An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Authorities in the United States and United Kingdom today levied financial sanctions against seven men accused of operating "Trickbot," a cybercrime-as-a-service platform based in Russia that has enabled countless ransomware attacks and bank account takeovers since its debut in 2016. The U.S. Department of the Treasury says the Trickbot group is associated with Russian intelligence services, and that this alliance led to the targeting of many U.S. companies and government entities. Initially a stealthy trojan horse program delivered via email and used to steal passwords, Trickbot evolved into "a highly modular malware suite that provides the Trickbot Group with the ability to conduct a variety of illegal cyber activities, including ransomware attacks," the Treasury Department said.

"During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Trickbot targeted hospitals and healthcare centers, launching a wave of ransomware attacks against hospitals across the United States," the sanctions notice continued. "In one of these attacks, the Trickbot Group deployed ransomware against three Minnesota medical facilities, disrupting their computer networks and telephones, and causing a diversion of ambulances. Members of the Trickbot Group publicly gloated over the ease of targeting the medical facilities and the speed with which the ransoms were paid to the group."

Only one of the men sanctioned today is known to have been criminally charged in connection with hacking activity. According to the Treasury Department, the alleged senior leader of the Trickbot group is 34-year-old Russian national Vitaly "Bentley" Kovalev. A New Jersey grand jury indicted Kovalev in 2012 after an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service determined that he ran a massive "money mule" scheme, which used phony job offers to trick people into laundering money stolen from hacked small to mid-sized businesses in the United States. The 2012 indictment against Kovalev relates to cybercrimes he allegedly perpetrated prior to the creation of Trickbot. A copy of the now-unsealed 2012 indictment of Kovalev is here (PDF).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: When Nestle SA's peanut allergy medicine first hit the market in 2020, Robert Wood, the director of pediatric allergy at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, started preparing to offer it to the children he treats. But Covid-19 soon derailed in-person treatment, so over the next year and a half Wood and his colleagues told some 1,000 patients about the new drug instead, suggesting they consider it when the pandemic abated. Their responses came as a shock. Only six people were interested in a medicine that had been billed as a game changer for life-threatening allergies -- the first of its kind to be cleared by US authorities. Three years later, Wood has yet to prescribe the drug, Palforzia, and he isn't alone. Doctors and patients from California to Germany appear to be shunning the medicine in favor of the tried-and-true prescription for sufferers: simply avoiding peanuts and carrying an adrenaline injection for emergencies.

Nestle's chief executive officer, Mark Schneider, admitted as much in November, conceding that the drug's uptake had been slow. Schneider in 2020 bought out Palforzia's developer for $2.6 billion, paying a staggering 174% premium as he sought to take "the science business to the next level," snapping up vitamin makers such as Puritan's Pride and Solgar as well. The company is looking for a buyer, and the Swiss food giant says it will have to recognize a significant impairment to the deal's original value -- likely presaging a big writedown at a time when its core grocery business faces pressure from inflation. Maybe the company known for Nespresso capsules and Kit Kat chocolate wafers was never the right owner for a complex-to-administer niche medicine, but Schneider is on the hunt to find new avenues of growth in keeping with his strategic tilt toward health and wellness. The CEO "is looking to make acquisitions in new areas, and that inherently carries risks," says Martin Deboo, an analyst at Jefferies. "Palforzia is a signal of that." Nestle reiterated its commitment to nutritional health in an email and said Palforzia is safe and effective and solves the problem of variable potency that can hobble efficacy or trigger an allergic reaction with other less stringent treatments.

The product is essentially peanut protein that's been packed in a pill, standardized and categorized as a medicine after meeting the Food and Drug Administration's exacting clinical-trial requirements on safety and efficacy. By exposing children to tiny but gradually increasing amounts of the ingredient, Palforzia slowly raises their sensitivity threshold. But the process requires commitment by parents and kids to a demanding regime that lasts more than a year. [...] Palforzia is not without risk. During the clinical trials, about 9% of children suffered potentially dangerous immune reactions when their doses were being increased. [...] Bloomberg notes that Germany's Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care concluded that Nestle's drug "doesn't offer any advantage over peanut avoidance." A UK panel that assess medicines' cost-effectiveness also found the drug to be quite expensive, costing about $6,220 per patient in England.

"As for Wood at Johns Hopkins, he says the allergy center would've lost money administering Palforzia -- something it was willing to do if there had been enough interest among patients. When asked whether some patients might've gone elsewhere for Palforzia, Wood says probably not."

