An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Vitamin E acetate, an ingredient added to THC-based products, has been identified as a "very strong culprit" in the vaping-related lung injuries (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) that have sickened 2,051 people and killed more than three dozen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. But the agency left open the possibility that other chemicals or toxins could also be causing the severe respiratory ailments. The report is based on finding the vitamin compound in fluid samples taken from the lungs of 29 patients who had the lung disease. "For the first time, we have detected a potential toxin of concern, vitamin E acetate, from biological samples from patients," with lung damage linked to vaping, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said at a news briefing. The samples, she said, "provided evidence of vitamin E acetate at the primary site of injury in the lungs."

Samples taken from the patients were also tested for plant oils, petroleum distillates like mineral oil and other potentially harmful substances, which were "notably not detected," the C.D.C. said. The findings are being published in Friday's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. About 70 percent of the patients are male, 79 percent are younger than 35 and 86 percent say that they have vaped THC. Many of the products used by those who became ill were illicitly obtained, public health experts have said, by patients who bought them from friends or on the street. Vaping oils typically include other additives, solvents and flavor enhancers. Vitamin E acetate is sometimes added to dilute the THC to increase profits or as a thickening agent.

The Interior Department is grounding its entire fleet of aerial drones (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), one of the largest in the federal government, citing increasing concerns about the national security risk from Chinese manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal reports: The department has more than 800 drones, all of which are either made in China or have Chinese parts, according to a person familiar with the matter. The machines are used to fight forest fires, survey erosion, monitor endangered species and inspect dams. Under an order from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Wednesday, the drones will be grounded until the department completes a review of potential security risks of Chinese drones, said department spokesman Nick Goodwin. Exceptions will be made for emergency situations, including natural disasters or when lives are threatened, Mr. Goodwin said.

Officials worry that U.S. reliance on Chinese drones might be putting critical infrastructure at risk. They are concerned the drones may be sending information back to the Chinese government or hackers elsewhere to use for cyberattacks or other offenses. The Interior Department's decision is one of the biggest responses yet and may be the only total fleet shutdown in the federal government. It is not coordinating with the White House or other federal agencies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: The Federal Communications Commission is moving to place another restraint on the U.S. business of Huawei and ZTE by banning U.S. companies receiving federal subsidies from purchasing the Chinese firms' equipment (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). FCC Chairman Ajit Pai set the proposal for vote at the agency's meeting on Nov. 19. It would designate Huawei and ZTE as national security threat and tell U.S. firms not to buy their equipment using money from an $8.5 billion federal fund designed to fund telecommunications service in rural areas. The FCC would also propose further study, and potentially federal funding, for removing and replacing equipment from the companies that has already been installed. Mr. Pai in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday called this existing equipment an "unacceptable risk."

Dyson has abandoned its attempts to break into the automotive industry and will wind down its electric vehicle project, ending a venture that founder James Dyson claimed would redefine his business [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The company failed to find a buyer for its designs, and said its plans to build a car from scratch in Singapore were no longer commercially viable. Dyson's ambitions faced a mounting challenge from established carmakers, while electric vehicle makers such as Tesla have raised large sums on the stock and bond markets. Many new entrants such as China's Nio have struggled with the cost of competing against deep-pocketed incumbents. Sir James's decision represents a humbling U-turn for a man who is one of Britain's most celebrated living inventors. The billionaire businessman had hoped to harness his privately owned group's expertise in battery systems, aerodynamics and high-tech manufacturing to break into a fiercely competitive industry. "Though we have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable," Sir James wrote in an email to staff on Thursday. "We have been through a serious process to find a buyer for the project which has, unfortunately, been unsuccessful so far." The failed automotive gamble was part of a $3.1 bn investment push into a range of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and robotics and batteries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Some of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's electronic surveillance activities violated the constitutional privacy rights of Americans swept up in a controversial foreign intelligence program (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), a secretive surveillance court has ruled. The ruling deals a rare rebuke to U.S. spying activities that have generally withstood legal challenge or review. The intelligence community disclosed Tuesday that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last year found that the FBI's pursuit of data about Americans ensnared in a warrantless internet-surveillance program intended to target foreign suspects may have violated the law authorizing the program, as well as the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

The court concluded that the FBI had been improperly searching a database of raw intelligence for information on Americans -- raising concerns about oversight of the program, which as a spy program operates in near total secrecy. The court ruling identifies tens of thousands of improper searches of raw intelligence databases by the bureau in 2017 and 2018 that it deemed improper in part because they involved data related to tens of thousands of emails or telephone numbers -- in one case, suggesting that the FBI was using the intelligence information to vet its personnel and cooperating sources. Federal law requires that the database only be searched by the FBI as part of seeking evidence of a crime or for foreign intelligence information. In other cases, the court ruling reveals improper use of the database by individuals. In one case, an FBI contractor ran a query of an intelligence database -- searching information on himself, other FBI personnel and his relatives, the court revealed. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that the Trump administration failed to persuasively argue that the bureau would not be able to properly tackle national security threats if the program was altered to better protect citizen privacy.

