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Alexandru Iftimie, a 39-year-old who came to the UK from Romania seven years ago, was just about making ends meet as an Uber driver during the pandemic when he got an unexpected message from the ride-sharing app. “I received a warning: ‘We detected some fraudulent activity, therefore you have to stop otherwise I have to fire you,’” he recalls. “I said: ‘It has to be a mistake, I know I haven’t done anything.’ But two weeks later, I received another one: exactly the same message, with the difference that this time they were saying: ‘It’s the last warning. One more time, you’re done.’” When he called Uber’s driver support line in an effort to understand why he had been flagged, it was a frustrating experience. The problem seemed to be that he had taken an unexpected route, though he insists he had not charged the customer extra for doing so. “Can you imagine how difficult it was to explain to an Uber operator – I don’t know where he was – that the Blackwall tunnel was closed during a trip, and so I had to take a long detour?” he says. He was unable to get an unequivocal explanation of why he had been flagged as “fraudulent” by Uber’s systems. “At that time my main concern was: ‘It’s my only source of income, there’s a pandemic outside, there’s a lockdown. If I lose that, then what?’ “In a normal company, you would have an HR department and this kind of issue can be solved in one way or another – not necessarily in your favour, but you would have a specialised team,” he adds. With the help of his union, the App Drivers and Couriers Union, he went on to request the data Uber held about him; but what came back left him little wiser about what he was meant to have done wrong. With the help of Worker Info Exchange and his union, Iftimie pursued Uber – and another ride-sharing app for which he worked, Ola – all the way to the court of appeal in Amsterdam, where Uber’s European headquarters is based. The court found that he and other drivers involved in the case, based in the UK and Portugal, had the right to more information about the way automated decisions were made about them. Just before the case came to court, Uber apologised and acknowledged it had made a mistake. Iftimie hopes the ruling will help others to challenge automated management decisions that threaten their livelihoods – though campaigners warn that legislation going through the UK parliament will weaken data protection rights. “It’s about principles. We should fight for our principles,” Iftimie says. “In the communist Romania described by my parents, you couldn’t say a word: you couldn’t say anything. You could have been arrested for saying a joke about the wrong person. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/16/stop-or-ill-fire-you-the-driver-who-defied-ubers-automated-hr]

According to a 2022 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, almost one-third of children in the UK live in poverty. With the annual rate of inflation recently reaching 11.1% – a 41-year high – soaring energy bills and food prices mean families across the UK are struggling more than ever to meet basic needs. Calls to the NSPCC’s Childline service show that it’s not just adults bearing the strain of the cost of living crisis. Children and young people are also suffering – either through awareness of the pressures their parents and carers face, or by taking on this burden themselves. In fact, Childline has received calls like this one from a 14-year-old girl – explaining her fear about losing her family home: “My family isn’t the richest and I’m scared we won’t be able to pay our bills and we’ll lose our house,” she confides in Childline counsellors. Darren Worth, a Childline service head, has witnessed first-hand how complicated young people’s worlds have become in recent years. Worries about mental and emotional health, he says, are the number one recorded topic as a knock-on effect of the cost of living crisis. “Children will tell us: ‘My family are stressed and arguing about money – and it’s making me feel anxious,’” says Worth, adding that Childline has heard from children whose families can’t afford heating. “They are talking to us about those connected impacts – where the cost of living crisis is the cause.” Another common emotional effect is the fear of being judged. While adults can usually rationalise and develop ways in which not to worry about how other people see them, a peer’s opinion is crucial to a young person. “It’s a real fear or worry about what their friends will think if they aren’t able to do the same things their friends can,” says Worth. In such situations, it can help to talk to a Childline counsellor who is “outside of the picture and anonymous”, says Childline counsellor Jackie*. As parents facing these pressures “may be less likely to be aware if their children are suffering”, the NSPCC’s services are more needed than ever. “It is the role of the NSPCC’s Childline service to listen, empathise and support them to see that this is not their fault or responsibility.” While children might not necessarily experience the cost of living crisis directly, they may well be feeling the ramifications of the behaviour of their parents, family or carer. There might be greater tensions in the home or, perhaps, their basic needs as a child are not being met because the adults are struggling to cope themselves. “Children are incredibly perceptive,” says Worth. “They pick up on the emotions and stresses of the people around them. For that reason, for those who are more vulnerable, the impact is absolutely enormous.” Sadly, this can lead to a sense of helplessness, where young people feel