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Biometric Entry/Exit System phased in from October to 29 Schengen countries

Travelers including Britons and Americans visiting most European countries will have to register their fingerprints and faces under a system that goes live next month.…

The Japanese city of Toyoake has passed (PDF) a symbolic ordinance limiting recreational smartphone use to two hours a day, aiming to improve citizens' sleep -- especially for students after summer vacation. The Register reports: "The primary purpose of this ordinance is to ensure that all citizens receive adequate sleep," states a Council information page, which explains that many Japanese people ignore Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recommendations to spend six to eight hours a day dozing. An accompanying FAQ [PDF] explains that Council passed the ordinance because students who return to school after summer vacations sometimes need a nudge the re-establish an appropriate daily regime. The ordinance also points out "Excessive phone users and their families are facing difficulties in their daily and social lives," and suggests the two-hours-a-day guidance might help. Council's documents point out that smartphones have myriad uses beyond recreation, and that the ordinance should not be taken as a suggestion to reduce overall use of the devices. Toyoake is part of the Nagoya megalopolis and is home to around 70,000 people. The town's government plans to survey residents about the ordinance, and the FAQ also mentions it wants to tackle other digital menaces, among them harmful effects of using smartphones while walking.

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Supermarket says the hack that shut down systems and emptied shelves has turned profits into losses

The Co-operative Group has revealed the cyberattack that knocked its systems offline earlier this year will leave it nursing an £80 million hangover. …

Guidance follows privacy complaints over sharp increase in police searches of travel doc and visa pic libraries

The Home Office has told police forces to check their own photo databases before asking it to search its libraries of passport and visa facial images, as well as avoiding urgent requests "unless it is absolutely necessary."…

Big performance on offer, but be prepared to spend $200

HANDS ON Raspberry Pi has unveiled a fully loaded version of its computer-in-a-keyboard, featuring oodles of RAM, an SSD, and a clicky, mechanical keyboard. However, you'll pay a relative premium for these features.…

Doctors report the first successful treatment for Huntington's disease using a new type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery. The BBC reports: An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients. It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of "good quality life", Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News. The first symptoms of Huntington's disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades -- opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging. None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair. Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families. [...] It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA. This is infused deep into the brain using real-time MRI scanning to guide a microcatheter to two brain regions - the caudate nucleus and the putamen. This takes 12 to 18 hours of neurosurgery. The virus then acts like a microscopic postman -- delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells, where it becomes active. This turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death. The cells produce a small fragment of genetic material (called microRNA) that is designed to intercept and disable the instructions (called messenger RNA) being sent from the cells' DNA for building mutant huntingtin. This results in lower levels of mutant huntingtin in the brain. [...] The data showed that three years after surgery there was an average 75% slowing of the disease based on a measure which combines cognition, motor function and the ability to manage in daily life. The data also shows the treatment is saving brain cells. Levels of neurofilaments in spinal fluid -- a clear sign of brain cells dying -- should have increased by a third if the disease continued to progress, but was actually lower than at the start of the trial.

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By supporting efficient video codecs in hardware, which to be fair will also help punters

Google, Meta, and Vodafone have called on chipmakers and smartphone manufacturers to support the AV1 video codec in hardware, especially in midrange devices, a suggestion that’s not entirely altruistic.…

As ban on under-16s using some sites looms, cyber-safety regulator sends Microsoft’s code locker a letter

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has written to GitHub to ask it to consider if it’s a social network that endangers children.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's oceans have failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown. In its latest annual assessment, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life. This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium. The report, which follows earlier warnings about ocean acidity, comes at a time of recordbreaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching. Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and play an essential role as a climate stabilizer. The new report calls them an "unsung guardian of planetary health", but says their vital functions are threatened. The 2025 Planetary Health Check noted that since the start of the industrial era, oceans' surface pH has fallen by about 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs and Arctic marine life are especially at risk. This is primarily due to the human-caused climate crisis. When carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas burning enters the sea, it forms carbonic acid. This reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, which many marine organisms depend upon to grow coral, shells or skeletons. Near the bottom of the food chain, this directly affects species like oysters, molluscs and clams. Indirectly, it harms salmon, whales and other sea life that eat smaller organisms. Ultimately, this is a risk for human food security and coastal economies. Scientists are concerned that it could also weaken the ocean's role as the planet's most important heat absorber and its capacity to draw down 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Marine life plays an important role in this process, acting as a "biotic bump" to sequester carbon in the depths. In the report, all of the other six breached boundaries -- climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities -- showed a worsening trend. But the authors said the addition of the only solely ocean-centerd category was a alarming development because of its scale and importance.

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