Sam Frizell

It's not your average nightlight

Smart home company Leeo has unveiled its first product: a smart nightlight.

The light also monitors temperature and humidity in your home and alerts your phone when your smoke or carbon monoxide detectors go off. The device plugs into your wall and has a microphone so it can monitor those detectors, sending you or other people in your call list a warning if there’s smoke in your house.

There’s no doubt the Leeo nightlight is a nifty product. But it’s not clear it’s worth $100 for a device that’s like a combined smoke detector, a NEST and a regular ol’ nightlight, and may not do any of those things as well.

Leeo formed in 2013 and plans to release a series of connected home devices that connect to your home’s Wi-Fi.

Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, two of the world's largest drugmakers, are already working together to make vaccine doses

The world’s leading drugmakers are collaborating to develop millions of doses of an Ebola vaccine for use next year, aiming to prevent West Africans and frontline healthcare workers from contracting the deadly virus.

Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday that its goal is to produce 1 million doses of a two-step vaccine next year, and is already collaborating with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, Reuters reports.

The two companies could combine their vaccines and support each other’s work, while other companies are volunteering to provide production capacity. “I have spoken with (GlaxoSmithKline chief executive) Andrew Witty over the past few days several times as colleagues on how we are going to solve this,” Johnson & Johnson U.S. research chief Stoffels told reporters. “It might even be that we have to combine their vaccine with ours.”

The World Health Organization wants tens of thousands of people in West Africa, including frontline healthcare workers, to start receiving Ebola vaccines in January as part of clinical trials.

[Reuters]

Two experts said the slain teenager's autopsy supports the claim that Brown struggled with the officer who shot him

Michael Brown was shot in the hand at close range, according to an analysis of the slain teenager’s autopsy by two experts not involved in the case. That revelation sheds a small amount of light on Brown’s death, which triggered months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, but still leaves unanswered questions about the sequence of events that led to police officer Darren Wilson shooting and killing the unarmed Brown on Aug. 9.

Wilson has told investigators that Brown struggled for Wilson’s pistol inside a police SUV and that Wilson fired the gun twice, hitting Brown once in the hand, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Wilson later shot and killed Brown, igniting violent protests and national outrage. St. Louis medical examiner Dr. Michael Graham said Tuesday that the autopsy “does support that there was a significant altercation at the car.”

Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco, said the autopsy shows Brown was facing Wilson when Brown took a shot to the forehead, two shots to the chest and a shot to the upper right arm. Melinek said that contradicts witnesses who claim Brown was shot while running away from Wilson or while his hands were up.

Neither Melinek nor Graham are involved in the investigation.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

The disease killed 1.5 million people last year

Nearly half a million more people have tuberculosis than was previously estimated, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, adding to the 9 million people who developed the disease in 2013.

The epidemic killed 1.5 million people in 2013, including 360,000 people who were HIV positive, according to the WHO. The disease has been declining, however, by a rate of 1.5% per year, while its mortality rates have dropped 45% since 1990.

“Following a concerted effort by countries, by WHO and by multiple partners, investment in national surveys and routine surveillance efforts has substantially increased,” said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program. “This is providing us with much more and better data, bringing us closer and closer to understanding the true burden of tuberculosis.”

The WHO said $8 billion is needed each year to combat the epidemic, but there’s currently a $2 billion annual shortfall.

The 45-year-old star says she is happier and is glad her appearance reflects that

Read Zellweger’s full statement to People.

Responding to rumors that she underwent plastic surgery, Renée Zellweger says she is healthier and happier and flattered by the attention her appearance has been getting, People reports.

“I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows,” Zellweger, 45, said in a statement to People of the attention she received after an appearance at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards in Beverly Hills on Monday.

“My friends say that I look peaceful. I am healthy,” Zellweger continued. “For a long time I wasn’t doing such a good job with that. I took on a schedule that is not realistically sustainable and didn’t allow for taking care of myself. Rather than stopping to recalibrate, I kept running until I was depleted and made bad choices about how to conceal the exhaustion. I was aware of the chaos and finally chose different things.”

Her relationship with boyfriend Doyle Bramhall has also made her happier, Zellweger said. “I did work that allows for being still, making a home, loving someone, learning new things, growing as a creative person and finally growing into myself,” she said.

[People]

Read next: Leave Renée Zellweger’s Face Alone!

Federal regulators said Tuesday that 7.8 million are affected by faulty air bags from supplier Takata

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday warned owners of nearly 8 million cars with potentially faulty airbags to “act immediately” on notices to replace the defective parts, in an alert sent over fears that car owners weren’t getting defective airbags replaced, leaving them at risk of injury or death.

