A prenatal test taken by millions of pregnant women globally was developed by Chinese gene company BGI Group in collaboration with the Chinese military and is being used by the firm to collect genetic data, a Reuters review of publicly available documents found. From the report: The report is the first to reveal that the company collaborated with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to develop and improve the test, taken in early pregnancy, as well as the scope of BGI's storage and analysis of the data. The United States sees BGI's efforts to collect and analyze human gene data as a national security threat. China's biggest genomics firm, BGI began marketing the test abroad in 2013. Branded NIFTY, it is among the world's top selling non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT). These screen a sample of blood from a pregnant woman to detect abnormalities such as Down's syndrome in a developing fetus. So far more than 8 million women globally have taken BGI's prenatal tests, BGI has said. NIFTY is sold in at least 52 countries, including Britain, Europe, Canada, Australia, Thailand and India, but not the United States.

BGI uses leftover blood samples sent to its laboratory in Hong Kong and genetic data from the tests for population research, the company confirmed to Reuters. Reuters found the genetic data of over 500 women who took the test, including women in Europe and Asia, is also stored in the government-funded China National GeneBank in Shenzhen, which BGI runs. Reuters found no evidence BGI violated privacy agreements or regulations; the company said it obtains signed consent and destroys overseas samples and data after five years. "At no stage throughout the testing or research process does BGI have access to any identifiable personal data," the company said. However, the test's privacy policy says data collected can be shared when it is "directly relevant to national security or national defense security" in China. BGI said it "has never been asked to provide -- nor provided -- data from its NIFTY tests to Chinese authorities for national security or national defense purposes." "Non-invasive prenatal testing kits marketed by Chinese biotech firms serve an important medical function, but they can also provide another mechanism for the People's Republic of China and Chinese biotech companies to collect genetic and genomic data from around the globe," the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center said.

China's foreign ministry said Reuters' findings reflected "groundless accusations and smears" of U.S. agencies.

Nordic countries have registered near-record temperatures over the weekend, including highs of 34C (93.2F) in some places. From a report: The latest figures came after Finland's national meteorological institute registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844. Kevo, in Lapland, recorded heat of 33.6C (92.5F) on Sunday, the hottest day since 1914 when authorities registered 34.7C (94.5F), said the STT news agency. Several parts of Sweden also reported record highs for June.

The high temperatures follow the record-breaking heatwave and wildfires that have caused devastation in parts of North America. The intense heatwave has killed 95 people in the US state of Oregon alone, its governor said on Sunday. Hundreds are believed to have died from the heat in the US north-west and south-western Canada. Experts and officials fear that the catastrophic conditions, fuelled by the climate crisis, will only get worse through the coming months. Michael Reeder, a professor of meteorology in the school of Earth, atmosphere and environment at Australia's Monash University, said the events on the European and North American continents were linked.

The highly contagious Delta variant is on the rise, and countries that hoped they had seen the worst of Covid-19 are being battered again. From a report: The nightmare is returning. In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Europe, countries are slamming their doors shut once again, with quarantines and travel bans. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages. And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials announced on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.

A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record Covid-19 caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy. Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from the Financial Times: China's strengths as a cyber power are being undermined by poor security and weak intelligence analysis, according to new research that predicts Beijing will be unable to match US cyber capabilities for at least a decade. The study, published on Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, comes as a series of hacking campaigns have highlighted the growing threat of online espionage by hostile states.

IISS researchers ranked countries on a spectrum of cyber capabilities, from the strength of their digital economies and the maturity of their intelligence and security functions to how well cyber facilities were integrated with military operations. China, like Russia, has proved expertise in offensive cyber operations -- conducting online spying, intellectual property theft and disinformation campaigns against the US and its allies. But both countries were held back by comparatively loose cybersecurity compared with their competitors, according to the IISS. As a result, only the US is ranked as a "top tier" cyber power by the think tank, with China, Russia, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Israel in the second tier. The third tier comprises India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Iran and Vietnam.

