Phi◱ ◱ (@xcrypto) • Hey

Crypto

Stats

Following: 87
Followers: 75

Publications

The European Commission has opened an investigation into the owner of Facebook and Instagram over concerns that the platforms are creating addictive behaviour among children and damaging mental health. The EU executive said Meta may have breached the [Digital Services Act](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/25/how-the-eu-digital-services-act-affects-facebook-google-and-others) (DSA), a landmark law passed by the bloc last summer that makes digital companies large and small liable for disinformation, shopping scams, child abuse and other online harms.
Israeli tanks have advanced further into eastern Rafah, reaching some residential districts of the southern border city in Gaza. Witnesses reported seeing tanks crossing the strategically important Salah al-Din road into the Brazil and Jneina neighbourhoods. “They are in the streets inside the built-up area and there are clashes,” one person told Reuters. A UN official said the most advanced Israeli positions were about 2km from his office.
Offline Oracles is the recipient of a 1MM $BONSAI grant 🥳 Their team is cooking up something fun for onchain social!
Twelve minutes into a health forum discussion for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander organizations, [Kamala Harris](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/kamala-harris) on Monday offered a punchy piece of advice to younger members of the audience. “We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open,” the US vice-president [said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK66J1qfGog\&t=1059s). “Sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that fucking door down.” Harris, who is out front for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign on women’s and reproductive rights, made the remarks at a leadership summit at which she also described how her parents had met at a civil rights march. Harris’s remark came as she was describing the importance of breaking down barriers and being the first to do it.
The Covid-19 pandemic will “look minor” compared with what humanity faces from the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s former chief medical officer, has warned. Davies, who is now the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), lost her goddaughter two years ago to an infection that could not be treated. She paints a bleak picture of what could happen if the world fails to tackle the problem within the next decade, warning that the issue is “more acute” than climate change. Drug-resistant infections already kill [at least 1.2 million people](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/20/antimicrobial-resistance-antibiotic-resistant-bacterial-infections-deaths-lancet-study) a year.
to the moon
Serious gaps in testing animals and people could be obscuring the true rate of avian influenza cases in the US and make it difficult to understand how the H5N1 virus is spreading – and how to stop it, experts say. Facing reluctance from farms to test workers and animals, scientists are now turning to experimental studies to understand how H5N1, a highly pathogenic bird flu, is spreading through cows and on to other farms. The bird flu count among dairy herds in the US continues rising, but infections are more widespread than previously realized, as testing in commercially available milk reveals. While the risk to people is still low, that could change as the virus mutates, so its continued circulation remains a big concern.
The aurora borealis has lit up the night sky with rare sightings across the UK, Europe and the northern hemisphere. The northern lights were spotted in Whitley Bay on the north-east coast; Essex; Cambridgeshire; and Wokingham in Berkshire. They were also sighted in Suffolk, Kent, Hampshire and Liverpool. Kathleen Cunnea, in Great Horkesley, Essex, said: “It was absolutely stunning to see.” Sightings were reported in Ireland, where the weather service Met Éireann posted images of the lights over Dublin and above Shannon airport in County Clare.
A solitary, symbolic tank has featured in Russia’s annual 9 May military parade for the second year in a row as the country was forced to pare down its normal display of military might during a full-scale war in which it has suffered unprecedented losses over the last two years. The single tank to roll across Red Square as [Vladimir Putin](https://www.theguardian.com/world/vladimir-putin) reviewed about 9,000 troops was a second world war-era T-34 carrying the banner that the Soviet Union used when it defeated Nazi Germany alongside other allies. The tank has gained iconic status, but is not in combat use and is instead a token of those that used to be part of the 9 May Victory Day celebrations.
A solitary, symbolic tank has featured in Russia’s annual 9 May military parade for the second year in a row as the country was forced to pare down its normal display of military might during a full-scale war in which it has suffered unprecedented losses over the last two years. The single tank to roll across Red Square as [Vladimir Putin](https://www.theguardian.com/world/vladimir-putin) reviewed about 9,000 troops was a second world war-era T-34 carrying the banner that the Soviet Union used when it defeated Nazi Germany alongside other allies. The tank has gained iconic status, but is not in combat use and is instead a token of those that used to be part of the 9 May Victory Day celebrations.
