPRC 2 Investigates looked at four different categories of crime reported over a period of five years -- from 2016, before Art Acevedo became Houstonโs chief of police, through 2020, his last full year.
Texas A&M technology being used to make Houston better for walkers, bikers
HOUSTON โ As a whole, weโve been studying and counting cars on our roads for more than 70 years, but data on cyclists and pedestrians is limited. TxDOT has teamed up with Texas A&M Transportation Institute researchers to evaluate the best pedestrian bicycle monitoring technology to get an accurate pulse of those who walk or bike on our Texas roadways. According to Texas A&M, pedestrians and cyclists are about 5-10% of the total traffic stream we see in Texas. โThis is a fairly new area in traffic monitoring in terms of monitoring bicyclists and pedestrians, and it uses some newer technologies,โ P.E. So this information is imperative to help identify pedestrians and cyclists make their presence count when it comes to transportation planning.
Download Your Data: What does big brother know about you?
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) โ Weโve all heard the stories of companiesโ data mining and big brother watching our every online move. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, Amazon, Apple, Google โฆ social media has connected us all in so many ways, but how much of your data does someone have? For Facebook, click Settings and Privacy, then Your Facebook Information. Sites like Facebook track your web and location history as much as possible and you wonโt find all of that in your data request download. You can view your location history on Facebook by going to Settings, Location, and click View Location History.
Acevedo continues to back strategy aimed at combating homicides as numbers soar
HOUSTON โ Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo held a news conference Friday morning to address the surging homicide numbers in the city. Not yet, according to the numbers announced by Acevedo. When asked if itโs the right strategy, Acevedo replied without hesitation: โOf course.โ Asked again, Acevedo replied: โAbsolutely. Acevedo replied: โI donโt know your numbers right now.โ KPRC 2 Investigates reminded the chief they were his departmentโs numbers. Surging homicidesWatch a replay of the special report from KPRC 2โฒs Mario Diaz that aired Tuesday about the rising homicide numbers in the city.
Who voted for Trump? Who voted for Biden? Hereโs how the vote broke across Houston and Texas
HOUSTON โ Voters in Texas turned out in huge numbers during the election. Despite polls showing Texas as a battleground state for the presidential race, the Lone Star Stateโs reputation as reliably red continued in 2020. President Donald Trump, with 52% of the vote as of Thursday afternoon, trounced former Vice President Joe Biden, who had 46% of the vote. U.S. President - Texas Vote View All CandidatesHowever, the six-point margin of the 2020 presidential race in Texas is a bit tighter than the nine-point margin between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. Profile of a Texas voterData collected by the Associated Press helps build a profile of the average Texas voter and how he or she voted.
By the numbers: Voter turnout in Texas
Aaron Barker has been a senior digital editor at KPRC 2 since 2016. As a meteorologist, he specializes in stories about the weather. He has covered Hurricane Harvey, the Astros first World Series win, the Santa Fe High School shooting, the ITC fire and Tropical Storm Imelda.
Texas Medical Center debuts real-time data in tracking COVID-19 in Houston area
HOUSTON โ Building on seven months of extensive data gathering, analysis and publication, the Texas Medical Center is updating its public dashboards to provide user-friendly information in tracking COVID-19 in greater Houston. The dashboard highlights the reproduction rate (rate at which COVID-19 is being spread), testing trends, number of overall positive cases, and ICU bed capacity, among other topics. KPRC 2 uses this information to keep news reports up-to-date for the nine counties the TMC serves. โThere is no delay in the TMC data so when you look at testing data, positivity rate, people being hospitalized, youโre getting real-time data,โ said Dr. Mark Boom, with Houston Methodist Hospital. President and CEO of TMC, Bill McKeon, said the real-time data shows proof when social distancing has worked.
EXPLAINED: Why nearly 15,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the Houston area in one day
HOUSTON โ Tuesday saw the largest single-day increase in newly reported coronavirus cases in the Houston area since the numbers started being tracked in March. After a steady decline in the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases for the past couple of weeks, 14,687 cases were added to the numbers Tuesday. A bulk of those newly reported cases โ 13,875 โ came from Harris County. โ341 cases are from the last 14 days, 424 are from the last 15-28 days, and 13,110 are from 28 days+,โ the tweets read. However, county health officials have said they back-date the results so that their data reflects when the case was reported.
