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Top executives at Japan’s Kobayashi Pharmaceutical resigned on Tuesday following revelations that a health supplement the company sells may be linked to 80 deaths.

A damning external report funded by the company found that leadership had acted with an “insufficient sense of urgency” over consumer safety risks.

The tablets in question are made with red yeast rice or “beni koji,” which is fermented with mold cultures.

While a a common ingredient in east Asian food and drink for centuries, it can promote organ damage depending on its chemical makeup.

At the time the government called Kobayashi’s delay in reporting the number of cases under investigation “extremely regrettable.”

The company should have recalled the products immediately and reported the incident, but it only decided to do so after an internal investigation process, the lawyers conducting the audit wrote.

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The caustic tone from Sidorov and Solovyov provided a stark contrast with that of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that same evening, who had personified cool aloofness, saying that, with four months to go until the election, “much could still change.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Peskov has often suggested, has bigger things on his mind than the fracas among his political enemies overseas.

With Moscow in its third year of war against Ukraine, they have jumped on the chaos in the United States as an opportunity to frame Russia as superior to the West and distract from domestic problems.

Despite not having been officially nominated, Harris appears to have already been designated a prime target by Russia’s overwhelmingly white male propagandists.

“The entire deep state will be backing Harris,” Sergei Markov, an analyst with Kremlin ties wrote on his Telegram channel.

Instead, the state news agency ran with a comment from the aide of Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council who loves threatening the West with nuclear annihilation.

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The European Union says it has notified Meta that its “pay or consent” model for Facebook and Instagram might violate consumer protection laws.

The EU’s Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network says the company has until September 1st, 2024, to propose changes to its model, which it calls “misleading” and “confusing” for users, or face potential fines.

CPC regulators, who began their investigation after complaints from consumer watchdog groups, claim the company uses confusing language to explain how both the paid and “free” versions of Facebook and Instagram work and that its rollout pressured people to make a choice without enough time to consider how it would affect them.

They also say that calling the ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram “free” is misleading since it still requires users to consent to the use of their data for targeted ads.

Didier Reynders, EU Commissioner for Justice, says customers shouldn’t be “lured into” thinking they won’t see ads if they pay the subscription, or that it’s free despite the company profiting from their personal data.

“Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries,” Meta spokesperson Matt Pollard told The Verge in an email, “Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and we are confident it complies with European regulation.”

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A 2009 agreement insisted on by the European Commission meant that Microsoft could not make security changes that would have blocked the update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike that caused an estimated 8.5 million computers to fail, the Big Tech giant said in comments to the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled, leaving passengers stranded at airports worldwide, the UK’s NHS service was affected and contactless payments failed to work.

Microsoft has Windows Defender, its in-house alternative to CrowdStrike, but because of the 2009 agreement made to avoid a European competition investigation, had allowed multiple security providers to install software at the kernel level.

Microsoft’s main competitor, Apple, in 2020 blocked access to the kernel on its Mac computers, arguing it would improve security and reliability.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, a Microsoft spokesman said the company could not make a similar change because of the EU agreement.

Under its new Digital Markets Act, Europe is currently trying to force Apple to give access to its iPhone to allow alternative app stores and web browsers to be used.

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A wealth of promising home-grown titles from the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 back in June gave existing users plenty of reasons to stay subscribed.

Xbox Game Pass has had a really solid July for content, and it’ll get even sweeter if the rumors of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 hitting the service soon pan out.

I wrote recently about how games might not be enough to find those elusive “new” users in an article linked below, revolving around the dilemma that the overall number of “core” console players simply isn’t growing.

While speaking to developers at shows over the past year, a lot of the discourse revolves around “black hole” games like Fortnite and Roblox, which vacuum up users and turn them into mono-gamers with no interest in playing anything else.

Xbox Game Pass is an attempt to cut through that trend in the name of supporting and showcasing the variety of art the industry has to offer — meeting new customer cohorts halfway.

The vastness of its Activision-Blizzard purchase seems to have led to a lost couple of years of momentum for Xbox as a brand, with attention focused solely on its variety of court cases.

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The Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness said as of early afternoon Monday, there were about 440 properties on evacuation order and 3,000 under alert, calling the situation “dynamic and everchanging.”

On Monday afternoon, Sooke Potholes Park on Vancouver Island was closed due to a wildfire detected near Mavis Lake east of Victoria.

