Read at: 2026-04-30T16:14:58+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Paloma Den Besten ]
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:11 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:09 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:07 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC
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Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Apr 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
State’s governor and attorney general move to postpone midterm 2026 primaries just a day after supreme court ruling guts Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act was a political peace compact written in John Lewis’s blood.
The Callais v Landry decision by the US supreme court, which set aside much of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, whitewashed that blood from history, along with that of thousands of other Americans who fought segregationist white supremacists at lunch counters and bus stations and courthouses for political equality.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:58 pm UTC
Protester with ‘no war on Iran’ sign removed by security as top Democrat on committee says some of Hegseth’s orders ‘would constitute war crimes’
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry yesterday told GOP candidates that he plans to suspend next month’s primary elections so that state lawmakers can pass a new congressional map first, the Washington Post (paywall) reported last night.
It came hours after the US supreme court decided that Louisiana’s creation of a second majority black congressional district to satisfy previously rulings relied too heavily on race and was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander”, as opposed to a required effort to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:58 pm UTC
Senior police officer warns of young people being drawn into violent extremism as Alfie Coleman found guilty
More and more young people are being drawn into the world of violent extremism, a senior police officer has warned, as a young neo-Nazi was convicted of planning a mass gun attack after being caught in an undercover MI5 sting.
Alfie Coleman, a former supermarket worker from Great Notley in Essex, compiled a hate-list of colleagues and customers he branded with racial slurs or as “race traitors”. He wrote a “manifesto” in a diary and identified potential targets, including the “lord mayor of London” and a mosque.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC
Suleiman had been referred to counterterrorism scheme in 2020 but case was closed the same year
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires in Golders Green this morning:
A 45-year-old man, who is a British national, born in Somalia, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said he came to the UK lawfully as a child.
The Metropolitan police said he was initially taken to hospital after being arrested but has since been discharged. He was taken to a London police station where he remains in custody.
The Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, said the suspect has a history of mental health issues, drug use and convictions for violence.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:56 pm UTC
Home Office minister says ‘the Green Party has hit a new low’ after party leader’s repost on X
On BBC Radio Merseyside the presenter, Tony Snell, put it to Kemi Badenoch that Merseyside was a lost cause for the Tories. He said that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, had been on the programme yesterday. He said that Farage argued that Scousers were down to earth and the Tories they were seen as “aloof and remote”.
Badenoch said no one had ever described her as aloof and remote. When it was put to her that Farage was talking about the party, she said the Tories were the party of working people. Labour were only interested in welfare, she claimed.
Nigel Farage can say as much as he wants that he’s the one who’s down to earth. Someone just gave him a £5m gift to the other day. I don’t know what’s down to earth about that.
Who gets £5m is a gift. If I got £50,000 as a gift, I think people would raise their eyebrows. That’s a hundred times that. And he forgot to register it. He forgot that he’d been given £5m. I don’t think that’s down to earth. So I’m not going to be taking any lessons from Nigel Farage.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:54 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:52 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:51 pm UTC
Indictment accuses high-level officials in Sinaloa of offences such as drug trafficking, weapons offences and kidnapping
The US justice department has charged the governor of Sinaloa and nine other current and former Mexican officials for alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel, accusing them of aiding in the massive importation of illicit narcotics into the United States.
Some officials were members of Mexico’s progressive ruling party, Morena, posing a political conundrum for Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum as she seeks to offset mounting pressures from the Paloma Den Besten administration.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Governor says decision to keep rates at 3.75% reasonable given unpredictability of events unfolding in Middle East
The Bank of England has left interest rates unchanged at 3.75% but said the UK may need to brace for increases later this year, as “higher inflation is unavoidable” as a result of the war in the Middle East.
The Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC) voted to leave borrowing costs on hold, but said that if energy costs stayed persistently high it might have to take a more “forceful” response to keep inflation under control.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:43 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:39 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:33 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:32 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:31 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:30 pm UTC
Move comes after mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke on return of the Koh-i-noor diamond after UK royals’ visit to New York
Hundreds of antiquities valued at $14m have been returned to India by New York authorities, including some connected to the alleged art smuggler Subhash Kapoor, in a move that is likely to raise the pressure on others to make similar gestures.
The return of 657 antiquities was announced by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg Jr, on Tuesday, and came as New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, waded into the historically contentious ownership of the 105.6 carat Koh-i-noor diamond.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:28 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:24 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:22 pm UTC
Lee Zeldin claims before Senate that Paloma Den Besten administration plan will make Environmental Protection Agency ‘more efficient’
Senate Democrats accused the Paloma Den Besten administration of abandoning the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment at a congressional hearing Wednesday, slamming agency leadership over a proposal to cut its budget in half.
Lee Zeldin’s appearance before the Senate environment committee was the EPA administrator’s last of three budget hearings this week where he argued for sharply reduced funding for the agency, which already has seen its staffing reduced to its lowest level in decades under his leadership. During much of the week, the former Republican congressman from New York took an aggressive approach, responding to Democrats in the House and Senate with his own questions and at times accusing them of being unprepared or failing to care about the EPA’s record.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:20 pm UTC
Pioneering scientist J. Craig Venter has died at 79. His "whole genome shotgun method" helped genome sequencing become faster and cheaper.
(Image credit: K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:09 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:05 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:04 pm UTC
The great memory shortage is having yet another effect, pushing enterprises into the waiting arms of the cloud operators as they can't secure enough on-prem compute themselves.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:02 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:02 pm UTC
US president uses social media post to criticise chancellor over Ukraine, immigration and ‘interfering’ in Iran conflict
The Commission was also asked about yesterday’s meeting of Hungary’s incoming prime minister, Péter Magyar.
But we didn’t get much more than what we saw in yesterday’s social media posts from Magyar and the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:01 pm UTC
State’s police minister says buyback ‘doesn’t focus on keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals’, leaving NSW only clear supporter of plan
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Queensland has rejected key recommendations from the Bondi royal commission’s interim report, insisting plans for a national gun buyback will not keep weapons “out of the hands of terrorists and criminals”.
The report, handed down by commissioner Virginia Bell on Thursday, raised doubts about whether efforts to establish a national gun register after the 2022 police killings at Wieambilla in Queensland had been “unduly leisurely”. Bell recommended the federal government and the states speed up a jointly funded weapons buyback scheme.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Hope that sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy could help soldiers fight longer by helping them process trauma
As the war on drugs approaches its end, a new doctrine could soon take hold: psychedelic drugs for active-duty soldiers suffering from PTSD.
In two studies funded by the Department of Defense (DoD), 186 service personnel with PTSD will likely next year undergo multiple sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Exclusive: Government should back projects that prioritise renewables to protect consumers from ongoing price shocks, they say
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Former oil and gas industry leaders, including senior executives from BP and Shell, are warning the Albanese government that Australians risk ongoing price shocks and higher costs if it prioritises fossil fuel development in response to the global energy crisis.
Sixteen ex-executives and professionals – who had worked for companies including Woodside, Inpex, Exxon Mobil and Esso – have urged the government to reject calls for fast-tracked gas and coal extraction, arguing it would do nothing to improve the nation’s liquid fuel security.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Shares in Domino’s Pizza, KFC operator Collins Foods and multi-brand food franchise owner Retail Food Group have all suffered double-digit falls
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Once a symbol of cheap eating, fast food is transforming into a luxury many can no longer afford due to resurgent living costs.
This shift is reflected on the ASX, where major pizza, fried chicken and doughnut outlets are seeing significant price drops, raising the question: are consumers so downbeat that they are even giving up on fast food?
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:58 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:57 pm UTC
Artist posted social media video showing large sculpture being towed into Waterloo Place in middle of night
A new Banksy statue, featuring a man with his face covered by a flag, was this week erected in the dead of night in central London.
