My search doom
Millions of people around the world were unable to access the major search engines Google, Yahoo, Lycos and Altavista on Monday due to an attack by a variant of the MyDoom email virus. In a novel twist, the MyDoom.o virus spread using the search engines to find ever more new email addresses to send itself to. 鈥淭his is unprecedented. No virus has ever done this before,鈥� says Graham Cluley of antivirus firm Sophos in the UK.
Unwelcome guest
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Fears that West Nile disease might become established in western Europe, as it has in the US, have been heightened by confirmation that two Irish holidaymakers were recently infected with the disease in Portugal. There have been sporadic cases in eastern Europe for decades, but never before in Portugal.
Spot the fraud
More than one in four adults in the US still fall for online 鈥減hishing鈥� scams, according to a nationwide survey by email security firm MailFrontier published on Monday. These bogus emails attempt to solicit sensitive identity information from unsuspecting surfers.
Ignoring sex risks
Young men鈥檚 failure to take precautions during casual sex, both gay and straight, is fuelling a resurgence of sexually transmitted diseases in the UK, the country鈥檚 Health Protection Agency warned on Tuesday. Syphilis cases soared to 1575 in 2003, 28 per cent up on 2002, and chlamydia rose 9 per cent to 89,818. Overall, cases of STDs rose 4 per cent to 708,083.
Scattergun sun
A group of sunspots 20 times the size of our planet spat out a huge flare of charged particles on 25 July. The outburst may disrupt satellite communications when it smashes into the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field this week.