Category: 3. Business

Hackers have breached the Tea app, which recently went viral as a place for women to safely talk about men, and tens of thousands of women’s selfies and photo IDs have now seemingly been leaked online.

A spokesperson confirmed the hack Friday afternoon. The company estimates that 72,000 images, including 13,000 verification photos and images of government IDs, were accessed.

Tea is designed to function as a virtual whisper network for women, allowing them to upload photos of men and search for them by name. Users can leave comments describing specific men as a “red flag” or “green flag,” and share other information about them.

It’s recently gained such popularity that it became the top free app in the Apple App Store this week. The app claimed Thursday to have recently gained nearly a million new signups.

Signing up for Tea requires users to take selfies, which the app says are deleted after review, to prove they are women. All users who get accepted are promised anonymity outside of the usernames they choose. Taking screenshots of what’s in the app is also blocked.

The hacker accessed a database from more than two years ago, the Tea spokesperson said, adding that “This data was originally stored in compliance with law enforcement requirements related to cyberbullying prevention.”

The Tea spokesperson said that the company has hired third-party cybersecurity experts and is “working around the clock to secure our systems.”

“Protecting our users’ privacy and data is our highest priority. Tea is taking every necessary step to ensure the security of our platform and prevent further exposure,” the spokesperson said.

The app has angered some men, and prompted a thread Thursday evening on the right-wing troll message board 4Chan, in which users called for a “hack and leak” campaign. The company became aware of the incident, which was first reported by 404 Media, early Friday, the spokesperson said.

A 4Chan user posted a link Friday morning, allegedly allowing people to download the database of stolen images, and troves of alleged victims’ identification photos have been posted on 4Chan and X.

NBC News has not verified the authenticity of the photos or their provenance.

On Google Maps, a user has created a map that purports to show the locations of Tea users that were affected by the hack, though there are no names attached to the coordinates posted.

The Tea app’s creator, Sean Cook, said on its website that he was inspired after he watched his mother’s “terrifying experience with online dating,” including being catfished and unknowingly dating men with criminal records.

On Tea, users can run background checks, search for criminal histories and reverse-search photos to check whether a man is catfishing.

The app also claims to donate 10% of its profits to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. (The hotline confirmed to NBC News that the company is a donor.)

Some men online have expressed in online posts that they fear being misrepresented or doxxed on the platform. Others, including some users of the app, have also raised concerns that the app could lead to harmful cyberbullying unrelated to actual safety concerns.

In a few online forums, men have floated the idea of creating their own men-only version of the app as payback for women’s use of Tea. One such app, called Teaborn, quickly ignited backlash after its creator called users out for posting revenge porn. The app is now removed from the App Store.

The app said in an Instagram story that new signups have surpassed 2 million in the past few days. Many who have posted on the app’s Instagram page said they remain on the app’s waitlist. By Friday, several commenters had also started expressing concerns about their data privacy in the wake of the hacking news.

As part of a Satellite Sessions program hosted by CancerNetwork^®, a group of experts discussed the current landscape of melanoma treatment, ranging from relevant clinical trials to patient cases. Of particular interest were the phase 3 CheckMate 067 (NCT01844505), RELATIVITY-047 (NCT03470922), and NADINA (NCT04949113) trials.

Adil Daud, MD, HS clinical professor in the Department of Medicine (hematology/oncology) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and director of melanoma clinical research at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, led the panel. His fellow panelists were Bartosz Chmielowski, MD, PhD, a clinical professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, California; Gregory Daniels, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist and professor of medicine at UC San Diego Health in California; Warren Chow, MD, clinical professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the School of Medicine and associate director for clinical sciences in the UCI Health Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center in Orange, California; and Thuy Tran, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology) at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

CheckMate 067

Daud / The 10-year data from CheckMate 067 still show a persistent advantage for ipilimumab [Yervoy] plus nivolumab [Opdivo]. The first few times, the statistical difference between the ipilimumab plus nivolumab arm and the nivolumab-alone arm hasn’t been there. We’ve all been thinking that this is probably going to be positive at some point, but the most recent data do show that you still have this benefit for the ipilimumab plus nivolumab arm with overall survival [OS] and melanoma-specific survival. There is not a clear signal for a definite type of melanoma that seemingly does not benefit [between] both the mutant and wild type. There was a point where the mutant did look like it was better than the wild type, but this most recent analysis doesn’t show that.¹ The PD-L1–positive/negative and [lactate dehydrogenase] LDH-high/low [subgroups] don’t show any differences.

