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La Palma volcano: Family's anguish as lava destroys 'miracle house'

A house that miraculously survived an erupting volcano on La Palma in the Spanish Canary Islands for days has now been consumed by lava.
The retired Danish couple who owned the house, Inge Bergedorf and Ranier Cocq, told Spanish media on Tuesday it had been swallowed by the flow. "Everything is destroyed," Mr Cocq told the El Mundo newspaper. The property became known as the "miracle house" after escaping lava flowing from the Cumbre Vieja volcano. The lava has flattened hundreds of homes and forced the evacuation of more than 6,000 people since it started pouring from the volcano on 19 September. On Tuesday night the lava reached the Atlantic Ocean, on the west coast of the island, raising fears of explosions and the release of toxic gases.

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US approves Covid booster jabs for some older and at-risk Americans

US drug regulators have approved Pfizer booster vaccines for people over 65 if they had their last shot at least six months ago.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also authorised adults at higher risk of severe illness and who work in front-line jobs to get the booster jab. It means tens of millions of Americans are now eligible for their third shot. However the boosters still need approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Independent panels from the CDC are holding meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, and are expected to endorse the move quickly, US media reports. The panels' decisions will include recommendations on who qualifies as high risk, and which frontline workers should be eligible. For its part, the FDA says "health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons" should be on that list, acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement.

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Security audit raises severe warnings on Chinese smartphone models

The audit red-flagged Xiaomi and Huawei phones but gave OnePlus a pass.
The Lithuanian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently published a security assessment of three recent-model Chinese-made smartphones—Huawei's P40 5G, Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G, and OnePlus' 8T 5G. Sufficiently determined US shoppers can find the P40 5G on Amazon and the Mi 10T 5G on Walmart.com—but we will not be providing direct links to those phones, given the results of the NCSC's security audit. The Xiaomi phone includes software modules specifically designed to leak data to Chinese authorities and to censor media related to topics the Chinese government considers sensitive. The Huawei phone replaces the standard Google Play application store with third-party substitutes the NCSC found to harbor sketchy, potentially malicious repackaging of common applications.

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Google’s spending $2.1 billion for even more New York City real estate

Google's Hudson Square campus adds St. John’s Terminal at 550 Washington St.
Google is once again snapping up more real estate in New York City. Tuesday the company announced it was buying one of the buildings it currently leases: Google is buying Manhattan's St. John’s Terminal at 550 Washington Street for $2.1 billion. New York City is Google's second-biggest campus after its headquarters in Mountain View, and this building will be part of the 1.7 million-square-foot "Hudson Square campus," which has expanded several times now. The Hudson Square campus includes the Chelsea Market, which Google bought for $2.4 billion, and the first-ever Google retail store, which opened earlier this year.

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NFT-based fantasy football card firm raises $680m

French firm Sorare, which sells football trading cards in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has raised $680m (£498m).
The NFT-based cards are used by fans to create fantasy football teams which can then "play" each other. The funding was led by tech investor Softbank, with ex-England international Rio Ferdinand also putting in money. NFTs are controversial, with concerns over financial risk and environmental impact. An NFT is a "one-of-a-kind" digital asset that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property. As with crypto-currency, a record of who owns what is stored on a shared ledger known as the blockchain and maintained by thousands of computers around the world.

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Climate reporting reaches melting point

A trip to a melting glacier will shape how the BBC's new climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, reports on the story of climate change.
You cannot help but be awed by the scale of Antarctica, the great white continent. I visited just before the pandemic struck and it is impossible not to feel humbled in the presence of something that seems so much bigger and more powerful than you. But that sensation is an illusion. When we finally flew over the front of the enormous glacier after weeks of travelling, I found myself staring down at an epic vision of shattered ice. As I wrote at the time, it felt like I'd reached the frontline of climate change; a place where the equilibrium that has held our world in balance for thousands of years was slipping and crashing.

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Bitcoin mining producing tonnes of waste

Bitcoin mining produces electronic waste (e-waste) annually comparable to the small IT equipment waste of a place like the Netherlands, research shows.
Miners of the cryptocurrency each year produce 30,700 tonnes of e-waste, Alex de Vries and Christian Stoll estimate. That averages 272g (9.5oz) per transaction, they say. By comparison, an iPhone 13 weighs 173g (6.1oz). Miners earn money by creating new Bitcoins, but the computing used consumes large amounts of energy. They audit Bitcoin transactions in exchange for an opportunity to acquire the digital currency. Attention has been focused on the electricity this consumes - currently more than the Philippines - and the greenhouse gas pollution caused as a result.