Ahead of the meeting, Rishi Sunak said: “Universities should be places of rigorous debate but also bastions of tolerance and respect for every member of their community. “A vocal minority on our campuses are disrupting the lives and studies of their fellow students and, in some cases, propagating outright harassment and antisemitic abuse. That has to stop.” The prime minister, along with Gillian Keegan, the education secretary; Michael Gove, the communities secretary; and Tom Tugendhat, security minister; will call for a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitic abuse at universities. The Dublin campus, which is in the heart of Ireland’s capital, closed to the public, costing the college an estimated €350,000 (£300,000) in forfeited revenue because visitors could not view the Book of Kells, a medieval manuscript and tourist magnet.
The encampment began on 3 May when pro-Palestinian protesters set up dozens of tents in Fellows’ Square, similar to actions in the US, Europe and India in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. In contrast to confrontations in the US where police forcibly evicted demonstrators at several universities, there was no attempt to remove the protest. Eoin O’Sullivan, a senior dean who led talks with the students, thanked them for their “engagement”. In the UK, vice-chancellors from some of the leading universities will meet at No 10 on Thursday to discuss action to address the rise in antisemitic abuse on campuses and disruption to students’ learning.
Students at Trinity College Dublin have ended a five-day encampment after the university pledged to cut ties with Israeli companies. Student leaders claimed victory on Wednesday night for a US-style campaign that had disrupted the campus and blocked access to the [Book of Kells](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jan/04/book-of-kells-psychedelic-monks-drugs-trinity-college-dublin). Senior management made a deal with protesters, the university said in a statement. “Trinity will complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN blacklist,” it said. “Trinity will endeavour to divest from investments in other Israeli companies.”
The death toll from what authorities call the worst climate disaster ever to strike southern Brazil has risen to 90, after ferocious rain flooded huge stretches of Rio Grande do Sul state, displacing more than 155,000 people and forcing the closure of the main airport in the country’s fifth biggest city. Photographs of the Porto Alegre airport, one of Brazil’s busiest, showed its main terminal had been completely inundated and a cargo plane parked in an expanse of water next to a pair of semi-submerged boarding stairs. At least 361 people have been injured and 131 are missing as a result of what state governor Eduaro Leite called his state’s “biggest ever climate catastrophe”. More than 48,000 people are living in dozens of shelters.
Boeing faces a new investigation after the planemaker told US regulators it might have failed to properly carry out some quality inspections on its 787 Dreamliner planes. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was “investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records”. The regulator said that while the investigation was under way, Boeing employees would reinspect the Dreamliners that had not been delivered to airline customers yet, and the company would develop an “action plan” for the planes that are already in service.
Mexican authorities have identified the three dead bodies found in a well in Mexico as Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their travelling companion, Jack Carter Rhoad. The trio, [who went missing in the Pacific coast state of Baja California](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/03/three-arrested-in-mexico-as-concerns-grow-for-missing-perth-brothers), were killed with gunshots to the head, Mexican authorities said on Sunday. The victims’ relatives identified the bodies without need for genetic tests, the state attorney general’s office said in a statement. María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the state’s attorney general, said she was committed to investigating “these unfortunate events until those responsible feel the full weight of the law”.
Perth stabbing: police shoot dead boy, 16, after alleged attack that has ‘hallmarks’ of terror incident WA premier Roger Cook suggests teenager who allegedly stabbed man in Bunnings car park in Willetton may have been radicalised online Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastRoyce KurmelovsSun 5 May 2024 03.09 BSTShare Western Australian police say they have shot and killed a teenager who allegedly attacked a man in a Perth car park on Saturday night. Detectives on Sunday said there was no ongoing threat to the public and the 16-year-old was believed to have been acting alone in Willetton. The WA police commissioner, Col Blanch, said the incident “certainly has all the hallmarks” of a terrorism-related incident, but he was not prepared to declare it as such “at this stage”.