Chmielowski / But I think it was different because nivolumab did not do well in BRAF-mutant [disease] alone. The curves looked like they were separated because nivolumab was doing worse in BRAF-mutant disease than in BRAF wild type.

Daud / Do you make judgments based on BRAF-mutant [status]?

Chmielowski / There was this JAMA paper [that said], “You are showing [these] data [where], if PD-L1 expression is higher, there is not much of a benefit from adding ipilimumab. We are showing that, with BRAF wild type, the difference between nivolumab alone and nivolumab plus ipilimumab is smaller. Should you not be using [these] data and saving patients from toxicities and financial toxicity…?”² [For now,] I still use the combination.

Daud / Is there a class of patients that you’re treating with single-agent PD-1 [inhibitors]? If there’s an older [man] who has lung metastases, is PD-L1 high, and doesn’t have any liver or brain involvement, if he’s 70 or 80 years old, I often will give those people a single-agent [inhibitor].

Chmielowski / I often do. Although I’m treating an [89-year-old patient] with ipilimumab plus nivolumab. But yes, if the disease is a little too aggressive, either we are going to have a response or he’s going to be dead…. Yes, I do use a single agent.

Ipilimumab is given only for 4 doses. After these 4 doses—so after the first 9 weeks of therapy—both arms are identical, but the curves do not get closer. Even 5 or 7 years later, the same separation remains. The message is if I choose the wrong therapy in the first-line setting, I will never be able to catch up. This is what I think when I am selecting, because if I select the wrong one, I will always be on a worse curve, no matter what I do later. Patients on the nivolumab arm had the chance to get ipilimumab [later] if they were in shape, but they did not catch up.

Daniels / [Patients who received ipilimumab] never caught up to the [patients who received nivolumab]?

Chmielowski / Correct. It’s only 9 weeks of therapy, and we don’t see separation early when this therapy is given. We start seeing separation around 16 months into the trial. It means your first-line treatment had an influence on subsequent lines of treatment. Looking at progression-free survival 2 [PFS2]—like on the nivolumab plus relatlimab [Opdualag] trial—PFS2 was better in patients who got nivolumab plus relatlimab in the first line than in patients who got nivolumab alone.

RELATIVITY-047

Daud / [There’s] the RELATIVITY study, which we all know is nivolumab alone vs the nivolumab plus relatlimab combination…. PFS is 10.2 months vs 4.6 months; OS, according to the most recent analysis, is 51 months vs 34 months.³ It’s interesting how the response rate and the OS for nivolumab alone in the nivolumab plus relatlimab study seemed to be underperforming the nivolumab-alone arm of the CheckMate 067 study. Maybe that’s just an artifact of the different populations, although there wasn’t an obvious worsening of the population that I could tell.

Chmielowski / I was paying attention to the same thing. Also, nivolumab in this trial was less toxic than nivolumab in the CheckMate 067 trial. When you look at the frequency of adverse events [AEs], there were fewer AEs with nivolumab alone in this trial, which maybe reflects that people are more familiar with the management [of them]. But there was a follow-up [Journal of Clinical Oncology] paper where they weighted the trials and compared them with each other, and when they selected the patients based on all the characteristics and matched them, they got identical results.⁴

Daud / This makes sense because it would be hard to imagine that nivolumab is just losing its effectiveness as you do more studies….

The most recent OS data we have are 51 months for the nivolumab plus relatlimab arm and 34 months for the nivolumab- alone arm. Melanoma-specific survival also looks like it’s superior with nivolumab plus relatlimab, although it hasn’t been reached yet. Most interestingly, the response data are about 10% better for nivolumab plus relatlimab.

Safety

Daud / Looking at the safety summary…for grade 3 or 4 AEs, it’s 62% for nivolumab plus relatlimab vs 46% for nivolumab plus relatlimab, and it is relatively similar for nivolumab alone…. What are your impressions of the updated RELATIVITY data, and what practice do you consider when choosing dual therapy? What are you focusing on?

Chow / In the reanalysis published in NEJM Evidence [in 2023], they looked at the subset, and the forest plots favored nivolumab plus relatlimab if you had a PD-L1 [expression] of less than 1%.⁵ That’s an important factor to consider if you go with single-agent nivolumab vs the combination of nivolumab plus relatlimab.

Daud / If you had a PD-L1 [expression] that was high, [would you give nivolumab alone]?