Who got the most rain during Tropical Storm Beta?
HOUSTON โ Tropical Storm Beta dumped more than a foot of rain on some places in the Houston area during the nearly three days it was in the vicinity. The southern part of Houston and Harris County was one of the hardest-hit areas by the floodwaters, where more than a foot of rain fell on some communities. The amounts varied widely across the county. For example, Hobby Airport on the southeast side received 11.76 inches of rain, while George Bush Intercontinental Airport got 5.48 inches of rain. Hereโs a look at the 10 highest rainfall amounts reported by the National Weather Service during Beta.
โVery confusingโ: Doctor explains COVID-19 data discrepancies in Texas
HOUSTON โ When the Texas positivity rate suddenly doubled this month, parents and teachers preparing to go back to school werenโt the only people scratching their heads. โItโs making it very confusing for people, and for physicians too,โ said Dr. Diana Fite, president of the Texas Medical Association. KPRC 2 has reported on other COVID-19 discrepancies, including the difference in how the state and Harris County count Coronavirus deaths. โThat just confuses people all the more, so itโs hard for them to know what to do to protect themselves,โ Dr. Fite said. โThe data still gives trends, it still gives information,โ Fite said.
EXPLAINED: What caused the huge swing in Texasโ coronavirus positivity rate this month?
HOUSTON โ After days of hitting record-high positivity rates in Texas last week, the numbers fell dramatically. State health officials said that fluctuation was caused by problems in data being reported by some labs. On Aug. 7, the seven-day positivity rate hit a record of 19.41%. Lara Anton, of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said that rollercoaster rate was caused by coding errors on data that was being entered by three labs in Texas โ Walgreens, Christus Meditech and Quest Diagnostic. โWe were first alerted on May 7 there was an issue,โ the spokeswoman for Quest said in a written statement.
See it now: COVID-19 data for state hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities now posted by Texas Health and Human Services Commission
AUSTIN โ Beginning Monday, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) started posting to its website COVID-19 case counts and deaths by facility name for state-supported living centers, state hospitals, and state-licensed nursing and assisted living facilities. โHHSC has a legal and ethical obligation to protect the private health information of everyone we serve, both in the private facilities we regulate and those we operate,โ said HHS Executive Commissioner Phil Wilson. Data for the state-operated SSLCs and state hospitals will reflect confirmed cases as of the previous business day. Because nursing facilities and assisted living facilities self-report data to HHSC, HHSC says staff must review and correct any clerical or reporting errors to ensure data integrity. To accommodate time for this review, HHSC says data posted on these facilities will reflect counts two weeks prior to the date of posting.
Map: Track coronavirus infection rates per capita, county-by-county
SAN ANTONIO โ A new map put out by the Stanford Big Local News platform shows the severity of coronavirus across the country, broken down by county. KSAT-TV reports the site was developed with data provided by state and local health agencies, along with data from the New York Times. The map is tracks the confirmed number of COVID-19 per 100,000 people. COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March.
Analysis: Who is getting coronavirus in the Houston area?
HOUSTON โ The sheer volume of data being shared by health officials in the Greater Houston area can make it difficult to understand the true scope of the impact coronavirus is having on the region. For the purposes of reporting COVID-19 cases, officials at Harris County Public Health have divided the county into four quadrants. This map shows the quadrants being used by Harris County Public Health during the coronavirus outbreak. (HCPH)For the purposes of the Harris County analysis, the number of cases in the county is also compared below to the number of cases within the city limits of Houston. More of our coronavirus coverageFIND ALL OF OUR COVERAGE: See everything you need to know about coronavirus on our special page.
How are Texans doing with social distancing? Not that bad, according to this survey
Texas, how are we doing in terms of social distancing from one another? According to data from unacast.com, Texas scored an average grade of "B" for social distancing statewide. Both of which recently earned an โF.โLocally, Houston-area counties scored well in social-distancing. The data was used along with guidelines from the World Health Organization and the CDC on social distancing. Devices used by unacast.com were used to determine the size and population of each county observed.