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Giant rhino fossils in China show new species was 'taller than giraffe'

A new species of the ancient giant rhino - among the largest mammals to walk on land - has been discovered in north-western China, researchers say.
The Paraceratherium linxiaense, which lived some 26.5 million years ago, weighed 21 tonnes - the equivalent of four large African elephants. The hornless creature's head could also reach 23ft (7m) to graze treetops, making it taller than a giraffe. The new findings were concluded from fossils discovered in Gansu Province. In a study published in Communications Biology journal on Thursday, scientists said that analysis of the fossils - found near the Wangjiachuan village in 2015 - pointed to an entirely new species that was different to other known giant rhinos.

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Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets

Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page.

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Microsoft’s Linux repositories were down for 18+ hours

The outage prevented Linux installation or upgrade of any Microsoft software.
Yesterday, packages.microsoft.com—the repository from which Microsoft serves software installers for Linux distributions including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and more—went down hard, and it stayed down for around 18 hours. The outage impacted users trying to install .NET Core, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SQL Server for Linux (yes, that's a thing) and more—as well as Azure's own devops pipelines. We first became aware of the problem Wednesday evening when we saw 404 errors in the output of apt update on an Ubuntu workstation with Microsoft Teams installed. The outage is somewhat better-documented at this .NET Core issue report on Github, with many users from all around the world sharing their experiences and theories.

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The relatives frozen in time on Google Street View

Social-media users are sharing Google Street View images featuring friends and relatives who have since died.
It was sparked by a post on the Twitter account Fesshole, which asks followers to submit anonymous confessions - many of which are explicit. The original poster said they had searched the map platform for images taken before their father had died. Launched in the US in 2007, Google Street View has since rolled out worldwide. The BBC's Neil Henderson shared an image of his late father at his front door. "I have literally hundreds of pics of my dad but the Google Street View is quite affecting, like he's still around," he wrote. Another tweeter showed an image of a couple holding hands in the street - his parents, he said, who had died several years ago.

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'Living fossil' fish may live for up to a century

A "living fossil" fish can live for an impressively long time - perhaps for up to a century, according to a new study.
The coelacanth was thought to have a life span of around 20 years, but new estimates suggest it is a centenarian of the ocean, alongside sharks. French researchers studied marks on the scales of museum specimens - much like tree rings tell the age of trees. They believe the fish reproduces only in late middle age and can be pregnant for as long as five years. Slow-growing fish that produce few young are particularly vulnerable to extinction pressures, such as climate change and overfishing.

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Biden and Putin praise Geneva summit talks but discord remains

The presidents of the US and Russia have praised their talks in Geneva but have made little concrete progress at the first such meeting since 2018.
Disagreements were stated, said US President Joe Biden, but not in a hyperbolic way, and he said Russia did not want a new Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Mr Biden was an experienced statesman and the two "spoke the same language". The talks lasted four hours, less time than was scheduled. Mr Biden said they did not need to spend more time talking and there was now a genuine prospect to improve relations with Russia. The two sides agreed to begin a dialogue on nuclear arms control. They also said they would return ambassadors to each other's capitals - the envoys were mutually withdrawn for consultations in March, after the US accused Russia of meddling in the 2020 presidential election.

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Lina Khan: The 32-year-old taking on Big Tech

On Tuesday, 32-year-old Lina Khan was sworn in as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The role is a hugely powerful one, which protects consumers from bad business practices and companies from unfair competition. And when it comes to unfair competition, there is one sector that has been singled out by Democrats and Republicans alike: Big Tech. Worryingly for technology giants, Ms Khan has been one of their most vocal critics. Ms Khan was born in the UK and moved to the US as a child. In an interview with BBC Hardtalk in January, she talked about how she started getting interested in competition law as a policy researcher after graduating.

