<a href="https://verumcoin.info/">The cryptocurrency Verum Coin (VERUM)</a>&nbsp;has reached a new milestone — users can now&nbsp;<a href="https://wallet.uniswap.org/">buy and trade it through the popular decentralized Uniswap Wallet</a>.This integration brings new opportunities for users:<ul><li>Ease of use: The Uniswap Wallet interface enables crypto transactions in just a few clicks.</li><li>Security: Users retain full control over their assets.</li><li>Global liquidity: The platform connects millions of users worldwide.</li></ul>"We are committed to making Verum Coin as accessible as possible to everyone who values blockchain technology and believes in the future of decentralization. Integration with Uniswap Wallet is a significant step toward achieving this goal," said representatives of the Verum team.Uniswap Wallet is one of the leading decentralized wallets on the market, known for its flexibility and ability to trade tokens without intermediaries or hidden fees.<a href="https://wallet.uniswap.org/">You can try Verum Coin on Uniswap Wallet today.</a>&nbsp;Simply connect your wallet, find the $Verum token, and start trading.

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Verum Coin Now Available on Uniswap Wallet

<figure></figure>A car manufacturer plans to launch a training facility for those looking to enter the automotive sector.The Sunderland scheme is being led by Nissan which plans to develop the skills of school children, apprentices and those already working in the industry.The £14.6m MADE NE project is expected to receive £9.6m from the North East Combined Authority (NECA) after a council report backed the scheme.Adam Pennick, vice president for manufacturing at Nissan Sunderland, said to "build the cars of the future you need the skills of the future".MADE NE - which stands for Manufacturing, Automation, Digitalisation, Electrification North East - is planned to be built across two facilities at the International Advance Manufacturing Park (IAMP) in Sunderland.It will focus on training a workforce for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing.Nissan said the project will aim to be self-sustaining within five years and generate money through the delivery of apprenticeships, sub-letting office space and making Nissan's training commercially available.The car manufacturer has developed the project in partnership with NECA, Sunderland City Council, Education Partnership North East, New College Durham, AESC, Vantec, Newcastle University, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, and the North East Automotive Alliance.North East Mayor Kim McGuinness said the site would "unlock a generation of skilled workers"."The investment shows how we can make the North East the home of real opportunity by backing local workers and businesses – so our area has good, well-paid, high-skilled jobs and training on the doorstep," she said.The plans are set to before the NECA cabinet on 30 July.Follow BBC Sunderland on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk.

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Car firm plans multimillion-pound training hub

<figure></figure>The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has rejected a licence for an Alzheimer’s treatment which slows cognitive decline. The EMA said the benefits of lecanemab did not counterbalance the risk of serious side effects, especially bleeding and swelling in the brain. The medicines regulator in the UK, the MHRA, is still considering whether to grant a licence, and a decision is expected soon. The drug was approved in the United States earlier this year. In trials, lecanemab was shown to slow cognitive decline by about a quarter in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s researchers hailed the trial results as "historic" because no previous drug had convincingly shown that the underlying mechanism of the disease could be slowed. Lecanemab works by clearing a rogue protein called amyloid, which builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Even if the drug was to be approved in the UK, it would then be up to health bodies - such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) - to decide whether the drug represents value for money and should be recommended to patients. Lecanemab costs about £20,000 per patient per year in the US.The EMA said that although patients given lecanemab, whose brand name is Leqembi, had delayed cognitive decline, the effects were small. It said the most important safety concern was the frequent occurrence of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), that involve swelling and bleeding in the brain. The EMA said: “Although most cases of ARIA in the main study were not serious and did not involve symptoms, some patients had serious events, including large bleeds in the brain which required hospitalisation.” Overall it found the benefits of the treatment were not enough to outweigh the risks.Prof Tara Spires-Jones, president of the British Neuroscience Association, said the EMA’s decision will come as "a disappointment to many".But she said there were reasons to remain hopeful. "Lecanemab has shown that it is possible to slow down disease progression, and research does work. Now we need to ramp up our efforts to discover new and safer treatments,” Prof Spires-Jones said.Prof John Hardy, professor of neuroscience and group leader at the UK Institute for Dementia Research, University College London (UCL), said the decision could have unintended consequences."I am sure we will now see rich people with early Alzheimer’s disease flying to the US or other jurisdictions for treatment.”The BBC’s Panorama followed patients on lecanemab and another new drug donanemab. In the programme, broadcast earlier this year, Prof Cath Mummery, consultant neurologist and head of clinical trials at the Dementia Research Centre at UCL, said although the benefits of the drugs were small, they represented a “turning point”.She added: “I do not think that they're a false hope. For the first time, we've got drugs that show that you can alter the course of Alzheimer’s disease, and that's an extraordinary thing.”The Alzheimer's Society said while it respected the decision on the drug, it would be "really difficult news for people in Europe who may have been eligible for this drug".“Whatever the regulators decide, we remain at an important and exciting moment," said Mark MacDonald, from the society."There are currently 164 active clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease, and we expect more treatments to be submitted for MHRA approval in the future."