Federal accident investigators called for broad changes in decades-old engineering principles and design assumptions related to pilot emergency responses, the first formal U.S. safety recommendations stemming from two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes. From a report: As part of lessons learned from the crashes that took 346 lives and grounded the global MAX fleet, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration used unrealistic tests to initially certify the aircraft to carry passengers [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. The board also urged the plane maker and the FAA to pay more attention to interactions between humans and cockpit computers to ensure safety. The board wants Boeing and the FAA to reassess -- and potentially jettison -- what senior investigators portrayed as overly optimistic assumptions about the speed and effectiveness of cockpit-crew reactions to complex automation failures.

Five of the NTSB's seven recommendations, released Thursday, called for the use of more-objective methods to predict likely responses of airline pilots in such cases when automation goes haywire. The board's announcement challenged long-held industry and FAA practices that largely use the nearly instantaneous responses of highly trained test pilots -- rather than those of average pilots, who typically have less experience -- to verify the safety of new jetliner models. Some of the recommendations cover future airliner designs, not just the MAX.

The owner of the New York Stock Exchange launched its long-delayed market for bitcoin futures Sunday, a high-profile bet that consumers, businesses and Wall Street will embrace cryptocurrencies. From a report: Trading in the new bitcoin futures began just after 8 p.m. EDT [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], with the first trade at $10,115.00, in line with the current price of bitcoin, said a spokesman for the exchange's parent company, Intercontinental Exchange Futures let traders bet on whether an underlying market such as oil, gold, stocks or currencies will rise or fall. The new futures are part of a venture called Bakkt (pronounced "backed"), whose ultimate goal is to make cryptocurrencies sufficiently transparent and regulated for individuals to use in retail purchases. Bitcoin has failed to gain traction as a tool for payment, in part because of its extreme volatility. If successful, ICE's futures could make it easier for merchants to protect themselves from swings in bitcoin prices.

Facebook for most of the past decade was Silicon Valley's 800-pound gorilla, squashing rivals, ripping off their best ideas or buying them outright as it cemented its dominance of social media. Now the knives are coming out [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: A number of Facebook's current and former competitors are talking about the company's hardball tactics to investigators from the Federal Trade Commission, as part of its broader antitrust investigation into the social-media giant's business practices, according to people familiar with the matter. One of them is Snap, where the legal team for years kept a dossier of ways that the company felt Facebook was trying to thwart competition from the buzzy upstart, according to people familiar with the matter. The title of the documents: Project Voldemort.

The files in Voldemort, a reference to the fictional antagonist in the popular Harry Potter children's books, chronicled Facebook's moves that threatened to undermine Snap's business, including discouraging popular account holders, or influencers, from referencing Snap on their Instagram accounts, according to people familiar with the project. Executives also suspected Instagram was preventing Snap content from trending on its app, the people said.

Facebook revealed Friday that it had suspended "tens of thousands" of apps that may have mishandled users' personal data, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] part of an investigation sparked by the social giant's entanglement with Cambridge Analytica. From a report: The suspensions -- far more than the hundreds against which Facebook has taken action against in the past -- occurred for a "variety of reasons," the company said in a blog post, without elaborating. They were associated with about 400 developers. Facebook said it had investigated millions of apps and targeted those that Facebook said had access to "large amounts of information" or had the "potential to abuse" its policies. Facebook said some of the apps were banned for inappropriately sharing users' data, the same violation of company policy that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It added that its investigation, now 18 months long, isn't yet complete.

Federal regulators have ordered Google to assure employees they are allowed to speak out on political and workplace issues [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, as part of a settlement of formal complaints that the search giant punishes those who do just that. From a report: The move from the National Labor Relations Board offers Google an escape hatch from a thorny issue that has roiled the business in recent years. Though Google executives have long bragged about having a workplace culture designed to encourage open debate, current and former employees across the political spectrum have complained that they were retaliated against for raising concerns about equality and freedom of speech. The NLRB's settlement comes in response to a pair of complaints about Google's reaction to workplace dissent. The settlement orders Google to inform current employees that they are free to speak to the media -- without having to ask Google higher-ups for permission -- on topics such as workplace diversity and compensation, regardless of whether Google views such topics as inappropriate for the workplace.

