Canadian police identified an 18-year-old woman with a history of mental health problems as the suspect in a school massacre in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, that left six people dead, including a teacher and five students. The attack occurred on Tuesday in the remote town, according to The Guardian.
In other news, China's President Xi Jinping made a rare public reference to a recent military purge that saw the country's top military general removed, according to BBC World. General Zhang Youxia, widely seen as Xi's closest military ally, was removed from his post in January and accused of "serious violations of discipline and law," typically a euphemism for corruption. Speaking in a virtual address on Tuesday, Xi stated that the past year had been "unusual and extraordinary," adding that the army had "undergone revolutionary tempering in the fight against corruption."
Meanwhile, Apple and Google agreed to make changes to their app stores in the UK following an intervention from the UK markets regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), as reported by BBC Technology. The tech giants committed to not giving preferential treatment to their own apps and will be transparent about how others are approved for sale. This agreement came seven months after the regulator said Apple and Google had an "effective duopoly" in the UK over their dominance in the sector. The CMA's head, Sarah Cardell, said the proposed commitments "will boost the UK's app economy."
Also, according to BBC Business, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, asked Jeffrey Epstein for advice in dealing with her £6 million debt pile while he was still in jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Emails recently released by the Department of Justice revealed the desperate measures Ferguson considered to rescue her finances, including bailouts funded by two billionaires and selling her jewellery. Ferguson found the experience "so so demoralising" and said she was "about to freak with exhaustion," the emails suggest. "Death is easier than this," she appears to have said.
Finally, a report by the children's commissioner for England found that children are routinely exposed to adverts for weight loss injections and pills online, according to BBC Technology. Dame Rachel de Souza said the posts were "immensely damaging" to young people's self-esteem and called for a ban on social media advertising to children. The report found young people were "bombarded" with ads for products which claimed to change their bodies and appearance, despite this kind of advertising being banned. A spokesperson for the media regulator Ofcom said it did not tolerate "tech firms prioritising engagement over children's online safety."
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