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EU regulator rejects Alzheimer's drug lecanemab

<figure></figure>A council spent £15,000 on a Facebook page which had less than 200 followers, it has emerged. Essex County Council's social media campaigns costing more than £500,000 "did not represent value for money", a report said. The council said it could not comment ahead of a meeting to consider the report.A number of what were described as Facebook "groups" were highlighted in the draft report from the council's audit, governance and standards committee:<figure></figure>Labour committee member Aidan McGurran described the level of engagement for these pages as "utterly woeful", adding: "The whole thing was a shocking waste of money with appalling governance around it."He singled out the council's former head of strengthening communities, Kirsty O'Callaghan, for criticism over her role in setting up these arrangements.Ms Callaghan also approved payments to a number of people with whom she appeared to have a prior relationship, but she did not respond when the BBC made multiple attempts to reach her."The committee have seen no evidence that any declarations of interests were made and have seen information that several declarations of interest should have been made," the report stated.Simon Harris was contracted by the county council to set up and manage multiple Facebook pages during the pandemic and afterwards.But the draft report said the contracts were of poor quality with no evidence of a competitive procurement process."The committee observed that the service contracts were inadequately drafted, failing to specify the obligations of the contracted party and the council's rights to information necessary for evaluating performance," it said.The report reiterated a previous finding that there was no evidence of due diligence being conducted prior to these contracts being awarded.<figure></figure>Mr Harris was also paid to run the Essex Coronavirus Action Facebook page, later renamed Essex is United.He passed on at least £163,190 to sub-contractors, according to previous documents released by the county council.But he confirmed that he kept the remainder of the £530,000 received as payment for his services between 2019 and 2023.Previously Mr Harris insisted the money covered more than updating social media content.In response to the latest report, Mr Harris pointed out that the county council's chief executive's office had previously described the campaign work as "good value for money".He said he had provided the committee and the county council with different performance data for the Facebook pages.He gave a number of examples including the 'This Is Your Life' page, which he said had received 2.5m page impressions before being discontinued in 2023. Regarding the 'Essex Supports Veterans' page, Mr Harris said: "Impressions for this page were extremely low because over the entire course of the project, I was sent little to no content to be amplified and shared. "The work continued to be contracted and commissioned, and at no point did anyone from Essex County Council inform me that the work was unsatisfactory."Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

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Council's £15k Facebook spend for 189 followers

