‘Worst offenders’

Discounts

A TikTok trend where people pretend to be Holocaust victims is “hurtful and offensive”, the Auschwitz Museum says.

Users have shared clips of themselves with fake bruises, wearing clothes that Jews were ordered to wear by the Nazis.

The museum – at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp – said some of the videos on the app were “beyond the border of trivialization of history”.

But it warned against “vilifying, shaming and attacking” those who have taken part.

The trend has been heavily criticised on social media as “disrespectful” and “disturbing”.

In a statement, the museum says: “Stories of people who were imprisoned and murdered in Auschwitz are incredibly tragic, painful and emotional.”

It adds that some of the videos “were not created to commemorate anyone but to become part of an online trend”.

“This is very painful,” the museum says in the statement posted on Twitter.

• Auschwitz: How Auschwitz became centre of Nazi Holocaust
• ‘I survived two concentration camps’

However, it adds that the “motivation of some people” posting the videos came “from the need to find some way of expressing personal memory.

“They use the symbolic language familiar to them.”

Rather than shaming those who participate, it should be used as an “educational challenge”, the museum says.

The Holocaust saw the genocide of six million European Jews people and more than a million people were killed at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945.

TikTok has not yet responded to Newsbeat’s request for comment.

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Twitter has suspended a number of accounts for sharing a viral message claiming to be a Black Lives Matter protester who’s now planning to vote for Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

The message was shared by a seemingly inauthentic account using a profile picture of a male model.

Since then, it has been copy and pasted multiple times.

A Twitter spokesperson told the BBC the accounts violated its rules “on platform manipulation and spam”.

Where did it start?

On 23 August, a Twitter account called @WentDemtoRep shared a tweet that received more than 37,000 likes and 11,000 shares.

The account was set up this month and used images of a male model who was quick to call out the account.

“I can’t believe some pages are using me as profile picture without asking me for permission. Disrespectful,” Nelis Joustra tweeted on 24 August.

It remains unclear who was running this account or posted the initial message, which also appeared on social media site 4chan.

The account has now been removed, as has a similar one set up shortly afterwards called @Democratwent.

‘Super inauthentic’

Prior to the account’s suspension, it was spotted by Jordan Dixon-Hamilton, a law student and legislative intern to US Congressman Paul Gosar.

He decided to share the viral message on his own Twitter account @sirhottest during the second night of the Republican Convention on 25 August.

“It seemed super inauthentic to me, so I figured it would be funny if I copy and pasted the post,” he told the BBC.

“Lo and behold, a few more of my followers thought it would be funny to post as well until the point it turned into a meme and hundreds of accounts were sharing the message.”

Soon many more accounts were sharing the message. Most appear to be Republican supporters and other users who enjoy trolling.

Like @kpopobama who tweeted the message and told the BBC: “Yeah I’m not a Russian bot or anything I just like memes.”

Another called James said he shared the message “to add to the chaos”.

Other accounts sharing the message had been set up more recently. That includes one called Principled Conservative, which features a profile picture of a cartoon President Trump.

Principled Conservative told the BBC: “I heard that Twitter was auto-deleting accounts that posted this copypasta. So I used my spare account to check.”

‘Hostile foreign powers’

A number of popular pro-Democrat Twitter accounts soon expressed concern that the copied and pasted messages were part of a foreign interference campaign.

One user with more than 50,000 followers said: “Hostile foreign powers are using Twitter again to sway the election for Trump.”

The concerns come following evidence of Russian interference on social media during the 2016 US presidential election.

However, sources close to Twitter say these accounts do not appear to be linked to a state-backed operation at this time.

The origin of the initial message remains unclear.

The New Zealand stock exchange was knocked offline two days in a row due to a cyber-attack.

NZX said it had first been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack from abroad, on Tuesday.

The exchange said the attack had “impacted NZX network connectivity” and it had decided to halt trading in cash markets just before 16:00 local time.

Trading halted briefly for a second time, on Wednesday, but was back up and running before the end of the day.

A DDoS attack is a relatively simple type of cyber-attack, in which a large array of computers all try to connect to an online service at once, overwhelming its capacity.

They often use devices compromised by malware the owners do not know are part of the attack.

Genuine traders may have had problems carrying out their business.

But it does not mean any financial or personal information was accessed.

NZX said the attack had come “from offshore via its network service provider”.

The second attack had halted trading for a large chunk of the working day – from 11:24 to 15:00 local time, the exchange said.

But despite the interruption, the exchange was up at the close of business, near its all-time high.

New Zealand cyber-security organisation CertNZ issued an alert in November that emails were being sent to financial firms threatening DDoS attacks unless a ransom was paid.

