Coca-Cola will not ditch single-use plastic bottles because consumers still want them, the firm’s head of sustainability has told the BBC. Customers like them because they reseal and are lightweight, said Bea Perez. The firm, which is one of the biggest producers of plastic waste, has pledged to recycle as many plastic bottles as it uses by 2030. But environmental campaigners argue many Coke bottles would still go uncollected and end up in landfill. The drinks giant produces about three million tonnes of plastic packaging a year – equivalent to 200,000 bottles a minute. In 2019, it was found to…
Author: mediahitman
Scientists say they may have discovered why stress makes hair turn white, and a potential way of stopping it happening without reaching for the dye. In experiments on mice, stem cells that control skin and hair colour became damaged after intense stress. In a chance finding, dark-furred mice turned completely white within weeks. The US and Brazilian researchers said this avenue was worth exploring further to develop a drug that prevents hair colour loss from ageing. Men and women can go grey any time from their mid-30s, with the timing of parental hair colour change giving most of the clues…
Home DNA-testing company 23andMe is laying off about 100 people, or 14% of its staff, on Thursday, in the wake of declining sales. The layoffs include the operations teams, which were focused on the company’s growth and scaling efforts, as well as other teams. In the coming months, the company plans to tighten its focus on the direct-to-consumer business and its therapeutics arm while scaling back its clinical studies arm. CEO Anne Wojcicki told CNBC she’s been “surprised” to see the market starting to turn. Wojcicki has theories, but she doesn’t have clear proof for why consumers are shying away…
Wrongful death cases that were filed by Prince’s family have been dismissed, almost four years after the star died. Legal claims had been filed against a doctor who prescribed Prince pain medication and a pharmacy that supplied him with medicine. Dismissals usually occur after a settlement has been reached, but such agreements often remain confidential. The 57-year-old died in 2016 after an accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl at his home in Minneapolis. Claims that had been filed against the Walgreens pharmacy chain and Dr Michael Schulenberg, who treated Prince in the weeks before his death, have been dismissed. The…
Footballer Emiliano Sala told a friend he felt forced out of his former club, days before he died in a plane crash. The 28-year-old Argentine and pilot David Ibbotson, 59, were killed when the plane carrying him to his new club Cardiff City came down on 21 January 2019. The BBC has heard a voice message in which Sala says he did not feel respected at French club Nantes. FC Nantes refused to comment on the message. On Tuesday events are being held in Nantes and Cardiff in memory of Sala and Mr Ibbotson, marking one year since the plane…
A super-rich one percent of the world’s population has accumulated twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, global charity Oxfam said in a newly-released report. The gap between the obscenely rich and the rest of humanity has reached grotesque proportions, according to the annual report by Oxfam, published on Monday on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The new report, ‘Time to Care’, which focuses on the largely unpaid care work many women and girls take upon themselves, says that the world’s top 22 richest men now have more wealth than all the women in…
Sperm donations taken from men after they have died should be allowed, a study says. The analysis, which is published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, claims that opt-in post-death donations could be a “morally permissible” way of increasing the stocks available. In 2017 in the UK, 2,345 babies were born after a sperm donation. However, there is a growing shortage of donations around the country because of strict regulations. Sperm can be collected after death either through electrical stimulation of the prostate gland or surgery, and can then be frozen. Evidence suggests that sperm harvested from men who have…
A man in the US who co-founded a service to protect sites from cyber-attackers has pleaded guilty to launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Tucker Preston is co-founder of BackConnect, a cyber-security firm that claimed to be “the new industry standard in DDoS mitigation”. However, he was accused of arranging DDoS attacks targeting an unnamed firm. A court document stated the attacks took place between 2015 and 2016. News of the guilty plea was published online by Brian Krebs, a cyber-security expert and blogger. During a DDoS attack, a website or online service is flooded with high levels of…
Ukraine’s embassy in the UK has demanded an official apology after the Trident — its national coat of arms — was included among a group of “right-wing signs & symbols” in a guide by Britain’s national anti-terrorist authority. The Trident — or Tryzub as it’s known in Ukraine — was featured in an Extremism Guide for UK teachers and medical staff produced by the National Counter Terrorism Policing Network – a collaboration of law enforcement entities tasked with preventing and combating terrorism. A tattoo of the Trident is shown in a section on right-wing “signs & symbols” and is described…
