Just a few pieces of plastic can kill sea turtles
21 October 2018 - A new study shows that especially for young turtles, ingesting just a little more than a dozen pieces of plastic in the ocean can be lethal. All over the world, sea turtles are swallowing bits of plastic floating in the ocean, mistaking them for tasty jellyfish, or just unable to avoid the debris that surrounds them. Now, a new study out of Australia is trying to catalog the damage. (more)

Scottish government identifies case of mad cow disease
18 October 2018 - Scotland's government said on Thursday (8 October) that a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, had been discovered on a farm in Aberdeenshire, the first in Britain since 2015. BSE was first detected in Britain in the late 1980s, spreading from there to other parts of Europe and ravaging cattle herds until the early 2000s. It has been linked to the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. (more)

Yemen conflict could push millions more to brink of famine: U.N.
15 October 2018 - The number of Yemenis on the brink of famine could rise to 12 million -- or two in five of the population -- from around 8.5 million in coming months due to escalating war and a deepening economic crisis, the United Nations food agency said on Monday (15 October). Yemen has been torn apart by more than three years of civil war between the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led military coalition and based in the south, and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls the north, including the capital Sanaa. The nation of some 30 million is the Arabian peninsula's poorest. (more)

The Big Hack: How China used a tiny chip to infiltrate U.S. companies
4 October 2018 - The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America's technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources. ... Nested on the servers' motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn't part of the boards' original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental's servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA's drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers. (more)

China planted chips in Apple and Amazon servers, report claims
4 October 2018 - A Chinese military unit has been inserting tiny microchips into computer servers used by companies including Apple and Amazon that give China unprecedented backdoor access to computers and data, according to a new Bloomberg report. The tiny chips, as small as the tip of a sharpened pencil and designed to be undetectable without specialist equipment, were implanted on to the motherboards of servers on the production line in China, the report in Bloomberg Businessweek said. (more)

Huge Facebook breach leaves thousands of other apps vulnerable
2 October 2018 - Remember the Facebook hack last week that compromised at least 50m accounts? It's worse than you think. Last Friday (28 September), the social media company revealed a vulnerability that allowed attackers to steal automated log-in credentials (or 'tokens'). The tokens make it easier for people to log into popular apps and services like Spotify, Pinterest, or Yelp. The flaw, which has been present since July 2017, was discovered last month after Facebook engineers noticed unusual login activity. (more)

Indonesia mourns as death toll from quake and tsunami jumps to 832
30 September 2018 - The toll from an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia soared to 832 confirmed dead on Sunday (30 September), with authorities fearing the numbers will climb as rescuers grappled to get aid to outlying communities cut off from communications and help. Dozens of people were reported to be trapped in the rubble of several hotels and a mall in the city of Palu, on Sulawesi island, which was hit by waves as high as six meters (20 feet) following the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Friday. (more)

'Medicane,' a rare, hurricane-like storm, is on track to hit Europe
28 September 2018 - People in Greece and Turkey are bracing themselves for a rare and powerful hurricane-type storm in southern Europe's Mediterranean region, due to hit this weekend. The storm, often called a 'Medicane' (Mediterranean + hurricane) has features similar to hurricanes and typhoons. The current storm, called Zorba, triggered flash flooding across Tunisia and Libya over the past few days before moving north over the Mediterranean towards Europe. (more)