● [Tech] Spanish football league defends phone 'spying'. ︴ ︴

▼ Spanish football league La Liga has defended the privacy policy of its app after admitting it was accessing the microphone and GPS of Android users. It said it had been trying to track down venues illegally broadcasting matches, by matching audio data and phone location. The app, downloaded more than 10 million times on the Google Play Store, has been criticised by fans. La Liga said it wanted to "protect clubs and their fans from fraud". The broadcasting of football matches in public places without a paid licence cost the game an estimated 150 million euros (£132m; $177m) a year, it said. The new function was enabled on Friday, 8 June. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] Yahoo fined £250,000 over cyber-attack. ︴ ︴

▼ Yahoo's UK arm has been fined £250,000 ($335,000) by the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over a data breach affecting more than 500 million users which took place in 2014. The incident was reported two years later. The firm said "state-sponsored" hackershad stolen personal information, which included names, emails, unencrypted security questions and answers. The ICO said Yahoo had failed to take appropriate measures to protect it. Yahoo said it did not comment on regulatory action. "The failings our investigation identified are not what we expect or will accept from a company processing significant volumes of personal data," wrote deputy commissioner of operations James Dipple-Johnstone in a blog. "Yahoo! UK Services Ltd had ample opportunity to implement appropriate measures, and potentially stop UK citizens' data being compromised." 'Most notorious' (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] E3: Nintendo Switch gets Fortnite and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. ︴ ︴

▼ Nintendo has announced that Fortnite is being released for its Switch console to coincide with the opening of the E3 video games show in Los Angeles. However, the release is limited to the title's last-gamer-standing Battle Royale mode and will not include the original Save The World co-op content. Nintendo also revealed Super Smash Bros Ultimate will include every character to have appeared in prior versions. It described it as the "biggest crossover in gaming history". That means the fighting game will include the Japanese firm's own characters - Mario, Zelda and the Splatoon Inklings - as well as those from third-party developers, such as Final Fantasy's Cloud, Metal Gear Solid's Snake and Sonic The Hedgehog. Nintendo acknowledged that its decision to include so many fighters from the past meant that there was a limited number of new challenges. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] Social media must be made less addictive, says watchdog. ︴ ︴

▼ Social media firms need to limit features that hook youngsters on devices, Children's Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, has said. Streaks, the number of consecutive days people have sent Snapchat messages to each other,should be dropped, she told the Telegraph. She also pinpointed autoplay videos and algorithms that identify interests to serve youngsters with more content. Snapchat said its streaks were not designed to encourage addiction. In an interview with the newspaper, Ms Longfield said: "I would like all these to be looked at and really reduced down, if not taken away. "The internet is set up to be addictive. All of the algorithms on it are silently working there to keep us addicted, whether it is the little dots that come up to tell you someone is writing a reply, to the YouTube video that moves on to the next in a nanosecond." (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Watch Strange, Glowing Bacteria Harpoon and Swallow DNA to Evolve. ︴ ︴

▼ A bacterium "harpoons" a bit of stray DNA in this first-of-its-kind recording. On the left, you can see the scene without the fluorescent dyes. On the right, you can see the scene with the fluorescent dyes. Credit: Ankur Dalia, Indiana University In an astonishing new video, a bacteriumreaches out into space, snatches a piece of DNA and stuffs that DNA into its own body. Its appendage, much longer than its own body, wanders and bends a little but seems to move with intention toward its target. And the whole act is part of the microbe's effort to evolve. The video is the first direct observation of bacteria using appendages called pili to "harpoon" loose DNAand incorporate it into the bacteria's own genetic structures. It shows how the single-celled organisms pull off a neat trick called " horizontal gene transfer" that lets them adapt quickly to new environments. This would be a bit like if a person who's allergic to pollen needed only to reach out, snatch some loose flesh from a nonallergic friend and swallow it to get through spring without sneezing. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Activated charcoal is showing up everywhere—here are four reasons to avoid it Food trends are rarely based in scientific fact. ︴ ︴

▼ On her Goop website, Gwyneth Paltrow claimed that charcoal lemonade was one of the “best juice cleansers”. That was in 2014. Today, charcoal products—from croissants to capsules—are everywhere. Even high street coffee chainshave taken to selling charcoal “shots”. Some vendors of these products claim that activated charcoal can boost your energy, brighten your skin and reduce wind and bloating. The main claim, though, is that these products can detoxify your body. It’s easy to see where the claim that activated charcoal can detoxify the body comes from: it is used in emergency medicine to reduce the toxic load when someone has consumed poison or overdosed on medication. Charcoal binds to poison in the gastrointestinal tractand stops it from being absorbed into the bloodstream. The toxins are then passed out of the body in the stool. However, this detoxifying action is another case of the non-scientific nutritionists seeing the medical use for something and misinterpreting its application. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Scientists shocked by mysterious deaths of ancient trees. ︴ ︴