Chow / Yes. If this is an older patient with other comorbid conditions, you don’t want to give ipilimumab. If you have a high PD-L1 [expression], the benefit of adding the relatlimab is not so great. You could consider just giving single-agent nivolumab to those patients with a high PD-L1 expression.

Daud / Is your default regimen at this point nivolumab plus relatlimab or nivolumab plus ipilimumab, or is it one of the different single-agent combinations? What are you using to decide?

Chow / ECOG [performance status] is a big differentiator in comorbid conditions. If they’re older and they have a lot of comorbidities, I don’t like to give nivolumab plus ipilimumab. For the older patients—over 70 [years]—the decision point for me is the PD-L1 expression.

A Patient Case

Daud / Our last case is a 56-year-old [patient]. The patient had COVID-19—which may or may not be connected—and had a left submandibular lymph node and NRAS mutation with a high [tumor mutation burden], so it was skin to begin with. Would you give him pembrolizumab [Keytruda], nivolumab plus ipilimumab, or send him to surgery?

Daniels / I’d give him nivolumab plus ipilimumab.

Chmielowski / I would give [the NADINA regimen].

Chow / NADINA.

Daud / NADINA, you would do that? It’s funny, I saw 2 patients of the same type on the same day. For whatever reason, I gave one of them nivolumab plus ipilimumab, and I put [the other] on a clinical trial with relatlimab—it was the [phase 3 Regeneron study (NCT06246916)] with the [fianlimab and cemiplimab (Libtayo)] combination. The [patient who received] ipilimumab plus nivolumab had 7% residual tumor…. Would you stick with the NADINA data?

Daniels / Yes, that’s done.

Chow / The data are the data.

Daud / I haven’t decided what to do. I’m thinking about whether to give him a little bit more ipilimumab plus nivolumab. I might have led him to think that the results were going to be good because his scans were so great. But he still had that little bit of residual tumor left.

Chmielowski / It’s difficult to make it better. That’s why I would stop. Also, the argument is to stop because I sense that if he recurs, he will respond again.

Daud / True. As long as you’re keeping close tabs on him, [and monitor him for any adverse reactions].

Daniels / For a [patient] like this, are you putting in clips and taking out a single node, or are you doing the full neck?

Daud / With this [patient], I did put a clip in, but I haven’t been consistently putting a clip in. There was another [man] who was a pathologist, and that [patient] had a forehead melanoma and bilateral lymph nodes. He’s had 4 cycles of pembrolizumab, and now, just when I had the bright idea of putting clips in, the lymph nodes are undetectable. I sent him to get a Magseed, and they [said], “What do you want us to put a Magseed in? There’s nothing.” What are you doing? Are you putting clips or a Magseed in?

Daniels / I’m starting to put clips in. If there’s hesitation, I’ll wait, and if I start seeing a response, I’ll get them in quick…. NADINA didn’t clip them. They did a full dissection.

Tran / I usually try to get them clipped before starting neoadjuvant immunotherapy. But in spite of that, in the NADINA trial, of the 198 patients who underwent surgery, 197 of them—which is almost 99.9% of the patients—had a total lymph node dissection. They didn’t get a limited dissection. Only 1 had an index lymph node removed. Technically, if you’re going to follow the NADINA trial, we should be doing the total therapeutic lymph node dissection….

Tran / In my practice, I discuss this with my patients. I tell them that yes, even though in the purest form, we technically do the total therapeutic lymph node dissection, the data are evolving. We can clip the lymph nodes. We could do limited. [There’s] less morbidity. I go through the options with the patients and tell them, “Yes, the standard of care is still technically a total therapeutic dissection, but limited [therapeutic dissection] is an option.” Especially since I always rescan the patients after neoadjuvant immunotherapy. If I see the lymph nodes completely disappearing, and I have already clipped the lymph node, it isn’t unreasonable to offer a limited dissection.

Daud / What do you do for a [patient] who started with bilateral lymph nodes and has had a great clinical response? Would you do a limited sampling of both necks? Or would you go full bilateral neck if the patient is willing to do that? With neck dissections, you do get these seromas and some serious morbidity if you do a multilevel neck dissection.

Tran / It’s hard. If a patient started with a high disease burden, then I might be more inclined to do a bigger dissection vs someone with very limited disease from the get-go. [If] they have a great response with immunotherapy, I would lean toward considering doing limited [therapeutic dissection]. But I don’t think the data are out there yet.

