While Brexit slowly shuffled out of the news cycle in August, the European Commission is still very much centre stage. The past month's biggest story is arguably the EC's ruling on Apple's tax case in Ireland, which both the company and the country are likely to appeal against. The commission is also gearing up towards revamping the ePrivacy directive (the so-called cookie law) to include over-the-top players like WhatsApp and Skype.

Keep reading to catch up with Europe's most important tech, science, business, and policy news for August.

Europe’s competition chief has ordered Ireland to reclaim €13 billion (£11.1 billion) in back taxes from Apple. Speaking at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels, Margrethe Vestager said: “Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies—this is illegal under EU state aid rules." Apple's boss Tim Cook, in a lengthy statement rebuffing the ruling, accused the EC of trying "to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws, and upend the international tax system in the process." Later, in an interview, Cook also called the case "total political crap." Ireland has also said it will appeal against the decision in Europe's courts.

In related news, Apple’s new data centre slated for construction in Ireland has been granted approval by An Bord Pleanála. The €850 million installation was announced in early 2015 for Athenry, near the city of Galway.

Uber has urged the new London mayor to nix English tests for drivers. The company has griped that Transport for London is forcing its drivers to take tougher English tests than even the UK's national citizenship exam. It also claimed that only 0.5 percent of all driver feedback from customers last month related to poor English. In related news, seemingly emboldened by the temporary success of Deliveroo riders’ protests, couriers working for the on-demand food delivery service UberEats are planning a strike of their own in the UK capital city.

Google has been fined more than £5 million (€5.9 million) by Russian competition authorities. The investigators found that the ad giant had breached competition rules with its Android mobile operating system, and told the company to slacken limits it places on device makers. Google appealed the decision, but the appeal was tossed out by Moscow’s ninth arbitration court a few days later. The antitrust case dates back to a February 2014 complaint lodged by Russian search firm Yandex.

Riders working for Deliveroo in the UK have staged a strike lasting more than four days over changes to their pay packet. The company, which is one of the UK's most popular takeaway delivery services, was forced into a humiliating climbdown. The news came a few weeks after the company announced a massive £209 million (€246 million) Series E funding round. In the meantime, Deliveroo is battling a formidable rival, Delivery Hero, on German streets. According to a recent internal projection, Deliveroo’s revenues will reach £130 million (€153 million) this year.

Amazon is pouring more cash into the UK with plans to open another national distribution centre in the country. This will be the online retail giant's 13th warehouse in Britain, bringing with it 1,500 new "permanent" jobs. Amazon claimed the pay would be "competitive" with employees earning up to £9 (€10.60) per hour—once they've worked at the site for at least two years. The London Living Wage—the salary someone needs to take home to sustain the basic cost of living in the capital—is currently £9.40 (€11.06) per hour, while the rate for the rest of the UK is £8.25 (€9.71).

Germany's interior minister revealed plans for facial recognition systems in the country’s airports and train stations. Thomas de Maiziere said that he wanted a system that would allow biometric information gathered from surveillance cameras to be matched against intelligence databases of known terror suspects. Digital rights activists, however, have told Ars that the plan goes too far and would prove ineffective. A large trial for facial recognition at Mainz train station funded by Germany's interior ministry proved worthless as too many false positives made the technology unreliable—though it's worth noting that the test was carried out over nine years ago.

The national religion of Norway—the Evangelical Lutheran Church—lost a staggering 15,000 of its flock in just four days. It happened after a one-click function was added to its website allowing members to unsubscribe from the religion. The feature prompted 10,854 people to walk away in the space of 24 hours. Within a few more days, a further 5,000 members had left the church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church—which claims 3.8 million souls—was Norway's official religion until 2012 and is currently disentangling itself from the state.

CERN has confirmed that hints of the hypothetical new particle have disappeared. While the possible new particle never produced a signal that reached statistical significance, it did show up in some detector data towards the end of last year, raising the hope that the LHC was finally on to some new physics. Those hopes have now officially been dashed. According to new data produced by the LHC, what had appeared to be a signal turned out to be nothing but statistical noise.