<figure></figure>Major video game makers - like Activision, Warner Bros and Walt Disney - are facing a strike by Hollywood performers over the use of artificial intelligence (AI).It follows a year and half of talks over a new a contract between the companies and a union representing more than 2,500 video game performers.The two sides say they have agreed on several key issues, such as wages and job safety, but protections related to the use of AI technology remain a major hurdle.The industrial action was called by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), which last year paralysed Hollywood with a strike by film and television actors.The performers are worried about gaming studios using generative AI to reproduce their voices and physical appearance to animate video game characters without providing them with fair compensation."Although agreements have been reached on many issues... the employers refuse to plainly affirm, in clear and enforceable language, that they will protect all performers covered by this contract in their AI language," Sag-Aftra said in a statement.“We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse AI to the detriment of our members," it added.However, the video game studios have said that they have already made enough concessions to the union's demands.“We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal," said Audrey Cooling, a spokesperson for the 10 video game producers negotiating with Sag-Aftra."Our offer is directly responsive to Sag-Aftra’s concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the [Interactive Media Agreement]," she added.The Interactive Media Agreement covers artists who provide voiceover services and on-camera work used to create video game characters.The last such deal, which did not provide AI protections, was due to expire in November 2022 but has been extended on a monthly based while talks continued.Last year, TV and film actors in the US won $1bn (£790m) in new pay and benefits, as well as safeguards on the use of AI, following a strike organised by Sag-Aftra.The 118-day shutdown was the longest in the union's 90-year history.Combined with a separate writers' strike, the actions severely disrupted film and TV production and cost California's economy more than $6.5bn, according to entertainment industry publication Deadline.

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Video game actors go on strike over AI

<figure></figure>Being vaccinated against shingles may also help delay getting a dementia diagnosis - a study in the journal Nature Medicine suggests. The work builds on previous suggestions that a shingles jab may have this unintended benefit. Researchers compared some 100,000 people who had a new shingles jab to a similar group who had an older one.On average, those who had the new jab had an extra 164 days free from a diagnosis of dementia over six years. Further work is needed to prove the link, scientists say.Shingles is a painful, serious condition that is more common in older people. It is caused by a reactivation of the Herpes zoster virus - the virus that causes chicken pox. A vaccine against shingles was introduced in many countries about 18 years ago. Since then there has been growing evidence that the jab could help protect against dementia - but no conclusive proof.In this study, researchers from the University of Oxford compared the health records of people in the US who had the older Zostavax jab with a newer jab, called Shingrix, which is increasingly used in the UK. While similar numbers still got dementia by the end of the study, the researchers found, on average, over the six-year period: Study author Prof Paul Harrison said: "Even if it is a delay of 164 days, for example, on the public health level, that would not be a trivial finding."It is a big enough effect that if [the link is proved] it feels meaningful to us."Dr Sheona Scales, at charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, said finding new ways to reduce people’s risk was "vital". She added: "This research, carried out in a large group of people, suggests that people given the Shingrix shingles vaccine might have a reduced risk of dementia. "But it isn’t clear how the vaccine might be reducing risk, nor whether the vaccine causes a reduction in dementia risk directly, or whether there’s another factor at play."Other factors that have definitively been linked to an increased dementia risk include smoking, high blood pressure and excessive alcohol consumption, she added.Prof Harrison said the study threw up a number of questions that need to be urgently addressed."One possibility is the herpes viruses may be one of the many factors that might promote dementia," he said. "Therefore a vaccine that is stopping you have a reactivation of the virus might delay whatever that process is that is leading you to have dementia in coming years."Another possibility is that ingredients in the vaccine, designed to help the body mount a protective response, could play a part, he added.In the UK, a free shingles vaccine is available to people who turn 65, those aged between 70 and 79, and people aged 50 and over who have a severely weakened immune system. Older shingles vaccines are now being replaced with Shingrix.Shingrix is made by pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). It was not involved in the research, but one of the scientists working on the study does other, separate work with GSK.

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Shingles vaccine may help delay dementia - study

