US fair trade agency sues Facebook for ‘illegal monopolisation’
United States fair competition agency, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved to a federal court on Wednesday to seek a permanent injunction that, if granted, will among other things require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp. The agency also wants Facebook prohibited from imposing anti-competitive conditions on software developers besides...
Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist for declining to manipulate Covid data
State police brandishing firearms early this week raided the Tallahassee home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health employee who built the state’s much-praised Covid-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at...
Coronavirus origin: ‘Without it, we are flying blind’
It is a big ask. Intensified detection of coronavirus in humans might require doing a thorough evaluation of any patient who comes to any hospital or clinic with the kind of symptoms that are usually dismissed. An unexplained fever or the symptoms of a respiratory infection that has no obvious...
Pivot point: Efforts shift from vaccine to tracking origin of coronavirus
With cases soaring in the United States and elsewhere, the Covid-19 pandemic is nowhere near its end – but with three vaccines reporting trial data and two apparently nearing approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, it may be reaching a pivot point. In what feels like a moment...
Confidence rises upon reports coronavirus vaccines may soon be available
With the news that Moderna has applied for emergency use authorisation for its coronavirus vaccine, and that Pfizer and BioNTech’s shot has been approved in the UK, the US is inching ever closer to having one, if not two, vaccines approved for use. Both are mRNA vaccines, which trigger cells...
Civil liberties union sues US government for snooping on ordinary people
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued the US government claiming Homeland Security agents trampled over people’s constitutional rights – by buying phone location data from commercial brokers rather than getting necessary search warrants. “These practices raise serious concerns that federal immigration authorities are evading Fourth Amendment protections for...
Not even Attorney General Barr buys Trump’s election nonsense
President Donald Trump is running out of wrenches to throw at the gears of democracy. Since prematurely and incorrectly declaring victory on the night of the election, Trump and his legal team have launched dozens of lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the presidential race in pivotal states like...
How coronavirus vaccines are being divvied up around the world
Vaccine developers who have already reported promising phase III trial results against Covid-19 estimate that, between them, they can make sufficient doses for more than one-third of the world’s population by the end of 2021. But many people in low-income countries might have to wait until 2023 or 2024 for...
Firing director of Homeland Security crosses a line – even for Trump
Within minutes of Donald Trump tweeting that he had fired Christopher Krebs as the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency on Tuesday night, Twitter slapped on a warning label that the accompanying claim about electoral fraud “is disputed.” The disinformation warning was, in some ways, a fitting...
Forgetting may make your mind more efficient
Memory palaces provide imaginary architectural repositories for storing and retrieving anything you would like to remember. Sixteen centuries ago, St Augustine spoke of “treasures of innumerable images” stored in his “spacious palaces of memory.” But twenty-first century scientists who study memory have identified an important point to remember: Even the...