Greg Austin, an expert in cyber, space and future conflict at the IISS, said media reports focusing only on the positive sides of China's digital advances -- such as its aspirations to become a global leader in artificial intelligence -- had contributed to an "exaggerated" perception of its cyber prowess. "On every measure, the development of skills for cybersecurity in China is in a worse position than it is in many other countries," he said. What set the US apart in the first tier, according to the IISS, was its unparalleled digital-industrial base, its cryptographic expertise and the ability to execute "sophisticated, surgical" cyber strikes against adversaries. Unlike opponents such as China and Russia, the US also benefited from close alliances with other cyber powers, including its Five Eyes partners.

Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has warned buyers to keep Apple AirTags away from young children, saying it's too easy to remove a potentially dangerous battery from the tiny location trackers. The Verge: An ACCC statement cautions that AirTags' small lithium button batteries can severely injure children if they leak or become stuck in a child's throat, nose, or ear. It raises particular concerns about Apple's design making those batteries too readily accessible: "The ACCC is concerned that the AirTag's battery compartment could be accessible to young children, and the button battery removed with ease. In addition, the AirTag battery compartment's lid does not always secure fully on closing, and a distinctive sound plays when an AirTag's lid is being closed, suggesting the lid is secure when it may not be."

As 9to5Mac notes, Australian retailer Officeworks removed AirTags from its shelves last month, citing safety concerns. Apple has since added a new warning label to AirTag packaging, and the ACCC quotes Apple as saying that AirTags are "designed to meet international child safety standards." The agency states that it's currently discussing safety issues with Apple. [...] Australia recently introduced new, stricter overall safety rules for devices using button batteries, and Apple isn't the only company in the ACCC's sights. Its statement says that it's "assessing whether there are issues with button battery safety in similar Bluetooth tracking devices," and companies that don't meet the new standards will have until June 2022 to comply.

There are some big announcements on DuckDuckGo's blog at SpreadPrivacy.com:

• "Our apps have been downloaded more than 50 million times over the last 12 months, more than all prior years combined...

• "Spurred by the increase in DuckDuckGo app usage, over the last 12 months our monthly search traffic increased 55% and we grew to become the #2 search engine on mobile in many countries including in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. (StatCounter/Wikipedia)."

• "We don't track our users so we can't say for sure how many we have, but based on market share estimates, download numbers, and national surveys, we believe there are between 70-100 million DuckDuckGo users."

• "We're excited to start rolling out additional privacy features to our all-in-one privacy bundle. In a few weeks, DuckDuckGo Email Protection will be available in beta which will give users more privacy without having to get a new inbox. Later this summer, app tracker blocking will be available in beta for Android devices, allowing users to block app trackers and providing more transparency on what's happening behind the scenes on their device. Before the end of the year, we also plan to release a brand-new desktop version of our existing mobile app which people can use as a primary browser."

They're now pulling in over $100 million a year in revenue, "giving us the financial resources to continue growing rapidly," and at the end of 2020 they also landed a "mainly secondary investment" of over $100 million from a long list of investors (which included Tim Berners-Lee as well as Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor).

One thing they're doing with their money is spreading the word about online privacy — by purchasing billboard, radio, and TV ads in 175 different markets across the U.S., with more marketing blitzes now planned soon for Europe and other countries around the world.

Slashdot reader Thelasko quotes the BBC: A project to preserve endangered Tasmanian devils on a small island has backfired after the predators killed seabirds in large numbers, a conservation group says.

A small number of devils were shipped to Maria Island east of Tasmania, Australia, in 2012. The move aimed to protect the mammals from a deadly facial cancer that had driven them towards extinction. The devils have recovered since, but the island project has come at a cost... Citing a government survey, BirdLife Tasmania said a population of little penguins that numbered 3,000 breeding pairs in 2012 had disappeared from the island.