<figure></figure>On Friday 19 July, 2024, the world woke up to what many have called the worst digital crisis of all time. A botched software update from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike crashed some 8.5 million computers, smearing Microsoft's dreaded "blue screen of death" across the globe. Airlines cancelled over 46,000 flights in a single day, according to the FlightAware. Hospitals called off surgeries. 911 emergency services faced disruptions in the US. Film Forum, an arthouse cinema in New York, switched to cash payments as its credit card system went down. Microsoft and CrowdStrike issued a solution, but the outages continue almost a week later. It's a reminder, frustrated IT experts said, to never push updates out on a Friday.&nbsp;As our infrastructure becomes ever more tangled with the internet, this won't be the last catastrophic online outage. But CrowdStrike wasn't the first, either. The history of computing is littered with examples of our digital fragility, and crashes of the past offer a glimpse of what it will feel like on the day the internet turns off."There's a price to pay for the convenience we enjoy," says Ritesh Kotak, a cybersecurity and technology analyst. "It will happen again, and from a technical standpoint, the fix for CrowdStrike was relatively easy. Next time, we might not be so lucky."One of the earliest major outages came in 1997 thanks to a glitch at the company Network Solutions Inc., one of the main registrars that issues domain names for websites. According to the New York Times, a misconfigured database crashed every single website ending in .com or .net. It took down around one million sites, which at that point in history was a huge portion of the web. Some people didn't get their email. An untold number of web searches ended in frustration. Some businesses who couldn't reach clients and customers lost business around the 1997 crash, but overall, the problems were minimal.&nbsp;Yet with the Internet now touching nearly every part of our daily lives, anything close to the Network Solutions outage has far greater consequences. Twenty-one years later, for example, a malware attack on the Alaskan community of Matanuska-Susitna took an array of digital services offline. The Internet blackout sent 100,000 people back in time."The cyber-attack, God help us, just about stopped everything, you know," local Helen Munoz told the BBC in 2019. "In fact, the borough still [hasn't sorted out] their computers."Employees were locked out of their workstations. Local libraries were ordered to turn off all their devices. In one government office, workers had to switch to typewriters to do their jobs. It was 10 weeks before the majority of the Matanuska-Susitna's systems came back online.&nbsp;Sometimes the problems start in the physical world. For a while, the entire nation of Armenia's internet connectivity depended on a single fibre-optic cable running through Georgia. If that sounds precarious, you're right. In 2011, a 75-year-old woman took all 2.9 million Armenians offline when she sliced through that cable with a spade near the Georgian village of Ksani. The woman, who was scavenging for copper at the time, was arrested but reportedly let go soon after because of her advanced age. She later told reporters: "I have no idea what the internet is."<figure></figure>Others felt its absence more keenly. "You can feel it when you don't have access to the internet. You start going crazy," says Vahan Hovsepyan, senior community and public policy advisor at RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry for Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, who lives in Armenia. "There's no way to ensure stability when you have a cable that's thousands of kilometres long," Hovsepyan says, which highlights the importance of building redundancies into digital infrastructure.It's proof positive that, on some level, the internet really is just a series of tubes. Pensioners aren't the only threat to those tubes, either. In 2017, all of Zimbabwe lost its internet access for half a day. Local newspapers reported that a tractor had torn through a cable in South Africa.The fibre-optic cables in our backyards need protection from human beings, but the thousands of kilometres worth of cables draped across the ocean floor face their own dangers. Sharks have a mysterious fondness for biting undersea cables, which has caused outages in the past. There's a long history of teeth marks on these ocean cables, not just from sharks but other fish and barracudas. A tooth can penetrate the insulation and mix sea water to ground the power conductors. It's been causing problems for phone and telegraph cables since at least 1964, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme. Today, Google reportedly wraps its underwater cables in a Kevlar-like material, in part to stop sharks and other ocean dwellers from biting through the Internet. Videos posted online have captured the web-hating sharks in action.A quarter of Canadia's&nbsp;internet and phone service was knocked out in 2022 because of a failure at Rogers Communications, one of the country's biggest telecom providers. It gave 11 million people a preview of last week's CrowdStrike debacle. Emergency services couldn't accept phone calls, hospitals cancelled appointments and businesses across the country couldn't accept debit card transactions. Canadian R&amp;B star the Weeknd was forced to postpone a concert.Kotak, who lives in Toronto, says the Rogers outage didn't have a major impact on his life, but others weren't so lucky. "A friend of mine literally missed the bar exam," he says. "Her whole family were Rogers customers, and she couldn't get the exact address and room number for the test because she only had it written down in her email."Legislators can prevent these kinds of problems by mandating safety measures in the technology and telecom industries, Kotak says. But sometimes, governments are responsible for internet shutdowns in the first place.