The Islamic State (IS) militant group is driven out of most of the northern Syrian town of Kobane, a Kurdish commander tells the BBC.

Athlete Oscar Pistorius is in court for the fifth day of his sentencing hearing, after being convicted of killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp

Police in Hong Kong have used cranes to clear road blocks erected around a major protest site.

After President Putin banned fresh food imports from the EU, how are Russians coping without delicacies like Parmesan cheese and Serrano ham?

Three members of a Dutch motorcycle club are now leading a Kurdish battalion fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq.

The UK's casualty vessel RFA Argus will depart on Friday for Sierra Leone with medical teams and aid experts on board as world leaders call for more aid to fight Ebola.

American health officials have faced some tough questioning after a nurse in Texas was allowed to travel after treating an Ebola victim who later died.

The UK charity Street Child has spoken to people in Kenema in Sierra Leone whose lives have been devastated by Ebola.

On Thursday, the Guardian reported that the developers of Whisper, a social media platform that allows individuals to post anonymous messages that can be seen by others based on a number of factors, isn’t all that anonymous after all. Whisper, which is advertised as “the safest place on the Internet,” tracks geolocation data of posters and uses their location data for a number of purposes—including censorship and reporting of posts from military bases to the Department of Defense. Whisper’s chief technology officer took to YCombinator’s Hacker News to defend the company against the report, but his explanation was torn apart by security and privacy experts in the discussion that followed.

Much like its competitor Secret, Whisper allows individuals to post anonymous messages overlaid on images or photos to share with others for comment. The application uses geolocation data to determine where the poster is and who should be able to see its contents.  It has become popular with a number of communities, including members of the military.

The Guardian was exploring a potential editorial relationship with Whisper, and staff from the news organization spent three days at Whisper’s offices in Los Angeles. While there, the Guardian team witnessed Whisper employees using an in-house geolocation tool to track posts made from various locations and found that the company is tracking specific Whisper users believed to be “potentially newsworthy,” including members of the military, government employees, and employees of companies such as Disney and Yahoo. The company also shares information about posters and their locations with the Defense Department, FBI, and the UK’s MI5, the Guardian’s Paul Lewis and Dominic Rushe reported.

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UK pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline says its Ebola vaccine will not be ready until late 2015 and is "going to come too late" for this epidemic.

The Japanese start-up Fove has developed a consumer eye-tracking helmet for use in virtual reality environments.

Brazilian police have arrested a man who they say has confessed to at least 39 murders over a three-year period.

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American Ebola survivor Nancy Writebol and her husband David talk about the moment she found out she had the virus.

The umbrella, which has become a symbol of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, has spawned an art movement all of its own.

The "Apple SIM" allows AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or EE support without switching SIM cards. Andrew Cunningham

Apple's iPad announcements today focused overwhelmingly on the iPad Air 2's thickness, its screen, and its internals, but it and the iPad Mini 3 got some other quieter upgrades too. One such upgrade is a new "Apple SIM," a nano SIM card that allows the cellular models to switch between multiple mobile carriers without changing the actual card. At launch the card supports AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and UK carrier EE. Though Apple is still selling Verizon-compatible iPads, the US' biggest carrier remains conspicuously (though perhaps not surprisingly) absent from the list.

One thing Apple is emphasizing with the SIM is that it can be used to secure short-term data commitments, rather than the regular monthly charges most cellular tablets generally assume. In theory, you can jump between carriers based on the one that's offering the data you need for the price you want, and you never have to swap out the SIM card to do it. Apple is also playing up the ability to buy data from international carriers when traveling, though obviously the carrier list will need to expand before this is practical.

Though the Apple SIM is launching in the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3, we would expect it to start showing up in other Apple products eventually. Simplifying the product line instead of shipping carrier-specific versions of iPhones and iPads seems like the right move for Apple to make; let's hope carriers continue to climb on board.

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After President Putin banned fresh food imports from the West, Russian menus began to change. Now, many believe the sanctions will boost the local economy, as Sarah Rainsford reports.

The world's fastest ambulance has been revealed at the Gitex technology show in Dubai.

An eight-year-old boy form Kosovo has been reunited with his mother after returning from Syria.

The expanding options for communicating over the Internet and the increasing adoption of encryption technologies could leave law enforcement agents “in the dark” and unable to collect evidence against criminals, the Director of the FBI said in a speech on Thursday.

In a post-Snowden plea for a policy more permissive of spying, FBI Director James B. Comey raised the specters of child predators, violent criminals, and crafty terrorists to argue that companies should build surveillance capabilities into the design of their products and allow lawful interception of communications. In his speech given at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC, Comey listed four cases where having access to a mobile phone or laptop proved crucial to an investigation and another case where such access was critical to exonerating wrongly accused teens.

All of that will go away, or at least become much harder, if the current trend continues, he argued.

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