The European Space Agency is working to tackle the issue of space debris with the technological version of a big hug. From a report: It hopes to be able to use tentacle-like mechanical arms to embrace a dead satellite and remove it from orbit. Other options considered include casting a net over the object, using a single robotic arm or firing a harpoon. At Esa's ministerial council last month, the agency allocated $450 million to space safety programmes, some of which will go towards a mission aimed at removing defunct satellites from orbit. The head of Esa's space debris office, Holger Krag, said work on developing the mission would start now with the aim of designing something that could be used again. "The goal is to make these removal actions happen more frequently, and therefore they need to be cheap," he said. "The technology that we will most likely use now is actually consisting of some sort of arms, like tentacles, that embrace the object because you can capture the object before you touch it."

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Land speed record holder Andy Green describes his final high-speed test run in the Bloodhound car.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani says he hopes talks with Saudi Arabia will lead to 'progress'.

Greece has sent warships to Crete after Turkey and Libya signed a controversial deal dividing the sea.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released a new study which suggests that piracy is dropping in Europe. While the research is limited to site-based piracy, it has some interesting findings. Countries with a lower average income per person visit pirate sites more often, for example. In addition, the study shows that awareness of legal options doesn't always decrease piracy.

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The European parties did not trigger a mechanism in the accord that could renew UN sanctions against Iran.

Reports of gunmen attacking building near bridge where anti-gov't protesters camped out for weeks, killing at least 7.

Agnes Reeves Taylor had been due to face charges of torture and conspiracy to commit torture during Liberia's civil war.

Magic Leap just announced that they're in the midst of closing a Series E round of funding, but it sounds like they're going to have to clinch that investment with some pretty troubling sales numbers for their only device on the market. From a report: The Information is reporting [paywalled] that Magic Leap managed to sell just 6,000 units of its $2,300 Magic Leap One headset in its first six months on sale, a figure made worse by CEO Rony Abovitz's internal claims that he wanted the startup to sell at least one million units of the device in the first year, a goal the report states he was later convinced to rethink -- Abovitz later projected the company would sell 100,000 units in the first year. The report adds that Magic Leap's second-generation VR headset is "years away from launch" and the startup recently laid off dozens of employees. Magic Leaps counts Google, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Qualcomm, AT&T, Japan's NTT Docomo, and the government of Saudi Arabia among its investors. Further reading: Magic Leap Finally Demoed Its Headset And It Is 'Disappointing'; Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap, Says Oculus Cofounder; Oculus CTO Carmack Downplays Consumer AR, Calls Magic Leap Overhyped; and The Magic Leap Con.

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The FBI says owners of IoT (Internet of Things) devices should isolate this equipment on a separate WiFi network, different from the one they're using for their primary devices, such as laptops, desktops, or smartphones. From a report: "Your fridge and your laptop should not be on the same network," the FBI's Portland office said in a weekly tech advice column. "Keep your most private, sensitive data on a separate system from your other IoT devices," it added. The same advice -- to keep devices on a separate WiFi network or LAN -- has been shared in the past by multiple IT and security experts. The reasoning behind it is simple. By keeping all the IoT equipment on a separate network, any compromise of a "smart" device will not grant an attacker a direct route to a user's primary devices -- where most of their data is stored. Jumping across the two networks would require considerable effort from the attacker. However, placing primary devices and IoT devices on separate networks might not sound that easy for non-technical users. The simplest way is to use two routers. Further reading: Now Even the FBI is Warning About Your Smart TV's Security.

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Usman Khan, who killed two people and injured several others, had a terrorism conviction and was only released from prison last year.

The teenager has become the figurehead of a global movement of climate justice activists.

Gaza's health ministry says 14 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli fire, four of them with live gunshots.

After signing a pact with the Seattle Seahawks last week, Amazon Web Service announced a much larger deal with the NFL to use its technology to address concussions and other devastating injuries. From a report: AWS will provide artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to the NFL with the hope that eventually, the league will be able to predict the risk of player injuries, it announced on Thursday. Amazon Rekognition, Amazon ML Solutions Lab and Amazon SageMaker will be used by the NFL's data scientists, developers and doctors to develop a platform called "Digital Athlete." With "Digital Athlete," the league can create a simulated model of an NFL player and run it through an endless number of game scenarios to gain a better understanding of what situations lead to injury. The league's doctors will also use other data like equipment choice, playing surface, play type, environmental factors, aggregated and anonymized player injury information and player position to better understand how to treat or rehabilitate injuries.

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General Motors and LG Chemical plan to make battery cells for electric-powered vehicles, unveiling a joint venture that they expect to create more than 1,100 jobs in northeast Ohio. The companies say they'll invest up to $2.3 billion in the venture. From a report: The project is centered around Lordstown, Ohio, where GM shuttered a plant last March that had produced the Chevrolet Cruze. The new plant in the Lordstown area will make battery cells for GM's upcoming all-electric vehicles, from a Cadillac sedan to a new electric truck that's slated for release in late 2021. GM recently sold its idled Cruze plant to a company called Lordstown Motors, which plans to produce electric pickup trucks at the facility, as member station WCBE reported. The new venture will pair GM's manufacturing know-how with LG Chem's battery-cell technology, says GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. Construction on the facility will begin in the summer of 2020, the companies say.

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