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Civil liberties MEPs on Monday night approved plans to create a law that will block terrorist content online.

The counter terrorism directive also deals with terrorism training and financing as well as “Internet propaganda, and the misuse of the Internet for terrorist purposes." It was passed by 41 votes to four, with 10 abstentions meaning that the parliament’s chief negotiator, German MEP Monika Hohlmeier, can now start talks with the European ministers for justice and home affairs on a final text.

The initial draft proposal contained no reference to online activity, but Hohlmeier introduced two new sections taken in part from the EU law against child sex abuse. Under the latest wording, national authorities must take measures to ensure the prompt removal of illegal content hosted from within their territory that constitutes public incitement to commit a terrorist offence. If this is not feasible, they may take the necessary measures to block access to such content “while adhering to transparent procedure, adequate safeguards, and subject to judicial review.”

(credit: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)

Until yesterday, if you were to browse the video pages of popular gaming YouTubers Trevor "TmarTn" Martin and Tom "Syndicate" Cassell, you'd have found a string of videos about the about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gambling site CSGO Lotto. These videos showed the pair gambling weapon skins on the site, which allows anyone over 13 years of age to trade their hard-earned weapon skins for actual money. They often won big, resulting in videos with titles like "HOW TO WIN $13,000 IN 5 MINUTES."

Ordinarily, such a video would be regarded as little more than clickbait, the sort of thing you might see on a banner ad while browsing unscrupulous websites. But, with millions of subscribers, both Martin and Cassell have a captive audience who watch the videos in their hundreds of thousands. Now, these same subscribers have been turning out in their droves to launch allegations of unethical behaviour and a complete lack of disclosure.

It turns out the owners of the CSGO Lotto website are none other than Martin and Cassell.

A massive coalition of tech and telco companies have called for the EU’s so-called cookie law to be repealed.

Ars reported yesterday that the European Commission was working to overhaul the current ePrivacy Directive, and had held a public consultation soliciting feedback. But a group of 12 trade bodies has now called for it to be scrapped altogether. The coalition includes the European Telecommunications and Network Operators association (ETNO), the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), the GSMA representing mobile operators, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), IAB, the interactive advertising bureau, and DigitalEurope.

“We believe that simplifying and streamlining regulation will benefit consumers by ensuring they are provided with a simple, consistent, and meaningful set of rules designed to protect their personal data," said the group. "At the same time, it will encourage innovation across the digital value chain and drive new growth and social opportunities. This is critical at a time when digital companies are striving to launch new innovative services and working to build a 5G Europe."

(credit: National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health)

Google’s DeepMind division has announced a partnership with the NHS’s Moorfields Eye Hospital to apply machine learning to spot common eye diseases earlier. The five-year research project will draw on one million anonymous eye scans which are held on Moorfields’ patient database, with the aim to speed up the complex and time-consuming process of analysing eye scans.

The hope is that this will allow diagnoses of common causes of sight loss, like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, to be spotted more rapidly and hence be treated more effectively. For example, Google says that up to 98 percent of sight loss resulting from diabetes can be prevented by early detection and treatment.

Two million people are already living with sight loss in the UK, of whom around 360,000 are registered as blind or partially-sighted. Google quotes estimates that the number of people suffering from sight loss in the UK will double by 2050. Improvements in detection and treatment would therefore have a major impact on the quality of life for large numbers of people in the UK and around the world.

National Archives

A colorized photo of the Baker detonation from Operation Crossroads. The underwater detonation rained down unanticipated fallout over a large area, covering the entire target fleet.

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In July of 1946, the US military conducted a pair of nuclear weapons tests on the previously inhabited island of Bikini, a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands chain. Advertised as a "defensive" test to see how ships would withstand a nuclear blast, the tests—code-named "Crossroads"—were described by the Manhattan Project team as "the most publicly advertised secret test ever conducted."

The National Security Archive project at George Washington University has assembled a collection of documents and videos related to the Bikini tests—the second of which would be called "the world's first nuclear disaster"by Atomic Energy Commission chairman Glenn T. Seaborg. The Baker explosion, detonated underwater, was the first to create significant fallout, as a "base surge" of irradiated water and debris washed over the entire fleet of target ships and Bikini's lagoon itself.

Bikini was chosen for its deep, large lagoon, and because the island was far off international shipping routes. To prepare the site, the US Navy (which governed the Marshall Islands immediately following World War II) convinced the inhabitants of Bikini to relocate for the tests, which military governor Commodore Ben Wyatt told them was for "the good of all mankind and to end all world wars."