● [Tech] Tesla chief Elon Musk accuses worker of sabotage. ︴ ︴

▼ Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has accused an employee of carrying out "extensive and damaging sabotage" at the electric carmaker. In an email to staff, Mr Musk said an unnamed employee made unspecified coding changes to its manufacturing operating system and sent sensitive data to unnamed third parties. The company did not comment and the allegations have not been verified. The matter will be investigated, Mr Musk said. "The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted so far is pretty bad," he said in the email. "His stated motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. "As you know there are a long list of organisations that want Tesla to die," he added, citing Wall Street short-sellers, oil and gas companies and rival car makers as being among them. 'Extraordinarily unusual' (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] IBM’s machine argues, pretty convincingly, with humans. ︴ ︴

▼ On a stage in San Francisco, IBM’s Project Debater spoke, listened and rebutted a human’s arguments in what was described as a groundbreaking display of artificial intelligence. The machine drew from a library of “hundreds of millions” of documents - mostly newspaper articles and academic journals - to form its responses to a topicit was not prepared for beforehand. Its performance was not without slip-ups, but those in attendance made clear their thoughts when voting on who did best. While the humans had better delivery, the group agreed, the machine offered greater substance in its arguments. That, IBM said, spoke to the heart of its goal: augmenting human beings to make decisions quickly and with more data than ever before. “I think it says actually very optimistic things about how humans respond to facts and figures,” said Noa Ovadia, one of the human debaters at the event. “I think they are important, but they’re not everything when we make up our argumentation.” (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile. ︴ ︴

▼ Facebook has been ordered by a UK high court judge to reveal who told it to delete the profile of a jazz musician and his band, six months after he died. The Times reports that the firm said it had acted on a request but had declined to reveal to the family who had instructed it. Mirza Krupalija's partner Azra Sabados says she is certain that it was not a family member or friend. She said losing his posts and messages felt like losing him "a second time". Mr Krupalija, who lived in Sarajevo, suffered a fatal heart attack just after his 57th birthday in 2016. "It's that feeling, you lose someone you love and you try to hang onto everything, and then something happens and you can't explain that either and nobody knows, none of the friends, none of the family," Ms Sabados told the BBC. "Lots of Mirza's profile included me and our travels, our photos, music he shared, some for me, some for friends, his profile stated that he was in a relationship with me - they could have dropped me an email to check [before deleting it]." Ms Sabados said she spent a year talking to Facebook before pursuing legal action. Facebook declined to comment. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Here's the Latest Study on the Links Between Alcohol and Cancer. ︴ ︴

▼ Drinking less alcohol may be linked to a lower risk of cancer, a new study suggests. In the study, researchers found that people who drank some alcohol had a lower risk of cancerand death from any cause during a nine-year period than those who drank more or none. In particular, people who had fewer than seven drinks a week had the lowest risk of cancer and death, compared with those who had seven or more drinks a week, according to the study, published today (June 19) in the journal PLOS Medicine. And with each additional drink a week, the risk of cancer and death from any cause increased, the scientists reported. However, the study found only an association between alcohol and cancer and death, and did not prove cause and effect, the researchers said. What sets the new study apart, said lead study author Andrew Kunzmann, a postdoctoral research fellow at Queen's University Belfast in Ireland, is that previous studies have tended to look at cancer and mortality separately. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Meet the yogis who hang out in cadaver labs You can hone your corpse pose by hanging out with actual corpses. ︴ ︴