The sun’s otherworldly landscape, including coronal moss, solar rain and 6,000-mile-tall spires of gas, is revealed in footage from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The observations, beamed back by the European Space Agency probe, reveal feathery, hair-like structures made of plasma and also capture eruptions and showers of relatively cooler material falling to the surface. Scientists say the observations of the sun’s complex surface dynamics could help resolve the question of why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface – a longstanding paradox in solar physics.
Turkey has halted all trade with Israel, citing the “worsening humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories, which prompted strong criticism from the Israeli foreign minister. “Export and import transactions related to Israel have been stopped, covering all products,” Turkey’s trade ministry said late on Thursday. “Turkey will strictly and decisively implement these new measures until the Israeli government allows an uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Body recovered of fifth worker who died in Baltimore bridge collapse Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez was one of six construction workers killed when a container ship collided with bridge in March Guardian staffThu 2 May 2024 13.28 BSTShare The body of a fifth victim in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, has been recovered. Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez was identified as the victim, per Unified Command salvage teams. The group, which is a joint effort by police, the coast guard and other government agencies, had reported one of their construction vehicles missing when the bridge collapsed in March and notified the Maryland department of state police, per ABC News. A 49-year-old husband and father of three, Gonzalez was from El Salvador but had lived in Maryland for more than 19 years, according to Casa, a group that provides critical services to immigrant and working-class families, and advocates for their rights.
A young women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia was secretly sentenced to 11 years in prison by an anti-terrorism court after being arrested for “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights”. Saudi officials confirmed in a statement to the United National high commissioner for Human Rights that Manahel al-Otaibi was sentenced on 9 January for what the Saudi government called “terrorist offences”. Al-Otaibi, who was sentenced in a secret hearing before the counter-terrorism court, was found guilty of charges related to a Saudi anti-terror law that criminalises the use of websites to “broadcasts or publishes news, statements, false or malicious rumors, or the like for committing a terrorist crime”.
Eight law-enforcement officers were shot, four fatally, during a shootout outside of a home in North Carolina. The officers were serving a warrant to an individual wanted for possessing a firearm when the shooting began. When marshals approached a home on the 5000 block of Galway Drive in Charlotte, the subject of the warrant began shooting at them in the front yard, police said. Officers shot back and fatally struck the man.
A new tax on fossil fuel companies based in the world’s richest countries could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help the most vulnerable nations cope with the escalating climate crisis, according to a report. The Climate Damages Tax report, published on Monday, calculates that an additional tax on fossil fuel majors based in the wealthiest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries could raise $ 720bn (£580bn) by the end of the decade.
Spanish opposition parties have stepped up their attacks on the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, as he prepares to announce whether he will resign because of what he describes as a “harassment and bullying operation” being waged against him and his wife by his political and media enemies. Sánchez shocked Spain on Wednesday night when he published a letter announcing that he would abandon his public duties for five days while he weighed up whether to step down, adding that he would reveal his decision on Monday.
The American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested over a year ago in Russia, will remain in jail for at least two more months after a Moscow court rejected his appeal against his detention. Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been held in the Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow since March last year on allegations by the Russian authorities of espionage while on a reporting trip in the city of Ekaterinburg.
Nearly four in 10 people in the US are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, a new report has found. Four of the five most polluted cities are in California, where wildfires, drought and extreme heat are driving the rise in hazardous air quality. More than 131 million people are exposed to harmful ozone and particle (PM 2.5) pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report. That figure, which incorporates new, more stringent federal standards for particle pollution, represents an 11.7 million increase from the previous year.
Paedophiles are being urged to use artificial intelligence to create nude images of children to extort more extreme material from them, according to a child abuse charity. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said a manual found on the dark web contained a section encouraging criminals to use “nudifying” tools to remove clothing from underwear shots sent by a child. The manipulated image could then be used against the child to blackmail them into sending more graphic content, the IWF said.