In an interview with CBC News shortly before 5:30 p.m. PT, Sooke Mayor Maja Tait said there is currently no risk to the wider community, but as a precaution, the district has cancelled a scheduled council meeting so it can react if anything changes.

That same fire also forced the evacuation of the Bowron Lake provincial park canoe circuit and the artistic enclave of Wells, impacting up to 1,000 residents, tourists and temporary workers, according to Mayor Ed Coleman.

Farther south, the city of Williams Lake, B.C., home to more than 10,000 people, ordered a local state of emergency Sunday night after a fire broke out along Mackenzie Avenue, which is a strip of businesses and industry.

Locals posted photos and video of water bombers flying low over the neighbourhood on Sunday evening, and by midnight Mayor Surinderpal Rathor confirmed residents who had been “tactically evacuated” from their homes were allowed to return.

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“I first saw this in 2013 - an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

And because these nodules contain metals like lithium, cobalt and copper - all of which are needed to make batteries - many mining companies are developing technology to collect them and bring them to the surface.

And his discovery, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, raises new concerns about the risks of proposed deep-sea mining ventures.

The scientists worked out that the metal nodules are able to make oxygen precisely because they act like batteries.“If you put a battery into seawater, it starts fizzing,” explained Prof Sweetman.

And this discovery suggests that the nodules themselves could be providing the oxygen to support life there.Prof Murray Roberts, a marine biologist from the Univerisity of Edinburgh is one of the scientists who signed the seabed mining petition.

“There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” he told BBC News.“Because these fields cover such huge areas of our planet it would be crazy to press ahead with deep-sea mining knowing they may be a significant source of oxygen production.”Prof Sweetman added: “I don’t see this study as something that will put an end to mining.“[But] we need to explore it in greater detail and we need to use this information and the data we gather in future if we are going to go into the deep ocean and mine it in the most environmentally friendly way possible.”

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The European Union has stripped Hungary of the right to host the next meeting of foreign and defence ministers over its stance on the war in Ukraine.It comes weeks after Hungary assumed the presidency of the Council of the European Union, a role in which it would normally host the event, and amid anger over a meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orban held with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month.

Every six months, under each new council presidency, the EU’s foreign and defence ministers hold informal meetings to discuss the biggest global issues facing the bloc.

Following the decision, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on Facebook: "What a fantastic response they have come up with.

"Mr Orban’s meeting with Mr Putin came as part of what he described as a “peace mission” - launched days after Hungary assumed the council presidency - that also saw him visiting the leaders of Ukraine and China as well as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the US.

The trip sparked condemnation from leaders across the EU, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen describing it as “nothing but an appeasement mission”.Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Mr Orban had “no mandate to negotiate or discuss on behalf of the EU”, while Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the trip sent “the wrong signal to the outside world and is an insult to the Ukrainian people’s fight for their freedom”.The episode is one of numerous occasions since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on which Hungary has been at odds with most of the rest of the EU about the appropriate response.

After winning re-election in April 2022, just months after the invasion, Mr Orban told a crowd of supporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was among the people he would have to “battle” in his fourth term.Last year, he repeatedly used Hungary’s veto to delay a €50bn (£42bn) package of non-military financial aid to Ukraine.

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In the biggest news of all, Rivian and Volkswagen announced a $5 billion joint venture that will co-develop core parts of the hardware and software platform to be used in cars from both automakers.

We love that because it aligns so beautifully with our mission: the ability to help accelerate putting highly compelling electric vehicles into the market, which will ultimately drive more demand.

A core objective of how we’ve structured the joint venture is that we don’t lose the velocity and the speed and the decisiveness and lack of bureaucracy that exists within our software function today.

Beyond just simplification of how we manage running over-the-air updates across so many different instances, it also gets us a lot of supply chain leverage in a way that we, Rivian, haven’t had in the past.

In fact, you can imagine the day of the announcement, I had a handful of phone calls from CEOs of big semiconductor suppliers, and they’re like, “Hey, we can work harder on pricing.” So, that was awesome.

So, taking away all those mechanical design studio packaging constraints that we had before, and then solving the biggest challenge, which was network architecture by this being that as a project, it’s just a very different type of relationship.

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At least six people have been killed after a gunman opened fire in a care home in Croatia, sparking calls for stricter gun control in the Balkan country.

Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic said he was shocked by the “savage, unprecedented” mass shooting and called for rules on gun ownership to be “even more rigorous”.

Marin Piletic, Croatia’s minister for Labour, Pensions, Families and Social Policy, said the mother of the suspect had been a resident of the care home for 10 years.

He also had a previous record for disturbing public order and domestic abuse, according to Croatian national police chief Nikola Milina.

“I was stacking the medicines and then I heard gunshots,” a shocked employee of the nursing home told state broadcaster HRT.

Last year, two mass shootings in neighbouring Serbia left more than 18 people dead and led many Serbs to hand in thousands of registered and unregistered weapons as part of a government amnesty.

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“Consolidation is in full swing and I’m excited to see who will still be there at the end of the year,” said one managing director, on condition of anonymity.

Installers face significant challenges, including employee utilization, short waiting times for commissioning, and declining demand due to higher interest rates, inflation, and high electricity prices.

He also said that large online providers could exploit current market conditions, affecting even reputable solar installers.

“Price competition in the balcony module segment makes a normal PV system seem too expensive,” said another executive.

Another long-standing installer compared the current market to 2012, criticizing the media’s focus on low prices from third-rate Chinese manufacturers.

“I’m pessimistic about the second half of the year,” he said, noting the need for future support and policies to ensure sector stability.

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“I first saw this in 2013 - an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

And because these nodules contain metals like lithium, cobalt and copper - all of which are needed to make batteries - many mining companies are developing technology to collect them and bring them to the surface.

And his discovery, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, raises new concerns about the risks of proposed deep-sea mining ventures.

The scientists worked out that the metal nodules are able to make oxygen precisely because they act like batteries.“If you put a battery into seawater, it starts fizzing,” explained Prof Sweetman.

And this discovery suggests that the nodules themselves could be providing the oxygen to support life there.Prof Murray Roberts, a marine biologist from the Univerisity of Edinburgh is one of the scientists who signed the seabed mining petition.

“There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” he told BBC News.“Because these fields cover such huge areas of our planet it would be crazy to press ahead with deep-sea mining knowing they may be a significant source of oxygen production.”Prof Sweetman added: “I don’t see this study as something that will put an end to mining.“[But] we need to explore it in greater detail and we need to use this information and the data we gather in future if we are going to go into the deep ocean and mine it in the most environmentally friendly way possible.”

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BRUSSELS — Hungary on Monday said it had asked the European Union to take action against Ukraine for imposing a partial ban on Russian oil exports, arguing the move was jeopardizing Budapest’s energy security.

Kyiv last month adopted sanctions blocking the transit to Central Europe of pipeline crude sold by Moscow’s largest private oil firm, Lukoil, sparking fears of supply shortages in Budapest.

The escalating diplomatic spat comes as ties between Ukraine and Hungary hit rock-bottom, with Kyiv last week lashing out at Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin within a self-styled “peace mission.”

The ban means the country’s central Slovnaft refinery would “receive 40 percent less oil than it needs,” Fico said, arguing it would also reduce Slovak fuel exports to Ukraine that make up a 10th of Kyiv’s consumption.

Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned imports of Russian oil arriving at the bloc by sea, but allowed landlocked countries like Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to continue buying supplies via the Russia-to-Europe Druzhba pipeline until they could find an alternative solution.

But Budapest, which has angered Ukraine by holding up EU sanctions against Russia and has stalled Kyiv’s attempts to join the bloc, hasn’t tried to find other options, said Isaac Levy, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank.

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TOKYO – Vice foreign ministers from Japan and China held a strategic dialogue Monday for the first time in four and a half years, as the countries focus on shared interests amid a host of diplomatic challenges.

Masataka Okano and Chinese counterpart Ma Zhaoxu discussed developments in the East and South China seas as well as Ukraine during their talk in Tokyo.

Other topics included Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the detention of Japanese nationals in China.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi are considering holding talks on the sidelines of ASEAN-hosted meetings in Laos starting Thursday.

China is eager to bolster ties with Japan ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, concerned that a harsher stance by Washington could lead Tokyo to follow suit.

Beijing also awaits the outcome of the leadership race in Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party scheduled for next month, which will decide the country’s next prime minister.

