It cost just under $5 million for Colonial Pipeline, the company that operates the largest fuel pipeline in the US, to pay off a gang of cybercriminals that hacked its servers, shut off the flow of oil and gas, and disrupted fuel supplies across the east coast. The company caved to hackers’ ransom demands within hours of the attack, Bloomberg News reported.

In a ransomware attack, criminals encrypt a company’s data and demand an extortion payment in exchange for a special key that will restore the company’s access to its files. Colonial Pipeline’s decision to pay the hackers flies in the face of most official recommendations. US policy—and the standing advice of many other national governments and intelligence agencies—is clear: Companies should not pay ransoms to hackers.

But in practice, it’s a bit messier than that. From time to time, the FBI will privately tell a hacked company it understands if executives choose to pay off the hackers. At a press conference following the Colonial Pipeline Attack, top White House cybersecurity official Anne Neuberger acknowledged that sometimes companies have no other choice: “We recognize, though, that companies are often in a difficult position if their data are encrypted and they do not have backups and cannot recover the data,” she said.

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Reddit, a sprawling collection of message boards is supported by advertising, but that may be changing. In an appearance at a conference this week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says he’s open to exploring ways its millions of users can earn money through the site. But he’s not planning on paying them.

“I do think moderators and users…should be able to, long term, earn money on Reddit, but they don’t work for Reddit therefore Reddit wouldn’t pay them,” he said at a virtual conference hosted by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.  “I do think economics will begin slowly working its way through Reddit. A lot of our non-ad revenues eventually will build toward that.”

Founded in 2005 by Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit has grown into the 19th most visited website on the planet. But it still maintains the anarchic spirit of the early Internet, and its 100,000+ communities, known as subreddits, are a jumble of geekery, deep knowledge, and porn. Despite its size, Reddit has maintained a relatively low profile compared to contemporaries like Facebook and Twitter, but has been forced into the spotlight when its communities attract outsized attention. Most recently, it was the subreddit /r/wallstreetbets fueling the GameStop stock frenzy.

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From the US to Europe, there is growing awareness that an over-reliance on China for rare earths presents economic and national security risks. One high-stakes arena that could shape the trajectory of the global climate economy is the rare earth permanent magnet industry.

What are rare earth magnets?

Permanent magnets are so called because they maintain their magnetic properties even when exposed to a magnetic field. Put another way, the magnets have permanent magnetic fields.

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Here’s what you need to know

Israel is closer to a ground operation in Gaza. Five days into the latest conflict, more tanks and troops arrived at the border, with heavy shelling and air strikes continuing against Palestinian rocket attacks.

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Every week, shoppers online scramble to get their hands on some new sneaker release, and every week, most invariably fail. But the hunt isn’t over. Those willing to pay a premium for their desired shoes will always find them on resale marketplace StockX.

StockX’s trade in sneakers helped it snag a $3.8 billion valuation in April, and the company is growing fast as sneakers become status symbols. But its ambitions have always been bigger than footwear and StockX is already seeing success elsewhere, like in electronics: Many shoppers unable to get their hands on a PlayStation 5 at retailers have been finding them at a premium on StockX.

Since November in the US, the company says it has sold around 83,000 PS5 standard consoles at an average sale price of $573, and 55,000 PS5 digital versions at an average price of $531. (The PS5 retails at about $499 and $399, respectively.) In the past year, the game console was the top-selling product on the site by both number and value of sales, according to Jesse Einhorn, StockX’s senior economist.

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India’s Covid-19 pandemic is about to get much more complicated.

A crushing second wave of Covid-19, when the country is persistently seeing around 350,000 new infections a day, has led to a massive increase in cases that require strong medication. Now, the long-term effects of such drugs are leading to cases of a rare fungal infection, which can even prove fatal in some instances.

Mucormycosis, colloquially known as black fungus, is an infection from the mucormycetes group of fungi. It is abundantly found in natural environments, especially in soil. Though rare, this infection has been around for decades, but only impacts those with health conditions and significantly weakened immune systems because of the use of steroids.

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South Africa is set to expand its nationwide rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations as the country braces for a potential third wave of the coronavirus pandemic that officials fear could materialize in the coming weeks.

Beginning Monday, South Africans aged 60 and older will be able to receive the vaccine as part of the second phase of a rollout that began in February. To date, roughly 431,000 healthcare workers in the country have received the Covid-19 shot created by the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, which the country was the world’s first to administer. A broadening of the program for vaccinating healthcare workers sent hundreds of such workers and others to vaccine sites this week in search of shots.

The jabs slated to start Monday will be administered with a dose of urgency. Cases of Covid-19 have increased in South Africa recently after remaining relatively flat since a second wave of the pandemic ended in February. Over the past seven days, the country has recorded a 46% uptick in cases nationwide, though the rise comes off a low base. South Africa now has roughly 23 cases of infection for every 100,000 people, compared with 90 cases per 100,000 in the U.S. and about 200 cases per 100,000 in India.

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If overburdened crematoriums weren’t enough, India now has unidentified bodies washing up the banks of river Ganga, adding to the worry that the country is vastly undercounting its Covid-19 deaths.

Nearly six weeks since the Covid-19 situation in the country became alarming, the number of deaths because of the disease reported from various districts has been inconsistent with data from crematoriums and graveyards. Indian newspapers in regional languages like Gujarati have been doggedly calling out the state government for glaring gaps in death reporting.

Even in large metropolises like Delhi, the deaths officially counted by the government are far fewer than those counted by the civic authorities overseeing crematoriums.

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