▼ Beverly Boyer knows bodies—the registered massage therapist soothes living muscles every day. But when Boyer describes the first time she peered inside a corpse, her voice lowers as if she’s recalling the start of a great romance. “Everything clicked,” she says. “Everything I had learned through my education—the anatomy, the physiology—I could see it right there.” It’s a Tuesday night in February, and Boyer, standing in the basement of a funeral parlor, is doing her best to share her macabre love interest with others. In 2014, she founded what’s now called the Colorado Learning Center of Human Anatomy, which rents space in a Longmont mortuary, to give other flesh professionals—massage therapists, yoga teachers, acupuncturists, and energy workers, among others—access to deceased and donated bodies. Each week, dozens of Boyer’s students gather here to manipulate the soft tissue of cadavers, hoping to gain anatomical insight to apply to their own day jobs. Hers is one of a handful of cadaver schools for the ­nonmedical crowd that has risen up in the past several years. They promise unconventional students a sort of anatomical enlightenment, focusing on the body’s fascial layers, muscular origins, insertion points, nervous systems, and biomechanical functions (and dysfunctions). (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Puan, oldest known Sumatran orangutan, dies in Australia. ︴ ︴

▼ The world's oldest known Sumatran orangutan has died in an Australian zoo aged 62, leaving behind 54 descendants. Puan, described as the "grand old lady" of Perth Zoo, was euthanised on Monday due to age-related complications. She had been at the zoo since 1968, and was officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest of her species in 2016. A critically endangered species, Sumatran orangutans rarely reach age 50 in the wild, the zoo said. Believed to have been born in a jungle in Sumatra, Indonesia, in 1956, Puan left an "incredible legacy" of 11 children and a total of 54 descendants across the US, Europe and elsewhere, the zoo said. "Her genetics count for just under 10% of the global zoological population," primate supervisor Holly Thompson said. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] How I reconstruct the faces of early human ancestors Sculptor Élisabeth Daynès works in paleo-reconstruction, bringing the faces of long-dead human ancestors back to life. ︴ ︴

▼ Serving face Science Eye for the Neanderthal Guy Julia Rothman ↑Élisabeth Daynès, sculptor and founder of Atelier Daynès, Paris Thirty years ago, I was sculpting hyperrealistic masks for theatrical productions. Then I met these scientists who asked me to create models of Paleolithic hunters for museum exhibits. When I visited their lab, I saw 20 ancient skulls on a shelf, and I was fascinated by all the different shapes early humans took. I wanted to get my hands on those skulls. Since then, it’s been my job to bring ­ancient people back to life, a field called paleo-­reconstruction. We convey science’s best guess about how these human relatives looked. I start with a plaster cast of the skull and lay clay “muscles” over it, building thin layers to mimic flesh. The tricky parts are the features. Right now I’m working on a Homo naledi—a 300,000-year-old relative of ours that archaeologists discovered in 2013. Many hominids looked more like chimpanzeesthan today’s humans, so I could make the nose chimp­like or modern. But I’m waiting for the scientists to determine that, based on how much H. naledi’s teeth or other remains resemble those of better-understood species. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] 'They stuck my face on to a porn clip'. ︴ ︴

▼ A tweet attributed to independent journalist Rana Ayyub went viral, causing her to become a victim of grievous online harassment. She spoke to the BBC's Ayeshea Perera about what her life has been like. Visuals by Nikita Deshpande and Puneet Barnala. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] The Indian Dalits attacked for wearing the wrong shoes. ︴ ︴

▼ Over the last month, Dalits (formerly untouchables) across India have been threatened, beaten and killed for seemingly mundane reasons, highlighting again how vulnerable the community is. On Sunday, a groom was threatened for riding a horse to his wedding - because doing so is considered an upper caste privilege. Here are five reasons why Dalits have been attacked and threatened in the last month alone. Threatened for riding a horse On 17 June, Prashant Solanki, a Dalit man in his late 20s, was on his way to his wedding riding a colourfully decorated horse, as is common practice, when he was ambushed by a group of upper-caste villagers. They insisted that riding a horse was an upper-caste privilege and threatened to attack Mr Solanki and his family. Fearing for his life, Mr Solanki had the police accompany him to his bride's homeand also to his wedding. This is not the first time a Dalit riding a horse to his wedding has been threatened. A similar incident occurred in 2015 when villagers hurled stones at a Dalit groom in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. Killed for sitting cross-legged (▪ ▪ ▪)

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