The vulnerability is currently being exploited via PowerPoint files. These specially crafted files contain a malicious OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) object.

Microsoft is still investigating the matter and deciding whether they will issue an out-of-band patch or wait for the next Patch Tuesday to plug the hole.

The EU's decision to ban the use of some pesticides could threaten UK crops, increase food prices and hit farmers' profits, a report has claimed.

It said this could lead to a surge in pests, affecting production of apples, carrots and peas, among other crops.

They claim that "systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy"; it makes things more complex, thus breaking the "do one thing and do it well" principle.

"We contemplate adopting more recent alternatives to sysvinit, but not those undermining the basic design principles of "do one thing and do it well" with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and opaque logs."

Whisper is not a place for illegal activity. If we receive a valid legal request, or we learn that you tried to use Whisper to post content that exposes imminent danger to yourself or others, we will share the limited information we have, including IP address, with the appropriate authorities.

To cite another example, if a user claims to be a health care professional concerned about Ebola, we may review their recent posts to help assess the authenticity of the Whisper before featuring it.

The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be “the safest place on the internet”, is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed.

But on Monday – four days after learning the Guardian intended to publish this story – Whisper rewrote its terms of service; they now explicitly permit the company to establish the broad location of people who have disabled the app’s geolocation feature.

User data, including Whisper postings that users believe they have deleted, is collated in a searchable database.

Whisper has an offshore base in the Philippines, where more than 100 employees screen messages 24 hours a day.

FBI Director James Comey upped the ante on Oct. 16 by proposing that Congress change the law it passed about 20 years ago, titled the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which gives law enforcement access to electronic communications.

The FBI wants to change all that by requiring companies such as Apple and Google to provide back doors so that law enforcement can read whatever is on your smartphone at its convenience.

The rumored figure we mentioned then was the already-generous €3.7 billion; but it has just been revealed that Vattenfall is actually demanding even more -- €4.7 billion, to be precise.

Two other energy companies, RWE and E.on, are unable to sue in the same way as Vattenfall, because they are German companies, and the ISDS option is only available to foreign investors.

RWE and E.on are also trying to sue in Germany's national courts in order to obtain compensation, as Vattenfall is doing with the ISDS tribunals

After the company tried to level the pricing of e-books across the board to $9.99 (£6.28), Hachette, backed up by authors such as JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell and James Patterson, objected.

Amazon squeezed the publisher by delaying delivery of its books - sometimes by weeks.

"In its pursuit of bigness, Amazon has left a trail of destruction - competitors undercut, suppliers squeezed - some of it necessary, and some of it highly worrisome," he writes.

"It Looks so Cool!" Linksys's public relations squad informed us in an e-mail, which also said the switch saves space by stacking beneath the $250 WRT1900AC router.

“This 8-Port Switch was designed and developed for our loyal WRT router fans," Linksys VP Mike Chen said in the company's announcement.

The filing comes from VPN company Golden Frog and discusses "two recent examples that show that users are not receiving the open, neutral, and uninterrupted service to which the Commission says they are entitled."

This broadband provider is overwriting the content of users’ communications and actively blocking STARTTLS encryption. This is a man-in-the-middle attack that prevents customers from using the applications of their choosing and directly prevents users from protecting their privacy.