The ramping up of tariffs come in an apparent game of high-stakes chicken between President Trump and the Chinese government. Trade talks, soon coming to a conclusion between the two sides, may make for good TV but are causing concern for American businesses who will have to pay significantly more for essential imported components and equipment.

China responded to the latest tariffs this week by saying that it "deeply regrets that it will have to take necessary countermeasures," and hopes that "the US and the Chinese side will work together and work together to resolve existing problems through cooperation and consultation."

French Guiana, a small French overseas territory on the north-eastern coast of South America, is one of the most forested nations on the planet, but its precious ecosystem is under threat from illegal gold mining.

Since then, the price of gold has continued to soar and rampant illegal gold mining has destroyed swathes of jungle from Ecuador across Peru, Colombia and Venezuela to Brazil.

A startup is claiming to have signed age verification contracts with a host of smut site operators – and is hoping 40 per cent of Britons will display their privates to it in July.

The company has not responded to The Register's enquiries about its business model, given that its website boasts that it charges neither consumers or porn companies for its services.

With the British government seemingly hellbent on forcing Britons to compromise their privacy and personal data in order to access certain internet services used by many folk, whether or not they admit it, companies like these are going to be springing up everywhere.

It was signed by France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.

But not everyone is on board - there are 28 countries in the EU, and several of those absent from the joint position statement are significant players - including Germany.

The position of the eight countries is that climate change has "profound implications for the future of humanity" and that its impacts are already apparent - citing "the heat waves and scorching fires of last summer".

But several countries oppose strengthening current commitments, which have proven difficult to stick to just two years after the Paris climate agreement was signed.

Political and economic giant Germany is among them, fearing that further action could damage its industry.

"The FTC must set a resounding precedent that is heard by Facebook and any other tech company that disregards the law in a rapacious quest for growth," write Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). "The commission should pursue deterrent monetary penalties and impose forceful accountability measures on Facebook."

The Republican chairman reportedly favors a fine of around $5 billion and has the backing of the other two Republican commissioners. In its last quarterly earnings statement, Facebook said it was budgeting $3 billion to $5 billion for an expected FTC fine.

But the two Democrats consider this inadequate. They not only want a larger fine, they're also seeking to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally responsible for the company's missteps.

In their letter, Blumenthal and Hawley firmly side with the Democrats in this intra-agency fight. The pair describes a $5 billion fine as a "bargain" for a company with $15 billion in quarterly revenues, and they also argue that "fines alone are insufficient."

Every single web extension, theme, search engine plugin, and language pack had been nuked from netizens' Firefox installations, stripping any data and settings associated with them as they were removed.

For those using the Netflix add-on, there would be no video. For those using HTTPS Everywhere, there would be no enforced privacy. And the situation was similar for users of password management add-ons, content blocking add-ons, and the like.

Hundreds of developers have had had Git source code repositories wiped and replaced with a ransom demand.

The hacker claims all source code has been downloaded and stored on one of their servers, and gives the victim ten days to pay the ransom; otherwise, they'll make the code public.

However, all evidence suggests that the hacker has scanned the entire internet for Git config files, extracted credentials, and then used these logins to access and ransom accounts at Git hosting services.

Facebook is giving social scientists unprecedented access to its data so that they can investigate how social media platforms influence elections and alter democracies.

The scientists will have access to reams of Facebook data such as the URLs that users have shared and demographic information including gender and approximate age.

A leading politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner took a page straight out of Karl Marx’s playbook, calling for the people to take control of large companies in the battle against profit-hungry capitalists.

“The distribution of profits must be democratically controlled,” Kevin Kuehnert, the leader of the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party, told Die Zeit newspaper in an interview published on international labor day. “That excludes that there is a capitalist owner at this business,” he said, using luxury-car maker BMW AG as an example.

Google is to offer users the option of automatically deleting their search and location history after three months.

The search giant has faced scrutiny over the personal data it collects. In November, it was accused of tracking where people went even when they had switched off location history.

And earlier this month, to the surprise of many people, Google said human reviewers sometimes listened to voice recordings from its Home speaker and Assistant app.