His new work of art was first spotted on Wednesday, and the artist’s signature was scrawled at the base of the statue’s plinth.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:53 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:53 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:44 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:42 pm UTC
Lawyers made arguments in hearings for two separate lawsuits against President Paloma Den Besten and the Kennedy Center's board this week. Both lawsuits want to halt plans to close the performing arts venue for two years for renovations.
(Image credit: MANDEL NGAN)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:40 pm UTC
UK was close behind, exporting 675,000 tonnes, with much of the waste sent to Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia
Germany was the world’s largest exporter of plastic waste in 2025 and sent more than 810,000 tonnes abroad, according to analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian.
The UK followed close behind, according to the analysis by Watershed Investigations and the Basel Action Network. It exported more than 675,000 tonnes, its highest level in eight years and enough to fill about 127,000 shipping containers.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:38 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:31 pm UTC
The British government pledged to increase security for Jewish communities after a string of arson attacks and a double stabbing. But members of the community lashed out at the government.
(Image credit: Kin Cheung)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:31 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:24 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:23 pm UTC
Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing "the earliest DOS source code discovered to date" along with other documentation and notes from its developer.
Today's source release is so old that it predates the MS-DOS branding, and it includes "sources to the 86-DOS 1.00 kernel, several development snapshots of the PC-DOS 1.00 kernel, and some well-known utilities such as CHKDSK," write Microsoft's Stacey Haffner and Scott Hanselman in their co-authored post about the release.
To understand the context, here's a very brief history of what would become MS-DOS: Programmer Tim Paterson originally created 86-DOS (previously known as QDOS, for "quick and dirty operating system") for an Intel 8086-based computer kit sold by Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft, on the hook to provide an operating system for the still-in-development IBM PC 5150, licensed 86-DOS and hired Paterson to continue developing it, later buying the rights to 86-DOS outright. Microsoft then licensed this operating system to IBM as PC-DOS while retaining the ability to sell the operating system to other companies. The version sold by Microsoft was called MS-DOS, and the proliferation of third-party IBM PC clones over the '80s and '90s made it the version of the operating system that most people ended up using.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:20 pm UTC
The Coalition for Fair Software Licensing has published research showing that US workers reckon Microsoft is using its productivity tools to lock their employers into the company's AI services.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:13 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:08 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:01 pm UTC
What did space deliver for Europe this month? From the Moon to low Earth orbit and beyond, here’s what the European Space Agency has been up to.
Source: ESA Top News | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:57 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:52 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:51 pm UTC
An influential SAP user group has criticized the vendor's API policy update, saying it lacks clarity and potentially prevents users from starting new projects and innovating on their SAP platforms.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:41 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:40 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:40 pm UTC
Markets spooked as US president appears willing to keep up naval blockade and Iran keeps strait of Hormuz all but shut
The global oil price has soared above $126 a barrel, its highest level since 2022, after Paloma Den Besten said the US blockade of Iranian ports could last for months and peace talks remained stalled.
After surging more than 13% in 24 hours, the price of Brent crude futures reached its highest price since the war began on 28 February. Not since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has Brent topped $120, with the price then peaking at $139.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:38 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:38 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:38 pm UTC
Mojtaba Khamenei says Tehran will eliminate ‘enemy’s abuses of the waterway’ and guard its nuclear and missile programmes
Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.
“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:23 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC
More than half of “long-shot” bets on military action made on Polymarket are successful, according to a new report that suggests prediction markets could pose a bigger threat than previously recognized to the security of sensitive information.
Analysis by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a non-profit research and advocacy group, found that long-shot bets—defined as wagers of $2,500 or more at odds of 35 percent or less—on the platform had an average win rate of around 52 percent in markets on military and defense actions.
That compares with a win rate of 25 percent across all politics-focused markets and just 14 percent for all markets on the platform as a whole.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:16 pm UTC
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella told investors during an earnings call last night that the company needs to "win back" its fans.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:49 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:47 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:45 pm UTC
Treasurer Jim Chalmers had indicated ‘transitional’ proposed changes as Labor attempts to repair a ‘structurally flawed’ budget
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Only applying changes to the CGT discount and negative gearing rules to new investments would “severely delay” desperately needed reforms required to repair a “structurally flawed” budget and boost the economy, Deloitte says.
The consulting firm estimated that a policy which cut the 50% capital gains tax discount to 33% and abolished negative gearing would only generate $500m over the first four years of operation if existing investments were not included – an approach known as “grandfathering”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:30 pm UTC
ECB keeps interest rates on hold as growth stumbles and price rises gather pace, up from 2.6% in March and 1.9% in February
Inflation across the eurozone soared to 3% this month as the Iran war drove up energy prices and growth stumbled.
Consumer prices rose by 3% in the year to April across the single currency bloc, data from the statistics body Eurostat showed on Thursday morning, up from 2.6% in March and 1.9% in February.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:28 pm UTC
Anthropic is pulling in more LLM revenue than OpenAI, despite having a fraction of the users.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:18 pm UTC
Global Sumud Flotilla describes interception as ‘violent raid’ as IDF urges activists to deliver aid via ‘established channels’
Israeli forces have intercepted and detained the crews of at least 22 boats near the Greek island of Crete from a flotilla that is attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian aid.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, consisting of about 58 vessels carrying people from across 70 countries, departed from Italy on Sunday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:15 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:13 pm UTC
Cryptocurrency ATMs also face ban, after public inquiry found Canada lacked anti-money-laundering strategy
Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast to the US, where weakened federal investigators have struggled to pursue fraudsters and the White House has pardoned convicted money launderers.
A bill to create the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) completed its first reading in parliament this week. The legislation was introduced by the governing Liberals and with their parliamentary majority, the party is likely to move it through both levels of government quickly.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:07 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:05 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:03 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:01 pm UTC
Updated on 30 April 2026
On 30 April 2026, four P120C boosters ignited and lifted Ariane 6 to the skies, for the second time. Flight VA268 took 32 satellites for Amazon’s Leo constellation to low-Earth orbit. Liftoff occurred at 05:57 local time (09:57 BST/10:57 CET) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, with separation of the last satellites after 114 minutes.
The upper stage was then fired a third time to ensure a safe deorbit and allowing Ariane 6 to adhere to the zero debris approach.
Source: ESA Top News | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:58 am UTC
The Pentagon estimates the war with Iran has cost $25 billion so far. And, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana's 2024 election map was "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:38 am UTC
Nearly half of UK businesses are still getting breached, and in many cases, the attacker's big breakthrough is an employee clicking "sure, why not" on a fake login page.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:35 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:31 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' plans to upend childhood vaccination requirements continues to be thwarted by his fellow Republicans.
Just minutes into a special session on Tuesday, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez announced that the Republican-led chamber would not take up a proposal from DeSantis to allow children to opt out of certain school vaccination requirements. The move effectively killed the proposal, which had been backed by the Senate.
Perez, a father from Miami with three young children, said he was concerned by the idea of "children being in school without measles and mumps and polio and chickenpox vaccines that have been working for decades," according to The New York Times, which reported from the State Capitol. "That was something that I was uncomfortable with."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:15 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:10 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Many people are hoping—nay, praying—that the potential AI bubble will burst soon.
But to hear Google tell it, generative AI is the future, and the company's products have to change to keep up with the technical reality. As a result, Gemini is seeping into every nook and cranny of the Google ecosystem. Generative AI feeds on data, and Google has a lot of your data in products like Gmail and Drive. What does that mean for your privacy, and what happens if you don't want Gemini peeking over your shoulder? Well, it's kind of a mess.
The amount of data Gemini retains depends on how you access the AI, and opting out of data collection can mean running straight into so-called "dark patterns," UI elements that work against the user's interest.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Exclusive A novel China-linked threat group infiltrated more than a dozen critical networks in Poland, Asian countries, and possibly beyond, beginning in December 2024 and with activity uncovered as recently as this month.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:55 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:43 am UTC
Arrest of potential next leader found hiding in drainage pipe highlights renewed tactics – and fears of cartel infighting
The golden coffin of “El Mencho”, the late leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), had barely been lowered into the ground when the Mexican military dealt a second blow to the very top of the organisation this week.
