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The Netherlands is sending more forces to contain "serious" post-storm looting on the island of St Martin as Hurricane Irma leaves a trail of destruction. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said more soldiers and police would be deployed amid reports of people with guns and machetes roaming the streets. A French minister said she witnessed looting close up. The island is shared between France and the Netherlands. At least 17 people across the Caribbean have been killed by Hurricane Irma. The hurricane has been downgraded to a category four, but US officials have warned that it remains "extremely dangerous". The storm has recently pummelled the Turks and Caicos Islands - a British overseas territory which has experienced a top-rated category five hurricane for the first time. It is now hitting Cuba and the Bahamas. Some 500,000 people were told to leave south Florida ahead of its arrival there on Sunday. Nine people are now known to have bee...

The UK tax office must improve its handling of website security problems, says an expert who spent 57 days trying to report a bug. The researcher, called Zemnmez, found two separate flaws on HMRC's online tax service. He said finding who to report the issues to was more challenging than finding the bugs. HMRC said it had addressed the problems and was looking at improving ways for people to get in touch. Zemnmez said exploiting either flaw could have let attackers view or modify ta x records or harvest key details from Britons. "I spent days reaching out to half a dozen different government social media accounts attempting to find where the right place to go was and got nothing meaningful in response," he told the BBC. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre - contacted through friends with intelligence connections - was key in helping get the security problems solved, he added. Common weakness Clues that the HMRC site was vulnerab...

Mitch Lowe does. And he remembers what they said to him as he set about putting them out of business with Redbox, the movie rental company. “They said 'wait a minute, we rent movies for $5. You can’t make money renting them for a dollar!’" "The year I left we did $1.5bn in revenue. Blockbuster doesn’t exist any more. Lowe was also on the founding executive team at Netflix, and he helped guide the company to be the dominant online streaming service. It is one of Silicon Valley’s great disruptors - turning an industry almost on its head. Now he thinks he can do it again, this time with cinema. Lowe didn’t create Moviepass - it’s been around for six years - but he’s the company’s new chief executive at a time when it is making a dramatic move: it’s lowered its monthly subscription rate to $9.95. For that money you can watch any movie, at (almost) any movie theatre in the US, any time you like, as often as you like (though not more than once...

About 143 million US customers of credit report giant Equifax may have had information compromised in a cyber security breach, the company has disclosed. Equifax said cyber-criminals accessed data such as Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses during the incident. Some UK and Canadian customers were also affected. The firm's core consumer and commercial credit databases were not accessed. Security checks. Equifax said hackers accessed the information between mid-May and the end of July, when the company discovered the breach. Malicious hackers won access to its systems by exploiting a "website application vulnerability", it said but provided no further details. The hackers accessed credit card numbers for about 209,000 consumers, among other information. Time Warner users exposed in data breach. UK data protection laws to be overhauled Verizon: Yahoo data breach may hit deal Shoddy data-stripping leads to cyber-leaks ...

Bell Pottinger's Asian unit has said it will separate from its British parent, amid reports the public relations firm is nearing collapse. Bell Pottinger's UK business is expected to go into administration as early as next week, the firm said. The Asian business will begin trading under a new name "in the coming days". The PR firm was expelled from the industry trade body after being accused of stirring up racial hatred in South Africa. The company's Asian business is seeking to distance itself from the scandal. "The Asia business is entirely ringfenced and solvent," Asia Chief Executive Ang Shih Huei said in a statement sent to clients on Friday seen by the BBC. "Our teams are intact, we continue to serve our clients and it is entirely business as usual. Bell Pottinger Asia said it would soon re-launch with a new ownership structure and operate under the name Klareco Communications. Nearing collapse Late on Thur...

Automated financial advice delivered by computer algorithm - often dubbed robo-advice - is a fast-growing business. But should you entrust your life savings to a computer? For many of us, talking about money is embarrassing - revealing our income and spending habits can feel like disrobing in public. So it's no wonder seeking investment advice from an impersonal, unbiased computer program is proving so popular. Consultancy firm Accenture found that 68% of global consumers would be happy to use robo-advice to plan for retirement, with many feeling it would be faster, cheaper, and more impartial than human advice. "Many of our clients say they feel awkward in face-to-face meetings, preferring an online experience where they don't feel judged," says Lynn Smith, a director of robo-advice firm Wealth Wizards. So how does robo-advice work and is it really any better than traditional financial advice? Robo-adviser firms use algorithms to analyse ...