Glassdoor, a service that enables current and former employees to anonymously review companies, is out with its annual "best companies to work for" list, and a number of tech names have seen their rankings fall. From a report: One area where the techlash could most harm Big Tech is recruiting and employee retention. Facebook fell to No. 23 from No. 7 among large U.S. firms, making this the first time since 2015 that the company didn't make the top ten. It's worth noting, though, that its 4.4 rating is still well above the 3.5 average, with most employees still happy to work there despite another year of controversy. Google, which landed at No. 11, dropped three spots, while Apple, at No. 84, dropped 13 positions. Employees rated the company high for compensation and benefits, but lower in senior leadership, citing bureaucracy and poor work-life balance. Microsoft, meanwhile, rose 13 places to rank at No. 21.

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#BlackLivesMatter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and rapper Lowkey talk about being branded a 'terrorist' and activism.

What can Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder teach about ending impunity for the violent suppression of the media?

Security researchers are accusing Apple of abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to take down a viral tweet and several Reddit posts that discuss techniques and tools to hack iPhones. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Vice: On Sunday, a security researcher who focuses on iOS and goes by the name Siguza posted a tweet containing what appears to be an encryption key that could be used to reverse engineer the Secure Enclave Processor, the part of the iPhone that handles data encryption and stores other sensitive data. Two days later, a law firm that has worked for Apple in the past sent a DMCA Takedown Notice to Twitter, asking for the tweet to be removed. The company complied, and the tweet became unavailable until today, when it reappeared. In a tweet, Siguza said that the DMCA claim was "retracted." Apple confirmed that it sent the original DMCA takedown request, and later asked Twitter to put the Tweet back online. At the same time, Reddit received several DMCA takedown requests for posts on r/jailbreak, a popular subreddit where iPhone security researchers and hackers discuss techniques to jailbreak Apple devices, according to the subreddit's moderators. "Admins have not reached out to us in regards to these removals. We have no idea who is submitting these copyright claims," one moderator wrote.

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The world's first fully electric commercial aircraft has taken its inaugural test flight, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and flying for 15 minutes. From a report: "This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work," said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Australian engineering firm magniX. The company designed the plane's motor and worked in partnership with Harbour Air, which ferries half a million passengers a year between Vancouver, Whistler ski resort and nearby islands and coastal communities. Ganzarski said the technology would mean significant cost savings for airlines and zero emissions. "This signifies the start of the electric aviation age," he said. Civil aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions as people increasingly take to the skies, and new technologies have been slow to get off the ground. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has encouraged greater use of efficient biofuel engines and lighter aircraft materials, as well as route optimization.

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Abiy Ahmed received the award for his efforts towards ending Ethiopia's conflict with Eritrea.

After months of promising to reexamine how it handles harassment on its platform, YouTube has unveiled an update to its policy. From a report: On Wednesday, the Google-owned video platform said it would take a "stronger stance" against threats and personal attacks, among other changes intended to address the safety of its community. YouTube said it would now prohibit "veiled" or "implied" threats, not just explicit ones. This new policy includes content that simulates violence against a person or language indicating physical violence could occur. YouTube also said it will no longer permit "maliciously" insulting someone based on characteristics like race, gender expression or sexual orientation, whether it's a private individual, YouTube personality or public figure. The policy applies to content, as well as comments. The move comes six months after YouTube faced one of its most high-profile controversies over harassment in recent memory.

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The TV personality, scientist and conservationist died on Wednesday, the foundation he formed says.

Major disruption across France is set to continue, but strikers seem to have support from the wider public.

Court says 'substantial grounds to believe' Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, Alfred Yekatom behind crimes against civilians.

President Mahamadou Issoufou cuts short trip to Egypt due to 'tragedy' at military camp in Inates, western Niger.

U.S. regulators decided to allow Boeing's 737 MAX jet to keep flying after its first fatal crash last fall even after their own analysis indicated it could become one of the most accident-prone airliners in decades without design changes [Editor's link: the link may be paywalled], the Wall Street Journal reports. From the report: The November 2018 internal Federal Aviation Administration analysis, released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, reveals that without agency intervention, the MAX could have averaged one fatal crash about every two or three years. That amounts to a substantially greater safety risk than either Boeing or the agency indicated publicly at the time. The assessment, which came the month after a Lion Air crash in Indonesia, raises new questions about the FAA's decision-making in the wake of that disaster, along with what turned out to be faulty agency assumptions on ways to alleviate hazards. In the wake of the analysis, the FAA took steps to put short-term and permanent measures in place to combat hazards, but Wednesday's hearing started off with challenges to some of those decisions. "Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the 737 MAX continue to fly," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The FAA's intervention proved inadequate after a second fatal MAX crash, in Ethiopia in March, led to the global grounding of the fleet and sparked an international controversy over the agency's safety oversight.

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A "safe" alternative to opioid painkillers turns out to be not so safe. From a report: Gabapentin was supposed to be the answer. Chronic pain afflicts about a fifth of American adults, and for years, doctors thought it could be treated with prescription painkillers like Oxycontin. But as the drugs began killing the equivalent of three planeloads of Americans every week, opioid prescriptions fell off precipitously. Many doctors embraced gabapentin, an anticonvulsant drug traditionally used to prevent seizures, as a way to treat neuropathic pain while avoiding triggering life-threatening addiction. From 2012 to 2016, prescriptions for gabapentin increased 64 percent. It's now the 10th-most-commonly-prescribed medication in the United States. Baclofen, a muscle relaxant, has become another popular opioid replacement. Though gabapentin and baclofen can cause a boozelike "high" for some people, they're far less addictive and less likely to be fatal when taken in large quantities than opioids are. But now their own pitfalls are becoming clear. Though gabapentin and baclofen are much safer alternatives to opioids, recent research suggests that they're not as safe as some doctors might have hoped, especially in combination with other sedating medications. The findings are a frustrating turn that suggests there's still no silver bullet for chronic pain. By examining the National Poison Data System, which collects reports of poisonings around the United States, Kimberly Reynolds, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, and her co-authors recently found that people are increasingly using both gabapentin and baclofen to either get high or attempt suicide. From 2013 to 2017, people tried to commit suicide using gabapentin nearly 42,000 times, and thousands more abused or misused the substance. In most cases -- nearly 70 percent -- the poisoned individuals took a combination of gabapentin and other drugs. Meanwhile, the majority of the poison cases involving baclofen were suicide attempts. "It's rare, but overdose from large quantities of gabapentin or baclofen can be fatal," Reynolds told me via email.

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday demanding that two US Homeland Security agencies -- Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- release details on how they've been using powerful phone surveillance tools. From a report: The ACLU is suing after the two agencies declined to provide it with documents related to International Mobile Subscriber Identity, or IMSI, catchers, more commonly known as Stingrays. These devices pretend to be cell towers and connect with nearby phones, intercepting data that details calls, messages and device location. IMSI catchers can often pull in data from entire neighborhoods, and they're able to obtain sensitive details on people without the people even knowing. Civil liberties and privacy groups have criticized the technology for its invasive surveillance. The two agencies have denied the ACLU's requests for information since 2017, telling the civil rights organization that "no records responsive to your request were found." The assertion comes despite the fact that a House Oversight Committee investigation in 2016 found that ICE spent $10.6 million on 59 IMSI catchers and that CBP had spent $2.5 million on 33 IMSI catchers.

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Shifting policies on land reform and food subsidies by successive governments have contributed to the dire situation.