The emails claimed to be from well known Russian hacking group Fancy Bear.

But CertNZ said at the time the threat had never been carried out, beyond a 30-minute attack as a scare tactic.

Technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the air could have huge implications for future food prices, according to new research.

Scientists say that machines that remove CO2 from the air will be needed to keep the rise in global temperatures in check.

But these devices will have major impacts on energy, water and land use.

By 2050, according to this new report, food crop prices could rise more than five-fold in some parts of the world.

In the wake of the Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, researchers have tried to understand what keeping the world under a 1.5C temperature threshold would mean in practice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported on this question in 2018, and found that keeping below this temperature rise would require the world to reach net zero emissions by 2050 but would also need the removal and storage of large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

One of the ideas on how to achieve this is called BECCS – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. It means growing crops that soak up CO2, then burning them for electricity while capturing and burying the carbon that’s produced.

Critics say this idea would need the deployment of huge amounts of land which would reduce the amount of land for agriculture at a time of increasing global population.

Another technology that has raised much interest is called Direct Air Capture (DAC), where machines pull CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

A number of experimental installations of this idea have been successfully implemented, notably in Switzerland and Canada.

But there has been little research to date on how the deployment of DAC would impact crop and food prices.

This new study looks at the large-scale deployment of a range of negative emissions technologies including DAC.

The report says that the energy and water resources needed to drive these machines will be on a very large scale.

DAC will need large amounts of heat to make the process work, say the authors. This would require energy equal to 115% of current global natural gas consumption.

Water for DAC is also a significant cost by 2050, with the machines using 35% of the water currently used in global electricity production.

And while DAC reduces the amount of land required, there will still be a need for significant amounts of energy crops and new forests.

“I want to make clear that we’re not in any way trying to throw cold water on efforts to try and develop DAC,” says Dr Andres Clarens from the University of Virginia, who led the study.

“I think DAC is really very important technology that needs to be developed.”

“But in our simulations, what we find is that the world doesn’t just go 100% all in on DAC, right?

“Even under optimistic pricing scenarios for the technology, the world is still deploying a decent amount of BECCs, if you want to get to 1.5C.

“DAC is not going to be the only thing.”

According to the report, with widespread use of DAC, many parts of the world will see substantial price increases in maize, wheat and rice.

The worst affected areas would be in sub-Saharan Africa which could see prices rise by 5-600% by 2050.

India, Pakistan and many other countries in Asia could see three to five-fold increases, while Europe and South America could see prices double or treble.

But some people involved in DAC reject the report’s findings, saying that the authors wrongly assumed that all air capture systems are the same.

“We would like to point out that the paper only analysed liquid sorbent direct air capture technology whilst Climeworks has developed a solid sorbent technology that does not rely on the burning of natural gas or has a need for fresh water to deliver carbon dioxide removal from the air,” said Christoph Beuttler from Climeworks.

“We are confident that if the paper would have made that distinction the reported direct air capture potentials could be significantly higher and the risks lower.”

Despite the questions over methods, all involved in negative emissions agree that the longer it takes to implement these technologies, the bigger the impact on food, energy and water.

Short-term efforts to decarbonise, particularly in transport and energy production will alleviate some of the difficulties with negative emissions.

“I think that negative emissions are going to be important. I think that DAC in particular is going to be important. But I think that it can’t be our first order of business. We have to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible,” said Andres Clarens.

“Anybody that thinks we can continue to burn fossil fuels for another decade, because we’ll just do DAC, you know, down the road. That’s not a viable approach.”

The study has been published in Nature Climate Change.

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Microsoft has thrown its weight behind Epic Games in a continuing legal battle with Apple.

Apple pulled hugely popular game Fortnite from its App Store after Epic deliberately broke its rules in protest at Apple’s policies.

In an escalation, Apple then said it would pull Epic’s access to developer tools on iOS and Mac.

But Microsoft said this would damage a “critical technology” for many third-party game creators.

That is because Epic also owns the Unreal Engine – a tool widely used by developers from other studios to build games, virtual-reality VR experiences and special effects in major television shows and films.

Microsoft uses the technology itself.

Marketing push

Xbox head Phil Spencer tweeted: “Ensuring that Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is the right thing for game developers and gamers.”

Epic has objected to what it calls a “monopoly” in the App Store – specifically the 30% cut Apple demands from in-game purchases.

It had legal documentation and a huge marketing push prepared after it decided to circumvent the rule by signposting players to a discount available away from the app.

Microsoft said denying Epic access to Apple’s developer tools would “prevent Epic from supporting Unreal Engine on iOS and macOS, and will place Unreal Engine and those game creators that have built, are building, and may build games on it at a substantial disadvantage”.