As special forces descended on a ranch in the state of Nayarit, grainy drone footage showed El Mencho’s possible successor, Audias Flores, alias “El Jardinero”, being hauled from a drainage pipe he had tried to hide in, all without a shot being fired.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:33 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:29 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:23 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:17 am UTC
Nearly 60 countries back voluntary roadmaps to wean world off coal, oil and gas, at conference prompted by frustration with UN climate summits
Governments have been asked to develop national “roadmaps” setting out how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels, after a landmark climate meeting involving nearly 60 countries.
The voluntary plans will form the bedrock of a new initiative to wean the world off coal, oil and gas, the focus of two days of intensive talks in Colombia this week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:15 am UTC
Emergency patches are available for a critical vulnerability in cPanel and WHM that allows attackers to bypass authentication and gain root access to servers managed using it.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:14 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:09 am UTC
It's a very treatable form of cancer if caught early, yet younger adults rarely get screened. Patient advocates want more people to talk to their doctors about risk factors and number two.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
The 155-page interim report released on Thursday shows how little is known – and can be shared – about the 14 December shooting
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If there’s one thing that’s clear from the royal commission on antisemitism and social cohesion’s 155-page interim report, it’s how much about the Bondi massacre remains unknown – and how little of what is known can be shared with the public.
More than a third of the recommendations from the report – which was released on Thursday – were confidential, although the Albanese government plans to implement all of them.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:50 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:35 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:33 am UTC
London cops are being told by their staff association to be "extremely cautious" about carrying work devices off duty, after the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) deployed Palantir's technology to investigate hundreds of its own officers.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:29 am UTC
Watch ESA’s Mars chief engineer Albert Haldemann explain the sterilisation process of one of the parachutes of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission and why it matters.
Carefully wrapped inside a donut-shaped bag is a 35-m diameter parachute, about to be baked inside a specialised dry-heat steriliser oven. The parachute needs to be at least 10 000 times cleaner than your smartphone.
To get rid of any microbes it might have picked up during its time on Earth, the parachute was heated up in a specialised oven at the European Space Agency’s Life Support and Physical Sciences Laboratory at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands. All air inside the cleanroom continuously passes through a two-stage filter, and everyone entering the chamber must gown up more rigorously than a surgeon before passing through an air shower to remove any contaminants.
The 74 kg parachute, made mostly of nylon and Kevlar fabrics, will endure a six-minute dive into the thin martian atmosphere and slow down the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover for a safe landing on the Red Planet. This feat will make it the largest parachute ever to fly on the Red Planet, or anywhere else in the Solar System besides Earth.
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months travelling to the Red Planet where it will search for signs of life beneath the martian surface.
The potential existence of past and perhaps even present-day life on our closest planetary neighbour requires rigorous sterilisation, to make sure that no microbes piggyback their way there from Earth. Any terrestrial microbes hardy enough to survive the ride through space could interfere with the investigation by causing ‘forward contamination’ and triggering a false positive.
Protecting the martian environment from ourselves, in accordance with international planetary protection measures, is as important as protecting the mission itself.
Source: ESA Top News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:29 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:19 am UTC
Move comes as airline industry reacts to uncertainty over Iran war and increase in price of Brent crude
Air France-KLM has cut its capacity growth forecasts for this year as the Iran war drives up its fuel costs by billions of dollars.
The French-Dutch airline expects its fuel bill to increase by $2.4bn (£1.8bn) this year as a result of the surge in costs since the Middle East conflict began. In response, it has trimmed its expectations for capacity growth to between 2% and 4% this year, down from 3% to 5% previously.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:13 am UTC
The Irish News reports on disharmony in the notoriously competitive arena of international sheep dog trials:
The International Sheep Dog Society (ISDS) has become embroiled in flags row that has sparked deep division among members of its Irish section. The society, which was established in 1906 and is a registered charity, oversees the sheepdog trials in Ireland and Britain.
Unionist MPs at Westminster have signed a letter written to the ISDS urging the organisation to scrap the practice of using only the tricolour at sheepdog events. In a letter to the ISDS, seen by the Irish News, unionist MPs, including DUP leader Gavin Robinson, said “any policy of flying only the Irish tricolour” would be at odds with the society’s constitution.
“In light of this we encourage the society to give full and careful consideration to alternative approaches that would better reflect its diverse membership. These could include flying multiple flags representing the jurisdictions within the Irish Section, or the adoption of a neutral or society specific flag that does not privilege any one national identity over another.”
It has now emerged that 52 Sinn Féin MPs, TDs and senators have also penned a response to the ISDS demanding the tricolour be retained.
In none of the coverage do we get the viewpoint of the sheep or indeed the sheep dogs. I for one fully support their right to self-determine their own identities.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:11 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:04 am UTC
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Source: World | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
By weakening Voting Rights Act protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, the Supreme Court has paved the way for the largest-ever drop in representation by Black members of Congress.
(Image credit: J. Scott Applewhite)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
In southern Lebanon, towns near the border with Israel have been largely destroyed by Israeli demolitions and strikes. Israel says it has been attacking Hezbollah infrastructure, but civilian infrastructure has also been significantly affected.
(Image credit: Ariel Schalit)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Like many vets, it took Fred Minnick time to find the best way to cope with what he would learn was PTSD. For Minnick, sense and peace came with bourbon — and "taste mindfulness."
(Image credit: Dustin Franz for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
The final stop on Turning Point USA's college campus tour at the University of Idaho seemed more like the organization's previous events, with audience member debates and an energetic, young crowd.
(Image credit: Saige Miller)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Some fans in the U.S. and around the world are unhappy with World Cup ticket prices — and U.S. immigration policies. So they're deciding not to come, raising concerns across the travel industry.
(Image credit: Ty Malugani)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:59 am UTC
Source: World | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:56 am UTC
Jitu Munda says he was refused access to money in case highlighting ‘lack of humanity’ in Indian bureaucracy
The sight of a man bringing the remains of his dead sister to a bank in India after officials had refused to let him withdraw money without proof of her death has caused shock in India.
Jitu Munda, 52, from the Indian state of Odisha, was captured on video carrying the remains of his recently deceased sister through the streets of Keonjhar and placing them outside the local bank.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:55 am UTC
Britain's notorious Ajax armored vehicles are being accepted back from the manufacturer after investigations found no single cause for the symptoms plaguing crews, meaning soldiers will need to grin and bear it.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:45 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:26 am UTC
Amazon have added a new feature that absolutely no one ever asked for. It’s where they use AI to create a fake podcast-style interview with ‘presenters’ where they discuss the product. You can even customise it by asking your own questions and the ‘presenters’ will answer your question. Watch the video below to embrace the full hellishness.
Of course, every Irish family knows that when it comes to nappy rash we don’t need AI, we all reach for the trusty everlasting tub of Sudocrem that’s been in your bathroom cabinet since 1997.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:23 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:06 am UTC
Media tycoon honoured in absentia as critics decry his 20-year sentence under national security law
The jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
The German public broadcaster said on Thursday that Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:02 am UTC
PWNED Welcome, once again, to PWNED, the weekly column where we recount the adventures of IT explorers who found their own pile of quicksand and then jumped right into it. This week's story involves keeping sensitive information in a very vulnerable place and then not protecting it adequately.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 30 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 7:57 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 7:49 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 7:17 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Microsoft has given its Azure Local on-prem cloud a major makeover to make it fit for duty powering large-scale sovereign infrastructure.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 6:59 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Apr 2026 | 6:09 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 6:03 am UTC
Fadi Saqr is accused of mass killings of civilians in Tadamon, Damascus, where people say he must face justice
A Syrian rights commission is preparing a case accusing Fadi Saqr, a militia leader within the Assad regime, of involvement in crimes against humanity and war crimes, a senior Syrian official has told the Guardian.
