Facebook has admitted that it had a data sharing agreement with four Chinese technology companies, including one considered a national security threat by the U.S. intelligence community, raising new concerns about the social media giant’s handling of its consumer’s personal information.

The admission by the U.S.-based social media giant Tuesday came two days after The New York Times revealed that Facebook had struck special data-sharing deals with as many as 60 device makers, including Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL, to make it easier for Facebook users to access their accounts on a wide array of devices.

U.S. intelligence officials have raised concerns for years about Huawei, fearing the Chinese government could demand access to data stored on their devices or servers. The concerns prompted the U.S. military to ban the sale of Huawei smartphones on its bases.

Francisco Varela, Facebook’s vice president of mobile partnerships, said Tuesday that the data sharing deals with Huawei and the other Chinese companies “were controlled from the get-go.”

Facebook has been under intense criticism after it was disclosed that tens of millions of users’ personal information was accessed by the British-based political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The company has also been under fire after revealing in September that Russians, using fake names, used social media to try to influence voters ahead of the 2016 U.S. election.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent agreement over a previous ruling that found Facebook had misled consumers over its data-use policies.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

In and around the Mekong Delta, school children will spend this summer moving rainbow-colored blocks and cartoon animals around a screen to get an early taste of computers in a program backed by Google.

The tech company is paying for Vietnamese students to learn some introductory programming, along the way perhaps earning some goodwill from Vietnamese officials who are taking an increasingly strict view toward global internet firms.

The Mekong Community Development Center will run the classes, which make use of Scratch, a very basic computer language that lets children create their own virtual games.

“To support Vietnam’s development in the direction of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the most effective and practical way, Google is focused on developing projects to build and raise awareness and capacity in information technology in Vietnam,” said Ha Lam Tu Quynh, who is the director of communications and public relations in charge of Vietnam at Google Asia Pacific. “We believe children in particular will be the best creators of the future.”

She was referring to a tech revolution that has been a buzz word around the Communist country, encompassing all kinds of new tech, from the internet of things, to big data analysis.

Google, which did not disclose how much it is spending, is far from alone in stressing its corporate social responsibility, allowing firms to do good or look good, or both. It would not hurt to earn some goodwill with Vietnam, which has been overhauling its legislative and regulatory system in a way that has not always gone over well with tech companies. 

Last year the Southeast Asian country pressed local advertisers to boycott Facebook and Google’s YouTube because they had permitted content critical of the state. In a more recent example, the National Assembly is debating a draft law on cyber security that would require businesses to store data inside the borders and delete online information that is deemed objectionable.

The U.S. embassy in Hanoi expressed “concerns about Vietnam’s proposed cyber security law, including the impact of localization requirements and restrictions on cross-border services for the future development and growth of Vietnam’s economy.”

Also contributing to the child-friendly computer lessons, with laptops and technical support, is the Dariu Foundation, which focuses on micro-finance and education for low-income people in Vietnam, Myanmar, and India. Nguyen Van Hanh, the director of the Dariu Foundation, noted that roughly 65 percent of those now in primary school will be doing jobs someday that do not exist right now, citing data from the World Economic Forum.

“With all of the economic and social changes brought on by technology, we do not know exactly the kind of skills children will need in order to develop and become citizens who contribute positively to the world in the future through work,” he said in discussing his group’s participation in the Scratch classes. “However, we can be sure that today’s children need to be equipped with many skills to adapt to the challenges and the requirements of the digital era.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the simple Scratch language so that computer programming would be more widely accessible. First-time programmers do not type dense lines of code, but rather use logic to design things like animation and games, dragging colorful objects and command labels around the software interface. Even an 8-year-old can do it, and in fact they do.

So will 1,200 public school students in the Vietnamese metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City and the nearby delta provinces of Vinh Long and Tien Giang.