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Cryptocurrency launchpad hit by $3 million supply chain attack

SushiSwap's MISO launchpad hacked via a malicious GitHub commit.
SushiSwap's chief technology officer says the company's MISO platform has been hit by a software supply chain attack. SushiSwap is a community-driven decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that lets users swap, earn, lend, borrow, and leverage cryptocurrency assets all from one place. Launched earlier this year, Sushi's newest offering, Minimal Initial SushiSwap Offering (MISO), is a token launchpad that lets projects launch their own tokens on the Sushi network. Unlike cryptocurrency coins that need a native blockchain and substantive groundwork, DeFi tokens are an easier alternative to implement, as they can function on an existing blockchain. For example, anybody can create their own "digital tokens" on top of the Ethereum blockchain without having to recreate a new cryptocurrency altogether.

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Unmanned submarine earmarked for Irish Sea freight crossings

A self-driving hydrogen-powered submarine is among the winners in a UK government competition to tackle emissions from shipping.
A start-up consortium has been given £380,000 to develop the sub to deliver parcels without a captain or crew. Call it blue seas thinking - the submarine will follow shipping routes but 50 metres below the surface. It will be able to deliver goods in shallow waters where container ships can't operate. Then it will dive beneath the waves to weather storms on the open ocean. The firm awarded the grant, Oceanways, has flagged Belfast to Glasgow as a possible route for the submarine. The grant is part of a £23m UK fund for environmental maritime projects. The cash is too small to put a dent in carbon emissions in time to stave off dangerous heating of the planet but it does demonstrate the explosion of innovation that climate change has prompted.

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TikTok faces privacy investigations by EU watchdog

TikTok is under investigation by The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) - its lead regulator in the EU - over two privacy-related issues.
The watchdog is looking into its processing of children's personal data, and whether TikTok is in line with EU laws about transferring personal data to other countries, such as China. TikTok said privacy was "our highest priority". The Irish DPC said it was specifically looking into GDPR-related issues. These are the EU privacy laws which can potentially lead to enormous fines of up to 4% of a company's global turnover. It said the first inquiry would examine "the processing of personal data... for users under age 18, and age verification measures for persons under 13". It will also look into how transparent TikTok has been about how it processes such data.

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Afghanistan: UN condemns Taliban's brutal crackdown on protests

The UN has condemned the Taliban for what it called an "increasingly violent response" to dissent, weeks after the group's rapid takeover of Afghanistan.
The body said Taliban fighters killed four people during recent protests. Demonstrations have taken place across Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul on 15 August, demanding respect for women's rights and greater freedoms. Taliban fighters have used batons, whips, and live ammunition against protesters, the UN said in its report. "We call on the Taliban to immediately cease the use of force towards, and the arbitrary detention of, those exercising their right to peaceful assembly and the journalists covering the protests," a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a press statement.

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Apple dealt major blow in Epic Games trial

Apple has been dealt a major blow in its ongoing trial against Fortnite-maker Epic Games.
A court in Oakland, California has ruled that Apple cannot stop app developers directing users to third-party payment options. Apple had argued that all apps should use Apple's own in-app payment options. But Epic Games challenged the up-to-30% cut Apple takes from purchases and argued that the App Store was a monopoly. On Friday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers issued a permanent injunction that said Apple could no longer prohibit developers linking to their own purchasing mechanisms. For example, a movie-streaming service will now be able to tell customers to subscribe via their own website, without using Apple's in-app purchasing mechanism. Epic had argued that this was unreasonable, and that the company should be able to inform users that they could make purchases away from the App Store. Epic has also taken legal action against Google over its Play Store.

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James Webb: Hubble successor given mid-December launch date

It's a date for your diary and one that's not to be missed.
The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch on 18 December. Yes, countless targeted lift-offs have come and gone in the past, but this one has a reality to it that the others didn't: the successor observatory to Hubble is now actually built. All that is required is to ship the finished telescope to French Guiana, put it on the top of an Ariane rocket, light the engines and stand well back. "It's fantastic for everybody; it's a real boost for all those that have worked on the project," said Prof Gillian Wright, the senior UK scientist on Webb who co-leads one of the telescope's four instrument packages.