When Amazon scrubbed plans to build a second headquarters in New York City earlier this year, the reason appeared rooted in a debate about unions, tax subsidies and housing costs. Then there was the burn book. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.] The Wall Street Journal reports: In a private dossier kept at the time, whose existence has gone previously unreported, Amazon executives cataloged in minute detail the insults they saw coming from New York politicians and labor leaders, according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal. By late January, Amazon executives had been pummeled at two public hearings. The burn book, which was kept in a Microsoft Word document called "NY Negative Statements," had separate sections for a half-dozen politicians and officials who had gone from thorns in the company's side to formidable opponents of a deal that now looked to be in jeopardy.

The document recorded how opponents mocked the helipad Amazon planned to build, pushed the Twitter hashtag #scamazon, and brought up the company's work for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a sore spot among some Amazon employees. It was an eight-page, bullet-pointed, Calibri font testimony to Amazon's sensitivities. The burn book is one indication of just how ill-suited Amazon and New York were to each other, a buttoned-up corporation that didn't talk publicly about its unhappiness up against a raucous political circus that had no problem running its mouth. This account is based on interviews with multiple people who were part of the deal.

U.S. officials are seeking to block an undersea cable backed by Google, Facebook, and a Chinese partner, in a national-security review that could rewrite the rules of internet connectivity between the U.S. and China, WSJ reported Wednesday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing people involved in the discussions. From the report: The Justice Department, which leads a multiagency panel that reviews telecommunications matters, has signaled staunch opposition to the project because of concerns over its Chinese investor, Beijing-based Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group, and the direct link to Hong Kong the cable would provide, the people said. Ships have already draped most of the 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network across the seafloor between the Chinese territory and Los Angeles, promising faster connections for its investors on both sides of the Pacific. The work so far has been conducted under a temporary permit expiring in September. But people familiar with the review say it is in danger of failing to win the necessary license to conduct business because of the objections coming from the panel, known as Team Telecom. Team Telecom has consistently approved past cable projects, including ones directly linking the U.S. to mainland China or involving state-owned Chinese telecom operators, once they were satisfied the company responsible for its U.S. beachhead had taken steps to prevent foreign governments from blocking or tapping traffic.

President Trump said Friday U.S. companies were "hereby ordered" to start looking for alternatives to doing business in China after Beijing said it would impose tariffs on $75 billion worth of additional U.S. products. From a report: "Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years," Mr. Trump wrote in a series of tweets [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. "They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won't let that happen! We don't need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them." Mr. Trump's comments came in response to China's plan, laid out Friday, to impose tariffs of 5% and 10% on almost all the remaining U.S. imports on which it has yet to impose punitive taxes, including vehicles and car parts, in retaliation against U.S. moves to slap punitive tariffs on an additional $300 billion of Chinese goods.

The president demanded that U.S. companies "immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA." The sharp escalation in the prolonged trade conflict between the two countries comes weeks after Mr. Trump said he would impose the fresh tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing had vowed to retaliate. China's new levies on U.S. goods are set to go into effect on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15, timed with the next two rounds of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. Chinese tariffs on U.S. automotive goods are set to begin Dec. 15.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The stodgiest of business documents is in the midst of its most extreme makeover yet -- whether employers want it or not [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. Gone are the utilitarian, black-and-white documents covered in bullet points. As Gen Z enters the workforce, companies are seeing digital CVs filled with artistic flourishes, including illustrations of college mascots, logos of past employers and icons to denote hobbies such as home renovation and watching movies. Job seekers have been striving for years to make their resumes stand out from the pile. While earlier generations played with eye-catching print fonts and horizontal lines, today's tech-savvy young people have a new arsenal of tricks. Many throw in headshots. Some add bitmojis, the personalized avatars used in text messages and on social media.

The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation's bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], the grizzly bear and the American alligator from extinction. From a report: The changes will make it harder to consider the effects of climate change on wildlife when deciding whether a given species warrants protection. They would most likely shrink critical habitats and, for the first time, would allow economic assessments to be conducted when making determinations. The rules also make it easier to remove a species from the endangered species list and weaken protections for threatened species, a designation that means they are at risk of becoming endangered. Overall, the new rules would very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said the changes would modernize the Endangered Species Act and increase transparency in its application. "The act's effectiveness rests on clear, consistent and efficient implementation," he said in a statement Monday. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement the revisions "fit squarely within the president's mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species' protection and recovery goals." The new rules are expected to appear in the Federal Register this week and will go into effect 30 days after that.

An anonymous reader shares a column [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]: Few television shows in recent years have been as compelling, yet as difficult to watch, as Chernobyl. The story of the hours and days following the 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown, and the many awful ways that radiation can kill, was expertly told. But it was the antithesis of one of the prevailing objectives of today's TV producers: to make a programme viewers love so much that they binge it all in one go. Chernobyl's horrors were so richly realised that it was unbingeable. Even though I was watching the show on Sky's streaming service, Now TV, I found that watching in nightly instalments rather than rushing through it served only to heighten my appreciation of it. The internet has been built on instant gratification, but Chernobyl got me wondering whether we occasionally need something to hold us back.

