Category: News and Views

Fraud experts brought in over student loan allegations | BBC News

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The education secretary has asked counter-fraud experts to lead an investigation into reports millions of pounds in student loans are being claimed by people with no intent to study.

It follows a report in the Sunday Times which says it found evidence of some individuals enrolling on degree courses at small colleges just to access loans, with no intention of paying them back.

Bridget Phillipson has called in the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) to coordinate the government’s response to the allegations and to support investigations already under way.

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23andMe files for bankruptcy protection | BBC

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Popular DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection, and announced that its co-founder and CEO, Anne Wojcicki, has resigned with immediate effect.

The company will now attempt to sell itself under the supervision of a court.

23andMe said in a press release that it plans to continue operating throughout the sale process and that there “are no changes to the way the company stores, manages, or protects customer data.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection watchdog, said on Monday it had notified the company of its intent to hand down a £4.59m fine over a 2023 data breach.

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Vertical farming company Plenty files for bankruptcy after raising nearly $1B | TechCrunch

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Vertical farming company Plenty has filed for bankruptcy, the company said in a press release on Monday.

In its statement, Plenty said it has received a commitment for $20.7 million in debtor-in-possession financing as part of a proposed restructuring plan. It plans to continue to operate a strawberry farm in Virginia and a plant science research and development (R&D) center in Wyoming.

Debtor-in-possession financing is financing for firms in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Since its 2014 inception, South San Francisco-based Plenty has raised nearly $1 billion in funding from a variety of investors, including SoftBank Investment Advisers, Walmart, Bezos Expeditions, and Jeff Bezos as an angel investor.

Its last known valuation was $1.9 billion at the time of a $400 million Series E fundraise in January 2022, according to PitchBook.

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Apple is bringing lossless audio and low-latency audio to AirPods Max | TechCrunch

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Apple announced on Monday that it’s bringing lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio to AirPods Max headphones when using the included USB-C cable.

With this upcoming update, AirPods Max headphones will unlock 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio to maintain the quality of original recordings. Lossless audio also extends to Personalized Spatial Audio “to deliver a more sonically accurate, uncompressed, and immersive experience,” the company says.

Users will be able to listen to more than 100 million songs in lossless audio with Apple Music.

As for the ultra-low latency audio, Apple says the AirPods Max will be better suited for music production. Using the USB-C cable, AirPods Max users will enable musicians to create and mix with Personalized Spatial Audio and head tracking. This means artists can record and mix music without losing audio quality, Apple notes.

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End-to-End Encrypted Texts Between Android and iPhone Are Coming | WIRED

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Knifings, firebombings, shootings, and murder-for-hire plots—all linked to a splinter group of the 764 crime network called “No Lives Matter.” According to its own manifesto, the group seeks to “purify mankind through endless attacks” and has released at least two “kill guides” tied to violent plots in the US and Europe. Intelligence documents reviewed by WIRED reveal growing concern among analysts, but experts remain unsure how to stop the group’s spread.

On Monday, X experienced intermittent outages after a botnet flooded the social network with junk traffic in an attempt to take down its system. Elon Musk stated that the distributed denial-of-service attack originated from Ukrainian IP addresses, implying that the country—already under siege by a Russian invasion and frequently mocked by the centibillionaire—may have been responsible. Security experts tell WIRED that this is not how DDoS attacks work.

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Fed Keeps Interest Rates Unchanged, Experts Not Surprised | Entrepreneur

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Federal Reserve officials kept interest rates at a target range of 4.25% to 4.5% following the conclusion of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday.

The range has stayed the same since December when the Fed cut rates by 25 basis points or 0.25%, but the Fed indicated that reductions to the rate could occur later in the year.

“We’ll be adapting as we go,” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in a Wednesday press conference following the decision. He noted that the Fed does not need to rush to make policy adjustments and “is well positioned to wait for clarity” on President Donald Trump’s economic plans, including tariffs

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Morgan Stanley Plans to Cut 2,000 Workers, Partly Due to AI | Entrepreneur

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Morgan Stanley is preparing to reduce its 80,000-person workforce by 2,000 employees later this month, marking the bank’s first significant round of layoffs since CEO Ted Pick took over in January 2024.

The workforce reduction will affect divisions across Morgan Stanley, except for its 15,000 financial advisers, per Bloomberg. The cuts are meant to keep costs down as executives face low attrition, or a low rate of employees leaving an organization through resignations, terminations, or retirements.

Some employees impacted by the layoffs will be let go due to performance issues, while others will be cut because AI and automation have replaced their roles within the bank. A source told Bloomberg that the bank expects to make more job reductions due to AI in the coming years.

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A brand new volcanic vent opened up in Yellowstone National Park | Mashable

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A new column of steam rises from Yellowstone.

While the expansive volcano shows no hints of an eruption, magma brews beneath the surface, fueling hundreds of geysers and other heated phenomena. In a new blog on its website, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory reports a new steaming feature in the national park, illustrative of this dynamic world’s constantly evolving, and thrilling, landscape.

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‘Stranded’ NASA astronauts will be carried away on stretchers after return from space. Here’s why. | Live Science

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On Tuesday (March 18) NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are expected to splash harmlessly into Earth’s oceans inside a SpaceX crew capsule, ending a more than nine-month stay in space that was originally slated to last just a few weeks. When their capsule is finally opened, the astronauts will likely be carried out and loaded onto stretchers.

The reason for this has nothing to do with Williams and Wilmore’s specific mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but is simply a matter of protocol that all astronauts must follow, experts told Live Science.

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Florida’s citrus faces mounting threat from real estate developers | Fast Company

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As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre (8-hectare) grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides.

“At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.”

Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country.

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