By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, charging

Enel SpA is on track to miss a key target tied to the terms of almost $11 billion

The effects of long Covid are still being uncovered by experts, and now doctors have been studying a rare complication that saw a man’s legs turn purple. A new research paper has been released which looks into the case of a 33-year-old man who had been infected with Covid 18 months earlier and experienced difficulties when standing up. His legs would turn purple when he did so, as well as tingling and itching, but things would return to normal when he lay down. The odd condition was diagnosed as POTS dysautonomia. This was determined after his pulse was found to rise to 127 beats per minute when standing, as well as feeling shaky and unsteady on his feet. The paper leads on from previous studies, which detected POTS in 20 people after they developed a Covid-19 infection. According to the new study published in The Lancet, there is "evidence is growing of a link between long Covid and POTS dysautonomia”. The paper’s co-author Dr Manoj Sivan said in a statement: "This was a striking case of acrocyanosis in a patient who had not experienced it before his Covid-19 infection. "Patients experiencing this may not be aware that it can be a symptom of long Covid and dysautonomia and may feel concerned about what they are seeing. Similarly, clinicians may not be aware of the link between acrocyanosis and long Covid." Dr Sivan added: "We need to ensure that there is more awareness of dysautonomia in long Covid so that clinicians have the tools they need to manage patients appropriately." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Bitcoin mining requires as much water annually as all of the baths in Britain, according to a new analysis of the cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. Financial economist Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion litres of water each year is required to cool the computers used to support the cryptocurrency’s network. Separate research from 2018 found that 1.6 trillion litres is how much bath water the British public sends down the plughole every year – enough to fill roughly 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The latest analysis, which was published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday, suggested that a single bitcoin transaction could use as much water as a backyard swimming pool. “Many parts of the world are experiencing droughts, and fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource,” said Mr de Vries. “If we continue to use this valuable resource for making useless computations, I think that reality is really painful.” The “useless computations” refer to the complex calculations required to mint new units of the cryptocurrency and verify transactions on the network. The use of water to cool the necessary hardware could be significantly reduced if miners shifted their operations underwater, with companies like Microsoft already placing some of their data centres in the ocean in order to cool them. Earlier this month, China announced that it had begun building the world’s largest underwater data centre in order to reduce electricity and water costs. Bitcoin has previously been criticised for its electricity consumption, with Mr de Vries’s Energy Consumption Index estimating that the cryptocurrency’s network uses roughly as much electricity as the country of Poland. Bitcoin advocates have refuted accusations relating to bitcoin’s electricity consumption, claiming that miners are increasingly turning to renewable energy sources as the costs of wind and solar drop. A recently published study suggests bitcoin mining could actually help speed up the transition to renewable energy, as solar and wind energy installations could earn hundreds of millions of dollars mining bitcoin during periods of excess electricity generation. ”These rewards can act as an incentive for miners to adopt clean energy sources, which can lead to combined positive effects on climate change mitigation, improved renewable power capacity, and additional profits during pre-commercial operation of wind and solar farms,” said Apoorv Lal, a doctoral student at Cornell University who was involved in the research. Read More Bitcoin mining could supercharge transition to renewables, study claims Bitcoin mining rate hits all-time high amid record-breaking prediction for 2024 Elon Musk scam ads appear on X as key advertisers depart Scientists find planets moving around in strange ‘rhythm’ Astronomers find unprecedented ‘disc’ around distant planet Scientists have cooked ‘alien haze’ that could help find life

JERUSALEM Israel aims to parlay its technological prowess to become an artificial intelligence "superpower", the Defence Ministry director-general

London hasn’t seen rain in 22 days, close to breaking the previous longest stretch from last July when

Germany’s top court struck down a key element of the government’s plans to address climate change and transform

Elon Musk announced on Friday that X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, will dramatically limit the ability of users to block other accounts, a move that critics say will allow harassment to flourish on the platform. “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs [direct messages],” Mr Musk wrote in a post on X on Friday. “It makes no sense.” Critics quickly pounced on the move. “I thought the old Twitter was a pretty negative force for American society, I’m glad it was ‘disrupted’, but removing the ability to block will just encourage the kind of pile-ons that made it bad,” wrote journalist Nate Silver in an X post. Monica Lewinsky wrote a post of her own tagging Mr Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino, saying, “please rethink removing the block feature. as an anti-bullying activist (and target of harassment) i can assure you it’s a critical tool to keep people safe online. - that woman.” Even some X investors like Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao seemed sceptical. “X should really solve the bots & spam problems before removing blocks,” he wrote on X. “Just my 0.02.” As X users flagged in a community note, the removal of the blocking feature, which allows X users to block certain accounts from appearing in their feeds or being visible to others interacting with their content, could run afoul of the policies of the Apple and Google app stores. “It’s a downward spiral that cannot be good for the long term success of X,” Louis Jones of the Brand Safety Institute told CNBC. The potential change to the policy is the latest tweak Mr Musk has made to the service since taking it over last year. Earlier this week, users noticed the X logo had changed on Apple operating systems, appearing with a grunge-style effect over the company’s X symbol. “The cracks & scratches better represent this product that I love,” Mr Musk wrote of the new design. The concern over changing the block feature follows a report from The Washington Post that X has been throttling traffic to news sites and competitors. Read More Elon Musk says ability to block other X accounts may be removed in future Elon Musk’s X now sorts posts on accounts based on number of likes, not by chronology Elon Musk’s Twitter slows down access to rival websites X now sorts posts on accounts based on number of likes, not by chronology Musk’s Twitter takeover sparks mass exodus of climate experts Elon Musk’s Twitter slows down access to rival websites

After bans on affirmative action in states from California to Florida, colleges have tried a range of strategies to achieve a diverse student body

One of Google’s earliest employees will step back from an executive management role, having held a senior position

Despite no evidence backing up their claims, Flat Earthers are adamant that they are correct when it comes to the shape of our Earth. Even when their own evidence disproves them, it seems. Back in 2020, a couple from Venice tried to prove the world was flat by setting sail to the edge of the world, which they believed was somewhere near Sicily, after a planned Flat Earthed cruise to Antartica was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The couple violated the lockdown restrictions in place at the time of their travels, selling their car in order to buy a boat. Using a compass, a device that works because the Earth is round, the pair set off in their boat to reach Lampedusa. However, it was not long until they found themselves lost, tired, and on the island of Ustica instead. Salvatore Zichichi of the Maritime Health Office of the Ministry of Health told Italian newspaper La Stampa: "For them, Lampedusa [an island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea] was the end of the Earth." "The funny thing is that they orient themselves with the compass, an instrument that works on the bass of terrestrial magnetism. A principle that they, as Flat Earthers, should reject." They were placed in quarantine by health officials due to the ongoing pandemic at the time, but the couple escaped and sailed away in pursuit of the edge of Earth. Three hours later, they were caught. The pair tried to escape one more time but failed, and abandoned their plan, taking a ferry back to mainland Italy once their time in quarantine was fulfilled. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

INDIANAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 25, 2023--