UnknowingFool writes: UK Judge James Mellor has thrown out Craig Wright's cases against Bitcoin derivatives like Bitcoin Cash as Wright cannot claim copyright on the Bitcoin file format. Wright had sued forks of Bitcoin claiming they breached his copyrights to prevent them from operating. The judge disagreed noting that Wright had failed to meet a requirement of copyright called "fixation" detailing where/when/how the original expression was first recorded somewhere in any media.

"Whilst I accept that the law of copyright will continue to face challenges with new digital technologies, I do not see any prospect of the law as currently stated and understood in the caselaw allowing copyright protection of subject-matter which is not expressed or fixed anywhere," wrote Judge Mellor. In other words Wright has failed to show any evidence that he wrote down the file format somewhere to claim that he created the file format.

This is not the first time Wright has failed to produce credible evidence in a court case: in an Oslo, Norway case last year Wright claimed he destroyed a hard drive in 2016 containing the Nakomoto original keys despite telling a U.S. court in 2020 that he was waiting on the same keys to be delivered by a special courier. Those keys were later ruled to be fictitious. Decrypt notes that Wright is "currently in the process of suing 15 Bitcoin developers to retreive around 111,000 bitcoin after he lost the encrypted keys to access them when his home computer network was allegedly hacked."

Months after a successful vote, Apple Store employees in Glasgow have become the company's first retail workers to form a union in the UK. Engadget reports: Apple and the trade union GMB Scotland have signed a collective bargaining agreement that theoretically gives staff at the Buchanan Street store more clout when pushing for improved working conditions. The Glasgow employees voted to unionize in November. They sought better pay, increased wage transparency and improved shift scheduling. Union negotiators characterized talks with Apple as positive, but it took several months before workers cast ballots. Further reading: Are Unionization Efforts Picking Up at Tech Companies?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A section of the UK government has proposed making the sale or possession of bespoke encrypted phones for crime a criminal offense in its own right. The measure is intended to help the country's law enforcement agencies tackle organized crime and those who facilitate it, but civil liberties experts tell Motherboard the proposal is overbroad and poorly defined, meaning it could sweep up other forms of secure communication used by the wider population if not adjusted. "At the moment the government proposal appears to be vague and overly broad. While it states that the provisions 'will not apply to commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them' it is difficult to see how it will not result in targeting devices used on a daily [basis] by human rights defenders, protesters and pretty much all of us who want to keep our data secure," Ioannis Kouvakas, senior legal officer and assistant general counsel at UK-based activism organization Privacy International, told Motherboard in an email.

The proposal is included in a document published by the Home Office (PDF). In that document, the Home Office proposes two legislative measures that it says could be used to improve law enforcement's response to serious and organized crime, and is seeking input from law enforcement, businesses, lawyers, civil liberties NGOs, and the wider public. [...] The first measure looks to create new criminal offenses on the "making, modifying, supply, offering to supply and possession of articles for use in serious crime." The document points to several specific items: vehicle concealments used to hide illicit goods; digital templates for 3D-printing firearms; pill presses used in the drug trade; and "sophisticated encrypted communication devices used to facilitate organized crime." In other words, this change would criminalize owning an encrypted phone, selling one, or making one for use in crime, a crime in itself. [...]

With encrypted phones, the Home Office writes that both the encryption itself and modifications made to the phones are creating "considerable barriers" to law enforcement. Typically, phones from this industry use end-to-end encryption, meaning that messages are encrypted before leaving the device, rendering any interception by law enforcement ineffective. (Multiple agencies have instead found misconfigurations in how companies' encryption works, or hacked into firms, to circumvent this protection). Encrypted phone companies sometimes physically remove the microphone, camera, and GPS functionality from handsets too. Often distributors sell these phones for thousands of dollars for yearly subscriptions. Given that price, the Home Office says it is "harder to foresee a need for anyone to use them for legitimate, legal reasons." The Home Office adds that under one option for legislation, laws could still criminalize people who did not suspect the technology would be used for serious crime, simply because the technology is so "closely associated with serious crime." Potential signs could include someone paying for a phone "through means which disguise the identity of the payer," the document reads. Often distributors sell phones for Bitcoin or cash, according to multiple encrypted phone sellers that spoke to Motherboard. The document says "the provisions will not apply to commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them." But the Home Office does not yet have a settled definition of what encompasses "sophisticated encrypted communication devices," leaving open the question of what exactly the UK would be prepared to charge a person for possessing or selling.

Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will harm competition in the UK gaming market, Britain's antitrust watchdog provisionally warned, saying it could force the selloff of the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said it took an initial view that the deal could result in a substantial lessening in competition, higher prices, fewer choices or less innovation for UK gamers, according to a statement published Wednesday. Microsoft first announced the Activision deal last year, looking to add games like Call of Duty to a business that already includes the Xbox console, the Halo franchise and Minecraft world-building software.

But the tie-up has fallen foul of global regulators who fear that Microsoft could make it harder for rival platforms to get unfettered access to Activision's most popular titles. The British agency has suggested a number of structural remedies that include the divestiture of the business associated with Call of Duty, the Activision part of the business or blocking the merger altogether. The CMA also said it would consider a behavioral remedies that would promise rivals can access to Call of Duty, although it flagged concerns about its ability to manage these.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Consumers could be using a new digital pound as an alternative to cash by the end of the decade under plans being drawn up by the Bank of England and the Treasury. The government is speeding up its response to the rise of privately issued cryptocurrencies and stable coins with a four-month public consultation process on a "Britcoin" starting on Tuesday. After the volatility of cryptocurrencies and the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, the Bank and the Treasury will seek to reassure the public that a state-backed digital currency would be as safe as cash. Officials will explore the technical issues involved in creating a central bank digital currency before a final decision is taken by the middle of the decade.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, say the government could still decide against going ahead but momentum is building behind the idea. The consultation paper argues that a digital pound will be needed at some point in the future. Assuming the go-ahead is given, the earliest date cash could be held in digital wallets offered to consumers by the private sector through smartphones or smartcards would be the end of the 2020s, the Bank and the Treasury say. Bailey said: "As the world around us and the way we pay for things becomes more digitalized, the case for a digital pound in the future continues to grow. A digital pound would provide a new way to pay, help businesses, maintain trust in money and better protect financial stability. However, there are a number of implications which our technical work will need to carefully consider. This consultation and the further work the Bank will now do will be the foundation for what would be a profound decision for the country on the way we use money."

If introduced, the digital pound would be issued by the Bank of England and could be used to make payments in person or online. It would be interchangeable with cash and bank deposits, and -- as with the current system of notes -- be issued in denominations of pounds sterling. No interest would be paid on pounds held in digital form. The Bank and the Treasury say a digital pound would be subject to rigorous standards of privacy and data protection. "Like current digital payments and bank accounts, the digital pound would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is necessary to prevent financial crime," they said. "This is essential for trust and confidence in money and therefore wide use of the digital pound." Hunt added: "While cash is here to stay, a digital pound issued and backed by the Bank of England could be a new way to pay that's trusted, accessible and easy to use."

"That's why we want to investigate what is possible first, while always making sure we protect financial stability."

In 2003 a 20-year-old Ryan North began writing new dialogue, three days a week, for the exact same set of six drawings of talking dinosaurs. And twenty years later, he's still doing it!

Interestingly, North found the original six drawings on a clip-art CD. So honoring this strange milestone, he's created a special edition in which the online comic strip finally continues beyond its sixth frame: I fired up a virtual machine running Windows XP which ITSELF was tweaking its settings to run Windows 95, which ITSELF was running the Windows 3.1 software I first used in the last few days of January to make myself a comics layout, and started playing around. (Incidentally, the comic's still laid out in MS Paint, but the version that came with XP...

After 20 years I'm allowed to change the images BRIEFLY. And only once!!
While readers laugh along with T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus, North is experiencing this milestone as "incredible," while also adding "I'm so grateful for everyone who reads my work." Writing Dinosaur Comics has led to so many amazing things - not just meeting readers, not just seeing plush versions of T-Rex go up to the edge of space or to Antarctica... [Y]ou can trace a direct line between me sending an upload command to my FTP client in 2003 and everything I've done since, and if you told me back then that "hey, the Dinosaur Comics guy is going to write Star Trek comics and adopt Vonnegut into comics too and write bestselling (and non-fiction!) guides to both time travel and taking over the world and, oh, let's say be the new writer for the Fantastic Four AND MORE" I would've said "What?! I would like to be the Dinosaur Comics guy, thank you so much."
Looking back to 2003, North also reflects that "The world of online comics is very different from how it was when I started." [T]here's been a huge shift towards social media - functioning effectively as an aggregator - and a huge shift away from people actually visiting websites. But I love websites, and I think they give us the healthiest, most free version of the web, and I hope 20 years from now the only way to connect with other people won't be through a corporate or algorithmically-mediated platform.
And he adds that he hopes he'll still be writing the comic on its 40th anniversary in the year 2043.