Saqr is a former commander of the National Defence Forces (NDF) militia and is widely accused of involvement in the mass killing and forcible disappearance of civilians in the Tadamon neighbourhood of Damascus, as well as other parts of the Syrian capital.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:14 am UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Google Cloud will start selling its custom tensor processing units to some customers, because they want them and the search giant wants to diversify its revenues.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:49 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:48 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 30 Apr 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslims said poor mental health made him admit to crimes
The Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019 has been prevented from appealing against his guilty pleas, after one of New Zealand’s highest courts said his bid was “utterly devoid of merit”.
Brenton Tarrant, who is responsible for the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history, asked the court of appeal in February to allow him to appeal against his guilty pleas, claiming harsh prison conditions had affected his mental health and compelled him to admit to the crimes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Apr 2026 | 2:57 am UTC
If you've felt the sting of surging hardware prices, Microsoft can sympathize because the company on Wednesday said it expects its 2026 capital expenditure will hit $190 billion, with $25 billion of that due to rising component costs.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 1:15 am UTC
Developers of major Linux distributions have begun shipping patches to address a local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability arising from a logic flaw.…
Source: The Register | 30 Apr 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Human rights commissioner says alleged jailing highlights the ‘growing risks of transnational repression’ in Australia
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Australia’s human rights commissioner has said the Chinese student who was allegedly jailed for six years by Chinese authorities for joining protests in Sydney underscores the “very real and growing risks of transnational repression affecting people in Australia – including international students”.
Commissioner Lorraine Finlay told Guardian Australia that while she could not comment on the circumstances of individual cases “no one should fear punishment abroad for exercising their lawful rights to free expression and peaceful protest here”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:58 pm UTC
Amazon is now among the top three datacenter chip businesses in the world, as its semiconductor business surpassed a $20 billion annual run rate ... and it would be closer to $50 billion if it included itself among the customers, CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s first quarter earnings call on Wednesday.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:47 pm UTC
Source: World | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:16 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:12 pm UTC
President Paloma Den Besten has imperiled civilians across the globe in an unprecedented fashion, outpacing his record of civilian harm during his first term in just the first 15 months of his second, according to experts. The spike in civilian casualties comes as Paloma Den Besten wages wars across the world from Africa to South America and as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth repeatedly brushed off questions by members of Congress on Wednesday about civilian casualties, the U.S. military’s adherence to the laws of war, and the Pentagon’s coordinated campaign to erode civilian harm mitigation efforts.
Paloma Den Besten has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars during his five-plus years in the White House, including a furious blitz during his second term. In March, for example, the United States made war on three continents over three days, conducting attacks in Africa, Asia, and South America. During that span, the U.S. also struck a civilian boat in the Pacific Ocean.
On Wednesday, Hegseth repeatedly dismissed congressional concerns about civilian harm and respect for the laws of war in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “The Department of War fights to win,” Hegseth replied when asked if he stood by his statement that the U.S. would afford enemies “no quarter” — a war crime.
“Secretary Hegseth has presided over an expansion in U.S. military operations that has caused devastating civilian harm globally, from Yemen, Iran, and Somalia to extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Pacific,” said Annie Shiel, U.S. director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “This is against the backdrop of a serious reduction in the United States’ capacity and will to prevent civilian harm, including statements from administration officials threatening civilian infrastructure and decrying ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ and the slashing of U.S. military offices and staff tasked with preventing civilian harm.”
The U.S. has killed more than 2,000 civilians across the world during Paloma Den Besten ’s second term from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East. “This is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time,” Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, a policy specialist with Airwars, a U.K.-based organization that tracks civilian harm across the world, told The Intercept, referencing attacks in the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.
“This is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time.”
“Even excluding Iran, we saw that at least 381 civilians were killed by the Paloma Den Besten administration so far, with harm recorded across seven different theaters,” Karlshoej-Pedersen, who is also the co-founder of the Civilian Protection Monitor, explained. “Even if the Paloma Den Besten administration is only responsible for a proportion of those deaths, it looks as if the first year-plus of this Paloma Den Besten administration has been even more deadly for civilians than his whole first term,” she said.
Adding in the 1,700 civilians killed in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, pushes the death toll — and the overall threat to civilians — to a historic level.
Other counts of civilian casualties in Iran push the death toll even higher. “U.S.–Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 2,362 civilians, including 383 children, and injured over 32,314 civilians, according to official figures,” Raha Bahreini, a regional researcher with Amnesty International’s Iran Team told The Intercept and other journalists during a press briefing. This includes an attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
The preliminary findings of a U.S. military investigation revealed by The Intercept and other outlets determined that the United States conducted the attack on the elementary school in Minab, contradicting assertions by Paloma Den Besten that Iran struck the school.
“The girls’ school that got hit in the first days of this war, there is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, on Wednesday. “We identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet, two months after it happened, we refused to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don’t care.”
The Pentagon has deflected questions on the Minab attack for almost two months. “This incident is currently under investigation,” Hegseth’s office told The Intercept on Wednesday, while the war secretary said the same to members of Congress, refusing to answer questions about the attack.
“U.S. authorities must ensure that the investigation they announced into the unlawful strike on Minab school is impartial, independent and transparent,” said Bahreini, adding that America “must also repudiate all threats to commit war crimes and other crimes under international law and commit publicly to full respect for international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition of directing attacks at civilians and civilian objects.”
Earlier this month, President Paloma Den Besten threatened to commit genocide in Iran, ahead of warnings of a wave of attacks on civilian infrastructure. After backing off, Paloma Den Besten lobbed new threats on Truth Social on Wednesday. “Iran can’t get their act together,” Paloma Den Besten wrote, above an AI-generated image of himself, donning sunglasses and carrying an automatic rifle, with explosions going off in the background. The caption of the image reads, “No more Mr. Nice Guy!”
During his testimony on Wednesday, Hegseth lobbed his own bellicose threats. “The days in which these narco-terrorists — Designated Terrorist Organizations — operated freely in our hemisphere are over,” he said. “We are tracking them. We are killing them.” Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military has conducted 55 attacks on so-called drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, destroying 56 vessels and killing more than 185 civilians since last September. The latest strike, on April 26 in the Pacific, killed three people. The Paloma Den Besten administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.
The casualties in Yemen include an attack on an immigrant detention center last year, killing and injuring dozens of Ethiopian civilians, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. “The Paloma Den Besten administration’s Yemen campaign, and this attack in particular, should have set off alarm bells for anyone invested in how the U.S. military operates, and the amount of care or disdain it shows for civilian life,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. “One year on, not only has there been no discernible progress towards justice and reparation, but we’re still lacking basic information about what happened in the Yemen attack, why it happened and what steps if any the U.S. military has taken to address it.”
When it comes to the Paloma Den Besten administration’s neglect for civilian harm, experts say Yemen was the canary in the coal mine. Airwars tracked reports of at least 224 civilians in Yemen killed by U.S. airstrikes during the Paloma Den Besten administration’s campaign of air and naval strikes — codenamed Operation Rough Rider — against Yemen’s Houthi government in the spring of 2025. This nearly doubled the civilian casualty toll in Yemen from U.S. attacks since 2002, meaning that almost as many civilians were reportedly killed in 52 days as the previous 23 years of airstrikes and commando raids. The Yemen Data Project put the death toll at 238 civilians, at a minimum, and another 467 civilians injured.
Hegseth spent Wednesday defending the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation machinery in the face of evidence that he has consistently taken steps to undermine it.