References

1. Wolchok JD, Chiarion-Sileni V, Rutkowski P, et al. Final, 10-year outcomes with nivolumab plus ipilimumab in advanced melanoma. N Engl J Med. 2025;392(1):11-22. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2407417
2. Courtney PT, Yip AT, Cherry DR, Salans MA, Kumar A, Murphy JD. Cost-effectiveness of nivolumab-ipilimumab combination therapy for the treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(5):e218787. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.8787
3. Tawbi HA, Stephen Hodi F, Lipson EJ, et al. Nivolumab (NIVO) plus relatlimab (RELA) vs NIVO in previously untreated metastatic or unresectable melanoma (RELATIVITY-047): overall survival (OS) and melanoma-specific survival (MSS) outcomes at 3 years. J Clin Oncol. 2024;42(suppl 16):9524. doi:10.1200/JCO.2024.42.16_suppl.9524
4. Long GV, Lipson EJ, Stephen Hodi F, et al. First-line nivolumab plus relatlimab versus nivolumab plus ipilimumab in advanced melanoma: an indirect treatment comparison using RELATIVITY-047 and CheckMate 067 trial data. J Clin Oncol. 2024;42(33):3926-3934. doi:10.1200/JCO.24.01125
5. Long GV, Stephen Hodi F, Lipson EJ, et al. Overall survival and response with nivolumab and relatlimab in advanced melanoma. NEJM Evid. 2023;2(4):EVIDoa2200239. doi:10.1056/EVIDoa2200239

The pay of water company chief executives in England and Wales rose by 5% in the last financial year to an average of £1.1m, despite a ban on bonuses for several companies and widespread outrage over the sector’s poor performance.

Total pay reported by water companies reached £15m in 2024-25, up 5% on £13.8m the previous year, according to Guardian analysis of 14 companies’ annual reports.

Water companies have been under scrutiny in recent years over their record on the environmentally damaging discharges of sewage into Britain’s rivers and seas. Politicians and campaigners have also reacted angrily to bill increases allowed in April by the regulator, Ofwat.

The pay figures raise questions about the effectiveness of the government’s efforts to limit water executives’ pay. Ofwat gained powers last year to insist that bonuses were paid by shareholders rather than through customers’ bills, before new rules in June that allowed a ban on bonuses for bosses of companies guilty of the most serious environmental damage.

The biggest pay increase was enjoyed by Keith Haslett, the chief executive of Affinity Water. He was awarded an extra £844,000, doubling his total pay to £1.6m. Portsmouth Water’s boss, Bob Taylor, also doubled his pay, to £754,000.

Six companies – Thames Water, Anglian Water, Southern Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water – were banned from paying bonuses for the 2024-25 financial year to their chief executives and chief financial officers. The bonus ban did appear to have an effect, with pay falling 8% to £5.5m across those six suppliers. Most of that drop was driven by Thames Water, whose boss, Chris Weston, received £1m, after he and three predecessor chief executives received a total of £1.7m the year before.

Despite the bonus ban, Southern Water awarded its chief executive, Lawrence Gosden, an 80% pay increase to £1.4m.

After the Guardian revealed the increase, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said Gosden should turn down the extra money. Southern Water said the pay increase complied with the rules. A spokesperson said it was not a bonus but part of a “two-year long-term incentive plan”. Not all the money was paid during the financial year, and he may not receive all of it if Southern fails to achieve an adequate environmental rating.

Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at We Own It, a group campaigning for public ownership of water, said: “The public is rightly angry about the obscene levels of cash being handed over to the private water bosses.

“What has their highly valued commercial brilliance delivered for us? Water bills hiked by 30% and the ongoing vandalisation of our rivers and lakes. No new reservoirs built in 30 years, and 3bn litres of water lost daily to crumbling pipes.

“Never in the field of essential public services has so much been earned by so few for doing so little.”

Pay for chief financial officers pay fell 3% to £7.6m for the 12 water companies who disclosed it, although that decline was driven by a steep drop from £1.3m to £636,000 for the since-departed Alastair Cochran at Thames Water as the company neared collapse. Aside from Thames, CFO pay rose by 7% on average during the year.

The highest-paid water boss was Liv Garfield, of Severn Trent, a FTSE 100 company that supplies 4.6m households across the Midlands and north Wales. She was granted £3.3m during the financial year.

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The lowest-paid water chief executive was David Hinton, of South East Water, who received £456,000 – still well above the £270,000 salary for the head of the NHS.

Luke Hildyard, the executive director of the High Pay Centre, which campaigns against “excessive” pay, called for water company salaries to be limited to 10 times the lowest earners.