The NHTSA has recommended that owners of 7.8 million Toyota, Honda, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors models replace air bags supplied by Takata. The airbags, which can explode in a flurry of shrapnel even after a minor accident, have caused at least three deaths and more than 100 injuries.

“Responding to these recalls, whether old or new, is essential to personal safety and it will help aid our ongoing investigation into Takata airbags and what appears to be a problem related to extended exposure to consistently high humidity and temperatures,” NHTSA Deputy Administrator David Friedman said in a statement.

A total of more than 14 million vehicles from 11 automakers have been recalled over Takata airbags, most in the last two years, the New York Times reports.

Jeffrey Fowle returns after a half a year in captivity

An Ohio man who was detained in North Korea for nearly half a year has arrived back home.

Jeffrey Fowle landed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio Wednesday morning, one day after being released from North Korean custody, the Associated Press reports.

The 56-year-old Miamisburg resident was arrested earlier this year by North Korean authorities after he left a Bible at a nightclub. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea.

Fowle was the only one of three Americans held by Pyongyang who was not convicted of any charges. Two other Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, continue to be held.

[AP]

In the wake of hacks agains Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan, analysts say companies' boards need to be more vigilant on cybersecurity

As an increasing number of major retailers and financial institutions are falling victim to hacks like those against Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan, many experts say corporate boards aren’t doing enough to protect customers from cybersecurity breaches.While corporate boards are a step removed from companies’ day-to-day operations, the increasing risk of data breaches means that boardmembers need to be more involved in cybersecurity, observers say, whether by pushing for security oversight or reshuffling executives who don’t react properly to crises.

“We live in the post-Target era,” said John Kindervag, security analyst at Forrester. “There’s a moral obligation to consider firing an executive team because of a data breach. It’s a huge business failure.”

Corporate boards rarely review cybersecurity plans or involve themselves in the particulars of data protection, traditionally viewing security as an information technology problem. According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report released last month, just 42% of 9,700 executives in over 150 countries said their boards are involved in security strategy; just 25% said their boards are involved in reviewing security and privacy threats.

“They’ll say to the CEO, what are we doing about security, and then don’t get involved at all until they get breached,” says Avivah Litan, security analyst at Gartner. “Most companies don’t communicate at that level with the board. They’re out of touch and they’re totally clueless about information security.”

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Luis Aguilar put it more gingerly to board directors earlier this month at a New York Stock Exchange cybersecurity conference. “There may be a gap that exists between the magnitude of the exposure presented by cyber-risks and the steps, or lack thereof, that many corporate boards have taken to address these risks,” Aguilar said. There’s a discrepancy, too, between what shareholders demand of boards and what they’re actually doing — a survey published by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) last month shows that nearly 70% of shareholders view board oversight actions prior to hacking incidents as “very important.”

Negligent boards may find themselves facing questions from angry shareholders and customers after a cyber breach. In June, ISS made the unusual recommendation that Target shareholders oust seven out of 10 members of its board after credit card information belonging to 40 million customers was compromised, laying blame on two board committees in particular.

“The data breach revealed that the company was inadequately prepared for the significant risks of doing business in today’s electronic commerce environment,” ISS advised. “The responsibility for oversight of these risks lies squarely with the Audit Committee and the Corporate Responsibility Committee.” Shareholders re-elected the board, but ISS’ condemnation was a wake-up call for retailers. Target is now facing an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission into the details of the breach.

Home Depot, meanwhile, was a founding member of a threat-sharing group of major retailers earlier this year, and its board received regular updates on cybersecurity, according to a spokesman. “IT and IT security have regularly been items on our board meeting agendas for several years now, and the board has received regular updates on the breach since it occurred,” said that spokesman. But the hardware retailer was caught flat-footed by a data breach this year that jeopardized 56 million customers’ credit cards, and managers ignored weaknesses in cyber defense before the attack, the New York Times reported last month.

Analysts say a strong board of directors should know how to ask management the right questions about cybersecurity. “The board is not responsible for identifying risk, but it sure as hell needs to know that management understands that responsibility and knows how to respond to it,” said Rick Steinberg, former governance practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Ultimately, it might be a financial motivation that gets corporate boards to take a closer look at their firms’ cybersecurity standards. Target’s net income dropped more than $400 million in the quarter the breach was announced compared to the year before; the company said direct costs from the data breach would reach $148 million in the second quarter of 2014 alone. The total expense of any breach, including lost profits from nervous consumers, are often incalculable. “A data breach is the equivalent of an oil spill,” said Kindervag. “It’s a fundamental business issue.”