The initiative “Programming the Future with Google,” also includes digital training for 30 local school teachers, will run from now through August.
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From: MeNeedIt

A security breach at family networking and genealogy website MyHeritage leaked the data of over 92 million users, the company said in a blog posted on Monday.

The breach took place on Oct. 26 last year, and consisted of the email addresses and hashed passwords of users who signed up to the website up to the date of the breach, according to the blog post.

The company said it learned about the breach on Monday, when its chief information security officer was notified by a security researcher who found a file with the email addresses and hashed passwords on a private server outside of MyHeritage.

MyHeritage said no other data was found on the server, and that there was no evidence of data in the file being used.

Information about family trees and DNA data are stored on separate systems and were not a part of the breach, the blog said.

MyHeritage said it was investigating the breach and taking steps to engage an independent cybersecurity company to review the incident.

The company advised users to change their passwords.

Israel’s MyHeritage helps families around the world find their history with family tree tools, DNA tests, and a library of historical records. 
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From: MeNeedIt

Marking World Environment Day, the United Nations on Tuesday named plastic one of the biggest environmental threats facing the world. 

The report, Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability, said while government regulation on the use of plastic has made some impact on reducing waste, it is not enough, and more urgent action is needed. 

“Our world is swamped by harmful plastic waste,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech. “Microplastics in the seas now outnumber stars in our galaxy.”

“From remote islands to the Arctic, nowhere is untouched. If present trends continue, by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic than fish,” he said.

The report noted that by some estimates, as many as 5 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. 

While acknowledging that combating plastic waste is different for every country, the U.N. report suggested 10 universal steps that policymakers can follow, including use of more eco-friendly alternatives to plastics and the promotion of reusable products.

​According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the Earth’s oceans every year, which adds to the estimated 150 million metric tons already in the marine environment. 

A 2017 report by the Ocean Conservancy said China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are dumping more plastic than the rest of the world combined.

But the advocacy group warned that the problem is not Asia’s alone. It noted the United States tosses out more than 33 million tons of plastic, of which less than 10 percent is recycled. 

For years, environmentalists have warned of the deadly effect plastic trash has on marine wildlife. This week, a pilot whale died in Thailand after struggling for five days to stay alive. Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources announced that the whale had 80 plastic bags lodged in its stomach. 

A Thai marine official said the whale, which normally feeds on squid, probably mistook the floating debris for food. 
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From: MeNeedIt

For Apple users worried about how much time they and their children spend posting photos and videos to their devices, help is on the way.

Apple has announced new controls that will allow parents to remotely limit the amount of time their offspring spend on iPhones and iPads, as well as hold up a mirror to their own online habits. The feature will be available in the next software update.

The move comes as the tech industry faces criticism that it has successfully made its smartphones and apps addictive with little thought for how people’s lives may be negatively affected by the distraction of constantly checking their devices.

Smartphone addiction

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about his own habits at an Apple developers conference this week. After trying out Apple’s new controls, he saw his usage in a new light.

“I thought I was fairly disciplined about this, and I was wrong,” he told CNN.

Earlier this year, major Apple shareholders wrote the company asking that it do more to help parents by providing tools to limit children’s screen time, while looking at how being online constantly affects customers’ mental health.

Apple appears to have listened to some of these concerns. It is introducing “Screen Time,” an app that will give users a weekly report about how much time they spend on their devices and on specific apps, as well as new ways to curb the habit.

Parents can give their children screen time allowances — a specific amount of time they can play a video game or check in with friends on apps such as Snapchat. Once they hit the limit, children will have to ask parents to increase the time allotment.

“We’re empowering people with the facts that will allow them to decide for themselves how they want to cut back,” said Cook.

Apple’s changes will be part of a software update typically released in September.

Apple isn’t the only company creating a digital baby sitter of sorts. Last month, Google announced it, too, was giving parents more tools to monitor their and their children’s usage. 