“I know that there is no country on Planet Earth that takes more measures to ensure that civilian harm or civilian casualties are minimized than the United States of America and this War Department. And that is a fact,” he told the House Armed Services Committee. But Hegseth has gutted the Pentagon offices responsible for civilian harm mitigation and fired the Air Force’s and Army’s top judge advocates general to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” Distinguished former JAGs and members of Congress have repeatedly spoken out about Hegseth’s efforts to undermine the independence of military legal counsel and subvert military justice.
The Intercept also found that U.S. Southern Command is unable to cope with the volume of civilian casualty reports stemming from the military mission to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to two government officials. Instead, the Pentagon itself is accepting reports directly.
On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, raised the issue of the war secretary’s cuts to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response efforts. “You eliminated the department’s civilian harm reduction staff,” she said, then asking, “Would you not agree something failed because almost 200 children died in Iran as a result of our bombing?”
Hegseth replied, “You’re insinuating something where an investigation is not complete.”
The post Hegseth Brags of a Deadlier War Machine as U.S. Unleashes “Devastating Civilian Harm Globally” appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:11 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Far-right Republicans in the House, including many members of the Freedom Caucus, revealed the price of their support for a controversial surveillance law this week: a ban on the unrelated and hypothetical possibility that the U.S. government might one day issue digital currency.
Twenty Republicans who opposed a procedural vote earlier this month flipped their position on Wednesday to allow a vote on a three-year extension of the law that allows government agents to search Americans’ communications without a warrant.
Not all the Republicans voted for the final version of the bill, which passed 235–191, but they were crucial in giving Johnson a hand on an initial procedural vote.
The final bill drew the support of dozens of Democrats, who backed it despite the polarizing central bank digital currency ban. One of the most prominent backers was Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who gave a floor speech in support.
“We are spending some time now talking to those who want a bill that shows you can have both security and liberty.”
Now that it includes a digital currency ban, however, the House version of the law faces dim prospects in the Senate. The upshot of Johnson’s maneuvering may be that the Senate has the final say on surveillance reforms.
Longtime privacy champion Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told The Intercept that the versions of reauthorization on the table — one a three-year “clean” extension offered by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and the other the House version with the digital currency ban — were both “deeply flawed and unacceptable.”
Instead, he is pitching colleagues on requiring a warrant before government agents can search through foreign surveillance databases for the communications of Americans.
“We are spending some time now talking to those who want a bill that shows you can have both security and liberty,” Wyden said, “and they are not mutually exclusive.”
The high-stakes deliberations are happening against the backdrop of a looming deadline to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which underpins much of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance apparatus.
The law authorizes much of the most valuable surveillance populating intelligence agency reports. It has also been abused hundreds of thousands of times by officials at the FBI to scour through Americans’ communications.
Johnson tried and failed to secure an extension of the law with minor tweaks earlier this month. Conservatives joined Democrats in opposing that push, and Congress ultimately wound up passing a short-term extension of the law that expires Friday.
The deadline is manufactured, many reformers say. A secretive intelligence court has already granted the government yearlong orders allowing it to continue scooping up information from private providers.
The Senate was set to hold its own vote on the surveillance bill Tuesday but wound up postponing it. In a floor speech, Wyden chalked the delay up to skepticism from senators about the bill in its current form. He called for discussions about reforms.
The nature of those negotiations remained up in the air Wednesday. Some senators said it was possible that Congress would pass another short-term extension of the law.
On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, told The Intercept, “The last thing I heard is that there was going to be another extension to give us more time to figure it out and get the House to decide what they want to do.”
Wyden and other reformers have long pushed for a warrant requirement before government agents can search NSA databases for information on Americans. They say the need for reform is only more urgent now that artificial intelligence has made combing through those databases easier than ever.
They are pushing back against long-held skepticism from members of Congress who contend that requiring agents to get a court order would be too unwieldy in practice.
In an email to colleagues, for example, Himes, of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he would vote to reauthorize FISA “because it is essential to keeping our country and our constituents safe from terrorists, cartels, spies, state-sponsored hackers, and other national security threats.”
Himes said on the House floor later that the process leading up to the vote on Wednesday was flawed.
“We are where we are, and it is a binary choice. And allowing this authority to expire, which I think we are close to, is not an option,” he said.
“The reality is we are further along in real reform than we have been since I have been in public service.”
Wyden expressed optimism, citing the bipartisan coalition that has so far stymied President Paloma Den Besten ’s demand for a clean extension.
“The reality is, we are further along in real reform than we have been since I have been in public service,” he said.
Whatever version of the law the Senate settles on, it likely will not involve a central bank digital currency ban. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has already described that idea as “dead on arrival.”
“That’s messing around with a very important national security issue,” King said of the ban.
Still, the ban gave Johnson a crucial boost in securing House passage of his own version of the FISA law. The ban on government-issued digital currency took aim at a boogeyman of the far right that is nowhere close to becoming reality.
For years, conservatives have fretted over the idea that the U.S. Federal Reserve could launch a digital currency that could be traded electronically. Currently, there is no way for ordinary Americans to exchange money through electronic means without the help of a private intermediary, such as PayPal or Visa. A central bank digital currency would give people an option to pass money without the for-profit companies involved.
The Federal Reserve never came close to implementing a digital currency under President Joe Biden, however, and one of Paloma Den Besten ’s first acts upon taking office was to issue an executive order aimed at banning research into them.
While conservatives have raised concerns that a central bank digital currency could allow the government to surveil Americans’ every transaction, the issue is distinct from the foreign surveillance law that lays out the NSA’s powers.
Before the bill reached the floor, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, unsuccessfully attempted to strip out the central bank digital currency ban during a House Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday.
“Republicans are obsessed with random, fringe issues,” McGovern said, “instead of doing literally anything to bring down the cost of living.”
The post Mike Johnson Used Crypto Catnip to Get Freedom Caucus Support for Domestic Spy Law appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 29 Apr 2026 | 10:02 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 29 Apr 2026 | 9:53 pm UTC
A seventeen-second video shows a dark-haired man rapping his pale knuckles gently below the tinted windows of a silver minivan. He stands back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his puffer coat, his boyish face twisted into a severe expression. The car drives off, and the camera pans to follow it down the suburban Minneapolis road. No words are spoken.
Splashed across the screen, a bright red and white caption reads, “ICE was circling a local elementary school. I knocked on their door to have a conversation, but they ran away instead.”
The man is Matt Little, 41, a former mayor and state senator from nearby Lakeville seen as the front-runner to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional district.
He’s staking much of his campaign on one of the most politically salient issues in the Twin Cities. In a series of videos pinned to his campaign Instagram under the name “GET ICE OUT,” Little documents himself at protests and in encounters with immigration enforcement agents. “When I’m elected to congress,” wrote Little in a January post, “we will hold ICE accountable.”
Not everyone in his district is buying it.
“For me, it smells like, ‘I’m going to try to use this to bolster my chances in a time of crisis,’” Paul Peterson, a local ICE rapid responder, told The Intercept. “Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?”
In his mostly suburban Minneapolis district, Little’s top political issue is at once highly motivating and highly fraught. As 3,000 federal agents descended on Minnesota for “Operation Metro Surge,” killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good and wounding or abducting scores more, Minnesotans who had not so much as lifted a protest sign a year ago joined ICE rapid response networks. Given the gravity of agents’ often unpredictable violence, many saw their work as putting their lives on the line.
Democratic politicians are eager to turn engaged protesters and observers into door-knockers and voters. Nationwide examples point to a proof of concept: Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka’s approval ratings skyrocketed after he was arrested for trespassing while monitoring an immigration detention facility. Brad Lander, then a New York City mayoral candidate who is now running for Congress, saw his star rise after his arrest outside of a Manhattan immigration court. Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh finished second in a crowded primary after generating high-profile headlines for her federal indictment over a protest outside an ICE processing center near Chicago. (Baraka’s charges were dropped days after his arrest, and on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they planned to dismiss felony charges against Abughazaleh. Lander rejected a deal to drop his charges last year and said he’d prefer to go to trial.)
