Twitter and Snapchat see user numbers increase 

  • Social media firms Twitter and Snapchat are continuing to add users even as pandemic restrictions ease 
  • Snapchat’s number of daily users topped 293 million in the three months to the end of June, beating analysts’ expectations 
  • Twitter reported it passed the 200 million mark for daily active users who view adverts on its platform in the same period, up 11% year-on-year
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World of Warcraft players stage online protest 

  • Hundreds of World of Warcraft players are participating in an in-game protest against Activision Blizzard after a lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing 
  • The court documents include allegations of a “frat boy culture” that subjected female employees to “constant sexual harassment” 
  • The protest was organized by Fence Macabre, a role-play guild that runs faction neutral stories on the Wyrmrest Accord and Moon Guard servers 
  • In addition, the group is running a fundraising campaign for the charity Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching girls aged 7-17 about computer programming and digital technology
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Man caught with child sex abuse images 

  • A man who shared images of child sex abuse online because he felt ‘lonely and isolated’ has been handed a suspended sentence 
  • The offender, aged 40, was found with over 1,000 of the child sex abuse images on several items seized during a search of his house in Manchester 
  • Following further analysis, it was found he had distributed six of the pictures, Manchester Crown Court heard 
  • The majority of the children featured in the images were said to be aged between 7 and 11 
  • The offender pleaded guilty at the lower court to three offences of making indecent images, two offences of distributing indecent images and possession of an extreme pornographic image
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Parents urged to be vigilant of RSV in children 

  • Parents are being urged to look out for signs of severe respiratory infection in their children over the summer amid a rise in cases 
  • Hospitals are treating a growing number of children with illnesses usually only seen in winter after the levels of such cases fell during the pandemic, health officials in England have said 
  • More young people with high temperatures and difficulty breathing are seeking help amid a surge in colds and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) which usually hits at a different time of year, an official warning from Public Health England said 
  • Positive RSV samples among suspected cases have increased over the past five weeks from 1.2% to 8.9%
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