▼ A tree regarded as the icon of the African savannah is dying in mysterious circumstances. International scientists have discovered that most of the oldest and largest African baobab trees have died over the past 12 years. They suspect the demise may be linked to climate change, although they have no direct evidence of this. The tree can grow to an enormous size, and may live hundreds if not thousands of years. The researchers, from universities in South Africa, Romania and the US, say the loss of the trees is "an event of an unprecedented magnitude". Revealing the findings in the journal Nature Plants, they say the deaths were not caused by an epidemic. "We suspect that the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate conditions that affect southern Africa in particular," said the team, led by Dr Adrian Patrut of Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. "However, further research is necessary to support or refute this supposition." 'Shocking and very sad' (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] What Causes Uncombable Hair Syndrome? ︴ ︴

▼ Taylor McGowan, an 18-month-old from outside Chicago, is being called a mini Einstein because her hair—like the late physicist’s—is wild and sticks up from her head. The toddler's unruly, and absolutely adorable, hair is the result of a rare genetic condition called uncombable hair syndrome (UHS), which has been reported in only about 100 people globally, according to BuzzFeed. But some researchers think the numbers could be greater, according to the National Institutes of Health(NIH). Some people think that Einstein might have also had the syndrome, but this is just speculation for now, according to Buzzfeed. So what is uncombable hair syndrome? This genetic condition is also sometimes known as "spun glass hair syndrome" because people with it typically have hair that's shiny, dry and frizzy, and usually silver, blond or straw-colored. The hair also sticks up from the scalp, and it's difficult to comb, according to a 2016 study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics. Despite the few confirmed reports of UHS, the condition is "much more common than expected," Regina Betz, a professor at the University of Bonn in Germany and senior author of the 2016 paper, told Live Science in an email. Because the condition typically gets better with age, some adults might have unknowingly had it as a child, according to the NIH. For their next paper, Betz and her team hope to calculate how common UHS is. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] US asylum: Domestic and gang violence cases 'no longer generally qualify'. ︴ ︴

▼ The US attorney general has ruled that victims of domestic abuse and gang violence should no longer generally qualify for asylum in the US. Jeff Sessions' ruling overturns a 2016 decision which granted asylum to a woman from El Salvador who had been raped and abused by her husband. Activists criticised the move, saying it will affect tens of thousands. Mr Sessions has said he has a "zero tolerance" stance toward illegal immigration on the country's border. "Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum," Mr Sessions wrote in his 31-page ruling released on Monday. "The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes - such as domestic violence or gang violence - or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim." How did the ruling come about? The unnamed woman - known in court documents as A-B - entered the US illegally in 2014, and requested asylum on the basis her former spouse had repeatedly abused her "emotionally, physically and sexually". (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] 'We no longer die in childbirth': how Indian villages saved their mothers A little feminism goes a long way in parts of rural India where the number of women who die in labour has been cut by 90 percent. ︴ ︴

▼ Gita Gupta (in yellow sari) with Seema Agrahari and her three children. Photograph: Amrit Dhillon/Guardian The message is written on a poster, hung between trees that offer shade but little relief from the blazing sun. It spells out what has been achieved in this rural Indian village: “We no longer die in childbirth.” For the women of Purabgaon, in the Amethi district of Uttar Pradesh, expectations had always been clear. Get married young, then have back-to-back pregnancies. Those babies would be delivered in unsanitary conditions at home by adai, a village midwife with no training and many superstitions. “Even if a woman was taken to hospital for the birth, half an hour later she would be bundled home to do the chores, feed the cattle and cook,” said Gulab Yadav, a project manager in Amethi for Save a Mother. The maternal mortality rate (MMR) in Amethi has been one of the highest in the world – 451 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to a 2008 government survey. Anaemia is one key problem: around 55% of Indian women are anaemic, and rural women’s diets are often poor. Save a Mother aims to educate rural women about pregnancy, nutrition, immunisation, delivery and care of the child. “We told them to delay having the first baby and leave a three-year gap between pregnancies to keep mother and child safe and healthy. And they understand that delivery in hospital is safest because complications such as heavy bleeding can be treated,” said Gita Gupta, a Save a Mother team leader. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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