<figure></figure>Disabling the internet is also a go-to method for government censorship, both for authoritarian governments and stable democracies. "It's a pretty massive problem," says Zach Rosson, a data analyst at Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group. "By our definition, there have been over 1,500 Internet shutdowns since 2016", by governments, militaries and police forces.In fact, the CrowdStrike disaster shadowed an example that began the same day. For the last week, Bangladesh has face near total internet blackout after a government shutdown in response to violent clashes between protesting stuidents and police. The online cutoff has been accompanied by a curfew and reporters say the lack of internet access makes accurate information harder to come by. At least 150 people have been killed in the clashes, with some local media putting the figure much higher.There's a growing push to understand internet access as a human right. "Think about all the things it gives you access to: employment, healthcare, education, communication, business and just understanding the world around you. We've found that internet shutdowns actually impede humanitarian delivery and prevent the documentation of atrocities," Rosson says.India is probably the world leader&nbsp;in using Internet shutdowns to quell unrest, but it's a widespread tactic that's been deployed in at least 83 countries including Iran, Russia, Algeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Cameroon and Venezuela, according to Access Now.&nbsp;In places where the internet connection depends on one fibre-optic cable, it makes for a glaring Achilles heel. After decades of the internet worming its way into every corner of our lives through wires and WiFi connections, you might think there would be more built-in fail-safes to keep the world churning. But largely the opposite is true, according to Casey Oppenheim, chief executive at Disconnect, a cybersecurity company.&nbsp;"To me this is the real lesson of the CrowdStrike event," Oppenheim says. CrowdStrike holds a massive market share in its corner of the security business, serving more than half the companies on the Fortune 500 list. "The less diversity you have in any ecosystem, the more vulnerable you become, and there's zero diversity at the top of the internet supply chain. You can pick any core area of the internet and you'll find a very short list of companies in control."&nbsp;In other words, Oppenheim says, the potential for catastrophic Internet failures is yet another consequence of "monopolistic forces" in the tech business. When so much depends on a single company, one wrong move can bring it all tumbling down. "As governments take on antitrust issues, it's something we may want to think about," he says.&nbsp;• The cyber-attack that sent an Alaskan community back in time• Google just updated its algorithm. The internet will never be the same• Why your internet habits are not as clean as you thinkThe most famous internet failure in history is one that didn't really happen. Twenty-five years ago, the public went into a frenzy over the Y2K Bug. Many predicted that the dawn of the new millennium in the year 2000 would come with a global computer failure. Thanks to short-sighted engineers, many computer programmes relied on calendars that used two digits for the year instead of four. That meant 2000 would be indistinguishable from 1900 on New Year's Day. Forecasts about the resulting computer crashes were nothing short of apocalyptic, with stories about failing governments, riots in the streets and total societal collapse. The world was just starting to comprehend the power of the tech industry, and for many, the Y2K bug was as terrifying as it was obscure. Some people stocked up on food, water and weapons.<figure></figure>There were indeed widespread glitches when the clock struck midnight on 31 December 1999. Most were trivial, such as train delays in Norway or misprinted jury summons in Oregon, US. Some reports were serious, but compared to the forecasts, the supposed Y2K disaster never materialised.&nbsp;Elevators didn't stop running, as some building managers were reported to fear. Years of warnings about a collapse of the global financial system were for naught. Prison doors did not fling open and let convicts free, despite some warnings. And unlike the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the recommended toilet paper stock piles weren't necessary. The problems could have been far more severe, though the most dramatic prophecies were always overblown.CrowdStrike is the closest we've come to a full-blown internet shutdown. Even with its unprecedented scale, however, the consequences lasted just a few days. CrowdStrike was a taste of what's possible. Security experts are still bracing for the big one.&nbsp;--For timely, trusted tech news from global correspondents to your inbox, sign up to the Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.&nbsp;For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and X.