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Sun sets on Reddit Secret Santa

Reddit is "sunsetting" its annual Secret Santa gift exchange and Reddit Gifts, with this year's being the last.
The service allowed verified Reddit users to send a £20 gift to another randomly selected user. Celebrities such as SnoopDogg and Bill Gates participated in the secret seasonal exchange. Users have reacted angrily to the decision, which Reddit says is needed to focus on "user experience". One called it a "war on Christmas". Another popular post described the company's announcement as: "Translation - we weren't making enough money off this to be worth our time & effort". The Reddit tradition has seen more than 1.7 million gifts sent. Noteworthy presents have included a horned helmet from Bill Gates, a drawing of a cat by Arnold Schwarzenegger and embroidered slippers from SnoopDogg.

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California jury awards $15m over lost fertility clinic eggs and embryos

A California jury has awarded $14.9m (£10m) to five patients who lost frozen eggs or embryos in a 2018 storage tank failure at a fertility clinic.
The cryogenic tank malfunction at the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco ruined some 3,500 eggs, embryos and other genetic material. The jurors found a tank production defect was largely to blame. This is the first case to see an award for victims of a fertility clinic freezer problem, lawyers say. Three women and a couple will share the nearly $15m award after losing their frozen eggs and embryos, respectively. The tank manufacturer, Chart Industries Inc, will pay 90%, with the clinic being held liable for the remaining 10%. A Chart-made tank at the centre lost liquid nitrogen for a short period of time, which led to the destruction of some frozen material, the centre said.

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Srebrenica massacre: UN court rejects Mladic genocide appeal

Former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic has lost his appeal against a 2017 conviction for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The UN court upheld the life sentence for his role in the killing of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. The massacre, in an enclave supposed to be under UN protection, was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two. It is not yet clear where Mladic will serve the rest of his sentence. The five-person appeals panel found Mladic had failed to provide evidence to invalidate the previous convictions against him, although the presiding judge dissented on almost all counts. However, the Appeals Chamber also dismissed the appeal brought by the prosecution, which had sought a second conviction against Mladic over crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats in some other areas during the war.

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Websites begin to work again after major breakage

A major outage has affected a number of high profile websites including Amazon, Reddit and Twitch.
The UK government website - gov.uk - was also down as were the Financial Times, the Guardian and the New York Times. Cloud computing provider Fastly, which underpins a lot of websites, said it was behind the problems. The firm said there had been issues with its global content delivery network (CDN) which it was fixing. In a statement, it said: "We identified a service configuration that triggered disruption across our POPs (points of presence) globally and have disabled that configuration. A POP allows content to be sent from globally distributed servers that are close to the end user.

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Nicaragua opposition figure Chamorro put under house arrest

Police in Nicaragua have placed opposition presidential hopeful Cristiana Chamorro under house arrest.
Prosecutors have accused Ms Chamorro of money laundering, which she denies, and demand she be barred from running in November's election. Ms Chamorro is seen by many in the opposition as their best hope of defeating President Daniel Ortega, who is expected to run for a fifth term. Her mother defeated Mr Ortega in the 1990 presidential poll. The arrest is the latest in a series of measures which the opposition says are aimed at crushing its chances of defeating the government in the upcoming election.

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Facebook suspends Trump accounts for two years

Facebook Inc has suspended former US President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts for two years.
He was barred indefinitely from both sites in January in the wake of posts he made on the US Capitol riots, but last month Facebook's Oversight Board criticised the open-ended penalty. Facebook said Mr Trump's actions were "a severe violation of our rules". Mr Trump said the move was "an insult" to the millions who voted for him in last year's presidential election. Facebook's move comes as the social media giant is also ending a policy shielding politicians from some content moderation rules. It said that it would no longer give politicians immunity for deceptive or abusive content based on their comments being newsworthy.

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Norton antivirus adds Ethereum cryptocurrency mining

In a surprise move, one of the world's best-known anti-virus software makers is adding cryptocurrency mining to its products.
Norton 360 customers will have access to an Ethereum mining feature in the "coming weeks", the company said. Cryptocurrency "mining" works by using a computer's hardware to do complex calculations in exchange for a reward. It is not clear what the business model for Norton Crypto is, or if Norton will take a cut of earnings. The company pitched the idea as a safe and easy way to get into mining, an "important part of our customers' lives". In a press release, Norton LifeLock - once called Symantec - said: "For years, many coin miners have had to take risks in their quest for cryptocurrency, disabling their security in order to run coin mining."