UK-based Just Eat has sold its businesses in the Netherlands and Belgium to rival Takeaway.com for €22.5 million (£19 million). The CEO of Just East explained the move by the need to be number one in each country in order to “drive sustainable profitability.” Two weeks after the deal was announced, Takeaway.com, which is based in the Netherlands, shuttered its British business and sold its assets to Just Eat for an undisclosed amount.

TransferWise has been granted direct access to the UK's Faster Payments Service (FPS) via a partnership with private UK bank Raphaels Bank. FPS enables payments within the UK to be made instantly at any time. TransferWise is currently testing the integration, and a full launch is expected later this summer. In related news, the UK mobile banking startup Mondo is now officially, well, a bank. The startup has been granted a banking licence "with restrictions" by the UK regulators FCA and PRA. This means that its beta testers can now in theory begin switching to a Mondo current account and use the startup to do a lot more of their banking as the company readies for a full banking launch early next year.

Torrentz.eu, one of the world's largest torrent sites, is no more. It announced "farewell" to its millions of users in early August, a few weeks after the fall of another torrent giant, KickassTorrents. The biggest meta-search engine out there, which hosted no torrents of its own but linked to other sites including The Pirate Bay, has decided to cease operations. The site’s user are no longer able to login or search. Instead, they see the following message: “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.”

World’s largest aircraft Airlander 10 has crash landed its second flight. Days after a perfect maiden flight, the massive blimp performed a nosedive into the ground. Hybrid Air Vehicles told Ars that the crew are "safe and well." It added that the flight lasted for 100 minutes and that it "completed all the planned tasks." According to the manufacturer, the incident was not an unplanned dealtitudinal craft-terrafirma conflict, but rather "a heavy landing" as the craft returned to Cardington Airfield.

Airbnb only paid €70,000 (£60,000) in tax in France last year, according to reports in the French press. This represents a drop of 18 percent on the amount the company paid in 2014. France is Airbnb’s second biggest market after the US, and its popularity has ballooned in recent months. Airbnb also announced in August that it had passed the 10 million mark for the number of guests lodged in France since it launched in the country back in 2008.

A recent extension of the UK copyright for industrially manufactured artistic works represents "a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution," said Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge. The UK government has extended copyright for designs from 25 years to the life of the designer plus 70 years. In practice, this is likely to mean a copyright term of over 100 years for furniture and other designed objects. Originally, the new copyright term was due to come into force at the end of April, but following the consultation the government granted a further three months, which ended July 28. In addition, there is a six-month "depletion period" for contracts in place prior to the consultation. This will conclude on January 28, 2017.

The European Commission is mulling inclusion of over-the-top (OTT) players such as WhatsApp in a new ePrivacy law. The commission is currently working to overhaul the so-called cookies directive to make it fit for the digital age. The sprawling law, which covers spam and essential services as well as cookies and tracking issues, currently applies only to traditional telecoms companies and not to instant messaging, VoIP, or e-mail applications. The commission is expected to present its proposals for the new ePrivacy directive before the end of the year.

Drone crime has soared in the UK, with the police being called to probe peeping toms and drug-runners. Reports made to police concerning the illegal use of commercially available remote-controlled aircraft surged by 352 percent between 2014 and 2015, and are set to rise again as the public becomes more aware of their use—272 incidents were reported between January and May this year. In related news, a passenger plane carrying 62 people reported a "near-miss" with a drone near an airport in Cornwall. Police stated that neither the drone nor its operator could be located after the incident.

France's interior minister wants to take action against encrypted messaging apps. Bernard Cazeneuve has claimed that encryption technology in messaging apps is widely used by terrorists and said the country would work with Germany to initially launch a European initiative to "deal with" the issue. Cazeneuve refused to provide any details about what such an initiative might include. When asked whether Internet companies might be required to decrypt communications made with their encrypted services, he replied: "France will make proposals, I have sent a number [of them] to my German counterpart."