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Watch out for sharks: the bizarre history of internet outages

<figure></figure>A nuclear fusion energy plant being built in Nottinghamshire has been described as the “UK’s NASA moment” as it races to become the first of its type in the world.The work, based at the decommissioned West Burton A power station near Retford, will create a new source of clean energy.The project, called Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), was showcased at a launch event on Tuesday in Gainsborough, just over the border in Lincolnshire.Nuclear fusion recreates the same process which powers the sun and if plans are approved, backers said the project is expected to be constructed by 2040.<figure></figure>The STEP project is being led by UK Industrial Fusion Solutions (UK IFS), which is owned by the UK Atomic Energy Authority.West Burton A was chosen as the location for the facility in October 2022 by the government.Prof David Gann, chair of UK IFS, said: “We’re on the cusp of creating an energy source for the world which will be transformative."We’re turning science into reality right here in Nottinghamshire.“It’s a magnificent opportunity for any region to take on."We’ll see all sorts of new sectors opening up in robotics, AI [artificial intelligence], engineering, manufacturing and materials, and new companies growing.”<figure></figure>Fusion is the process of combining atomic particles together, releasing huge amounts of energy, and is much cleaner than the nuclear fission currently used by some other power stations, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.It is estimated that hundreds of jobs will be created during the design phase, thousands during construction and hundreds more for the long-term operation.<figure></figure>Claire Ward, the East Midlands' elected mayor, said: “It’s the UK’s NASA moment – the chance to develop brand new technology and change the world.“We’re incredibly lucky to be the place where fusion will start and will build great opportunities for people in this region – and it’s a global opportunity too."The bidding process to find a company to handle construction and another to handle engineering opened in May, with shortlists to be drawn up in October.Follow BBC Nottingham on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.

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Nuclear fusion prototype will be ‘UK’s NASA moment’

<figure></figure>Instagram owner Meta says it has removed thousands of accounts in Nigeria that were trying to target people in sextortion schemes.Such scammers typically pose as young women online to trick people into sending sexually explicit material before blackmailing them.Victims of sextortion crimes have taken their own lives due to the stress, stigma and shame felt after being scammed.Meta said in a blogpost on Wednesday it had removed about 63,000 accounts that tried to engage with the scams."Financial sextortion is a horrific crime that can have devastating consequences," it said.The company said it also took down 5,700 Facebook groups in which scammers were offering tips on how to scam people.Experts and authorities have previously warned social media users to remain aware and alert of the scam's dangers amid their apparent rise.In May, 16-year-old Murray Dowey from Dunblane took his own life after being targeted by criminals.And the BBC found sextortion guides being sold on social media platforms in May.Perpetrators of sextortion scams present themselves to a user online as a potential romantic interest with the aim of getting them to send explicit or intimate images of themselves - often by sending a nude image first and asking for one in return.Senders are then threatened with having their intimate images circulated publicly unless they send payment.Meta said on Wednesday that the accounts it disrupted and removed for engaging in sextortion attempts had links to a wider, informal network of cybercriminals operating in Nigeria, known as "Yahoo Boys".The fraudsters are included on the tech giant's list of dangerous organisations and individuals that are banned from using its platforms to carry out their activities.The company says it uses a combination of different technologies to identify accounts that may be engaging in sextortion scams or attempts.These include automatically blurring nude images sent to users in messages and presenting them with a message saying they do not have to respond and letting them instantly block the sender and report the chat.As part of new tools it announced in April, Meta said will not display the “message” button on a teen’s profile to accounts it has believes could be engaging in sextortion attempts, even if the accounts have already connected with each other.

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Instagram removes 63,000 sextortion accounts in Nigeria

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How the American war on porn could change the way you use the internet

