Safe Harbour Rules declared invalid

The European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that the personal data of Europeans held in America by tech corporations including Facebook and Google is not safe from United States government snooping and stopped these companies from transferring such information to the US. The court deemed as invalid the Safe Harbour Rules, which has streamlined the transfer of personal data from Europe to the US since 2000. This could well impact trade relations and also affect the trans-Atlantic trade pact that is currently being negotiated between Washington and Brussels. After US defence contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency had mass access to this data, Austrian lawyer Max Schrems took Facebook to court in Ireland for violating privacy. Ireland transferred the case to the European Court of Justice.

Nobel physics prize awarded to Japanese, Canadian scientists

Takaaki Kajita from the University of Tokyo and Arthur B. McDonald from Queen's University, Canada, were given the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. A press release said that the discovery had changed our understanding of our matter works. The winners will share the prize money of 8 million Swedish kronor (about Rs 6.32 crore), along with a diploma and gold medal at the annual awards ceremony on December 10.

Russia’s incursion not an accident: Nato

Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said on Tuesday that it did not look as if Russia’s incursion into Turkish airspace on Saturday was an accident. Claiming that the violation lasted a long time, Stoltenberg said Russia had not provided any real explanation for what happened, though the country has claimed it was brief and a result of bad weather. On Tuesday, Russian jets hit Islamic State targets in the Syrian city of Palmyra and the northern province of Aleppo, a Syrian television channel reported.

US flip-flops on Afghan hospital bombing

The commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, testified before a Senate panel on Monday that Afghan forces had asked for US air cover while they were engaged in a fight to take back the city of Kunduz from the Taliban. However, Campbell changed the US version of the story again, the fourth such modification in four days, saying Afghan forces had not called the US pilots directly, but that a special operations unit had spoken to the aircraft that delivered the fires. Twelve Doctors Without Borders staff and ten patients were killed in the airstrike.

Snowden claims Britain hacked routers

Britain hacked routers in Pakistan made by Cisco, an American firm, and collected large amounts of data to identify terrorists, whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed. The British intelligence and security organisation Government Communications Headquarters has been monitoring the data with permission from the British government, he added. British spies can also make audio recordings or take photos from people’s phones without their knowledge by sending them a single text message, Snowden said. The UK government has declined to comment on the matter.