In their opinion, Facebook promotes violence against the persecuted minority and that’s why they are demanding more than $150bn (£113bn) in compensation. However, the platform did not give an immediate response, even though it is accused of allowing spreading hateful and dangerous misinformation for years.

A British law firm which is representing some of the refugees has written a letter to Facebook. Www.bbc.com gave some information about it. The letter is said to contain accusations of failing to invest in moderators and fact checkers who actually knew about the political situation in Myanmar. Also, the company is blamed for not taking down posts or deleting accounts that incite violence against Rohingya. Furthermore, in their words it did not take appropriate and timely action, even with all the warnings from charities and media.

As for the US lawyers, they field a legal complaint against Facebook. They accuse the media of being “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in Southeast Asia.” In an investigation by the Reuters news agency, there were posts that appeared, stating: “We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews.” Another one said: “Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster.”

The platform has more than 20 million users in Myanmar, and it is the main or even the only way of getting and sharing news.  In 2018 Facebook did admit that its efforts to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech against the Rohingya were not enough.

The social media site was hugely popular there. It seems, however, that the company was not aware of what was happening on its own platform. That’s why they didn’t actively moderate content in local languages like Burmese and Rakhine. But if they did, they would have seen anti-Muslim hate speech and disinformation about terrorist plots from the Rohingya.

Meta, however, which is now Facebook’s parent company, is trying to turn the focus away from the social platform.

Facebook is largely protected from liability over content posted by its users, under the US law. However, the new lawsuit argues the law of Myanmar, and it has no such protections.

The vulnerability is in Microsoft Azure’s flagship Cosmos DB database. A research team at security company Wiz discovered it was able to access keys that control access to databases held by thousands of companies. Wiz Chief Technology Officer Ami Luttwak is a former chief technology officer at Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group.

Because Microsoft cannot change those keys by itself, it emailed the customers last Thursday telling them to create new ones. Microsoft agreed to pay Wiz $40,000 for finding the flaw and reporting it, according to an email it sent to Wiz.

“We fixed this issue immediately to keep our customers safe and protected. We thank the security researchers for working under coordinated vulnerability disclosure,” Microsoft told Reuters.

Microsoft’s email to customers said there was no evidence the flaw had been exploited. “We have no indication that external entities outside the researcher (Wiz) had access to the primary read-write key,” the email said. Luttwak told Reuters:

“This is the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine. It is a long-lasting secret. This is the central database of Azure, and we were able to get access to any customer database that we wanted.”

Luttwak’s team found the problem, dubbed ChaosDB, on Aug. 9 and notified Microsoft Aug. 12, Luttwak said.

Microsoft told Reuters that “customers who may have been impacted received a notification from us,” without elaborating.

The disclosure comes after months of bad security news for Microsoft. The company was breached by the same suspected Russian government hackers that infiltrated SolarWinds, who stole Microsoft source code. Then a wide number of hackers broke into Exchange email servers while a patch was being developed.

A recent fix for a printer flaw that allowed computer takeovers had to be redone repeatedly. Another Exchange flaw last week prompted an urgent U.S. government warning that customers need to install patches issued months ago because ransomware gangs are now exploiting it.

Problems with Azure are especially troubling, because Microsoft and outside security experts have been pushing companies to abandon most of their own infrastructure and rely on the cloud for more security.

Hanson Robotics, based in Hong Kong, said four models, including Sophia, would start rolling out of factories in the first half of 2021, just as researchers predict the pandemic will open new opportunities for the robotics industry.

“The world of COVID-19 is going to need more and more automation to keep people safe,” founder and chief executive David Hanson said in front of Reuters.

Hanson believes robotic solutions to the pandemic are not limited to healthcare, but could assist customers in industries such as retail and airlines too. He aims to sell “thousands” of robots during the year, both large and small.

Hanson Robotics is launching a robot this year called Grace, developed for the healthcare sector.

Products from other big players in the industry are helping fight the pandemic as well. SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper robot was deployed to detect people who weren’t wearing masks. In China, robotics company CloudMinds helped set up a robot-run field hospital during the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.