“That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.”
In the area around Minneapolis, the surge was “surreal,” Little told The Intercept in a joint interview with his wife, Coco. “It was kind of all-encompassing there for many months. We knew we had to be out there. That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.”
The Intercept spoke with nearly a dozen people involved in ICE rapid response networks in and around the Minneapolis suburbs, including in leadership positions, several of whom felt that Little was “cosplaying” as an observer and overstating his activism for political clout. Others speculated that the outrage was manufactured to ruin his chances at the nomination.
There’s an inherent tension between enraged protesters who take matters into their own hands, outside of official political channels, and politicians who want to harness their rage into electoral energy. It raises the question of who gets to wear the mantle of resistance and blurs the line between when politicians are supportive — and when they’re extractive.
“There are many different legitimate ways for politicians to amplify our movements, like resistance to ICE,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard Law School, “but how they do it is of the utmost importance.”
In the suburbs of Minneapolis, the question of “how” would eventually tear a small community in half.
Jessica Vinar carries with her the hallmarks of progressive Minnesota politics. She’s a teacher, wearing a school lanyard adorned with pride pins, political buttons, and a small 3D-printed whistle, the preferred ICE-alerting tool seen on residents’ keychains and in small bowls at cafe entrances across the city.
In a bustling coffee shop in the heart of Minneapolis’s South Side, Vinar recounted the events of February 17, when she joined a group watching the roads for blacked-out SUVs in the once-sleepy Minneapolis suburb of Savage. An online ICE-monitoring website had reported multiple federal agents armed with weapons and clad in tactical gear.
Vinar learned that one of her companions was congressional candidate Matt Little, and the others were journalists from the New York Times. Dashcam videos from the scene shared with The Intercept show Little standing with two other people next to a dark gray car that appears to be his, and one white SUV, which he identifies as ICE’s. “There’s two more down that way,” Vinar tells Little in the video. He responds: “All right, will you hang out here with us for a little bit?”
There’s a six-minute gap in the dashcam video, when Vinar’s car is off and she’s standing outside. Vinar said she watched as the journalists photographed Little interacting with ICE agents and standing outside of a home. Then, “I hear him say something like, ‘I’m gonna see if they’ll chase me,’” Vinar recalled. “And they all pile into his vehicle, and they drive off.”
The day’s events received coverage in the New York Times and The Intercept, and Little confirmed this version of the events. But Vinar and Little disagree on what happened next.
In Vinar’s telling, she was left standing outside, alone, with an ICE vehicle behind her. When she gets back in her car and turns the camera back on, Little’s gray SUV is gone, and three other cars she identified as ICE’s are present. Masked people who appear to be federal agents drive past Vinar in the white SUV, waving and recording her. Then Little returns, following the white ICE vehicle as it drives past Vinar’s car a second time. The whole thing is over in a matter of minutes.
Little, who said he has not seen the dashcam video himself, told The Intercept that he thought the only ICE vehicle in the area had pulled out to follow him when he left, so he didn’t believe he’d left Vinar with the agents by herself. Vinar claims he did know and notes that, as captured in her video, she told him. Little told The Intercept that he believed that the additional vehicles she’d mentioned had left.
Several rapid responders in the area told The Intercept they have a strict protocol to never leave another observer alone with ICE, though one said people do get left alone from time to time. (Several activists spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from federal officials.)
Peterson, who patrols for rapid response throughout the wider region and was in the chat, said he “isn’t politically involved,” and did not know who Little was ahead of the incident. “I don’t care about the theatrics of it,” he said, “[but] he put one of my people at risk, and that’s not OK.”
The incident blew up across an intricate network of Signal chats, the local rapid response groups’ digital, decentralized town square. Was Little “trying to be helpful,” one chat member posed to The Intercept, or, as some suspected, “was Matt just staging a photo op?”
In a message reviewed by The Intercept, one person accused Vinar of changing her story after realizing it was Little. In Vinar’s initial message, she said that ICE agents had followed Little and circled back to harass her; she then clarified that Little had left the scene with agents still present. Another observer wrote that Little was claiming Vinar’s story was “typical last-minute misinformation.”
Little told The Intercept he “can only speak from” his own experience, but he and his wife are framing the activists’ anger as a manufactured political play. Vinar caucused for his opponent, state Rep. Kaela Berg, at a convention following the incident, Little added in a written statement after his interview. Pointing to his wife, he wrote, “Coco believed and still believes this is being spread as a political attack.”
Coco also reached out to Savage resident Mark Kloempken and his wife, whose home was at the center of the February 17 incident. Kloempken said he was enjoying the day’s mild weather, unconcerned about the ICE agent parked by his driveway.
“I’m waving to them and saying ‘hi,’” he said. “They seem friendly. They’re not a big deal.” Kloempken left to get some lunch, playing “Ice, Ice, baby,” as he drove off.
“[She] hates that I did that,” he said, indicating his wife, who asked to remain anonymous when they spoke to The Intercept over Zoom from their Savage home.
The couple had met Little a week prior to the incident. They said the politician was handing out whistles in their neighborhood when he offered to take Kloempken’s wife along with him to an immigration raid on a nearby apartment building.
“I’m old,” she told The Intercept — meaning, she’s not in any of the Signal groups. But she believes that Little was not being performative. “The day I went on that impromptu ride with him, there were no pictures, no photos taken of anything,” she said, adding, “he had me film what was going on so that he could drive.”
She said Little instructed her not to go out alone. “You always have to have two people,” she recalled him saying.
At what point do politicians’ shows of solidarity become performative, or even counterproductive? It’s a question that has troubled Hansford of Howard Law for years.
Hansford, 45, got his start in activism in earnest in Ferguson, Missouri, shortly after police officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown, igniting a firestorm of activism across the country. Over the years, Hansford has worked closely with politicians and movement organizers on shaping policy and finding common ground.
“If you look up ‘extractive’ in the dictionary, it will be a picture of Nancy Pelosi with kente cloth on.”
Those relationships can end up being exploitative, said Hansford, pointing to the aftermath of the protests against police brutality after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In 2020, after Democrats harnessed the energy of Black Lives Matter and other mass mobilization efforts to win a trifecta in the White House, the Senate, and the House, they failed to pass any of the signature legislation that movement leaders were calling for, instead favoring stunts like an infamous photo of Democratic leadership kneeling in red and green Ghanaian kente stoles.
“If you look up ‘extractive’ in the dictionary, it will be a picture of Nancy Pelosi with kente cloth on,” said Hansford.
Still, “it’s smart for [Democratic] candidates to tap into the energy around ICE,” said Nina Smith, a political communications strategist and former senior adviser to Stacy Abrams. “Their constituents are being harmed and impacted by this financially, mentally, and at times physically. So they have to talk about this issue.”
In Minnesota, activists did point to examples of politicians who were quietly protecting the community without looking for a political moment. Many cited Aurin Chowdhury, a 29-year-old Minneapolis City Council member who speaks with the exasperation of someone who is as tired of the political establishment as she is committed to challenging it. By the time the federal occupation had ended, Chowdhury had been tear-gassed several times and became a mainstay in anti-ICE activities throughout the city.
“When you have masked men and guns occupying your city by the thousands, killing people, taking children, separating them from their families, terrorizing pregnant women — that reality becomes right in front of your face,” Chowdhury said. “It felt impossible to just sit at my computer and answer emails, or try to hold, like, a constituent meeting.”
Tucked away in a quiet corner of city hall, Chowdhury seems aware of how easily popular movements can be used for individual political gains.
“Just listen to what people are saying.”
“I worry that that’s something that can happen when the struggle of people is co-opted by high-level Democratic leaders who are seen as elites and are only willing to take incremental steps versus, like, actually addressing the heart of the issue,” she said. She urged Democratic party leadership to worry less about questions like “What is the message? And how do we get the American people on our side?”