• Fortnite sues Apple over App Store ban
• Apple claims ‘half a trillion dollars’ app economy

“Apple’s discontinuation of Epic’s ability to develop and support Unreal Engine for iOS or macOS will harm game creators and gamers,” it added.

Apple, however, says it applies the rules equally and “won’t make an exception for Epic because we don’t think it’s right to put their business interests ahead of the guidelines that protect our customers”.

‘Focused conversation’

Microsoft has also previously criticised Apple’s App Store terms.

When it became clear Apple would not allow Xbox game streaming on iPhones, Microsoft said Apple was the only major platform to “deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services”.

Earlier this year, when Apple was engaged in another high-profile stand-off with an app developer over its policies, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, hinted at the company’s disapproval.

He said regulators should have a “focused conversation” about app stores and the rules they enforced.

However, Microsoft also runs the Windows and Xbox stores, where it takes a 15-30% cut of software sales, depending on the platform, according to its developer agreement.

A record £20.7m in compensation was paid to broadband customers who used a new scheme to complain about their service in the last six months of 2019.

The scheme, which does not necessitate formal claims, paid out for delays in repairs and setting up new connections and missed appointments.

Ofcom said just £8m was paid to customers in the first six months of 2019, before the scheme was introduced.

Yet 85% of customers were reportedly satisfied with their broadband service.

The watchdog’s annual report showed Plusnet customers to be the most satisfied with their broadband – and TalkTalk users the least.

Nine in 10 mobile mobile customers said they were happy with their phone service.

Tesco Mobile users reported higher-than-average satisfaction levels, while Three customers were the most dissatisfied, reporting the longest call waiting times and worst reception.

Ofcom’s consumer group director, Lindsey Fussell, said: “Checking the quality of a phone or broadband provider’s service can be the difference between you signing up to a company that keeps you connected or one that falls short.”

The data looks at how providers performed up to January 2020, so does not cover the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ofcom is hailing the new compensation scheme, which it introduced in April 2019, as a success.

The payouts include:

• £9.7m for delayed repairs following loss of service,
• £1.6m for missed appointments
• £9.5m for the delayed provision of new services.

Under the voluntary scheme, customers receive compensation from their provider without having to ask for it.

BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are among those who have signed up, and Ofcom is urging other providers to join to ensure “customers get fair compensation when things go wrong”.

Ride-hailing firm Lyft says it is suspending operations in California after a judge ordered it to treat drivers as employees.

Both Lyft and Uber were told they must classify their drivers as employees and not contractors by Friday.

Lyft has now said its services in California will stop at 23:59 local time on Thursday (06:59 GMT on Friday).

Uber has warned it will have to do the same if a stay is not granted by an appeals court before the deadline.

But Uber has yet to make any formal announcement.

“This is not something we wanted to do, as we know millions of Californians depend on Lyft for daily, essential trips,” Lyft said in a statement posted online.

What happened?

Both firms have always argued their drivers are self-employed contractors.

But a California law that came into effect earlier this year, known as AB5, extended classification as an employee to workers in the “gig economy”.

The judge’s ruling that the law applied to both Uber and Lyft means the firms need to provide drivers with extra benefits, such as unemployment protection.

Both companies filed an appeal to the judgement – and asked for a stay on its enforcement while the courts dealt with the appeal.

Unless the stay was granted, both companies had 10 days to undertake what they saw as a significant overhaul of their business in California.

They both warned that they could be forced to pull services from the state after 23:59 local time Thursday.

What did the firms say?

Lyft claims that four out of five of its drivers do not want to be classified as employees. Both argue that flexibility is valued by those who choose to work for them.

The two firms had been emailing customers and sending app push notifications to try to drum up support for their side of the argument.

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi, meanwhile, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, arguing that his firm was not truly against paying the costs of things like health insurance.

Instead, he argued that the choice between being a full-time employee and a “gig” worker was a problem itself, and laws needed to be changed. He argued for a system where companies pay benefits based on a rate per hour worked.

But he has also said that the company can only offer full jobs to a tiny fraction of its workforce. In a podcast interview with Vox Media, he summed up the problem as: “We can’t go out and hire 50,000 people overnight.”

Lyft echoed that sentiment, telling the court that it “cannot make the changes the injunction requires at the flip of a switch”.

The companies do have some outside support.

Some drivers do not want to be classed as employees, and the mayors of San Diego and San Jose – one Democrat and one Republican – joined forces to warn that shutting down the services “virtually overnight” would hurt one million residents in the state.