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WhatsApp “end-to-end encrypted” messages aren’t that private after all

Millions of WhatsApp messages are reviewed by both AI and human moderators.
Yesterday, independent newsroom ProPublica published a detailed piece examining the popular WhatsApp messaging platform's privacy claims. The service famously offers "end-to-end encryption," which most users interpret as meaning that Facebook, WhatsApp's owner since 2014, can neither read messages itself nor forward them to law enforcement. This claim is contradicted by the simple fact that Facebook employs about 1,000 WhatsApp moderators whose entire job is—you guessed it—reviewing WhatsApp messages that have been flagged as "improper."

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ProtonMail removed “we do not keep any IP logs” from its privacy policy

Swiss courts compelled it to log and disclose a user's IP and browser fingerprint.
This weekend, news broke that security/privacy-focused anonymous email service ProtonMail turned over a French climate activist's IP address and browser fingerprint to Swiss authorities. This move seemingly ran counter to the well-known service's policies, which as recently as last week stated that "by default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account." After providing the activist's metadata to Swiss authorities, ProtonMail removed the section that had promised no IP logs, replacing it with one saying, "ProtonMail is email that respects privacy and puts people (not advertisers) first."

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Afghanistan: Fate of Panjshir Valley in balance amid heavy fighting

The fate of Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley - the final holdout against Taliban control - hangs in the balance as heavy fighting continues.
Taliban sources told Reuters news agency that they had seized the area, but the resistance fighters they are battling denied this. One of the resistance leaders, Amrullah Saleh, dismissed claims he had fled, but said the situation was "difficult". The fighting in Panjshir is reported to have left hundreds dead. The valley, north of the capital Kabul, is one of Afghanistan's smallest provinces and the only one not to have fallen to the Taliban. The traditional anti-Taliban stronghold is home to somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people, and is hidden behind mountain peaks. The resistance - which includes former Afghan security force members and local militias - is led by local tribal leader Ahmad Massoud. His father successfully fought the Soviets who invaded in the 1980s, and the Taliban in the 1990s.

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Apple employees make US labour watchdog complaints

Two employee complaints against Apple are being considered by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
One alleges retaliation for raising safety concerns, while the other focuses on alleged suppression of questions about pay equity. Apple has declined to comment on individual cases, but says it investigates when a concern is raised. The complaints come as an online campaign says it's received more than 600 stories of workplace problems. The NLRB is an independent US agency which protects the rights of private sector employees to join together to improve their wages and working conditions, and to prevent unfair labour practices.

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International Space Station facing irreparable failures, Russia warns

The International Space Station (ISS) could suffer "irreparable" failures due to outdated equipment and hardware, a Russian official has warned.
At least 80 percent of in-flight systems on the Russian segment of the ISS had passed their expiry date, Vladimir Solovyov told state media. He also said small cracks had been discovered that could worsen over time. Russia has often raised concerns over hardware and has suggested it could leave the ISS after 2025. The station was built in 1998 as part of a joint project between Russia, America, Canada, Japan and several European countries and was originally designed for a 15-year lifespan. Mr Solovyov, the chief engineer at the space company Energia, which is the leading developer of Russia's section of the ISS, said: "Literally a day after the [in-flight] systems are fully exhausted, irreparable failures may begin."

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Children's Code: What is it and how will it work?

A ground-breaking code to create "a better internet for children" comes into force in the UK on Thursday - but critics say it is too broad and leaves many digital businesses unsure how to comply.
The UK's independent data authority, the Information Commissioner's Office, introduced the Age Appropriate Design Code in September 2020, allowing companies a year to comply. Without regulation the way in which social-media and gaming platforms and video- and music-streaming sites use and share children's personal data could cause physical, emotional and financial harm, it said.

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Caldor fire: Lake Tahoe deserted as Californians evacuate

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the shores of Lake Tahoe in northern California as a major wildfire continues to spread.
The Caldor Fire has already burned more than 191,000 acres, with just 16% of the fire brought under control. More than 3,500 firefighters have been deployed to combat the blaze, which began more than two weeks ago. One hospital has been forced to evacuate, with patients transferred to other facilities in the region. Five people have been injured, while more than 700 properties have been damaged or destroyed, according to authorities.