"Losing 3,000 pairs of penguins from an island that is a national park that should be a refuge for this species basically is a major blow," said Dr Eric Woehler, a researcher for the group.

Ran Balicer leads an expert Covid-19 advisory panel for the Israeli government. Friday he shared some troubling news with the Wall Street Journal: "The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission dynamics," said Prof. Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer for Israel's largest health-management organization, Clalit.

About half of adults infected in the outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated.

These so-called breakthrough cases — defined as positive Covid-19 test results received at least two weeks after patients receive their final vaccine dose — are broadly expected as the Pfizer vaccine is highly effective but not 100% foolproof, according to Mr. Balicer. Israeli health officials are optimistic that even if the variant does spread, evidence from countries such as the U.K. indicate the vaccine will prevent a large increase in severe illness and hospitalizations that plagued the country's health system in previous outbreaks. Israel has recorded only five severe cases in the past 10 days, Prof. Balicer said, but whether more will emerge is too early to tell....

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said the worrisome variant is now present in 85 countries.
Several countries appear concerned that fully vaccinated people could still spread the Delta variant. Israel's government just reimposed safety measures (including an indoor-mask requirement), according to the Journal. And Sydney, Australia (the country's largest city, housing more than 5 million people) "will enter a hard two-week lockdown on Saturday night..." reports CNN, "as authorities try to contain a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta coronavirus variant." More than a million people in downtown Sydney and the city's eastern suburbs were already under lockdown due to the outbreak, but health authorities said they needed to expand that after more Covid-19 cases were recorded, with exposure sites increasing beyond the initial areas of concern.
Meanwhile, CNBC reports: The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe. "People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves," Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency's Geneva headquarters. "Vaccine alone won't stop community transmission," Simao added. "People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene ... the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you're vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing."
CNN reports that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also "warned that there is a small chance a fully vaccinated person could still get infected if they're exposed." "Current data suggest that COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States offer protection against most variants currently spreading in the United States. However, some variants might cause illness in some people even after they are fully vaccinated," CDC spokesperson Jade Fulce told CNN in an email on Friday. While Covid-19 vaccines are effective, Fulce said no vaccine is "100% effective at preventing illness." And with millions of people getting vaccinated against the virus, some who are fully vaccinated "will still get sick if they are exposed," Fulce said.

"However, people with breakthrough infections may get less severely ill or have a shorter illness than they would have if they had not been vaccinated."

USA Today reports: Companies like Moderna and Pfizer's partner BioNTech, whose names are familiar from COVID-19 vaccines, are using mRNA to spur cancer patients' bodies to make vaccines that will — hopefully — prevent recurrences and treatments designed to fight off advanced tumors. If they prove effective, which won't be known for at least another year or two, they could be added to the arsenal of immune therapies designed to get the body to fight off its own tumors...

Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies around the world have been developing new ways to train the body's immune system to fight off tumors, particularly melanoma. They had learned how to remove a brake installed by tumors, unleashing the warriors of the immune system. Ten years ago, only about 5% of people with advanced melanoma survived for five years. Now, nearly half make it that long. Trials of mRNA cancer vaccines aim to boost that number even higher by adding soldiers to the fight... Once a tumor has been largely removed through surgery, a vaccine can help generate new immune soldiers known as T cells... A computer algorithm analyzes the mutations distinct to the cancer cells, looking for ones that trigger the production of T cells, said Melissa J. Moore, Moderna's chief scientific officer, of platform research. So far, she said, Moderna, working with partner Merck, has tested these personalized vaccines in about 100 patients. They aim eventually to make a personalized mRNA vaccine within about 45 days after the patient's cancer surgery, during their recovery...

Mutated cancer cells have proteins on their surface that can be targeted by an mRNA vaccine. For a tumor that has, say, five common mutations, a patient could get a combination of five of these vaccines. On Friday, BioNTech announced it was launching a new trial for this approach, testing it in 120 melanoma patients Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and the U.S. The new treatment, given in connection with an antibody from Regeneron, is aimed at four tumor-associated antigens. More than 90% of melanoma tumors contain at least one of the four.
The U.S. federal government now lists 29 studies underway or that will be soon investigating mRNA cancer vaccines, according to the article.