<figure></figure>CrowdStrike has promised to improve how it tests software after its faulty content update for Windows systems caused a mass global IT outage on Friday.The cybersecurity company's mistake resulted in problems for banks, hospitals and airlines as millions of PCs displayed "blue screens of death". In a detailed review of the incident published on Wednesday, CrowdStrike said the problem occurred due to a "bug" in the system which was meant to check software updates were working properly.The glitch meant its system did not identify "problematic content data" in a file.The company said it could prevent the incident from happening again with better software testing and checks, including more scrutiny from developers.The faulty update crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers around the world and George Kurtz, Crowdstrike's boss, has apologised for the impact of the outage.But cybersecurity experts told BBC News that the review revealed "major mistakes" were made by the firm."What’s clear from the post mortem is they didn't seem to have the right guardrails in place to prevent this type of incident or to reduce the risk of it occurring," said cyber-security consultant Daniel Card.<figure></figure>His thoughts were echoed by cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont, who said the key lesson from CrowdStrike's review was that the firm doesn't "test in waves"."They just deploy to all customers at once in a so called 'rapid response update' which was obviously a huge mistake," he said.But Sam Kirkman from cybersecurity firm NetSPI told the BBC the review showed CrowdStrike "took steps" to prevent the outages.He said these steps "have likely been effective to prevent incidents on countless occasions prior to last week”.According to insurance firm Parametrix, the top 500 US companies by revenue, excluding Microsoft, had faced some $5.4bn (£4.1bn) in financial losses from the outage.It said that only $540m (£418m) to $1.08bn (£840m) of these losses were insured.Meanwhile, Mr Kurtz has been called to testify in front of Congress about the outage."This incident must serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with network dependency," it said in a letter to Mr Kurtz.It has given the cybersecurity company until Wednesday evening to respond by scheduling a hearing.Additional reporting by Joe Tidy

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CrowdStrike to improve testing after 'bug' caused outage