Thousands of diehard supporters of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro have hit the streets of Rio to champion their embattled leader and celebrate the new hero of their far-right movement: Elon Musk. The tech billionaire has spent recent weeks using his social network X to bash Bolsonaro’s arch-enemy, the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes. Moraes is responsible for several investigations into Bolsonaro that could land the ex-president in jail, including one examining the alleged coup plot that preceded the rightwing insurrection in Brasília on 8 January 2023. Since early April Musk has been on the warpath against Moraes, calling him “Brazil’s Darth Vader” and comparing his actions to those of a “brutal dictator”.
Witnesses said the man pulled pamphlets out of a backpack and threw them in the air before he doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire on Friday. One of those pamphlets included references to “evil billionaires” but portions that were visible to a Reuters witness did not mention Trump. “Right now we are labelling him as sort of a conspiracy theorist, and we are going from there,” Tarik Sheppard, a deputy commissioner with the police department, said at a news conference.
A man has died after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is taking place. The New York City police department said on Saturday the man had been declared dead by staff at an area hospital. Officials had said earlier the man, who was in his late 30s, was in critical condition. The New York police department said the man, who they identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.
Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.
Prince Harry confirms he is now a US resident Paperwork filed shows the royal has informed British authorities that he has moved and is now ‘usually resident’ in the United States Guardian staff and agenciesFri 19 Apr 2024 00.51 BSTShare Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has formally confirmed he is now a US resident. The acknowledgment is said to underscore the prince’s increasing estrangement from Britain, after he and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, walked away from royal duties four years ago. A travel company he controls has filed paperwork this week informing British authorities that he has moved and is now “usually resident” in the United States.
By the middle of the century, global emissions from plastic production could triple to account for one-fifth of the Earth’s remaining carbon budget, an analysis has found. The stunning new estimates from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published Wednesday, provide yet more evidence the plastic industry is “undermining the world’s efforts to address climate change”, said Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, which helped fund the new report.
Solomon Islanders have begun voting in a national election, the first since the prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, struck a security pact with China in 2022 and drew the Pacific Islands nation closer to Beijing. The election outcome will be closely watched by the US, China and Australia for its potential impact on regional security, although Solomon Islands voters will be focused on struggling health services, education and inadequate roads, opposition parties said.
Firefighters at Copenhagen’s historic former stock exchange have been battling a huge blaze that has engulfed the 17th-century building’s roof, toppled its distinctive spire and threatened one of Denmark’s most valuable art collections. “We are witnessing a terrible spectacle. The Bourse is on fire,” the Chamber of Commerce, which occupies the building next to Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish parliament, wrote on X. “Everyone is asked to stay away.”
A lawyer who represented OJ Simpson said there were no plans to donate the former NFL player’s brain to science and that his body would be cremated. Simpson, who became the subject of an intense national debate in America after he was accused – and cleared – of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, died last week aged 76. He was later found liable for the two killings in a civil case. Rumors circulated in recent days that Simpson’s brain would be used to study CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease sometimes diagnosed in former NFL players and believed to be a result of repeated collisions on the field.
The world’s oldest living conjoined twins have died at the age of 62 in their native Pennsylvania. Lori and George Schappell died on 7 April at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, according to an obituary. A cause of death was not disclosed. The Schappell twins were born on 18 September 1961 in Reading, in southern Pennsylvania. They were joined at the skull with separate bodies, sharing 30% of their brain and essential blood vessels.
A vast network of undocumented “ghost roads” is pushing into the world’s untouched rainforests and driving their destruction in the Asia-Pacific region, a new study has found. By using Google Earth to map tropical forests on Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea islands, researchers from James Cook University in Australia documented 1.37 m kilometres (850,000 miles) of roads across 1.4m sq kilometres of rainforest on the islands – between three and seven times what is officially recorded on road databases.
A banquet room replete with well preserved frescoes depicting characters inspired by the Trojan war has been unearthed among the ruins of Pompeii in what has been described as one of the most striking discoveries ever made at the southern Italy archaeological site. The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nola, which was ancient Pompeii’s longest road, during excavations in the Regio IX area of the site. The “black room”, so-called because of the colour of its walls that were probably intended to mask the soot from burning oil lamps, was a “refined setting for entertaining during convivial moments”, experts said.