And Dr. Stephen Hahn, who had a career as an oncologist before running the Food and Drug Administration from 2019 until early this year, "said he's more optimistic this time because of how much researchers have learned about the role the immune system plays in cancer. 'That gives us an edge to maybe finally get to the place where we need to be.'"

Websites of dozens of financial institutions and airlines in Australia and the United States were briefly down on Thursday, in the second major blackout in just over a week caused by a glitch in an important piece of internet infrastructure. From a report: Server-related glitches at content delivery network provider Akamai had hampered services at Australian banks, while many U.S. airlines, including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, also reported an hour-long outage. The disruption linked to technical issues at Akamai follows an outage at rival Fastly that affected a number of popular websites last week. The impacted platform is now up and running, an Akamai spokesperson said, adding that the company was "continuing to validate services." The outage was caused by a bug in Akamai's software that has since been fixed, and was not caused by a cyber-attack or vulnerability, the spokesperson added.

In light of the recent wave of high-profile ransomware attacks that have caused havoc in the US and Europe, the member states of the G7 group have called on Russia and other countries to crack down on ransomware gangs operating within their borders. From a report: "We call on all states to urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating from within their borders, and hold those networks accountable for their actions," the G7 group said in a communique published on Sunday, at the end of a three-day conference held in Cornwall, UK. "In particular, we call on Russia [...] to identify, disrupt, and hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks, abuse virtual currency to launder ransoms, and other cybercrimes," the G7 group added.

The joint statement was signed by the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US -- more commonly known as the Group of Seven (G7). It comes after a series of ransomware attacks that caused disruptions at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel outages on the US East Coast following the Colonial Pipeline attack, and beef supply issues across Australia and the US following the JBS Foods ransomware incident.

"Apple paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a woman after iPhone repair techs posted risque pictures from her phone to Facebook," reports the Washington Post, citing legal documents obtained by the Telegraph.

An unnamed Oregon college student "sent her phone to Apple for repairs after it stopped working" in 2016, and the iPhone ended up at Apple-approved repair contractor Pegatron... Two iPhone repair technicians in Sacramento, uploaded "10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video" to her Facebook account, resulting in "severe emotional distress" for the young woman, according to the Telegraph's review of legal records. Pegatron, a major Apple manufacturer with facilities across the globe, had to reimburse Apple for the settlement and face insurers who didn't want to pay for it, according to the news outlet...

The settlement isn't the first time Apple has had to handle the misdeeds of employees. In 2019, a California woman alleged that an Apple store employee had texted a private picture on her phone to himself. That employee was no longer working for the company after Apple conducted its investigation. Apple store employees at a Brisbane, Australia, location were fired in 2016 for taking candid pictures of female employees and customers' bodies and stealing photos from consumers' phones to rank their bodies.
"Apple keeps a firm grip on the repair of its devices, arguing that allowing only approved retailers and vendors to repair its products ensures the privacy of its customers," the article points out.

"The revelation of the lawsuit pokes holes in the company's stance that only authorized retailers can keep customer information secure."

The FBI and Australian Federal Police ran an encrypted chat platform and intercepted secret messages between criminal gang members from all over the world for more than three years. From a report: Named Operation Ironside (AFP) / Trojan Shield (FBI, Interpol) on Monday, law enforcement agencies from Australia, Europe, and the US conducted house searches and arrested thousands of suspects across a wide spectrum of criminal groups, from biker gangs in Australia to drug cartels across Asia and South America, and weapons and human traffickers in Europe.