“Many people have found it hard to reconcile the litany of financial, environmental and customer service disasters variously afflicting these companies with top pay awards that have frequently exceeded £1m,” he said.

“Is a clean, reliable water supply really so contingent on these seven-figure pay awards?”

A government spokesperson said: “Undeserved bonuses for water company bosses have now been banned as part of the government’s plan to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good. We also have ringfenced customers’ bills to ensure investment must be spent on new sewage pipes and treatment works, not bonuses.

“Any instances of companies trying to circumvent the new rules are completely unacceptable. The government will leave no stone unturned against any bosses being made these payments.”

A spokesperson for Water UK, a lobby group, said: “Executive pay in the water industry is independently determined by remuneration committees, which abide by the laws and regulations set by government.

“Water companies are focused on investing a record £104bn over the next five years to secure our water supplies, end sewage entering our rivers and seas and support economic growth.”

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A dating safety app that allows women to do background checks on men and anonymously share “red flag” behaviour has been hacked, exposing thousands of members’ images, posts and comments.

Tea Dating Advice, a US-based women-only app with 1.6 million users, said there had been “unauthorised access” to 72,000 images submitted by women.

Some included images of women holding photo identification for verification purposes, which Tea’s own privacy policy promises are “deleted immediately” after authentication.

Tea said the breach affected members who signed up before February 2024. It added it had “acted fast” and was “working with some of the most trusted cyber security experts”.

The app has recently experienced a surge in popularity – as well as criticism from some who claim it is anti-men.

Tea lets women check whether potential partners are married or registered sex offenders as well as run reverse image searches to protect against “catfishing”, where people use fake online identities.

But one of the most controversial aspects of Tea is that it allows women to share information on men they have dated to “avoid red flags” but also highlight those with “green flag” qualities.

The company said the breached photos “can in no way be linked to posts within Tea”.

The firm blocks screenshots so that posts are not shared outside the app.

But on Friday it also admitted that an additional 59,000 images from the app showing posts, comments and direct messages from over two years ago were accessed.

Tea said: “We’re taking every step to protect this community – now and always.”

BBC News has contacted Tea for comment.

The company was set up in November 2022 by Sean Cook, a software engineer who said he was inspired to create Tea after witnessing his mother’s online dating experiences.

He told Medium in May: “I was shocked by how easy it was for catfish, scammers and criminals to take advantage of women on dating apps and how little traditional dating apps do to protect users.”

However, some men – and women – have challenged these types of groups claiming that they put men at risk of invasion of privacy and defamation.

Earlier this year, an individual named Nikko D’Ambrosio took legal action against Facebook’s owner Meta because of a number of statements made about him in a chat group called “Are We Dating the Same Guy”.

The lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge in Illinois.

Karachi- July 26, 2025 — The Canadian Dollar (CAD) has increased to 209.18 Pakistani Rupee (PKR) as of today, up from 207.65 PKR on July 21.

CAD to PKR- Daily Updates

This follows a series of fluctuations, with the CAD trading at 207.48 PKR on July 16, 207.88 PKR on July 9, 209.06 PKR on July 4, 207.96 PKR on July 2, 207.35 PKR on June 30, 206.34 PKR on June 24, 206.98 PKR on June 21, 207.32 PKR on June 18, and a weekly high of 208.31 PKR earlier in June.

Valuation Criteria

The Canadian Dollar-Pakistani Rupee exchange rate is driven by economic factors such as interest rates, inflation, trade balances, and macroeconomic stability. Canada’s strong economy, fueled by natural resource exports and stable fiscal policies, supports the CAD’s value. In contrast, Pakistan’s PKR faces pressures from inflation, political uncertainties, and external debt obligations, alongside global currency market trends.

Impact

The CAD’s rise increases the cost of Canadian goods for Pakistani importers, potentially impacting sectors like technology or agriculture. Pakistani expatriates in Canada benefit, as their CAD remittances convert to more PKR, boosting purchasing power in Pakistan. However, ongoing volatility may challenge businesses and investors engaged in cross-border trade.

Currency Overview

The Canadian Dollar (CAD), nicknamed the “Loonie,” is Canada’s currency, managed by the Bank of Canada, and is valued for its stability due to Canada’s robust economic fundamentals. The Pakistani Rupee (PKR), issued by the State Bank of Pakistan, is Pakistan’s currency, often influenced by domestic economic challenges and global market dynamics.