Customer privacy

In addition, Apple revealed new ways it would limit the sharing of customer information, perhaps in response to the firestorm directed at Facebook over how the social media giant mishandled customer data. It has long been part of Apple’s message that compared with fellow Silicon Valley companies, Apple cares the most about users’ privacy.

Apple customers might not notice some of the changes. They include limiting “fingerprinting,” which gives data collectors the ability to tell one Apple computer from another. Others will allow customers to actively decide whether to allow websites that track them on the Safari browser.

“We believe your private data should remain private,” said Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports no new cases of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been confirmed since May 17. WHO finds of 56 reported cases, 37 are confirmed, 13 are probable and six are suspected. The death toll stands at 25.

The U.N. agency said not too much should be read into the fact that the number of confirmed Ebola cases has remained stable since mid-May. It said  these numbers should be viewed with some caution.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said it is critical that all people who have had contact with an infected person are identified. He said even one person with Ebola could create a number of new cases by coming in contact with people at social events or religious ceremonies such as funerals.

Jasarevic told VOA it is premature to let down one’s guard. He says health care workers, responders and communities must remain vigilant.

“The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is not over and we need to continue to work,” he added. “… There are lots of areas that are difficult to reach that we have to go to, that we need to make sure that we get to all the contacts. So, there still are contacts that have not been reached. So, it is really too early to say that the outbreak is contained.”

Jasarevic said good progress is being made in vaccinating people who have come in contact with infected individuals. He said a vaccination campaign in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people, is now over as all 577 known contacts of Ebola patients, health care workers and other vulnerable people there have been inoculated against the disease.

He said vaccinations are ongoing in the village of Bikoro, where Ebola was first detected and in Iboko a remote, difficult to reach area.

Ebola has broken out nine times in the DRC since the virus was discovered in that country in the 1970s. An outbreak in West Africa a few years ago left more than 11,000 people dead.
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From: MeNeedIt

A pill could soon radio signals from inside your gut to help doctors diagnose diseases from ulcers to cancer to inflammation, according to a new study.

Scientists have developed a small, swallowable capsule that mixes synthetic biology and electronics to detect bleeding in the digestive tract.

The system can be adapted for a wide range of medical, environmental and other uses, the researchers say.

The biological part of the pill uses bacteria engineered to glow when exposed to heme, the iron-containing molecule in blood.

The electronic side includes a tiny light detector, computer, chip, battery, and a transmitter that sends data to a cell phone or computer.

“A major challenge for sensing in the GI tract is, the space available for a device is very limited,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineer Phillip Nadeau.

Using very low-power electronics they designed, Nadeau and colleagues fit all the components into a capsule about 3 centimeters long by 1 centimeter wide.

It’s still a bit big to swallow. But Nadeau says with engineering work it can likely be made about a third that size.

The engineered bacteria are contained in chambers covered by a membrane that lets small molecules in but does not let the organisms out. The researchers say the bacteria can be engineered to die if they accidentally leak from the capsule. Or future models may just use the key enzymes, rather than whole bacteria.

In laboratory tests, the pill successfully distinguished pigs fed small amounts of blood from those not given blood. The capsule has not yet been tested on humans. The team aims to do so in the next year or two.

Since the components are all fairly cheap to manufacture, the researchers speculate that the cost would be in the range of tens to hundreds of dollars.

And they say the same platform could be used to detect markers of a range of illnesses. Or, it could be used to sense chemicals in the environment.

“It’s really exciting, and I think it’s got a lot of legs,” said Rice University bioengineer Jeff Tabor, who was not part of the research team.

But Tabor notes that the sensors may need to be much more sensitive than what was used in the pig tests. He says there may be much less blood in the guts of actual patients than what the pigs were given. Other conditions may have the same limitations.

“For many actual diseases, you might have far less of the molecule that you need to sense available to you,” he added.

The research is published in the journal Science.
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From: MeNeedIt

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is expected to enter a plea in a New York court on Tuesday to charges of rape and sexual assault, the first cases involving the disgraced producer to be tested in criminal court since scores of accusers emerged last year, New York court documents showed.