In a press conference on Monday, Australian police said the sting operation got underway in 2018 after the FBI successfully seized encrypted chat platform Phantom Secure. Knowing that the criminal underworld would move to a new platform, US and Australian officials decided to run their own service on top of Anom (also stylized as AN0M), an encrypted chat platform that the FBI had secretly gained access to through an insider. Just like Phantom Secure, the new service consisted of secure smartphones that were configured to run only the An0m app and nothing else.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web summarizes a Department of Justice press release: The U.S. Department of Justice says "millions" of computers around the world were infected with the Trickbot malware, which was used "to harvest banking credentials and deliver ransomware."

In February they arrested a 55-year-old woman in Miami, Florida, saying she and her associates "are accused of infecting tens of millions of computers worldwide, in an effort to steal financial information to ultimately siphon off millions of dollars through compromised computer systems," according to Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith of the FBI's Cleveland Field Office. In October ZDNet was calling Trickbot "one of today's largest malware botnets and cybercrime operations."

Yesterday that woman — Alla Witte, aka "Max" — was arraigned in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio. According to the indictment, Witte worked as a malware developer for the Trickbot Group and wrote code related to the control, deployment, and payments of ransomware.

From the Department of Justice announcement:

The ransomware informed victims that their computer was encrypted, and that they would need to purchase special software through a Bitcoin address controlled by the Trickbot Group to decrypt their files. In addition, Witte allegedly provided code to the Trickbot Group that monitored and tracked authorized users of the malware and developed tools and protocols to store stolen login credentials... Witte and her co-conspirators allegedly worked together to infect victim computers with the Trickbot malware designed to capture online banking login credentials and harvest other personal information, including credit card numbers, emails, passwords, dates of birth, social security numbers and addresses. Witte and others also allegedly captured login credentials and other stolen personal information to gain access to online bank accounts, execute unauthorized electronic funds transfers and launder the money through U.S. and foreign beneficiary accounts...

If convicted, Witte faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud; 30 years in prison for each substantive bank fraud count; a two-year mandatory sentence for each aggravated identity theft count, which must be served consecutively to any other sentence; and 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment alleges that "beginning in November 2015, Witte and others stole money and confidential information from unsuspecting victims, including businesses and their financial institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and Russia through the use of the Trickbot malware." The AP reports the group is now accused of targeting high-reward victims which included hospitals, schools, public utilities, and governments, as well as real estate and law firms and country clubs.

Interestingly, this case is part of the U.S. Department of Justice's "Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force," with its Criminal Division working with the U.S. Attorneys' Offices and prioritizing the disruption, investigation, and prosecution of ransomware "by tracking and dismantling the development and deployment of malware, identifying the cybercriminals responsible, and holding those individuals accountable for their crimes," according to the department's statement. "The department, through the Task Force, also strategically targets the ransomware criminal ecosystem as a whole and collaborates with domestic and foreign government agencies as well as private sector partners to combat this significant criminal threat."

"These charges serve as a warning to would-be cybercriminals," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, "that the Department of Justice, through the Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force and alongside our partners, will use all the tools at our disposal to disrupt the cybercriminal ecosystem."

The world's largest food company, Nestle, has acknowledged that more than 60% of its mainstream food and drinks products do not meet a "recognised definition of health" and that "some of our categories and products will never be 'healthy' no matter how much we renovate." FT: A presentation circulated among top executives this year, seen by the Financial Times, says only 37 per cent of Nestle's food and beverages by revenues, excluding products such as pet food and specialised medical nutrition, achieve a rating above 3.5 under Australia's health star rating system. This system scores foods out of five stars and is used in research by international groups such as the Access to Nutrition Foundation. Nestle, the maker of KitKats, Maggi noodles and Nescafe, describes the 3.5 star threshold as a "recognised definition of health."

Within its overall food and drink portfolio, about 70 per cent of Nestle's food products failed to meet that threshold, the presentation said, along with 96 per cent of beverages -- excluding pure coffee -- and 99 per cent of Nestle's confectionery and ice cream portfolio. Water and dairy products scored better, with 82 per cent of waters and 60 per cent of dairy meeting the threshold.