A British man with Parkinson’s disease and his wife living in France say they have been left stranded on the continent because of “insulting” post-Brexit immigration rules. They worked and paid taxes for decades in the UK but say they have had the “door slammed in our faces” and have been told they must pay £11,000 if they want to return. Stephen Kaye, 60, an IT specialist, spent his entire working career paying tax in the UK, and his French wife, Carmen Delaunay, 64, made substantial contributions working as an analyst and client retention specialist for multinationals, most recently Deloitte, over 25 years in Britain.
A group of Iranian students have been threatened with prosecution after a video of them dancing after their graduation emerged on social media this week. In the now viral video, a group of about 11 female students from Al-Zahra University in the coastal city of Bushehr, in south-west Iran, were seen dancing and riding a motorcycle.
Christie’s has withdrawn four ancient Greek vases from Tuesday’s auction after a leading archaeologist discovered that each of them was linked to a convicted antiquities dealer. Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a specialist in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, told the Guardian that damning evidence was within the auction house’s own correspondence with the dealer, which was seized by the police.
Elon Musk faces a legal investigation in Brazil after becoming embroiled in a public row with a supreme court judge over an order requiring the social network X to take down some far-right accounts. Justice Alexandre de Moraes had issued a court order forcing the site formerly known as Twitter to block several users as part of his investigation into the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s attempts to stay in power after his 2022 election defeat.
Tens of thousands of Hungarians protested against the country’s leadership on Saturday in one of the biggest demonstrations in years, organised by a former government insider who has shaken up Hungary’s political landscape. Péter Magyar, a lawyer and former diplomat who used to belong to an elite circle around Hungary’s ruling party, publicly broke with the government in February and is now aiming to challenge the position of Viktor Orbán, the powerful prime minister.
An 111-year-old man from England is now the world’s oldest living man and says the only diet he follows is eating fish and chips every Friday. John Alfred Tinniswood, who was born in 1912 – the same year the Titanic sank – insist the secret to his long life is “pure luck”. He obtained the title of world’s oldest man after 112-year-old Gisaburo Sonobe, from Japan, was confirmed to have died on 31 March. Reflecting on his longevity, Tinniswood told Guinness World Records: “You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it.”
An overhaul of Somalia’s constitution, scrapping its power-sharing system and handing the president increased control, is threatening to destabilise the fragile country, as its wealthiest and most stable state refuses to recognise the changes. The amendments risk worsening violence, the information minister from the semi-autonomous state of Puntland has warned. Mohamud Aidid Dirir told the Guardian that “almost a totally new constitution” had been introduced without input from the state’s leaders. He accused the Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, of using parliament to “gather authority into his hands”.
Brazil has issued its first-ever apology for the torture and persecution of Indigenous people during the military dictatorship, including the incarceration of victims in an infamous detention centre known as an “Indigenous concentration camp”. The apology was made on Tuesday by an amnesty commission attached to the human rights ministry that is tasked with investigating the crimes of the 1964-85 regime.
Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in trophy hunting row President Mokgweetsi Masisi voices anger over Berlin’s opposition to the import of trophies over poaching concerns Guardian staff and agenciesWed 3 Apr 2024 05.07 BSTShare Botswana’s president has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany amid a dispute over the import of hunting trophies. Earlier this year Germany’s environment ministry raised the possibility of stricter limits on the import of hunting trophies over poaching concerns. But a ban on the import of hunting trophies would only impoverish Botswanans, Mokgweetsi Masisi told German daily Bild.
An avalanche at the top Swiss ski resort of Zermatt has killed three people and injured one, as authorities warned of the risk of more disasters due to heavy winds and snowfall. Video images on social media showed a wall of snow crossing an off-piste sector of the Riffelberg sector of Zermatt, one of the most luxurious ski resorts in the Alps. A major rescue operation was launched despite the bad weather.
French investigators have found the remains of a toddler who went missing in 2023, in a case that shocked the nation. Investigators are now working to determine how the boy died, a prosecutor said on Sunday. Emile Soleil, aged two and a half years old, vanished on 8 July last year while staying with his grandparents in an Alpine village.