Chess experts make more mistakes when air pollution is high, a study has found. From a report: Experts used computer models to analyse the quality of games played and found that with a modest increase in fine particulate matter, the probability that chess players would make an error increased by 2.1 percentage points, and the magnitude of those errors increased by 10.8%. The paper, published in the journal Management Science, studied the performance of 121 chess players in three seven-round tournaments in Germany in 2017, 2018, and 2019, comprising more than 30,000 chess moves.

The researchers compared the actual moves the players made against the optimal moves determined by the powerful chess engine Stockfish. In the tournament venues, the researchers attached three web-connected air quality sensors to measure carbon dioxide, PM2.5 concentrations, and temperature. Each tournament lasted eight weeks, meaning players faced a variety of air conditions. Fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, refers to tiny particles 2.5 microns or less in diameter, which are often expelled by burning matter such as that from car engines, coal plants, forest fires, and wood burners. Further reading: Study Reveals Links Between UK Air Pollution and Mental Ill-Health.

Planting more trees could mean fewer people die from increasingly high summer temperatures in cities, a study suggests. The Guardian reports: Increasing the level of tree cover from the European average of 14.9% to 30% can lower the temperature in cities by 0.4C, which could reduce heat-related deaths by 39.5%, according to first-of-its-kind modeling of 93 European cities by an international team of researchers. [...] The researchers used mortality data to estimate the potential reduction in deaths from lower temperatures as a result of increased tree coverage. Using data from 2015 they estimated that out of the 6,700 premature deaths that year attributed to higher urban temperatures, 2,644 could have been prevented had tree cover been increased.

The cities most likely to benefit from the increase in tree coverage are in south and eastern Europe, where summer temperatures are highest and tree coverage tends to be lower. In Cluj-Napoca in Romania -- which had the highest number of premature deaths due to heat in 2015, at 32 per 100,000 people -- tree coverage is just 7%. In Lisbon, Portugal it is as low as 3.6% and in Barcelona its 8.4%. That compares with 15.5% in London and 34% in Oslo. Study co-author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said the team picked 30% as that is a target that many cities are currently working towards.

He said there was no need for buildings to be razed and replaced with parks, since there is enough space to plant more trees in all the cities the team looked at. He praised initiatives such as the EU's 3 billion trees plan, and the UK government's proposal to ensure every home is within a 15-minute walk from green space, though he noted that policymakers must ensure trees are evenly distributed between richer and poor neighborhoods. He added that cities which are "too car-dominated" should consider replacing asphalt roads, which absorb heat, with trees. Planting more trees in cities should be prioritized because it brings a huge range of health benefits beyond reducing heat-related deaths, he added, including reducing cardiovascular disease, dementia and poor mental health. The study has been published in the journal The Lancet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Long-term exposure to even comparatively low levels of air pollution could cause depression and anxiety, according to a study exploring the links between air quality and mental ill-health. Tracking the incidence of depression and anxiety in almost 500,000 UK adults over 11 years, researchers found that those living in areas with higher pollution were more likely to suffer episodes, even when air quality was within official limits. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, the researchers, from the universities of Oxford and Beijing and Imperial College London, said their findings suggested a need for stricter standards or regulations for air pollution control.

The researchers drew on the data of 389,185 participants from the UK Biobank, modeling and giving a score to the air pollution, including PM2.5 and PM10, nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide for the areas in which they lived. They found 13,131 cases of depression and 15,835 of anxiety were identified among their sample within a follow-up period of about 11 years. As air pollution increased, the researchers found, so did cases of depression and anxiety. Exposure-response curves were non-linear, however, with steeper slopes at lower levels and plateauing trends at higher exposure, suggesting that long-term exposure to low levels of pollution were just just as likely to lead to diagnoses as exposure to higher levels. "Considering that many countries' air quality standards are still well above the latest World Health Organization global air quality guidelines 2021, stricter standards or regulations for air pollution control should be implemented in the future policy making," the researchers wrote.