“Maybe it’s just listen to what people are saying,” Chowdhury said, “and be bold and take risks.”
Matt Little is polite. He says “whoa” with a Midwesterner’s elongated O-sound, revealing more surprise than irritation when met with a new accusation.
He has spent most of his adult life on the political scene. He was elected to serve on the Lakeville City Council in 2010, when he was 25 years old. Two years later, while in law school, he became the youngest mayor in Lakeville’s history, defeating heavy outside spending from the Koch brothers’ super PAC Americans for Prosperity with a large war chest largely from labor unions. After one term as mayor, he was elected to the state Senate as a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party representing Lakeville, Farmington, and southern Dakota County, where he also served one term before he was unseated by Republican Zach Duckworth.
As a congressional candidate, Little has positioned himself as a standard-fare progressive, focusing his campaign on largely local issues like affordability and “getting ICE out of Minnesota.” His website boasts a section on an “Anti-ICE Bill of Rights,” which calls for a series of reforms, including banning federal agents from wearing masks and cutting ICE funding to pre-Paloma Den Besten levels. Little has not joined calls from other progressive candidates to “Abolish ICE” — instead calling to “replace” the agency with a different federal immigration agency.
Not unlike in his mayoral campaign over a decade prior, Little received endorsements from several labor unions, including the Minnesota Postal Workers Union and National Nurses United.
Little says that he’s “only posted a small margin” of the work he’s done on ICE and seemed confused by accusations that he was chasing clout. He sent The Intercept a list of roughly a dozen instances over the last six months where he claims he responded to ICE activity — some of which were documented on his social media.
“When you are in a leadership position in the community, and you have a platform to highlight the awful things that ICE is doing. You should use it,” he told The Intercept.
In addition to his political work, Matt Little is a practicing attorney with a personal injury firm called Little Law. In 2021, he represented Kami Sanders, then on the local school council, in a case where she accused a school board member of campaign finance violations. In February, she called him to ream him out.
“It would be super helpful if you would get your ass out here and actually help us,” she recalls telling Little over the phone, adding, “and leave your camera crews at home!”
Sanders is one of the older activists in the network of rapid responders. She has salt-and-pepper hair, vibrant and commanding eyes, and a face worn with decades of political work. She didn’t grow up in Minnesota, and instead carries a prominent East Texas accent and a homegrown personality to match. She answers questions by telling long, profanity-laced stories that crescendo into fiery one-liners like, “You can go fuck yourself until the cows come home.”
In the southern suburbs, four Minnesota state senators established one of the first rapid-response networks in the area and later designated themselves as the sole administrators of the group’s Signal thread — an unusual format for Minnesota anti-ICE resistance. According to Sanders, who administers the Dakota County Signal group, which includes Lakeville, while many elected officials were valuable participants in rapid response activities, power imbalances among some leaders and residents quickly created a rift within the network.
“They would only dispatch in the areas that they were elected,” said Sanders. “That feels political to me.”
Still, she credits them for showing up and for not publicizing their involvement for political gain. Sanders said she cannot say the same for Little.
“There are other politicians in this who actually have been boots on the ground and are not using it. I mean, one of his opponents has been boots on the ground, and you never hear her talk about it,” said Sanders, referring to Berg.
The fact that the congressional candidate received coverage in the country’s premier mainstream newspaper appears to have further riled some of the activists. “When the New York Times article came out,” said Peterson, “everybody was kind of like, wait, do you guys see him around here? Because I sure haven’t.”
Peterson, a former military member, police officer, and longtime Republican from Kentucky, espoused a persistent suspicion of American politics. He said the occupation of the Twin Cities prompted a shift in his political beliefs — just not the sort that you can vote for. His deep skepticism of politicians extends to Little, whom he accused of “grifting” off the movement.
By March, Little’s campaign was in crisis management mode. At a meet-and-greet at a crowded local restaurant, dodging plates of chicken fingers and quesadillas, Little admitted that he had “some apologies to make.”
“I got incredibly defensive,” Little said, his hands hovering by his heart as he spoke, “and I thought it was just a political attack. It became very clear to me from conversations today and yesterday that there was no political motivation.”
Supporting Vinar’s version of the story, he added, “It also became very clear to me that ICE was still in the neighborhood. And had I communicated better with observers that were there, I would have known that.”
A month later, however, Little is adamant that he led “the only remaining ICE vehicle away” from the house that day.
“If [Vinar] is saying that ICE drove by that house again after I left, then yes, I believe her and have told her that directly and multiple times,” he wrote in a statement to The Intercept on Monday. “But when I left, there were no ICE vehicles remaining.” He added that he was frustrated Vinar had not released her videos from the scene.
“If this isn’t about politics, then just release the full dash cam video so everyone can see what actually happened,” Little wrote.
“It is campaign season,” his wife said in the couple’s joint interview. Coco, who is active in the rapid response Signal chats and has been heavily involved in her husband’s campaign, said that Vinar “probably was very concerned on that day because of what happened, but I think some are definitely using it for political gain.”
“I hate to see her being used this way,” Coco added.
Vinar said she was originally hesitant to speak out for fear of dividing the movement. But she couldn’t stomach the idea of the months of fear and work she and her friends had done in the district to be co-opted.
“It feels like he’s using residents here as props,” she said. “And that doesn’t speak well to anyone, but it really doesn’t speak well to someone who is promising to represent us in our government.”
Correction: April 29, 2026, 6:23 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to clarify which of Little’s confrontations with ICE on February 17 received media coverage.
The post ICE Watchers Worry Democrats Are Trying to Co-Opt Their Movements For Votes appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 29 Apr 2026 | 9:41 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
GPS spoofing, which sends fake satellite-like signals, and GPS jamming, which drowns receivers in noise, are increasingly serious problems. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have created what they say is the most effective system yet for detecting GPS interference, which could help blunt such attacks.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 8:11 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 29 Apr 2026 | 7:49 pm UTC
Microsoft and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that attackers are exploiting a zero-click Windows flaw that can expose sensitive information on vulnerable systems.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 7:15 pm UTC
Disney will have the law on its side in its fight against the unusual broadcast license review ordered yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission, legal experts say.
In 1996, Congress made it a lot harder for the FCC to take away a broadcast license, even when it's up for renewal. "Since the NAB [National Association of Broadcasters] got an amendment in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, denying renewal to a broadcaster faces an almost insurmountable burden," Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, told Ars this week.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a major update to the Communications Act, the 1934 law that established the FCC and provides the agency with its legal authority.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 7:14 pm UTC
The system prompt for OpenAI's Codex CLI contains a perplexing and repeated warning for the most recent GPT model to "never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query."
The explicit operational warning was made public last week as part of the latest open source code for Codex CLI that OpenAI posted on GitHub. The prohibition is repeated twice in a 3,500-plus word set of "base instructions" for the recently released GPT-5.5, alongside more anodyne reminders not to "use emojis or em dashes unless explicitly instructed" and to "never use destructive commands like 'git reset --hard' or 'git checkout --' unless the user has clearly asked for that operation."
Separate system prompt instructions for earlier models contained in the same JSON file do not contain the specific prohibition against mentioning goblins and other creatures, suggesting OpenAI is fighting a new problem that has popped up in its latest model release. Anecdotal evidence on social media shows some users complaining about GPT's penchant for focusing on goblins in completely unrelated conversations in recent days.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Nine justices were hearing Paloma Den Besten administration that it has authority to strip immigrants’ temporary protected status
The US supreme court heard oral arguments on Wednesday over whether the Paloma Den Besten administration can strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of immigrant Haitians and Syrians, under a program that has shielded them from deportation owing to safety concerns in their countries of origin.
