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Popular social media platforms and video streaming services pose serious risks to user privacy, with children and teenagers most at risk, the Federal Trade Commission found in a report published Thursday.

The report, which stretches more than 100 pages, details the data, advertising and recommendation-system efforts by these companies, and how they rely on information about users to sell ads. Users also “lacked any meaningful control over how personal information was used for AI-fueled systems” on the companies’ platforms, according to the report.

“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release...

"The Bureau of Meteorology is shifting the way it communicates about climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, because global heating is making predictions based on the past less reliable.

This week the bureau kept the country on a “La Niña watch” and said if the climate system in the Pacific does develop, it’s likely to be short-lived and weak.

Historically, La Niña events – where warmer waters gather to the north of Australia – have been associated with cooler and wetter conditions from across north-western Australia to the south-east. El Niño events are often warmer and drier.

But Dr Karl Braganza, national manager of climate services at the bureau, said climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans made those old relationships less reliable.

Climate change may not have “broken” them, he said, “but the number of times when the climate is inconsistent with what we saw in the past will only increase”...

"Summer has increased by an average of 36 days across Spain over the last 50 years.

Spain is slipping into a desert climate, according to a new study into the relationship between global heating and drought.

The Mediterranean country is clearly on the frontlines of climate change in Europe. Now researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona have delved deeper into its climate vitals.

By 2050, they predict that rainfall will decrease by up to 20 per cent compared to current levels. This would tip Spain from a temperate Mediterranean climate into a steppe- or even desert-like one, as per the Köppen system which divides the world into five different climate zones based on plant growth.

“The warming process resulting from climate change has been very pronounced in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, representing a true hotspot,” the researchers write..."

"Nearly three in four of us will face extreme weather changes within the next two decades, a new study predicts.

"In the best case, we calculate that rapid changes will affect 1.5 billion people," says physicist Bjørn Samset from the Center for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Norway.

This lower estimate would only be reached by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions – something that is yet to occur.

Otherwise, CICERO climate scientist Carley Iles and colleagues' modeling finds that if we continue on our current course, these dangerous changes will hit 70 percent of Earth's human population.

Their modeling also suggests that much of what's to come is already locked in.

"The only way to deal with this is to prepare for a situation with a much higher likelihood of unprecedented extreme events, already in the next one to two decades," explains Samset.

We've already lived through examples of these extremes..."

"Article 5 eV, a civil rights group helping to maintain the Tor network, has reported that German police raided the private address where the non-profit was registered.

The authorities came knocking at the Essen-based office on August 16th, 2024, the group said, with armed officers spending nearly two hours in the office. Article 5 eV facilitates Tor network by operating its exit nodes.

“There are obviously still people working in German law enforcement today, who think that harassing a node-operator NGO would somehow lead to the de-anonymization of individual Tor users. At least that is what they claim in the paperwork,” Gero Kühn, the leader of the group, said..."

"This is part 4 of our 5-part series, Pollution's mental toll: How air, water and climate pollution shape our mental health.

The more people experience climate change, or even hear about storms and wildfires, the more it is expected to impact their mental well-being.

Some mental health experts have started preparing for the tsunami of need some leaders anticipate in the coming years..."

"All of humanity could share a prosperous, equitable future but the space for development is rapidly shrinking under pressure from a wealthy minority of ultra-consumers, a groundbreaking study has shown.

Growing environmental degradation and climate instability have pushed the Earth beyond a series of safe planetary boundaries, say the authors from the Earth Commission, but it still remains possible to carve out a “safe and just space” that would enable everyone to thrive.

That utopian outcome would depend on a radical transformation of global politics, economics and society to ensure a fairer distribution of resources, a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and the widespread adoption of low-carbon, sustainable technologies and lifestyles, it said.

This would probably mean that limits have to be placed on excess consumption and that taxes have to be used to address inequality and raise revenue for investment in technology and infrastructure.

The scale of the required change will alarm many governments, acknowledged one of the lead authors. “It won’t be immediately welcomed. To some extent, it is frightening, but it shows that there is still a space for people and other species,” said Joyeeta Gupta, a former co-chair of the Earth Commission and a professor of environment and development in the global south at the University of Amsterdam..."

"A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or “triple E.” It was New Hampshire’s first human case of the disease in a decade. Four other human EEE infections have been reported this year, in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Though this outbreak is small, and triple E does not pose a risk to most people living in the United States, public health officials and researchers are concerned about the threat the deadly virus poses to the public, both this year and in future summers. There is no known cure for the disease, which can cause severe flu-like symptoms and seizures in humans four to 10 days after exposure and kills between 30 and 40 percent of the people it infects. Half of the people who survive a triple E infection are left with permanent neurological damage. Because of EEE’s high mortality rate, state officials have begun spraying insecticide in Massachusetts, where 10 communities have been designated “critical” or “high risk” for triple E. Towns in the state shuttered their parks from dusk to dawn and warned people to stay inside after 6 pm, when mosquitoes are most active.

Like West Nile virus, another mosquito-borne illness that poses a risk to people in the US every summer, triple E is constrained by environmental factors that are changing rapidly as the planet warms. That’s because mosquitoes thrive in the hotter, wetter conditions that climate change is producing..."

"Google uses anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology, a UK watchdog has provisionally found.

The potentially unlawful behaviour could be harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers, an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned.

It accuses Google of preventing rivals from "competing on a level playing field" with its own tech for the billions of pounds spent by UK businesses on online advertising.

Google said the watchdog's findings were "flawed" and said it would respond.

According to the CMA, the vast majority of businesses use Google’s services when placing digital ads on websites.

Google maintains it has a strong business incentive to help UK firms thrive, and argues that advertisers choose to use Google because its products work well and help their businesses grow.

The watchdog will now consider representations from Google before deciding what action to take..."

"Human activities, mostly the burning of fossil fuels, are changing the climate faster than ever. As the world gets hotter, scientists and policymakers have agreed to try everything they can to limit warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels. But even 2C of warming will greatly impact life on Earth. Earth.Org looks at what will happen when we hit this warming milestone, what changes we can expect in extreme weather events, climate patterns, sea levels and temperatures, and what it means for ecosystems and human activities..."

"We wrapped recording on Lovecraft Investigations 4 on Wednesday evening, and it all went very well indeed. We spent five fun-filled days on location in a (REALLY) remote house in the countryside, which gave us pretty much every sound environment we needed.

Most of the familiar faces were there, alongside some new people - we're introducing a couple of major new characters this time around. There were also, unfortunately, a few notable absences.

Now we're into the edit, which also involves cutting down each episode for the Radio 4 slots (BBC Sounds and the podcast apps will carry the full versions, which will include a whole story strand that will be absent from the Radio 4 broadcast).

We're expecting the series to be released in October and I'm teasing a major new story for Season 5, but we won't know for a while if we're getting the go-ahead on that from the BBC..."

"Days after Brazilians sweltered under scorching heat, panted through a parching drought and choked from wildfire smoke, scientists anticipate temperatures in Brazil to linger between 35º C and 40º C all week — equivalent to 95º F to 104º F.

The temperatures are expected to reach these blistering heights primarily in the Central West region, which includes large cities like Brasília, Manaus and Belo Horizonte. In addition to putting the residents of these areas at risk of heat stroke and other health problems, the escalating heat creates a risk of wildfires..."