the adults around them – be that parents, family, carers, teachers or youth workers – can no longer help. They might say: “What’s the point in talking to them?”, which can lead to a distrust of authorities because they sense that nothing will change or get better. In turn, this sense of helplessness can then leave them more vulnerable to criminalised behaviour or sexual exploitation – because the latter quite often comes with promises of gifts or money. The cost of living crisis: how are children coping? Worth says one of the NSPCC’s most empowering assets is that young people can determine which Childline service they need at the outset. This means, when a child calls in they are presented with a menu that considers whether they want someone to listen to them or seek advice. “We want a world where young people are safe and looked after, so we can work with them to identify what [part of] their world can change with support from us or the adults they trust, or reduce that feeling of ‘stuckness’ so they can see other ways are possible,” says Worth. “Or we can take a more practical approach in crisis situations.” As the cost of living crisis continues, the best thing parents and carers can offer is to create a safe, open and non-judgmental space for children to talk about their worries. This is highly critical, says Worth, because young people don’t often have all the information around the problem, and this space allows them to be reassured and offload that burden to the adult. If additional help is needed, the Childline website offers advice for young people, and adults can encourage them to speak to a counsellor. [https://www.theguardian.com/cost-of-living-the-unseen-impact-on-children/2023/mar/31/im-scared-well-lose-our-house-giving-young-people-a-voice-in-the-cost-of-living-crisis]

America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic party, which – notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples, such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie Sanders in 2016 – is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican party, which is careening at high velocity toward authoritarianism. OK, fascism. What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers. The two Tennessee Democrats who Republicans expelled from the Tennessee house have been restored to their seats until special elections are held, but the damage to democracy cannot be easily undone. The two were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to protest against Tennessee’s failure to enact stronger gun controls after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left three nine-year-old students and three adults dead. They were technically in violation of house rules, but the state legislature has never imposed so severe a penalty for rules violations. In fact, over the past few years, several Tennessee legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct. And the two who were expelled last week are Black people, while a third legislator who demonstrated in the same manner but was not expelled is white. We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics – scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can. Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion, healthcare, guns or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements. But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose – including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election. Wisconsin may soon offer an even more chilling example. While liberals celebrated the election last Tuesday of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin supreme court because she will tip the court against the state’s extreme gerrymandering (the most extreme in the nation) and its fierce laws against abortion (among the most stringent in America), something else occurred in Wisconsin on election day that may well negate Protasiewicz’s victory. Voters in Wisconsin’s eighth senatorial district decided (by a small margin) to send Republican Dan Knodl to the state senate. This gives the Wisconsin Republican party a supermajority – and with it, the power to remove key state officials, including judges, through impeachment. Several weeks ago, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Protasiewicz. Although he was then talking about her role as a county judge, his interest in impeaching her presumably has increased now that she’s able to tip the state’s highest court. As in Tennessee, this could be done without any necessity for a public justification. Under Republican authoritarianism, power is its own justification. Recall that in 2018, after Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor and attorney general, the Republican legislature and the lame duck Republican governor responded by significantly cutting back the power of both offices. Meanwhile, a newly installed Republican supermajority in Florida has given Ron DeSantis unbridled control – with total authority over the board governing Disney, the theme park giant he has fought over his anti-LGBTQ “don’t say gay” law; permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the US to destinations of his own choosing, for political purposes, and then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers; and unprecedented prosecutorial power in the form of his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity”, pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud. Without two parties committed to democratic means to resolve differences in ends, the party committed to democracy is at a tactical disadvantage. If it is to survive, eventually it, too, will sacrifice democratic means to its own ends. In these circumstances, partisanship turns to enmity and political divisions morph into hatred. In warfare there are no principles, only wins and losses. America experienced this 160 years ago, when the civil war tore us apart. Donald Trump is not singularly responsible for this dangerous trend, but he has legitimized and encouraged the ends-justify-the-means viciousness now pushing the GOP toward becoming the American fascist party. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/the-modern-republican-party-fascism-robert-reich]