On April 5, 1933, with a desperate nation in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, “forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” The effect of the order, in conjunction with the statute under which it was issued, was to criminalize the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation, and at a time when Americans were desperate to regain lost wealth. The order was issued to allow the Federal Reserve to bypass restrictions contained in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913,…
A hacker has dumped a massive list of Telnet credentials and passwords for over 500,000 servers, routers, and so-called smart devices on the Dark Web, exposing the persistent vulnerability of cloud service providers. The list, published on a popular hacking forum, includes IP addresses, usernames and passwords for the Telnet remote service, which is used on numerous Internet of Things (IoT) devices around the world. The hacker in question reportedly trawled the internet for users who were exposing their Telnet ports. They then tried to gain access to these devices using factory default usernames and passwords, as well as custom…
Swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles overwhelming enemies’ defenses with sheer numbers might soon be part of the US combat strategy. Footage of the first flight of one such drone has just been showcased by a Pentagon contractor. A video published on YouTube by an applied science and IT company, Dynetics, shows a drone, which looks roughly like a large air-to-surface missile, being drop-launched from under the wing of a US transport Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. The drone designated X-61A then releases small wings and ignites its rocket engine, setting off for an autonomous flight. Media reports suggested that the UAV…
Migration pressures from conflict, religious persecution and economic causes already cause headaches in Europe and elsewhere, but now the UN has decided that climate change could be yet another reason not to repatriate a migrant. In the years to come, as climate change continues to bear the blame for everything from bushfires, drought, hurricanes, biblical-style rainfall and even record snowfall, we might just look back at a recent United Nations ruling as the tipping point for the greatest-ever global migration shift. For the UN has put the developed world on notice, and let’s be frank, it is those prosperous nations…
Two police officers have been shot dead in the Diamond Head area of Honolulu, Hawaii, and the suspect remains at large. A huge fire has also broken out in the neighborhood. The officers were responding to a report of assault when they were confronted by a man wielding a firearm, according to local news outlets. The suspect then opened fire and struck both officers. The FBI said it is also responding to the incident. A home the suspect was reportedly inside later caught on fire, with the blaze then quickly spreading to a number of neighboring houses. Firefighters were initially…
At first it seems like a quirky, what-are-the-chances-of-that headline: “China rewards fishers who netted foreign spy devices.” But behind that headline in Chinese state media, there is a different – and more intriguing – story. Firstly, this wasn’t two or three fishermen receiving awards. It was 11 – one woman, the rest men – who found seven devices in total. Secondly, this wasn’t the first time fishermen from Jiangsu had found “spy drones”. In 2018, some 18 were rewarded for finding nine devices. There was also a ceremony a year earlier. And thirdly, the rewards were huge – up to…
The US National Archives has apologised for altering a photo of the 2017 Women’s March, including blurring signs critical of President Donald Trump. The agency, which describes itself as the country’s record keeper, said it “made a mistake”. Changes to the photo, first reported by The Washington Post, included removing the president’s name from a sign that read “God Hates Trump”. The National Archives said it had removed the altered image. In a statement shared on social media, the agency said it had “always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration.” “This photo is not an archival…
The head of the Iranian investigation team denied earlier reports that the black boxes from the downed Ukrainian airliner would be sent to Kiev. Tehran tried to extract the data on its own, he said. “We are trying to read the black boxes here in Iran. Otherwise, our options are Ukraine and France, but no decision has been taken so far to send them to another country,” Hassan Rezaeifar, who leads the investigation into the incident along with the nation’s Civil Aviation Organization, told local news agency IRNA on Sunday. He added that Iran so far has “no plans” to…
Health officials in Wuhan, China have revealed that 136 new cases of a mysterious new strain of the coronavirus have been diagnosed over just two days, bringing the total in the city to 198. In a statement detailing the latest escalation in figures for the major viral outbreak, Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said a third person has died from the illness, while two more are in critical condition. A further 33 cases among the newly diagnosed patients are classified as “severe.” All of the patients are being kept in isolation. “The first symptoms were mostly fever, cough or chest tightness,…