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“We’re grateful for the progress leading companies have made toward fulfilling their voluntary commitments in addition to what is required by the executive order,” says Robyn Patterson, a spokesperson for the White House.

Without comprehensive federal legislation, the best the US can do right now is to demand that companies follow through on these voluntary commitments, says Brandie Nonnecke, the director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley.

After they signed the commitments, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI founded the Frontier Model Forum, a nonprofit that aims to facilitate discussions and actions on AI safety and responsibility.

“The natural question is: Does [the technical fix] meaningfully make progress and address the underlying social concerns that motivate why we want to know whether content is machine generated or not?” he adds.

In the past year, the company has pushed out research on deception, jailbreaking, strategies to mitigate discrimination, and emergent capabilities such as models’ ability to tamper with their own code or engage in persuasion.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has used satellite imagery and AI to improve responses to wildfires in Maui and map climate-vulnerable populations, which helps researchers expose risks such as food insecurity, forced migration, and disease.

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Researchers from Google have built a new weather prediction model that combines machine learning with more conventional techniques, potentially yielding accurate forecasts at a fraction of the current cost.

The model, called NeuralGCM and described in a paper in Nature today, bridges a divide that’s grown among weather prediction experts in the last several years.

It then incorporates AI, which tends to do well where those larger models fall flat—typically for predictions on scales smaller than about 25 kilometers, like those dealing with cloud formations or regional microclimates (San Francisco’s fog, for example).

But the real promise of technology like this is not in better weather predictions for your local area, says Aaron Hill, an assistant professor at the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, who was not involved in this research.

That means the best climate models are hamstrung by the high costs of computing power, which presents a real bottleneck to research.

While many of the AI skeptics in weather forecasting have been won over by recent developments, according to Hill, the fast pace is hard for the research community to keep up with.

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Since 2021, the anonymous group, Advance Regina, has been running thousands of dollars worth of advertising on social media and billboard campaigns complaining about crime, taxes and city services.

Advance Regina bills itself as “local residents who love our city,” but its website and social media presence provides no names of actual people behind the organization.

In the past, she was the Saskatchewan Party’s director of training and a constituency organizer, and just last year Premier Scott Moe nominated her for the Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee Medal for public service, according to her Facebook page.

Aaron Moore, a political science professor from the University of Winnipeg, said that as cities have grown and their budgets have inflated, this issue of third-party activism and donations has become more important.

“Advance Regina has transitioned to focus on issue-based advocacy, citizen and voter engagement, and promoting awareness of the current council’s poor performance.”

Moore, the University of Winnipeg political science professor, said that while there are stringent rules for third-party advertising in provincial and federal elections in Canada, that’s generally not the case for municipalities.

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A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, to six-and-a-half years in prison after a rushed, secret trial.

Gershkovich’s trial was similarly concluded with unusual haste, raising hopes of a prisoner swap involving the Wall Street Journal reporter, which has long been the subject of private discussions between Russian and US officials.

Still, Kurmasheva’s verdict, handed down on the same day as Gershkovich’s, suggests that Russia might be seeking to trade her for Russians wanted by the Kremlin, including several deep-cover spies behind bars in the west.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has launched an unprecedented crackdown on protesters, independent news outlets and foreign social media networks.

In March 2023, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed off on a draconian law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” news about the military, in effect criminalising any public criticism of the war.

Stephen Capus, the RFE/RL president and CEO, on Monday denounced the trial of Kurmasheva and her conviction as “a mockery of justice” and said that “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors”.

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A trailblazing physicist who gave up her PhD 75 years ago to have a family has received an honorary doctorate from her former university.

Rosemary Fowler, 98, discovered the kaon particle during her doctoral research under Cecil Powell at the University of Bristol in 1948, which contributed to his Nobel prize for physics in 1950.

But she left university without completing her PhD to marry fellow physicist Peter Fowler in 1949, a decision she later described as pragmatic after she went on to have three children in a time of postwar food rationing.

She has now been awarded an honorary doctor of science by the University of Bristol chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse, in a private graduation ceremony close to her Cambridge home.

Nurse praised Fowler’s “intellectual rigour and curiosity”, which “paved the way for critical discoveries that continue to shape the work of today’s physicists, and our understanding of the universe”.

Fowler was born in Suffolk in 1926, and excelled in maths and science as a child but found writing a challenge.

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