The Daily Telegraph - 06.08.2019

(C. Jardin) #1

10 ***^ Tuesday 6 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph


Flower power The National Trust has asked visitors flocking to Rhossili Bay, near
Swansea, for Instagram-worthy photos to stop picking the sunflowers. The blooms are
among 400,000 planted to provide a haven for endangered animals, birds and insects.

ALAMY LIVE NEWS

News


Facebook failing


to curb fake


review factories,


says watchdog


By Sam Meadows


FACEBOOK is failing to stop “fake re-
view factories” where online sellers of-
fer freebies in exchange for five-star
reviews, an investigation has found.
The competition watchdog wrote to
the social networking site in June, urg-
ing it to crack down on the practice of
sellers using Facebook groups to effec-
tively buy fake reviews.
Since then researchers from Which?
found 55,000 posts soliciting positive
reviews over a 30-day period.
Potential reviewers are told to pur-
chase items on sites such as Amazon
and that they will be refunded once
they have posted a five-star review.
A large number of positive reviews
can push a particular seller to the top of
search results, potentially tricking con-
sumers into buying shoddy or unsafe
products. The Competition and Mar-
kets Authority (CMA) estimates that
online reviews influence about £23 bil-
lion of spending each year.
The Daily Telegraph signed up to a
number of Facebook groups yesterday,
with thousands of members operating
as fake review factories and saw goods
from designer T-shirts to heart-rate
monitors offered in return for reviews.
Which? researchers also saw exam-
ples of Facebook’s algorithm “suggest-
ing” more fake review groups and
admins promoting other pages in the
event any one is shut down. Facebook


Pension perk to help hit Johnson target


u Police officers about to retire could
be offered pension incentives to stay
on and help hit Boris Johnson’s target
of 20,000 extra police in three years.
A working group of senior police
chiefs will consider expanding a
scheme pioneered by Scotland Yard to
combat a shortfall of experienced
officers taking on serious crime cases.
Rather than taking permanent
retirement, officers are offered the
chance to return to their post at the
same rank and salary with the added
bonus of first being able to draw a


six-figure lump sum from their
pension.
If they had stayed beyond the
standard 30 years, they would have
had no extra benefit to their pension.
This alternative allows them to either
take the pension contributions as extra
pay, or open an additional pension.
The move would aim to retain a
portion of the 6,000 police officers
who quit or retire every year.
It is understood £500 million has
been set aside to start recruiting the
first 6,000 officers from next month.

New dinosaur species found in museum


u A new species of dinosaur “hiding in
plain sight” in a museum for 30 years
has been identified by a British expert.
Prof Paul Barrett, a researcher at the
Natural History Museum, was able to
determine it was different to any other
species because of its well-preserved
skull. The specimen was in a collection
at the University of Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa.
Named Ngwevu intloko – meaning
“grey skull” in the Xhosa language –
the creature was probably an
omnivore, walked on two legs, had a

chunky body, a long slender neck and
a small head. It would have measured
three metres (9.84ft) from the tip of its
snout to the end of its tail.
Prof Barrett said: “This is a new
dinosaur that has been hiding in plain
sight. The specimen has been in the
collection ... for about 30 years, and
lots of other scientists have already
looked at it. But they all thought that it
was simply an odd example of
Massospondylus.”
The findings were published in the
journal PeerJ.

Attacker is jailed for stabbing police dog


u An armed attacker who nearly
blinded a police dog while high on
drugs has become the first person to
be jailed under Finn’s Law.
Daniel O’Sullivan, 29, admitted a
charge under the Animal Welfare
(Service Animals) Act 2019, and was
sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Howard Searle, prosecuting, told
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court how
O’Sullivan was seen clutching a 4in
lock-knife behind his back near the
city’s Potteries shopping centre at
around 2.15pm on July 1. Police,

including Pc Karl Mander and his
service dog Audi, arrived, and
O’Sullivan was told to drop the knife
but refused and threw a glass bottle at
them. Audi was then released.
“It engaged with the defendant,
who stabbed the dog to the eye area,”
said Mr Searle. “The dog had wounds
to its face, one near the eyeball. The
vet that treated the dog said it was
lucky not to have lost an eye.”
In June, a law to protect service
animals came into force, named after a
Finn, a police dog, stabbed in 2016.

Whitehall adviser


breaks down in


court over ‘climate


change catastrophe’


u A former Government adviser
yesterday broke down in tears over
what he described as a climate change
“catastrophe” after being sentenced
for his role in Extinction Rebellion
protests.
Dr Steven Melia, 57, an adviser on
transport, said his actions were a
justified response to a climate
emergency.
The academic, a senior lecturer at
the University of the West of England
in Bristol, has previously advised the
Government on eco-towns.
He was found guilty at Westminster
magistrates’ court yesterday of two
counts of failing to comply with a
condition to disperse protesters.
Melia was among thousands of
people who demonstrated across the
capital in April, when a camp was set
up on Waterloo Bridge, and Oxford
Circus was blockaded with a pink boat.
District Judge Richard Blake fined
Melia, of St Philips, Bristol, £500 and
told him to pay £300 in costs.
The judge added that the right to
demonstrate was “fundamental to a
free society” but it must remain
“within the law”.
Melia, who represented himself, had
to pause after he began crying while
saying that current action against
climate change was “not enough, it’s
not working”.
The lecturer was first arrested at
Waterloo Bridge shortly after
midnight on April 16.
Melia said he would continue to
campaign for Extinction Rebellion but
“try not to get arrested any time soon”.
He added: “For 22 years I have been
acting, in my diet, my work, in all
aspects of my life to combat climate
change.
“I realised that this is not enough


  • that civil disobedience is our last
    hope for avoiding catastrophe.”


said using its platform to facilitate fake
reviews was against the rules. It said it
had removed nine of the 10 groups
flagged by Which? and was investigat-
ing the other.
Natalie Hitchins, of Which?, said the
findings show the social network has
“systematically failed to take action” to
stop its site enabling fake reviews.
“It is deeply concerning that the
company continues to leave customers
exposed to poor quality or unsafe prod-
ucts boosted by misleading and disin-
genuous reviews,” she added.
A Facebook spokesman said: “We
continue to improve our tools to proac-
tively prevent this kind of abuse, by in-
vesting in technology and increasing
our safety and security team to 30,000.”
Which? said that writing or commis-
sioning fake or incentivised reviews
was a breach of consumer law and
could lead to criminal charges.
u Facebook’s past privacy breaches
suggest financial information might
not be safe if it launches a cryptocur-
rency, the Information Commissioner
has warned.
Elizabeth Denham said the prospect
of Facebook gaining a huge cache of fi-
nancial information has “amplified”
concerns about its data sharing.
Facebook announced plans to re-
lease Libra, its cryptocurrency, earlier
this year in what is being seen as an ef-
fort to challenge traditional bank trans-
fers, online payments and credit cards.

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