"Robots and artificial intelligence will replace workers on Australia's first fully automated farm," reports Australia's national public broadcaster ABC.

The total cost of the farm's upgrade? $20 million. Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga will create the "hands-free farm" on a 1,900-hectare property to demonstrate what robots and artificial intelligence can do without workers in the paddock... The farm will use robotic tractors, harvesters, survey equipment and drones, artificial intelligence that will handle sowing, dressing and harvesting, new sensors to measure plants, soils and animals and carbon management tools to minimise the carbon footprint.

The farm is already operated commercially and grows a range of broadacre crops, including wheat, canola, and barley, as well as a vineyard, cattle and sheep.

Australians were among those lucky enough to see it on Wednesday evening, a rare astronomical event marked by a dazzling array of sunset colors like red and burnt orange: a "super blood moon." From a report: From Brazil to Alaska, California to Indonesia, people with the right view of the celestial phenomenon marveled as their moon, usually a predictable, pale, Swiss-cheese-like round in the sky, was transformed into a fierce, red giant. As one Twitter user, words failing, put it: "Man I'm in love with this urghhh." The striking display was the result of two simultaneous phenomena: a supermoon (when the moon lines up closer than normal to our planet and appears to be bigger than usual), combined with a total lunar eclipse, or blood moon (when the moon sits directly in the Earth's shadow and is struck by light filtered through the Earth's atmosphere).

"A little bit of sunlight skims the Earth's atmosphere," said Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist and cosmologist based at the Australian National University in Canberra, the country's capital. He said this creates the effect of "sunrise and sunset being projected onto the moon." Depending on your vantage point and the amount of dust, clouds and pollution in the atmosphere, Dr. Tucker added, the moon appears pink-orange or burned red or even a brown color. "A super poo moon doesn't really have the same ring," he said. Sky gazers in eastern Australia caught the eclipse beginning around 6:47 p.m. local time Wednesday, with it peaking by 9:18 p.m., while those in Los Angeles were to see the action beginning at 1:47 a.m. Pacific time. In Australia, some took to the skies on a special flight to see the supermoon. It left Sydney about 7:45 p.m. and was to return later that evening. Vanessa Moss, an astronomer with Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, and the guest expert on the flight, said this kind of phenomenon was exciting because it was accessible.

"All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history..." reports the New York Times.

There's already been some surprising results: Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.

A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments. The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.

"A paradigm shift is necessary," said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. "Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline...." The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs)... As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.

The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff... Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the "demographic time bomb" that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off...

According to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100...
The article asks us to imagine a world where now-empty homes become "a common eyesore," noting that in regional towns in Korea, already "it's easy to find schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children."

Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals. From a report: Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world's plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis. The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill. It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.

ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China's oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes. Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

A software bug that's now been fixed allowed some Eufycam owners to stream video from strangers' homes instead of their own. The Register reports: These 1080p Wi-Fi-connected devices are made by Anker, and are designed to be used indoors and outdoors. They can record to microSD cards and/or the cloud, and viewable via a mobile app. On Monday, some users found themselves staring at feeds from other people's homes -- even those in other countries -- and feared they were being watched, too. The privacy breakdown sparked an eruption of complaints on Reddit and Anker's support forum.

A spokesperson for Anker told us just a small number of customers were affected: "Due to a software bug during our latest server upgrade at 4:50 AM EST today, a limited number (0.001 per cent) of our users were able to access video feeds from other users' cameras. Our engineering team recognized this issue at around 5:30 AM EST, and quickly got it fixed by 6:30AM EST." We're told customers in the US, New Zealand, Australia, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina were affected though not GDPR-armed Europe. "We realize that as a security company we didn't do good enough," the spokesperson added. "We are sorry we fell short here and are working on new security protocols and measures to make sure that this never happens again." Eufy recommends users unplug and then reconnect their devices, log out of the Eufy security app, and log in again to fix the issue.