Netflix has unveiled its plans to prevent password sharing between people in households outside of an account owner's primary location. From a report: As reported by gHacks, the streaming service has detailed how it aims to crackdown on account sharing in an updated FAQ. The information varies between countries, but it looks like the company will be paying careful attention to the devices used to log in to accounts from now on. The FAQ pages for US and UK subscribers currently highlight that devices may require verification if they are not associated with the Netflix household or if they attempt to access an account outside the subscriber's primary location for an extended period of time.

The FAQ pages for countries where Netflix is testing extra membership fees for account sharing have tweaked the rules. The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location and watch something on Netflix "at least once every 31 days." The company will use information "such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity" to determine whether a device signed into an account is connected to the primary location. A device may be blocked from watching Netflix if it's deemed to fall outside of the household. As further set out in the guidelines, if you are the primary account owner and you find yourself travelling between locations, you can request a temporary code to access Netflix for seven consecutive days. Alternatively, you can update your primary location if it has changed.

As nations around the world scramble to secure crucial semiconductor supply chains over fears about relations with China, the U.K. is falling behind. From a report: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the world's heavy reliance on Taiwan and China for the most advanced chips, which power everything from iPhones to advanced weapons. For the past two years, and amid mounting fears China could kick off a new global security crisis by invading Taiwan, Britain's government has been readying a plan to diversify supply chains for key components and boost domestic production. Yet according to people close to the strategy, the U.K.'s still-unseen plan -- which missed its publication deadline last fall -- has suffered from internal disconnect and government disarray, setting the country behind its global allies in a crucial race to become more self-reliant.

A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.'s efforts to develop its own coherent plan. The way the strategy has been developed so far "is a mistake," said a former senior Downing Street official. During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages -- soon compounded by China's tough "zero-COVID" policy. Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex -- a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts -- concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past. But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.

A Welsh branch of McDonald's has started playing classical music and rationing wi-fi in a bid to deter anti-social behavior. The BBC reports: The fast-food restaurant has taken action after incidents at its Wrexham branch and elsewhere in the city which led to police issuing dispersal orders. North Wales Police said a group of 20 to 30 youngsters had caused "upset" but progress had been made recently. McDonald's said it was committed to being a good neighbor in the area. [...] McDonald's said: "We are aware of anti-social behavior affecting the wider area, and have introduced a number of measures in our Wrexham restaurant to support the police in tackling this issue. These include playing classical music from 17:00 GMT and turning off the wi-fi at certain points in the evening."

Arrival, an electric vehicle startup based in the UK, said it was laying off 50 percent of its employees in a bid to reduce costs. The company also named a new CEO, Igor Torgov, who previously served as executive vice president of digital at the company. From a report: Arrival, which announced last year that it was winding down its UK operations in favor of refocusing its business in the US, became a publicly traded company in March 2021 after merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Founded in 2015, Arrival was developing electric delivery vans for UPS as a customer, as well as ridehailing cars for Uber and public buses. It also has backing from Hyundai and Kia. Arrival's layoffs will bring the company down to a workforce of 800 employees. The company claims that it expects to halve its ongoing cost of operating the business to approximately $30 million per quarter when accounting for reductions in real estate and other third-party costs. Arrival says it currently has $205 million in cash on hand.

An anonymous reader shares this report from OMG! Ubuntu: Developers have just uncorked a brand new release of Wine, the open source compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Linux.

A substantial update, Wine 8.0 is fermented from a year's worth of active development (roughly 8,600 changes in total). From that, a wealth of improvements are provided across every part of the Wine experience, from app compatibility, through to performance, and a nicer looking UI....

Notable highlights in Wine 8.0 include the completion of PE conversion, meaning all modules can be built in PE format. Wine devs say this work is an important milestone towards supporting "copy protection, 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers, x86 applications on ARM", and more.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham have developed an innovative method for existing furnaces that could reduce steelmaking's CO2 emission by nearly 90%. The Next Web reports: The iron and steel industry is a major cause of greenhouse gasses, accounting for 9% of global emissions. That's because of the inherent carbon-intensive nature of steel production in blast furnaces, which currently represent the most-widely used practice. In blast furnace steel manufacturing, coke (a type of coal) is used to produce metallic iron from ore obtained from mining -- which releases large quantities of carbon dioxide in the process. According to Dr Harriet Kildahl, who co-devised the method with Professor Yulong Ding, their technology aims to convert this carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide that can be reused in the iron ore reaction.