<figure></figure>Donald Trump, whose time in office made him a pariah to many in the business world, has found new champions among tech leaders as his path back to the White House takes shape.Elon Musk, the world's richest person, became the biggest name yet to throw his weight behind the former president this month, endorsing him and getting involved in fundraising efforts.The move capped weeks of mounting support from the tech world, as influential venture capitalists and tech leaders, including former Democratic donor Allison Huynh, investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and the Winklevoss twins, players in the world of crypto, rallied publicly around Trump.Support for Trump is hardly universal. But it marks a sharp turn from just a few years ago, when companies rushed to distance themselves from Trump in the weeks after the 2021 US Capitol riot. Coming from Silicon Valley, where backing a ban on gay marriage - a Republican cause - once cost an executive his job, the change is especially striking.At a cryptocurrency event at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nicholas Longo, 27, of wealth management firm Fortuna Investors, said when he voted for Trump four years ago he felt there was stigma attached."In 2020, it would have been inadvisable for me to express support for Donald Trump,” he said. Now, all that has changed.<figure></figure>The shift in the political winds has long been evident on social media, where Mr Musk and investor David Sacks are among those to regularly scorn President Joe Biden. But their decision to open their wallets to the Trump campaign is poised to significantly expand their influence beyond their traditional circle - with major consequences for the election.The support from tech leaders has helped Trump close the fundraising gap that he faced against Mr Biden a few months ago. "He was pretty far behind and struggling at the end of April," said Sarah Bryner, research director at OpenSecrets. "In the last eight weeks, it's a completely different campaign." She said the pledges sent a strong signal on how the tide is turning, noting that signs of victory at the polls often help push potential donors off the fence. "Success begets success," she said. Data from OpenSecrets shows Democrats claiming the larger share of venture capitalist donations in recent elections - and Mr Biden's decision to bow out of the race is expected to ignite further interest.However, Trump's new friends remain committed. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Musk has pledged $45m a month to the Trump campaign - which would make him one of the biggest donors this year. The billionaire has denied the sum, while acknowledging his work on fundraising efforts tied to the campaign."I believe in an America that maximizes individual freedom and merit. That used to be the Democratic Party, but now the pendulum has swung to the Republican Party," Mr Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns that was formerly known as Twitter, after Mr Biden dropped out. "He's convinced Republicans he's not as bad as they say... and now we're seeing that's broadening out," said Sal Russo, a veteran Republican consultant based in California."Do I think he's going to win Santa Clara County? No, but he's going to do better," said Mr Russo.<figure></figure>"Bad government policies are now the #1 threat to Little Tech," Mr Andreessen and Mr Horowitz, whose firm invests in start-ups and is a big player in crypto and AI, wrote in a recent essay. "The time has come to stand up."Mr Musk's decision to back Trump might appear a startling shift for a man who had historically shunned political donations.He reportedly once waited in line for six hours to shake Barack Obama’s hand, and as recently as 2018 described himself as politically moderate.In 2017, he was among the first members to quit a White House business council, parting ways with Trump over climate change policies. His company, Tesla, makes electric cars, which Trump has repeatedly criticised as expensive and impractical. However, Mr Musk has long bristled at oversight by financial regulators.His criticism of Mr Biden ramped up two years ago, after he did not get an invite to a White House business meeting, a snub that led him to tell CNBC he felt unfairly "ignored". On social media, he has increasingly waded into other debates over Covid lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, China policy and transgender issues. Mr Musk, whose SpaceX rocket firm does billions of dollars of government business, has a relationship with a possible Trump administration to consider as well.Democrats said the shift in the tech world has been motivated by self-interest, noting that Mr Biden has proposed new taxes on multi-millionaires and unrealised capital gains. He has also alienated some with his embrace of organised labour, and his administration's pursuit of tech companies in anti-monopoly and other cases. Businessman Mark Cuban, who supports Democrats, suggested that the gravitation towards Trump was a "bitcoin play" - a bet that cryptocurrency value could be boosted by high inflation and political chaos that Democrats say would result under a Trump administration.<figure></figure>Stanford Business School professor Neil Malhotra, who has studied the political views of tech founders, said it would be a mistake to conflate the "most vocal people on Twitter" with the industry overall - or even its elites, whose views historically have straddled both parties.A 2017 survey he and colleagues conducted found that as a group, tech leaders were aligned with Democrats on issues such as gay marriage and abortion - even taxes. However, they swung Republican in strongly opposing regulation.He noted that since the survey, new social issues such as policing, schooling and transgender rights have come to the fore. San Francisco has been a key battleground in those debates, driving some of the tech world backlash. "The suspicion is that most people in venture capital are still centre-left," Prof Malhotra said. But, he added: "There’s definitely a movement to the Republican Party."Evan Swarztrauber, an adviser to the Foundation for American Innovation thinktank, said tech leaders were betting Trump would be more hands-off on crypto and AI.But the gamble is not without risk. As president, Trump won praise from the business community by cutting taxes, putting anti-labour officials in charge of labour rights and generally veering away from regulation.But he also took a markedly more interventionist approach to the economy - and to tech - than previous administrations - starting a trade war with China, ordering a TikTok ban, and launching some of the ongoing anti-monopoly lawsuits against tech companies.Since then, he has pushed the Republican party further in that direction - while at the same time moderating or reversing himself on issues such as the TikTok ban and crypto.Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in tech policy for the libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump may be shifting his stance on some tech issues, noting that he is now the owner of a social media platform.JD Vance, Trump's choice for vice-president, also previously worked in venture capital and got key support from PayPal's Peter Thiel during his 2022 senate campaign.But she warned that the effort to distinguish between the interests of "big" tech and "little" tech would prove difficult when it comes time to govern.<figure></figure>David Broockman, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said Trump was finding success in the business world by presenting himself as more moderate than other members of his party on social issues such as abortion.After boasting of being "proudly the person responsible" for removing Roe v Wade protections, Trump has rejected claims he will back a national ban pushed by many conservatives, and says the matter should be left up to the states.But Prof Broockman noted that Trump also ran a relatively moderate campaign in 2016, only to adopt more extreme policies once in office. Those hurt his public approval and eventually frayed Republican ties to Wall Street, a traditional source of support for the party. "Tech and other business leaders are banking on a lot of Trump's more eccentric policy ideas ... just not happening," Prof Broockman said. "But they really could happen."Outside of tech, Trump has backed radical changes including mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a dramatic reduction in the government workforce and a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the country.But Garrett Johnson, co-founder of the Foundation for American Innovation and now an executive at a venture-backed tech firm, said he thought that as time had passed more tech and business elites have come around to Trump's views."Trump singlehandedly made the threat that China poses to our country a national topic," he said. "He was right and everyone else had to come along.""So absolutely I think that is part of the dynamic, of the vibe shift," he said. "Was he right on everything? No, but on many big issues Trump was right." Reporting contributed by Jude Sheerin at the Republican National Convention