In the Great Karoo, a vast semi-arid expanse in South Africa, lions and cheetahs once roamed. But then came farms and fences and guns. By the 1840s lions were gone; then by the 1870s, cheetahs too. Much of what is now the Samara Private Game Reserve, in the Eastern Cape, became home to livestock. That was until 1997, when nature was once again allowed to take its course over thousands of acres of land. Now, after 25 years of carefully managed rewilding, both cheetahs and lions have not only returned to this part of South Africa – they’re thriving. The successful reintroduction of these big cats is down to the vision of Mark and Sarah Tompkins. The couple purchased 11 farms totaling 27,000 hectares (67,000 acres) over five years for the purpose of returning the land to its former glory. “It wasn’t a wild area,” explains Isabelle Tompkins, their eldest daughter and business development manager at Samara. “All of the migrating animals were essentially shut out, and of course the predators (that) would accompany them.” To dream big, the family had to start small. That meant looking at what was beneath their feet. When the land was bought, much of it was overgrazed, with barren patches and gullies eroded in the earth. Fences were removed along with the livestock, and the rewilding effort began literally at grassroots level. “Despite being a semi-arid region, there’s a remarkable amount of biodiversity, particularly endemic plants,” says Isabelle, adding that five of South Africa’s nine types of plant habitat exist within Samara. Over time, the region’s flora returned. Forest and grasslands, rivers and streams, mountains and valleys span the reserve, providing habitats and grazing for herbivores (around 20 antelope species live in the reserve today) and megaherbivores such as elephants. “Little by little, we’ve introduced the pieces of the puzzle of what this ecosystem would have looked like,” says Isabelle. With plentiful prey, predators could be reintroduced. In 2003, cheetahs were brought back to the area for the first time in 130 years. Of the first three individuals, female Sibella became a symbol of Samara and its success. At the age of two she suffered a savage attack by hunting dogs and humans, and was brought to Samara after life-saving surgery and rehabilitation. At her new home she would give birth to 20 cubs and raise all but one to adulthood, before dying of natural causes in 2015. Some 50 cubs have been born at the reserve, and Samara’s po[CENSORED]tion has become substantial enough that many are translocated to other reserves and national parks through the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Cheetah Metapo[CENSORED]tion Project. Other cheetahs are brought to Samara in return, all in an effort to boost genetic diversity. Return of the king Once cheetah territories were firmly established, the climate was right to bring back lions – a momentous step for both Samara and the area of the Great Karoo. Male Titus and female Sikelele were introduced in January 2019, and female Sheba followed soon after. Two years later and Sikelele has given birth to two litters, Sheba one, with the reserve’s first litter now occasionally hunting on their own, say the Tompkins. “Lions being the apex predator, they were always going to have a big impact,” Tompkins says. Returning lions to the land has changed the dynamic of Samara. There are now more carcases for jackals to scavenge on, meaning less predation of springboks, resulting in an uptick in their po[CENSORED]tion. On the other hand, black wildebeest are producing more young, say the Tompkins, perhaps as a reaction to lions preying on the species. “We don’t have the luxury of not being ambitious about this” Samara Private Nature Reserve funds its rewilding efforts through its tourism operations. Visitors can stay at the reserve in lodges or even sleep beneath the stars, and partake in luxury safaris and cheetah tracking, with all earnings reinvested into its various programs. But perhaps its greatest plan extends beyond Samara’s borders. The reserve is involved in a long-term initiative to create a land corridor linking the Karoo’s Camdeboo National Park and Mountain Zebra National Park, opening up historical migratory routes and returning more land to nature. The Tompkins say it has the potential to be arguably “the last great mega-reserve in South Africa” covering 1.3 million acres (over 526,000 hectares). The area is one of 36 global biodiversity hotspots, but will rely on voluntary agreements with private landowners to manage the area in an environmentally friendly manner, rather than involve land purchases by the government body overseeing national parks. Thinking big has always been part of Samara’s ethos, but there’s added urgency provided by the United Nation’s ongoing Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. The initiative says that restoring just 15% of converted lands in priority areas worldwide could avoid 60% of expected species extinctions, along with myriad climate and livelihood-related benefits. [https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/samara-south-africa-reserve-big-cats-lion-cheetah-c2e-spc-intl/index.html]

