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An order which would have banned the popular video sharing app TikTok from smartphone app stores in the US has been temporarily blocked.
The order, from the administration of Donald Trump, was due to take effect at 11.59pm on Sunday.

A more comprehensive ban remains scheduled for November, about a week after the presidential election.
Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, did not agree to postpone the later ban.

TikTok: What data does it collect, and how do other apps compare?

The ruling followed an emergency hearing on Sunday morning in which lawyers for TikTok argued the administration’s app store ban would infringe on the company’s First Amendment rights and do irreparable harm to the business.

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Earlier this year, the US president said TikTok was a threat to national security and it must either sell its US operations to US companies or be barred from the country.

TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is scrambling to firm up a deal tentatively struck a week ago in which it would partner with Oracle, a huge database-software company, and Walmart in an effort to win the blessing of both the Chinese and American governments.

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In the meantime, it is fighting to keep the app available in the US.

Trump: ‘I don’t mind’ if Microsoft buys TikTok

Judge Nichols did not explain his reasoning publicly, instead filing his judicial opinion under seal.
In arguments to Judge Nichols, TikTok lawyer John Hall said that TikTok is more than an app, since it functions as a “modern day version of a town square”.
“If that prohibition goes into effect at midnight, the consequences immediately are grave,” Mr Hall said.
TikTok lawyers also argued that a ban on the app would affect the ability of tens of thousands of potential viewers and content creators to express themselves every month and would also hurt its ability to hire new talent.
Justice Department lawyer Daniel Schwei said Chinese companies are not purely private and are subject to intrusive laws compelling their cooperation with intelligence agencies.
The Justice Department has also argued that economic regulations of this nature generally are not subject to First Amendment scrutiny.

More than 10 million people have downloaded the NHS contact-tracing app since it launched on Thursday, despite it suffering a problem that left tens of thousands of test results unlogged.
The app, which Health Secretary Matt Hancock described as an “important step forward” in tackling COVID-19, had been downloaded six million times on its first day and 10 million by Sunday, the Department of Health said.

Mr Hancock described the figures as an “absolutely fantastic” response.

Is the NHS app up to the job?

But download numbers aside, the app has had a less-than-fantastic start.
Mr Hancock’s comments were made a day after an important fix for the app was rolled out – it solved an issue that had prevented users in England from being able log test results.

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On Friday, the app’s developers admitted it had not been able to link more than 60,000 coronavirus tests carried out that day – just under a third of England’s total – to its systems.

They confirmed the glitch after one user tweeted that he was being asked to enter a code he did not have in order to log his result.

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The app includes a link to enter a code that people should receive via email or text message from the testing service when their result comes through.
It asks users to self-isolate for 14 days if it detects they have spent 15 minutes or more in close proximity to someone who has tested positive.
But before the glitch was solved, it was only human contact tracers who could reach out out to those affected by someone testing positive in an NHS hospital, Public Health England lab, or through a surveillance study.

Image: The contact tracing app alerts users via Bluetooth technology
The glitch appeared to undermine the app’s central role of warning people of previous contact with a positive case.
While anyone in England and Wales can download the app, the problem existed only in England.
In a statement released on Saturday, a health department spokesperson implied it was solved, saying anyone with a positive test result can now log their result on the app.
“A minority of people, such as hospital patients, who were unable to log their positive result can now request a code when contacted by NHS Test and Trace to input on their app,” the statement read.
But as of Sunday, people who book a test outside the app still could not log negative results.

App ‘makes the UK safer’

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Regarding other app features, Mr Hancock said more than 1.5 million venue check-ins were recorded on Saturday.
More than 460,000 businesses had downloaded and printed QR code posters that can be scanned to check-in. These QR codes allow contact tracers to reach multiple people if an outbreak is found.
Mr Hancock described the “enthusiastic response” of over 10 million downloads in a few days as “a strong start” and “absolutely fantastic,” but called on more businesses and people to follow suit.
“The more of us who download it the more effective it will be,” he said.

Half a million sharks could be killed for their natural oil to produce coronavirus vaccines, according to conservationists.
One ingredient used in some COVID-19 vaccine candidates is squalene, a natural oil made in the liver of sharks.

Squalene is currently used as an adjuvant in medicine – an ingredient that increases the effectiveness of a vaccine by creating a stronger immune response.

Image: Scientists are testing synthetic alternatives to avoid threatening shark populations
British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline currently uses shark squalene in flu vaccines.
The company said it would manufacture a billion doses of this adjuvant for potential use in coronavirus vaccines in May.

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Around 3,000 sharks are needed to extract one tonne of squalene.

Shark Allies, a California-based group, suggests that if the world’s population received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine containing the liver oil, around 250,000 sharks would need to be slaughtered, depending on the amount of squalene used.

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If two doses are needed to immunise the global population, which is likely according to researchers, this would increase to half a million.
To avoid threatening shark populations, scientists are testing an alternative to squalene – a synthetic version made from fermented sugar cane.

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Stefanie Brendl, founder and executive director of Shark Allies, said: “Harvesting something from a wild animal is never going to be sustainable, especially if it’s a top predator that doesn’t reproduce in huge numbers.
“There’s so many unknowns of how big and how long this pandemic might go on, and then how many versions of it we have to go through, that if we continue using sharks, the numbers of sharks taken for this product could be really high, year after year after year.”
According to estimates made by conservationists, around three million sharks are killed every year for squalene, which is also used in cosmetics and machine oil.
There are fears that a sudden rise in demand for the liver oil could threaten populations and see more species become endangered as many species rich in squalene, such as the gulper shark, are already vulnerable.