What happens next?

There is a potential way out for the ride-sharing firms in the coming months.

A ballot that will be put to vote in November, at the same time as the US presidential election, would grant Uber and Lyft an exemption from the law. It is known as proposition 22.

“Your voice can help,” Lyft wrote in its blog post about suspending services.

“Prop 22, proposes the necessary changes to give drivers benefits and flexibility, while maintaining the rideshare model that helps you get where you need to go,” it said.

Both companies, along with other supporters such as food delivery app DoorDash, are reported to have spent millions of dollars in lobbying and campaigning for the law.

Labour groups, meanwhile, are set firmly against it, arguing it will save the companies vast sums of money at the expense of drivers.

It is possible that a shutdown of services could last until at least November, when the issue may be decided by the outcome of proposition 22.

The BBC’s head of news has said the number of traditional TV bulletins may be cut over the next decade as more people watch news online.

Fran Unsworth told The Daily Telegraph she thought there might only be one bulletin a day.

Asked whether the News at Ten might survive but not the News at Six, Ms Unsworth replied: “Possibly, or maybe the other way round.”

The News at One is the corporation’s other major daily national bulletin.

Asked by the newspaper to predict how TV news would change over the next five or 10 years, she replied: “I think TV journalism will still be around because of the power of pictures to tell a story, but it won’t necessarily be received in quite the forms it currently is.

“So I still think, ultimately in 10 years’ time, we probably won’t be consuming linear bulletins exactly. I mean, I might be wrong about that. I doubt it.

“There might be one [bulletin] a day, or something. I think there’ll be fewer of them. But I think that the power of how you tell stories through television, pictures, video will just be in a different space.

“It’ll be in the digital space, it’ll be on, you know, iPlayer. It’ll be on your tablet, your iPhone.

“We have to think creatively about what the product is, but that’s the direction of travel and I don’t think that’s changed.”

News bulletins are regularly among the most-watched programmes on British TV, with the News at Six and News at Ten usually behind only the regional 18:30 news as the BBC’s highest-rated broadcasts.

The audience for news has risen during the coronavirus pandemic, with more young viewers tuning in. But Ms Unsworth said she did not expect that to last.

“They’re sitting down and watching a television bulletin in a way that I thought they weren’t ever really going to again,” she said. “So that has been what’s been really interesting about this.

“I’m not under any illusions, to be quite honest with you, because I’ve seen it in the past. You get these big peaks, the big stories like the Bataclan [attack in Paris in 2015] and London Bridge attacks [in 2017 and 19], then the audience falls off again quite rapidly.

“What I would hope is that we’ve changed our image in the mind of the younger viewer, which is that we are there to be relied on, and if they really do want to know what’s happening they will come to us to find out. We’re not just any other news source.”

‘The direction of travel is clear’

Analysis by David Sillito, media correspondent

When ITN created the UK’s first half hour news bulletin in 1967, it was only commissioned for 13 weeks, because the bosses feared that viewers would find it too boring. The BBC’s Six O’Clock News was, at the time, under 10 minutes long, while the Nine O’Clock News was 15.

Fifty-three years on, the four main daily BBC news bulletins are at the moment more often than not the most watched programmes on BBC One. The audience for the BBC’s regional news programmes topped five million on Wednesday night – more than a million ahead of the most popular non-news programme of the evening, The Repair Shop.

The audience for traditional news bulletins has also been boosted by the impact of coronavirus. Not only is there a fast-moving story that affects everyone, more people are at home and able to turn the TV on. And what’s more, the basic shape and style of those bulletins has barely altered.

But things can change fast.

The amount of time we spend watching live TV schedules has been dropping for many years. There is, however, still a large and loyal (and largely elderly) audience who turn the TV on as a daily habit. The prime time TV audience even on a sunny August evening is usually around 16 million. However, Reuters’ Digital News Report noted that the number of people tuning in to TV news has begun to drop. For many years, 75-80% of people regularly watched a TV bulletin, but in January 2020 it said that had dropped to 55%.

Of course, predictions are always a fool’s game. The demise of print newspapers has long been predicted but so far the Independent is the only major paper to go digital only. News is a habit and habits change slowly. However, the direction of travel is clear. There will probably always be an audience for a daily digest of TV news reports but the online world offers so many new options for presenting news in greater depth and clarity.

Visual storytelling is not disappearing, it is going through an extraordinary moment of innovation and transformation. The traditional TV bulletin with its rigid storytelling formulas, desks and serious presenters will for a dwindling number of people be their preferred way of tuning in to global events, but the question is whether those in their 20s and 30s today will develop that habit in years to come. I suspect not.

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