Relics of ancient viruses - that have spent millions of years hiding inside human DNA - help the body fight cancer, say scientists. The study by the Francis Crick Institute showed the dormant remnants of these old viruses are woken up when cancerous cells spiral out of control. This unintentionally helps the immune system target and attack the tumour. The team wants to harness the discovery to design vaccines that can boost cancer treatment, or even prevent it. The researchers had noticed a connection between better survival from lung cancer and a part of the immune system, called B-cells, clustering around tumours. B-cells are the part of our body that manufactures antibodies and are better known for their role in fighting off infections, such as Covid. Precisely what they were doing in lung cancer was a mystery but a series of intricate experiments using samples from patients and animal tests showed they were still attempting to fight viruses. "It turned out that the antibodies are recognising remnants of what's termed endogenous retroviruses," Prof Julian Downward, an associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute, told me. Retroviruses have the nifty trick of slipping a copy of their genetic instructions inside our own. More than 8% of what we think of as "human" DNA actually has such viral origins Some of these retroviruses became a fixture of our genetic code tens of millions of years ago and are shared with our evolutionary relatives, the great apes Other retroviruses may have entered our DNA a few thousand years ago Some of these foreign instructions have, over time, been co-opted and serve useful purposes inside our cells, but others are tightly controlled to stop them spreading. However, chaos dominates inside a cancerous cell when it is growing uncontrollably and the once tight control of these ancient viruses is lost. These ancient genetic instructions are no longer able to resurrect whole viruses but they can create fragments of viruses that are enough for the immune system to spot a viral threat. "The immune system is tricked into believing that the tumour cells are infected and it tries to eliminate the virus, so it's sort of an alarm system," Prof George Kassiotis, head of retroviral immunology at the biomedical research centre, told me. The antibodies summon other parts of the immune system that kill off the "infected" cells - the immune system is trying to stop a virus but in this case is taking out cancerous cells. Prof Kassiotis says it is a remarkable role reversal for retroviruses which, in their heyday, "might have been causing cancer in our ancestors" due to the way they invade our DNA, but are now protecting us from cancer, "which I find fascinating", he adds. The study, published in the journal Nature, describes how this happens naturally in the body but the researchers want to enhance that effect by developing vaccines to teach the body how to hunt for endogenous retroviruses. "If we can do that, then you can think not only of therapeutic vaccines, you can also think of preventative vaccines," said Prof Kassiotis. The research came out of the TracerX study which has been tracking lung cancers in unprecedented detail and this week showed cancer's "near infinite" ability to evolve. It led the researchers running the trial to call for more focus on preventing cancer as it was so hard to stop. Dr Claire Bromley, from Cancer Research UK, said: "All of us have ancient viral DNA in our genes, passed down from our ancestors, and this fascinating research has highlighted the role it plays in cancer and how our immune system can recognise and destroy cancer cells." She said "more research" was needed to develop a cancer vaccine but "nevertheless, this study adds to the growing body of research that could one day see this innovative approach to cancer treatment become a reality." [https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65266256]

Microsoft is making a big move on the chatbot front by changing the Bing search website to incorporate its ChatGPT-powered AI. In other words, searches at the Bing site may see the chatbot appearing and chiming in with results. Previously, users had to specifically fire up the ‘New Bing’ (clicking on the ‘chat’ option, as opposed to ‘search’ at Bing.com) as Microsoft refers to the AI, but now, it’s reportedly pitching up unrequested in search results. This was noticed by Bleeping Computer(opens in new tab), with the tech site highlighting a test search for ‘winver’ that saw the Bing AI pop up and lend its expertise, putting together info drawn from five sources (with links provided) as an answer. There’s also a box to continue chatting with the AI on the subject if you wish to. For the uninitiated, ‘winver’ is a command you can enter in Windows to prompt the OS to tell you exactly what version of Windows 11 (or 10) you’re running. The Bing AI explains this, naturally, and more besides, as the first thing you see at the top of the search results page. We tried a few queries in Bing.com (in Edge) just to test things out ourselves, and saw the chatbot appear with that same ‘winver’ query, but not with a few others. Although that said, in some cases, we did get the chatbot’s prompt at the foot of the top result (with suggested questions to ask), allowing for firing up the AI to further explore the query. [https://www.techradar.com/news/microsofts-chatgpt-powered-ai-is-off-the-leash-and-popping-up-in-bing-searches]