Texas officials have warned thousands of residents of a city in the state about using tap water after a deadly brain-eating microbe was found in the water supply.
Tests were carried out on the system and confirmed the presence of Naegleria fowleri in Lake Jackson after a six-year-old boy contracted the microbe and died earlier this month, city manager Modesto Mundo told reporters on Saturday.

Officials believe the amoeba entered Josiah McIntyre’s body at a splash park in the city, or from a hose in the family home.

Image: The amoeba is regularly fatal in the people it infects
Until the water supply has been disinfected and tests show it is safe to use again, city residents have been told to boil tap water before drinking it and using it for cooking.
They have also been advised to take other measures, including ensuring water does not go up their nose while bathing, showering or washing their faces.

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Families have also been warned not to allow children to play with hoses, sprinklers, or any toy or device that may accidentally squirt water up the nose.

Eight communities had initially been warned on Friday not to use tap water for any reason except to flush toilets, while authorities distributed bottles of water to households.

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Officials lifted that warning on Saturday, but the advice on boiling water remains in place for Lake Jackson’s 27,000-plus residents.
Josiah’s mother, Maria Castillo, said her son died at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston on 8 September, and that doctors told her the cause was the brain-eating amoeba, NBC News reported.
She said her son was “super active” and “loved to be outside and loved playing baseball”.

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Naegleria fowleri is commonly found in warm freshwater and soil, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose.
From there it travels to the brain and can cause a rare and debilitating disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis. The infection is usually fatal.
Contamination of public water systems in the US by the microbe is rare but not unheard of.
The first deaths from the microbe after it was found in tap water occurred in southern Louisiana in 2011 and 2013, according to the CDC’s website.
According to the CDC there were only 34 infections across the entirety of the US from 2009 to 2018, the majority of which came from recreational water areas.
However it highly fatal. Of the 145 people infected between 1962 and 2018, only four survived.

A problem that prevented tens of thousands of people from logging the result of their coronavirus tests on the new NHS contact-tracing app has been fixed, according to a Department of Health spokesman.
In a statement, they said: “Everyone who receives a positive test result can log their result on the app.

“A minority of people, such as hospital patients, who were unable to log their positive result can now request a code when contacted by NHS Test and Trace to input on their app.”
It came after the app’s developers admitted it had not been able to link more than 60,000 coronavirus tests carried out in England on Friday – just under a third of the total – to its systems.

Image: This was the NHS app response to the issue, raised by a user on Twitter
The admission had appeared to undermine the central role of the software, which is to warn people when they have come into contact with anyone who subsequently tests positive.

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The long-awaited NHS COVID-19 contact-tracing app launched on Thursday across England and Wales.

However, in a response to a tweet on Friday by a user who said they had been tested but could not upload the result because they had not received a code, the app’s developers said it was not linked to test results processed in Public Health England labs or NHS hospitals.

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“If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative,” they wrote.

Official government figures show a total of 210,275 people were tested in England on Friday, including 61,481 in hospitals and PHE labs (Pillar 1) and 148,894 in testing centres (Pillar 2).
The admission on the app’s official Twitter account would have meant the results of just under a third (29%) of the tests carried out a day after the app went live could not be linked.
An earlier statement from the Department of Health said: “We are urgently working to enable positive tests for people who aren’t already given a code to be added to the COVID-19 app.
“NHS Test and Trace will continue to contact people by text, email or phone if your test is positive advising you to self-isolate and for those who don’t have a code, the contact tracers will shortly be able to provide codes to insert in the app.
“If you book your test via the app the results will be automatically recorded in the app and the isolation countdown will be updated.”

Your questions answered on new contact-tracing app

Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth had raised the issue on social media.
The shadow health secretary tweeted: “We all want to see this app succeed. We’ve encouraged people to download it.
“But have they really launched an app that doesn’t actually link to tests carried out by NHS hospital labs & PHE labs instead only including tests carried out via the outsourced lighthouse lab network??”
The Welsh government pointed out that Public Health Wales results can be processed and urged people to continue using the app.
Posting on Twitter, Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething urged people “shouting” that the app is “useless” to “please calm down”.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called the new mobile phone app an “important step forward” in the UK’s fight against COVID-19.
The app includes a link to enter a code which people receive via email or text message from the testing service if they have tested positive for COVID-19.
It asks users to self-isolate for 14 days if it detects they were in close proximity to someone with coronavirus.
Those who are tested in a NHS hospital, PHE lab or under one of the surveillance studies, including the ONS, and test positive are currently contacted by NHS Test and Trace contact tracers by text, phone or email.

Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, former chair of the ethics advisory board for the first edition of the app, said: “This is clearly a glitch. I imagine it won’t be that difficult to sort out, and the focus is on making sure the system is integrated.
“If they book the tests with the system they can feed them back into the app, clearly we haven’t yet got it right in terms of the other parts of the testing system being able to feed in and we would expect that to be sorted pretty quickly.”
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran told Sky News: “How on earth can we trust this government with our data with a test-trace isolate system that is meant to be the key to unlocking this country through this pandemic and keeping us all safe, when the very basics of the information that are meant to be given to this app, we find out over a tweet? It is just bizarre.”

Is long-awaited test and trace app up to the job?

Sky’s political correspondent Rob Powell said of the initial problem: “This could be a fairly serious blow to what was touted obviously by the prime minister as a world-beating test and trace system.
“To add insult to injury, this appears to be an England-only issue.”