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Biden expands US investment ban on Chinese firms

US President Joe Biden is set to ban Americans from investing in dozens of Chinese tech and defence firms with alleged military ties.
The new executive order will come into effect on 2 August, hitting 59 firms including communications giant Huawei. The list of firms will be updated on a rolling basis. The move expands an order previously issued by ex-President Donald Trump. Even before the official announcement, China suggested it would retaliate. Under the new order, US investors will be banned from buying or selling publicly-traded securities for other companies including the China General Nuclear Power Corporation, China Mobile Limited and Costar Group. It expands the previous list from 31 firms to include surveillance companies and is aimed at ensuring "US persons are not financing the military industrial complex of the People's Republic of China," one White House official said.

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Tesla cameras will monitor driver awareness

A new software update for Tesla cars appears to include monitoring of drivers through the car's internal cameras when Autopilot is in use.
The "self-driving" feature requires drivers to pay attention at all times, but has been criticised as easy to fool. Users have been able to activate the assist feature and leave the driver's seat, and video themselves doing so. But the new feature will detect how attentive the driver actually is. Tesla's cars have relied on sensors in the wheel to make sure the driver's hands remain on it. Some other car manufacturers have used internal sensors to observe where a driver's eyes are looking. That means the vehicle can slow down or switch off automated driving features if the driver starts looking at their phone, for example.

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Belarus plane: Russia accuses EU of risking passenger safety

Russia's foreign ministry has condemned the EU's call for Europe-based airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace, calling it completely irresponsible.
Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, commenting after Russia had denied entry to two airlines that planned to avoid Belarus, said passenger safety was at risk. EU leaders had acted after Belarus forced a Ryanair plane to divert and land in the capital, Minsk. A Belarusian dissident journalist and his girlfriend were then arrested. Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega, who is a Russian citizen, are both in jail. A court on Friday rejected her appeal against a two-month detention.

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Scam City: The unlicensed 'forex trader' who lost £3.8 million

In his four-part series, journalist Mobeen Azhar finds out how investors lost millions of pounds after getting caught up in forex - foreign exchange - schemes.
In Autumn 2020, a video clip of a man handing out cash to strangers on Plymouth High Street went viral. "You're an angel," one person in the crowd said. That clip of Gurvin Singh Dyal, a bio-med student, even made the local paper in Plymouth. But in trying to track down the 20-year-old (pictured above), it turned out there were different versions of the story. To many, he was simply handing out money to strangers because he'd made it big in the world of online trading and he wanted to give something back. To others, it was a publicity stunt and there were a string of questions to be answered.

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Florida high school alters 80 'immodest' yearbook photos of students

A Florida high school is facing backlash for altering the yearbook photos of 80 female students to add clothing to their chests and shoulders.
The school district told local media the changes were made to ensure the photos met the dress code, which says girls' shirts must be "modest". But critics pointed to yearbook photos of male students left unedited despite violating the same standards. The digital alterations were made without permission, the students say. Bartram Trail High School's yearbook co-ordinator - a female teacher - made the decision to edit the photos after determining they had violated the dress code, the St Johns County school district said. A disclaimer on Bartram Trail's website warns students that their yearbook photos may be digitally edited to be consistent with the dress code.

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Israel intensifies attacks in Gaza as conflict enters fifth day

Israel has intensified its assault on Gaza, as Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into Israel on the fifth day of hostilities.
Israel's military said air and ground forces were involved in attacks on Friday but had not entered Gaza. Meanwhile, clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli security forces spread across much of the occupied West Bank. At least 122 people have been killed in Gaza and eight have died in Israel since the fighting began on Monday.Jewish and Israeli-Arab mobs have also been fighting within Israel, prompting its president to warn of civil war. Defence Minister Benny Gantz ordered a "massive reinforcement" of security forces to suppress the internal unrest that has seen more than 400 people arrested.