Tag Archives: WorldNews

Cal State Long Beach in lockdown after five students test positive for the coronavirus

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All students living on campus have been placed into quarantine, said President Jane Close Conoley.

Can democracies stand up to Facebook? Ireland may have the answer | John Naughton

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Governments struggle to tackle the might of the tech giants when it comes to protecting users’ data

Last month, the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC) sent Facebook a preliminary order ordering it to stop sending the data of its European users to the US. This was a big deal, because in order to comply with the ruling, Facebook would have to embark on a comprehensive re-engineering of its European operations, or to shut down those operations entirely, at least for a time.

Such a shutdown would of course be traumatic for the poor souls who are addicted to Facebook and Instagram, but it would be even worse for the company – for two reasons. The first is that it makes more money from European users’ data – an average of $13.21 (£10.19) per user in 2019 – than from any other territory except the US (where it earns $41.41 per user); the second is that failure to comply could land it with a fine of up to 4% of its global revenue, which in Facebook’s case would come to about $3bn. Given the scale of its revenues, that’s not a showstopper, but it would nevertheless be annoying.

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Texas residents warned of tap water tainted with brain-eating microbe

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  • Communities around Houston are potentially contaminated
  • Naegleria fowleri enters body through nose, travels to brain

Texas officials have warned residents of some communities near Houston to stop using tap water because it might be tainted with a deadly brain-eating microbe.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality warned the Brazosport Water Authority late on Friday of the potential contamination of its water supply by naegleria fowleri.

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