This is realized using a thermochemical cycle which performs chemical reactions through changes in temperature. That way, the typically damaging CO2 is turned into a useful part of the reaction, forming "an almost perfect closed carbon loop." This drastically reduces emission by the amount of coke needed and, subsequently, lowers steelmaking's emissions by up to 88%. As per the researchers, if this method was implemented in the remaining two blast furnaces in the UK, it could save 1.28 billion pounds in 5 years, all while reducing the country's overall emissions by 2.9%.

"Current proposals for decarbonizing the steel sector rely on phasing out existing plants and introducing electric arc furnaces powered by renewable electricity. However, an electric arc furnace plant can cost over 1 billion pounds to build, which makes this switch economically unfeasible in the time remaining to meet the Paris Climate Agreement," Professor Ding said. "The system we are proposing can be retrofitted to existing plants, which reduces the risk of stranded assets, and both the reduction in CO2, and the cost savings, are seen immediately." The study has been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

British cybersecurity officials are warning that hacking groups linked to Russia and Iran are duping people into clicking malicious links by impersonating journalists and experts. From a report: The hackers, who have similar goals but are said to be working separately, have sought to steal emails from people working in academia, defense, the media and government, as well as from activists and non-governmental organizations, according to an advisory released on Thursday by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre. "These campaigns by threat actors based in Russia and Iran continue to ruthlessly pursue their targets in an attempt to steal online credentials and compromise potentially sensitive systems," said Paul Chichester, the center's director of operations. "We strongly encourage organizations and individuals to remain vigilant to potential approaches and follow the mitigation advice in the advisory to protect themselves online."

Scientists from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found a link between dozens of different viral exposures and a later increased risk of Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders. Gizmodo reports: They analyzed data from two existing and nationally representative biobank projects tracking the long-term health of residents in Finland and the UK, respectively, collectively involving around 450,000 people. They looked for links between viral infections that led to hospitalization and six neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's disease (the most common form of dementia), ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, vascular dementia, and generalized dementia. In the Finland data, they initially identified 45 types of viral exposure potentially linked to a greater risk of neurodegenerative illness. To double-check these results, they then ran the same sort of analysis on the UK data and found a similar relationship for 22 types of viral exposure across both datasets.

Some of these exposures involved specific viral infections, such as influenza, varicella zoster virus (the cause of chickenpox and shingles), and herpes simplex viruses. Others concerned where an infection or its harmful effects took place, such as viral encephalitis or meningitis, types of brain inflammation that can be caused by many different viruses. For some exposures, the risk of subsequent brain illness extended up to 15 years later, while the strongest link was seen between viral encephalitis and Alzheimer's. The team's findings were published earlier this month in Neuron. "As vaccines are currently available for some of the associated viruses, vaccination may be a way to reduce some risk of neurodegenerative disease," the authors note.

Hundreds of Amazon workers are on strike in Britain. The walkout marks the first formal industrial action in the country for the U.S. tech giant. CNBC reports: The 24-hour strike action began Wednesday a minute after midnight. Strikers are expected to picket outside the company's site in Coventry in central England throughout the day. At 6 a.m. London time, workers were pictured camping by a bonfire and waving union flags outside the Coventry site near Birmingham airport, known as BHX4. One poster behind the workers had a slogan that said "Fight for 15 pounds," and encouraged workers to join the GMB union. Another, which was bannered across a fence, read: "The wrong Amazon is burning."

The GMB Union, which represents the workers involved, said it expects 300 employees out of a total 1,000 at the plant to turn up to the walkout. Workers are planning to hold a larger scale demonstration from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. London time. Staff are unhappy with a pay increase of 50 pence (56 U.S. cents) per hour, equivalent to 5% and well below inflation. Amazon introduced the pay hike last summer. But warehouse workers say it fails to match the rising cost of living. They want the company to pay a minimum 15 pounds an hour. They also want better working conditions. Amazon workers have raised concerns about long working hours, high injury rates, and the unrelenting pace of work, as well as aggressive, tech-enhanced monitoring of employees. "We all saw the profits they're making during the pandemic -- that's what angered people more," said Darren Westwood, one of Amazon's warehouse workers taking part in the strike. "We were expecting a better increase than what they were imposing."

"Someone the other day said we're treated like robots -- no, robots are treated better," Westwood told CNBC.

Further reading: Amazon To Layoff Over 18,000 Employees