[...] A new approach to scheduling could crank up anticipation for the next instalment or build the loyalty that comes with habit. Chernobyl had a brilliant podcast commentary that delineated the boundary between fact and fiction; I wished I had listened to it between episodes rather than at the end of the series. There are billions of smartphones in the world today. While Silicon Valley is obsessing over what comes next -- whether that is augmented reality headsets or smart speakers -- the versatility and ubiquity of the smartphone still provide plenty of room to experiment. From instant streaming to next-day deliveries, technology has broken the idea that good things come to those who wait. But with a little imagination, making something unbingeable could be a feature, not a bug.

European climate researchers said Monday that last month was the hottest July -- and thus the hottest month -- ever recorded (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), slightly eclipsing the previous record-holder, July 2016. "While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally, by a very small margin," Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. The New York Times reports: The service, part of an intergovernmental organization supported by European countries, said the global average temperature last month was about 0.07 degree Fahrenheit (0.04 Celsius) hotter than July 2016. The researchers noted that their finding was based on analysis of only one of several data sets compiled by agencies around the world. The climate service noted some regional temperature differences in July. Western Europe was above average, in part because of a heat wave that occurred during the last week of the month and set temperature records in Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere. A rapid analysis released last week found that climate change made the heat wave more likely. "The highest above-average conditions were recorded across Alaska, Greenland and large swathes of Siberia," the report adds. "Large parts of Africa and Australia were warmer than normal, as was much of Central Asia. Cooler than average temperatures prevailed in Eastern Europe, much of Asia, the Northern Plains and Pacific Northwest of the United States and over large parts of Western Canada."

The Federal Trade Commission is examining Facebook's acquisitions as part of its antitrust investigation into the social-media giant -- to determine if they were part of a campaign to snap up potential rivals before they could become a threat [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The company's acquisition practices are a central component of the FTC probe, the people said. Facebook disclosed the FTC's antitrust investigation in its earnings announcement last week, but provided few details. FTC investigators are looking for evidence on whether Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg purchased startup technology firms to keep them from challenging Facebook's empire, the people said. The FTC has begun reaching out to people who founded companies that Facebook purchased, some of the people said.

The New York Times reports that Amazon is quietly exploring a new grocery store chain with a reimagined format for selling food (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: In early 2017, a memo circulated inside Amazon that imagined an ambitious new grocery chain. The document was written like a news release, a common practice for ideas being weighed inside the company, with the title "Grocery Shopping for Everyone." The new stores, the document envisioned, would have robust sections for produce, fresh food and prepared meals. Nonperishable products, like paper towels or canned beans, would be stored on a separate floor, away from customers. Shoppers could order those items with an app, and while they shopped for fresh food, the other products would be brought down in time for check out. There would also be an area to pick up groceries ordered online and to manage packages for delivery drivers. The faux news release, which has not previously been reported, cited a fictional grocery expert named Hal Apenyo, as in the chili pepper, declaring success in just six months. "The conversion from offline grocery shopping to mixed format shopping has been massive," the character was quoted as saying. A few months later, in June 2017, Amazon barged into the grocery business in a different way, by announcing a blockbuster deal to buy Whole Foods for $13.4 billion. The purchase catapulted Amazon near the top of the $700 billion grocery industry, and sank stocks of traditional grocers on fears that they would be outmaneuvered into oblivion. The memo and other big grocery proposals stopped circulating inside Amazon, as Whole Foods demanded everyone's attention.

But two years later, instead of Whole Foods being the answer to Amazon's grocery ambitions, it seems to have only whetted executives' appetites. The marriage has made clear the difficulties of selling fresh food inexpensively, either in a physical store or through delivery. Bananas are not the same as books. But the combination has also shown glimmers of success, particularly in delivery. And that has provided some fuel to Amazon executives pushing to add another food-selling option -- one built from the ground up that would change how people buy groceries. The company is now quietly exploring an ambitious new chain, probably separate from Whole Foods, that is not far removed from the one outlined in the old memo. It would be built for in-store shopping as well as pickup and delivery. As the discussions heated up this year, employees passed around a slightly updated version of the memo.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun sending letters to more than 10,000 cryptocurrency holders, warning about penalties for failing to report income and pay tax on transactions involving virtual currencies. From a report: The agency expects its mailing to be completed by the end of August [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. It is sending three variations of one letter, depending on the information it has about the recipient. "Taxpayers should take these letters very seriously. The IRS is expanding efforts involving virtual currency, including increased use of data analytics," said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. An IRS spokesman declined to say whether the letters stem from information turned over by digital-currency platform Coinbase. In mid-March of 2018, Coinbase provided data -- under a federal court order -- on about 13,000 accounts requested by the IRS.