Weinstein, 66, has said through his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, that he has never had nonconsensual sex and plans to plead not guilty.

His appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday morning comes after a grand jury indicted him last week in two cases.

Weinstein turned himself in at a New York police station on May 25, and was taken to court in handcuffs for his initial arraignment. A judge ordered him released on a $1 million cash bail on condition that he surrender his U.S. passport and agree to wear a location-tracking device. He was ordered to remain in New York state or Connecticut.

More than 70 women have accused Weinstein, the co-founder of the Miramax film studio and The Weinstein Co, of sexual misconduct, including rape, with some allegations dating back decades, all of which he has denied.

The accusations, first reported by the New York Times and the New Yorker last year, gave rise to the #MeToo movement, in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, government and entertainment of misconduct.

Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not name the two women accusing Weinstein of sexual assault in the criminal complaint filed against him following a months-long investigation with the New York Police Department.

The details of one of the cases closely align with the account of Lucia Evans, a former aspiring actress who told the New Yorker that Weinstein forced her to give him oral sex in 2004.

If convicted on the most serious charges, Weinstein could face between five and 25 years in prison.

Once a fixture of elite Manhattan and Los Angeles society, Weinstein has been ostracized since the accusations became public. He went to Arizona for sex addiction therapy.

The Weinstein Co.’s board fired him, the company filed for bankruptcy in March, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled him. In years past, the Academy had showered him with Oscars for a string of films that helped define independent cinema in the 1990s, including “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction.”

London’s Metropolitan Police and Los Angeles prosecutors have said they are reviewing accusations of sexual assault against him.
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation into misconduct allegations against White House physician Ronny Jackson, the inspector general’s office said in a statement on Monday.

President Donald Trump nominated Jackson to be veterans affairs secretary in March, but Jackson withdrew from consideration a month later amid allegations he had overseen a hostile work environment as White House physician, drank on the job and allowed the overprescribing of drugs.

Jackson, a U.S. Navy rear admiral, has denied the allegations.

“The DoD Office of Inspector General has initiated an investigation into allegations related to Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Ronny L. Jackson,” Bruce Anderson, spokesman for the inspector general’s office, said in a statement.

Democrats on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee have said more than 20 current and former colleagues had come forward to accuse Jackson of prescribing himself medications, getting drunk at a Secret Service party and wrecking a government vehicle.

Jackson has worked as a presidential physician since 2006. After withdrawing his nomination for the VA post, Jackson stopped serving as Trump’s lead physician.
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From: MeNeedIt

Demi Lovato’s best-known songs include “Sorry Not Sorry.” But when it comes to sharing details of a sexual joke on her bodyguard, she is sorry — mostly.

The pop singer triggered a flurry of negative reactions over the weekend when, in a largely innocuous exchange with fans on Twitter, she was asked to name the funniest prank she has ever pulled off.

Lovato said that she hired a sex worker to enter the hotel room of her bodyguard when they were staying in Las Vegas, where prostitution is legal.

“She walked into his room without permission and grabbed him in his ‘area’ and he freaked,” Lovato said, sharing her amusement.

A number of Twitter users took Lovato to task, saying she was admitting to a serious episode of sexual harassment, an issue that has drawn growing attention amid the rise of the #MeToo movement.

Lovato deleted the post and quipped: “I swear I could tweet something about craving jelly beans and it would offend someone.”

But she also urged upset people to revisit her song “Warrior” in which she speaks of being a survivor of sexual abuse.

“Maybe you’ll have more compassion for a simple mistake,” she wrote, while adding: “So sorry if anyone was offended.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Microsoft on Monday said it will buy software development platform GitHub, in a deal worth $7.5 billion which will blend two opposite corporate cultures.

The tech giant, based in Washington state, is a heavyweight in terms of software whose source codes are not openly available or modifiable, exactly the counter of GitHub’s philosophy.

