Hospitals will need to use new strategies to tackle bacteria experts have warned, after finding a type of hospital superbug is becoming increasingly tolerant of alcohol -- the key component of current disinfectant hand rubs. From a report: Handwashes based on alcohols such as isopropanol have become commonplace as a method of infection control. But while the move has been linked to benefits, including a fall in rates of hospital infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), new research suggests it might also have had unexpected consequences. Scientists say they have discovered that superbugs known as vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or VRE, appear to be becoming more tolerant to alcohol.

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I also uploaded the HighFiles PDF to the Scripting News repo.

A big downside of ceding economic leadership to China is that their norms of freedom will become the norms of the world. Once Google's search engine censors access to the net in China, it's just a matter of time before they do it in the west too.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earth's resources are limited. We only have so much water and food, let alone oil and gold. But humans are using more than Earth has to offer, and have been since 1970. In 2018, it's predicted we will use the equivalent of 1.7 Earths worth of resources -- which is, oh, almost a whole Earth more than we have. And the date at which we've consumed more than one Earth in a given year is called... Earth Overshoot Day. In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.

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Nearly four decades after Nicaragua's revolution, former Sandinista commanders believe President Daniel Ortega has become the new Anastasio Somoza.

Israel's intelligence community was 'struck dumb for two days' amid fears Trump may seek to mend ties with Tehran.

Health ministry announces Ebola outbreak in DRC just days after previous emergence of the deadly virus is declared over.

An anonymous reader writes: NetMarketShare reports on the state of the desktop operating system market on the first day of each month. [...] In July, [the market share of] Windows 10 went from 35.71 percent to 36.58 percent, an increase of 0.87 percentage points. That's down from the 0.97 percentage points it grew in June, but shows that the OS is still packing on share at a steady rate. In July, Windows 7 lost 0.51 percentage points and now sits on 41.23 percent, just 4.65 percentage points ahead of the newer OS.

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When I moved to California from Madison in 1979, I put together a brochure, in a manner of speaking, about the work I had been doing on an integrated outliner and database. I called the product HighFiles, for a high level file system. That's how I thought of it. We found a copy of this document in my mom's house. Finally got around to scanning it. It's a time capsule. Some ideas I didn't think I had that early, and some absolute SMH things, which I'm now putting on the record. I was only 24 when I wrote this, 39 years ago.

Women in South Africa protest against a long-running problem of gender-based abuse.

Three Ukrainians associated with the hacking group FIN7 have been arrested in Europe in connection with hacks of more than 100 U.S. companies that led to tens of millions of dollars in losses, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and court documents. From the report: Fin7 has been linked to breaches affecting hotels bearing the name of U.S. President Donald Trump, Whole Foods, Chipotle, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, according to cyber security firm Trend Micro. The suspects, Fedir Hladyr, Dmytro Fedorov and Andrii Kolpakov, were arrested in Europe between January and June of this year, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. Hladyr is in U.S. custody and U.S. authorities are seeking extradition of the other two, the department said. The three were arrested in connection with computer hacks to steal customer payment card data and other information from more than 100 U.S. companies, the department said.

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Country's president says ruling party to push ahead with plans to redistribute land, without compensation for white farmers, widening concerns.

The French Senate passes a law reducing the time refugees can claim asylum and the number of days to appeal a rejected decision, but increases how long they can be detained before being deported.