s AMD revealed the new Alveo MA35D media accelerator that features two 5nm, ASIC-based video processing units, or VPUs, which support the AV1 compression standard and are purpose-built to power a new generation of live interactive streaming services at scale. The global video market is overtaken 70% of live content, such as low-latency, high-volume interactive streaming applications, watch parties, live shopping, online auctions, and social streaming. AMD Launches Alveo MA35D, The First 5nm ASIC-based Media Accelerator Card With AV1 Encoding & Efficient Decoding Capabilities The AMD Alveo MA35D media accelerator will deliver high channel density, powering up to 32 times the 1080p @ 60fps streams per card. Power efficiency and ultra-low-latency performance are crucial to lowering the inflated infrastructure costs that are now demanded in scaling such compute-intensive content. Compared to the previous Alveo U30 media accelerator, the new Alveo MA35D delivers up to four times more channel density, maximum lower latency in 4K resolutions, and almost two times greater compression efficiency to reach the same VMAF score—a standard video quality metric. Purpose-Built Video Processing Unit The Alveo MA35D uses a purpose-built VPU to accelerate the entire video pipeline. The VPU will perform all video processing functions, minimizing data movement between the CPU and accelerator, reducing overall latency, and maximizing channel density with up to thirty-two times 1080p @ 60fps, eight times 4Kp @ 60fps, or four times at 8Kp @ 30fps streams per card. The platform will provide deficient latency support for the mainstream H.264 and H.265 codecs and feature next-generation AV1 transcoder engines to deliver up to a 52% reduction in bitrate for bandwidth savings compared to software implementation. Software Dev Kit and Product Availability Developers can access the platform with the AMD Media Acceleration software development kit (SDK), which supports the FFmpeg and GStreamer video frameworks for easy development. AMD's Alveo MA35D media accelerators are sampling now, with production shipments expected in the third quarter of 2023. The company offers qualified customers an Early Access Program with comprehensive documentation and software tools for architectural exploration. For more information, visit the official product page. [https://wccftech.com/amd-unleashes-alveo-ma35d-media-accelerator-first-5nm-asic-design-av1-1w-per-channel-1595-us/]

A global scamming network has robbed ordinary investors of more than a billion dollars. BBC Eye identified a shadowy network of businessmen who appear to be behind it. Short presentational grey line First, you hear a phone ringing. An elderly man answers. The caller introduces himself as "William Grant", from the trading firm Solo Capitals. He says he has a "great promotion" to offer. The elderly man sounds vulnerable and confused. "I'm not interested, I'm not interested," he says. But William Grant is persistent. "I only have one question," he tells the old man. "Are you interested in making money?" Jan Erik, a 75-year-old pensioner in Sweden, is about to get scammed - again. The call was made from the offices of Solo Capitals, a purported cryptocurrency trading firm based in Georgia. The recording is hard to listen to - not only does the elderly man, Jan Erik, sound muddled, he tells the caller he has already lost one million Swedish Krona (about £80,000) in trading scams. But the caller already knows this. And he knows it makes the pensioner a good target for a follow-up "recovery scam". He tells Mr Erik that if he hands over his card details and pays a €250 deposit, Solo Capitals will use special software to track his lost investments and get his money back. "We will be able to recover the whole amount," William Grant says. It takes him a while to wear Jan Erik down. But after about 30 minutes on the phone, the pensioner begins reading out his credit card details. The audio recording was saved by the company under the file name "William Sweden scammed". The BBC obtained the file from a former employee, but the company had not tried hard to hide it. In fact, it had handed it out to new recruits as part of the company training package. This was a lesson in how to scam. The scam For more than a year, BBC Eye has been investigating a global fraudulent trading network of hundreds of different investment brands that has scammed unwitting customers like Jan Erik out of more than a billion dollars. Our investigation reveals for the first time the sheer scale of the fraud, as well as the identities of a shadowy network of individuals who appear to be behind it. The network is known to police as the Milton group, a name originally used by the scammers themselves but abandoned in 2020. We identified 152 brands, including Solo Capitals, that appear to be part of the network. It operates by targeting investors and scamming them out of thousands - or in some cases hundreds of thousands - of pounds. One Milton group investment brand even sponsored a top-flight Spanish football club, and advertised in major newspapers, lending it credibility with potential investors. In November, BBC Eye accompanied German and Georgian police on call-centre raids in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. On the computer screens, we saw row after row of British phone numbers. We phoned several and spoke to British citizens who told us they had just invested money. On one desk, there was a handwritten note with a list of names and useful details for the scammers: "Homeowner, no responsibilities"; "50k in savings"; "From Poland, British citizen"; "50k in stocks." Next to the name of one British man, a note said: "Savings less than 10K, very pussy, should scam soon". [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65038949]

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