Created in 2008, GitHub allows developers to cooperatively manage software and has more than 28 million users around the world.

“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

“We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”

The veteran tech firm said it “will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock.”

Subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review, the deal is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, Microsoft said in a statement on its website.

“GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries,” Microsoft said.

“Developers will continue to be able to use the programing languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects — and will still be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device.”

Microsoft has begun moving towards an open source software culture, proposing for example Linux on its Windows Azure cloud service. It also started a training program with Linux and others.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will become GitHub CEO.

GitHub’s current chief executive, Chris Wanstrath, will move to Microsoft as a technical fellow to work on strategic software initiatives.

Writing on The GitHub Blog, Wanstrath said that he “could have never imagined” news of such a merger, when open source and business were considered as different “as oil and water” a decade ago.

But he said Microsoft and GitHub have already collaborated on projects, and “their vision for the future closely matches our own.”

He said “both believe that software development needs to become easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and more open, so more people can become developers and existing developers can spend more time focusing on the unique problems they’re trying to solve.”

In April, Microsoft reported that its earnings rose 35 percent to $7.4 billion in the fiscal third quarter, with revenue up 16 percent to $26.8 billion.

Earnings were lifted by gains in its core cloud computing operations for business.

Microsoft said the GitHub acquisition is expected to have a negative impact on 2019 earnings but positive beginning in 2020.
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From: MeNeedIt

A woman with an aggressive form of breast cancer which defied chemotherapy and spread to other organs, was cured with an experimental treatment that triggered her immune system, researchers said Monday.

The woman has been cancer-free for two years, reported the U.S.-based team, presenting their results as “a new immunotherapy approach” for the treatment of patients with a late-stage form of the disease.

Other experts not involved in the work hailed it as “exciting”.

So-called “immunotherapy” has already been shown to work in some people with cancer of the lung, cervix, blood cells (leukaemia), skin (melanoma) and bladder.

But an immune breakthrough for bowel, breast and ovary cancer has remained elusive.

In the latest study, a team extracted immune cells called lymphocytes from the patient, tweaked them in the lab, then reinjected them.

The woman was 49 when she signed up for the clinical trial after several attempts at a cure through conventional treatments had failed, said the study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.

The cancer had spread to various parts of her body, including the liver.

A person’s immune system is designed to kill invaders, including rogue, cancerous cells. But it can fail, often because it cannot recognize cancer cells containing the patient’s own DNA.

Immunotherapy trains a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and fight cancer.

For the new study, researchers took lymphocytes from a tumor in the woman’s body and scanned them for specific types which reacted to mutant, cancerous cells.

Complete regression

These were reactivated or “switched on” in the lab and injected back, along with a so-called “immune checkpoint inhibitor” — another type of immunotherapy that has shown success in other types of cancer.

This resulted in a “highly personalized” anti-cancer therapy that yielded “complete tumor regression,” the researchers wrote.

In a comment also published by Nature Medicine, expert Laszlo Radvanyi from Canada’s Ontario Institute for Cancer Research said the woman’s response to the treatment was “unprecedented” for such advanced breast cancer.

This work showed “we are now at the cusp of a major revolution in finally realizing the elusive goal of being able to target the plethora of mutations in cancer through immunotherapy,” he wrote.

In a reaction via the Science Media Centre in London, immunotherapy professor Alan Melcher of The Institute of Cancer Research said the trial was “fascinating and exciting.”

The work “provides a major ‘proof-of-principle’ step forward, in showing how the power of the immune system can be harnessed to attack even the most difficult-to-treat cancers,” he said.

Peter Johnson, an oncology professor at the Cancer Research UK Centre, said the study confirmed the immune system can recognize some cancers, and “if this can be stimulated in the right way, even cancers that have spread to different parts of the body may be treatable.”

The technique is “highly specialized and complex”, he cautioned, and may not be suitable for many patients.

 
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From: MeNeedIt