Personal details of about 150 million users of the MyFitnessPal app were compromised in one of the biggest hacks in history, its owner has confirmed.

US sportswear brand Under Armour said user names, email addresses and scrambled passwords were among the stolen data. However, payment card data was not affected. It urged customers to change their passwords immediately. The company said on Thursday that the accounts were compromised in February, sending shares of the company down 3% in after-hours trade. The breach was not discovered until 25 March and users were informed four days later.

Under Armour said: “We do not know the identity of the unauthorised party. Our investigation into this matter is ongoing.” The app allows customers to monitor their calorie intake and measure it against the amount of exercise they are doing using a database of more than 2 million foods. It was founded in 2005 by brothers Mike and Albert Lee. The data breach is the largest this year and one of the top five to date, based on the number of records compromised, according to SecurityScorecard, a risk management consultancy.(theguardian)…[+]

The Vatican has scrambled to clarify comments made by Pope Francis to a well-known Italian journalist that appeared to deny the existence of hell. The Holy See issued a terse statement saying a lengthy article published in La Repubblica on Wednesday by Eugenio Scalfari, 93, the newspaper’s founder, was “the fruit of his reconstruction” and not “a faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words”.

While the Vatican conceded that Scalfari, an atheist who struck up a friendship with Francis in 2013, had held a private meeting with the pontiff before the Easter weekend, it said an interview had not been granted. During the meeting Scalfari asked the pope where “bad souls” go, to which he was quoted as responding: “They are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. A hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.”(theguardian)…[+]

The only Christian among the 110 schoolgirls abducted last month by Boko Haram ran away from her kidnappers but was caught and brought back three days later, according to fellow captives speaking in their first face-to-face interview since they were returned to their families last week.

Leah Sharibu is the only one of the Dapchi girls that Boko Haram refused to hand over after negotiations with the Nigerian government, apparently because she refused to renounce her faith and convert to Islam. She is still held by the group. Kidnapped by a militant group that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions across north-east Nigeria and the surrounding region, the girls’ extraordinary bravery shines through their testimony. Speaking to the Guardian from their homes in Yobe state, the girls who had to leave their friend behind described how Leah and two others escaped together. “She didn’t tell us she was leaving,” said Aisha Ibiwa. “We thought she was just going round the corner, but she sneaked out along with Maryam and Amira [two classmates].”(theguardian)…[+]

Detectives investigating the attempted murders of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal have said they believe the pair were poisoned with a nerve agent at the front door of his Salisbury home. Specialists investigating the poisoning of the the Skripals have found the highest concentration of the nerve agent on the front door at the address, police said. Counter-terrorism detectives will continue to focus their inquiries on the home address for the coming weeks, and possibly months, after the father and daughter were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury earlier this month.

Local police have retaken control of The Maltings shopping centre, where the Skripals were first discovered, and London Road cemetery from counter-terrorism detectives, where officers focused their investigation into the nerve agent attack in previous weeks. More than 130 people could have been exposed to the chemical weapon in the aftermath of the poisoning in Salisbury, which the UK government believes was committed by the Russian state. In response to the poisoning, more than 150 Russian officials have been expelled from more than 25 countries, and the UK government is considering further measures to punish Russia, including a ban on the City of London from selling Russian sovereign debt. Public health experts are still working to establish whether the nerve agent attack presents a long term risks to Salisbury’s residents, which will receive a £1m support package from central government to help recover.(theguardian)…[+]

The leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to hold a summit at a village on the border between the two countries on 27 April, only the third-ever such meeting and another sign of a thaw in relations. Senior officials of the two Koreas met on Thursday to prepare for a rare inter-Korean summit, days after the nuclear-armed North’s leader Kim Jong-un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China. Kim is due to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in late April at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone, followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

At the Unification Pavilion on Panmunjom’s northern side, the leader of Pyongyang’s delegation Ri Son Gwon said Thursday’s talks were aimed at paving the way for a meeting between the leaders of North and South – the first direct public reference to a summit by any Northern official or media outlet. “Over the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place,” said Ri, who is chairman of the North’s reunification committee. The rapid rapprochement on the peninsula was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and comes after a year of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes, which saw Kim and Trump engage in a fiery war of words.(theguardian)…[+]