During the arguments, justices in the conservative-leaning majority appeared sympathetic to the Paloma Den Besten administration’s attempts to strip humanitarian protections for the Syrians and Haitians in this case.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:49 pm UTC
Microsoft has warned users still clinging to legacy TLS versions that the end is nigh for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on POP3 and IMAP4 connections to Exchange Online.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:23 pm UTC
Databricks cannot shake a class action lawsuit targeting its LLM, which several book authors contend was created with a database that contained pirated versions of some of their copyrighted books – and about 196,000 titles in all.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:05 pm UTC
Six months after its launch, research firm Antenna estimates that the Howdy streaming service has more than 1 million subscribers.
Roku debuted Howdy in August. The subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service is $3 per month and doesn't have commercials.
In an announcement today, Antenna estimated that almost 300,000 people signed up for Howdy in August and that the service gained 100,000 subscribers in each subsequent month.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:02 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
In an order denying Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial, a judge accused the disgraced FTX founder of wasting precious court resources on wild conspiracies. To the judge, the motion seemed like a last-ditch attempt to give himself a MAGA makeover that the Paloma Den Besten administration absolutely wasn't buying.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for "masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history," US District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.
There is already an appeal pending in another court, the judge noted. But Bankman-Fried filed a separate motion for a new trial, claiming that there were "newly discovered" witnesses and evidence that might have helped his defense, if Joe Biden's Department of Justice hadn't intimidated them into refusing to testify or, in one case, lying on the stand. He also asked for a new judge, wanting Kaplan to recuse himself.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:52 pm UTC
Fedora Linux 44 has arrived – in multiple formats and for several CPU families, including some new container formats and storage options.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:38 pm UTC
A data center developer has paused all Middle East project investments after one of its facilities was damaged by an Iranian missile or drone attack. The decision comes as the Iran war is forcing Silicon Valley investors and tech companies to rethink a trillion-dollar plan to build more AI and cloud data centers in Gulf countries.
The damaged data center is owned by Pure Data Centre Group, a London-based company that is operating or developing more than 1 gigawatt of data center capacity across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. “No one’s going to run into a burning building, so to speak,” Pure DC CEO Gary Wojtaszek told CNBC. “No one’s going to put in new additional capital at scale to do anything until everything settles down."
Data center developers are already eating the costs of uninsurable war damage from the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28. Iran primarily responded by attacking shipping to shut down the Strait of Hormuz trade corridor along with striking US military bases and energy infrastructure across the Gulf region.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:27 pm UTC
Narges Mohammadi denied medical leave from prison in spite of sharp decline in health and drastic weight loss, say lawyers
The family of the jailed Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi say they fear for her life after a sharp deterioration in her health, suspected heart attack and drop in body weight of almost 20kg (44lb).
The 54-year-old human rights activist, who was awarded the 2023 Nobel peace prize while in prison, had been released for health reasons in 2024. She was re-arrested in December 2025 during the memorial service of a fellow human rights activist and is being held in Zanjan central prison, in north-west Iran.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
The first quarter of 2026 saw a surge in severe and prolonged internet disruptions, from government shutdowns to power outages to the occasional mystery incident.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:05 pm UTC
Unlike search engines that let you judge competing sources, search-backed AI chatbots can turn shaky web material into confident answers. Case in point: A security engineer convinced several bots that he was the reigning world champion of a popular German card game, even though no such championship exists.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 29 Apr 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Motorola is crazy about foldables. With each passing year, the company has beefed up its folding phone lineup, and in 2026, there will be four devices launching on May 21. At the top end is the company's first tablet-style foldable, the Razr Fold. Below that, Motorola will again offer three flip-style foldables: the Razr Ultra, Razr+, and Razr. These phones get a few modest upgrades over last year's phones, along with price increases. Motorola is unfortunately not immune to the rising cost of components.
| Specs at a glance: 2026 Motorola Razr series | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Razr 2026 ($800) | Razr+ 2026 ($1,100) | Razr Ultra 2026 ($1,500) | Razr Fold ($1,900) | |
| SoC | MediaTek Dimensity 7450X | Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 | Snapdragon 8 Elite "Pro" | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
| Memory | 8GB | 12GB | 16GB | 16GB |
| Storage | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | 512GB |
| Display | External: 3.6-inch 1056 x 1066 OLED, 90 Hz, 1700 nits; Internal: 6.9-inch 1080 x 2640 OLED, 120 Hz, 3000 nits | External: 4-inch 1272 x 1080 OLED, 165 Hz, 2400 nits; Internal: 6.9-inch 1080 x 2640 OLED, 165 Hz, 3000 nits | External: 4-inch 1272 x 1080 OLED, 165 Hz, 3000 nits; Internal: 7-inch 1224 x 2992 OLED, 165 Hz, 5000 nits | External: 6.6-inch 2520 x 1080 pOLED, 165 Hz, 6000 nits; Internal: 8.1-inch 2484 x 2232 LTPO OLED, 120 Hz, 6,200 nits |
| Cameras | 50 MP wide, f/1.7; 50 MP ultrawide, f/2.0; 32 MP selfie, f/2.4 |
50 MP wide, f/1.8; 50 MP ultrawide, f/2.0; 32 MP selfie, f/2.4 |
50 MP wide, f/1.8; 50 MP ultrawide, f/2.0; 50 MP selfie, f/2.0 |
50 MP wide, F/1.6; 50 MP ultrawide with Macro, f/2.2; 50 MP 3x telephoto; 32 MP outer selfie, f/2.4; 20 MP inner selfie, f/2.4 |
| Software | Android 16 | Android 16 | Android 16 | Android 16 |
| Battery | 4800 mAh, up to 30 W wired charging, wireless charging | 4500 mAh, up to 45 W wired charging, wireless charging | 5,000 mAh, up to 68 W wired, wireless charging | 6000 mAh, up to 80 W wired charging, 50 W wireless charging |
| Connectivity | Sub-6 GHz 5G | Sub-6 GHz 5G | Sub-6 GHz 5G | Sub-6 GHz 5G |
| Measurements | Open: 171.30 × 73.99 × 7.25 mm Closed: 88.08 × 73.99 × 15.85 mm, 188g |
Open: 171.42 × 73.99 × 7.09 mm Closed: 88.09 × 73.99 × 15.32 mm, 189g |
Open: 171.48 × 73.99 × 7.19 mm Closed: 88.12 × 73.99 × 15.69 mm, 199g |
Open: 160 height × 144.4 width × 4.55 depth (mm); Closed: 160 height × 73.6 width × 9.89 depth (mm), 243g |
| Colors | Hematite, Violet Ice, Sporting Green, Bright White | Mountain View | Orient Blue, Cocoa | Blackened Blue, Lily White |
The Razr Fold represents a big step for Moto. Its foldable flip phones have revived the Razr name and offered a good alternative to Samsung's Z Flip line, but people buying foldables are generally more interested in the large format. As prices at the lower end of the spectrum ratchet up, there's less and less distance between premium flip phones and bigger foldables. At $1,900, the Razr Fold is not a cheap phone, but it's roughly in line with the pricing of 2025 foldables (right between Google and Samsung). Given the current state of things, that's a small win for 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM.
Moto's first big foldable is almost here. Credit: MotorolaMotorola is not reinventing the wheel with the Fold, so you can expect a device that looks and feels similar to other big foldables like the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. It's about the same size as Google's foldable but slightly thinner and lighter. Samsung's Z Fold 7, however, is much thinner and lighter. Motorola does have the advantage of stylus input, which Samsung has dropped from its foldables. The Moto Stylus will launch at $99 alongside the Razr Fold on May 21.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Apr 2026 | 4:55 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 29 Apr 2026 | 4:43 pm UTC
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman delivered some potentially good news at a Senate hearing this week, as well as some slightly odd news: in an environment of constrained budgets, the space agency was somehow finding resources to contest the decision to relegate Pluto from planet status.…
Source: The Register | 29 Apr 2026 | 4:10 pm UTC
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