An anonymous reader shares a report: Members of the European Parliament were offered special pouches to protect digital devices from espionage and tampering for a visit to Hungary this week, a sign of rising spying fears within Europe. Five lawmakers from the Parliament's civil liberties committee traveled to Hungary on Monday for a three-day visit to inspect the EU member country's progress on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights. One lawmaker on the trip confirmed to POLITICO that the Parliament officials joining the delegation were offered Faraday bags -- special metal-lined pouches that block electromagnetic signals -- by the Parliament's services and were also advised to be cautious about using public Wi-Fi networks or charging facilities.

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A communication error between GoDaddy Registry and Markmonitor took Zoom's services offline for almost two hours on Wednesday when GoDaddy mistakenly blocked the zoom.us domain. The outage affected all services dependent on the zoom.us domain. GoDaddy's block prevented top-level domain nameservers from maintaining proper DNS records for zoom.us. This created a classic domain resolution failure -- when users attempted to connect to any zoom.us address, their requests couldn't be routed to Zoom's servers because the domain effectively disappeared from the internet's addressing system. Video meetings abruptly terminated mid-session with browser errors indicating the domain couldn't be found. Zoom's status page (status.zoom.us) went offline, hampering communication efforts. Even Zoom's main website at zoom.com failed as the content delivery network couldn't reach backend services hosted on zoom.us servers. Customer support capabilities collapsed when account managers using Zoom's VoIP phones lost connectivity. Resolution required coordinated effort between Zoom, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy to identify and remove the block. After service restoration, users needed to manually flush their DNS caches using command line instructions (including the sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder command for Mac users).

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Rice, the world's most consumed grain, will become increasingly toxic as the atmosphere heats and as carbon dioxide emissions rise, potentially putting billions of people at risk of cancers and other diseases, according to new research published this week in The Lancet. From a report: Eaten every day by billions of people and grown across the globe, rice is arguably the planet's most important staple crop, with half the world's population relying on it for the majority of its food needs, especially in developing countries. But the way rice is grown -- mostly submerged in paddies -- and its highly porous texture mean it can absorb unusually high levels of arsenic, a potent carcinogenic toxin that is especially dangerous for babies. After growing rice in controlled fields for six years, researchers from Columbia University and international partners found that when both temperature and CO2 increased in line with climate projections, arsenic levels in rice grains rose significantly. "When we put both of them together, then wow, that was really something we were not expecting," said Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at Columbia University who led the study. "You're looking at a crop staple that's consumed by a billion people every day, and any effect on toxicity is going to have a pretty damn large effect." Inorganic arsenic exposure has been linked to cancers, heart disease, and neurological problems in infants. Disease risk rose across all seven top rice-consuming Asian countries analyzed. "This is one more reason to intervene -- to control people's exposure," said co-author Keeve Nachman of Johns Hopkins University. "The No. 1 thing we can do is everything in our power to slow climate change."

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Social media feeds are awash in images of lavish baskets overflowing with expensive gifts. Some parents are giving their children bikes. Others are pushing back.

Within a year, two federal judges declared the tech giant a monopoly in search and ad technology. The tide may be turning for antitrust.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was repeatedly the target of his opponents. President Trump’s threats on Canada loomed over the debate.

The Trump administration is on course for a potential constitutional clash with the judiciary branch, which has issued several rulings countering executive orders.

samleecole shares a report from 404 Media: American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications 404 Media obtained via public records requests. Massive Blue, the New York-based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an "AI-powered force multiplier for public safety" that "deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels." According to a presentation obtained by 404 Media, Massive Blue is offering cops these virtual personas that can be deployed across the internet with the express purpose of interacting with suspects over text messages and social media. [...] While the documents don't describe every technical aspect of how Overwatch works, they do give a high-level overview of what it is. The company describes a tool that uses AI-generated images and text to create social media profiles that can interact with suspected drug traffickers, human traffickers, and gun traffickers. After Overwatch scans open social media channels for potential suspects, these AI personas can also communicate with suspects over text, Discord, and other messaging services. The documents we obtained don't explain how Massive Blue determines who is a potential suspect based on their social media activity. Salzwedel, of Pinal County, said "Massive Blue's solutions crawl multiple areas of the Internet, and social media outlets are just one component. We cannot disclose any further information to preserve the integrity of our investigations." [...] Besides scanning social media and engaging suspects with AI personas, the presentation says that Overwatch can use generative AI to create "proof of life" images of a person holding a sign with a username and date written on it in pen.

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The police identified the gunman as a 20-year-old student who is the son of a Leon County sheriff’s deputy. Neither of the slain victims was a student at the university.

The threat of investigations into whether the administration violated the judges’ orders comes as President Trump and his advisers are increasingly butting heads with the courts.

The authorities identified the attacker as a 20-year-old student at the university, and said he appeared to have been acting alone.

Students on Thursday protested the president’s attacks on Harvard, but at town hall meetings, defiance mixed with uncertainty as faculty members examined the toll of the White House’s actions.

Amazon plans to release its first TV streaming device powered by Vega OS later this year while courting major publishers to bring their apps to the platform, according to Lowpass, which cites sources familiar with the company's plans and multiple leaks. Vega, a Linux-based operating system, may eventually replace Amazon's Android-based Fire OS across its device ecosystem. The company has already implemented Vega in three products: the Echo Show 5 and Echo Hub smart displays, as well as the Echo Spot smart clock/speaker. The tech giant has moved more cautiously in transitioning its TV hardware to Vega, having previously delayed a Vega-powered streaming stick originally slated for release in late 2024.

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The Trump administration said it would take $2.2 billion in research funds from the school. Some small donors are doing their best to make up for the shortfall.

The proceedings were pushed back for three weeks over the issue of whether a key report on Erik and Lyle Menendez was admissible.

databasecowgirl writes: [Liz Truss will launch an "uncensorable" social media platform this summer.] The shortest-serving prime minister, who was quickly shown the door after crashing the UK economy, claims the platform is needed to take on the Deep State. Truss has worked diligently to earn comparisons to Trump with appearances at American political rallies sporting a red MAGA cap. The effort has paid off with Trump's recent tariff announcement and resulting market meltdown, resulting in the two brands combined in the neologism Liz Trump to mark the unprecedented economic policy disasters of the two politicians. Truss' continuing in Trump's footsteps is creating her own uncensored social media platform for the UK to talk about important matters, which apparently is unable to be achieved without censorship on Musk's X or Trump's Truth Social. While a name has yet to be announced, Lettuce Talk has been suggested as appropriate for a platform run by a prime minister whose term was famously outlasted by a head of lettuce.

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She and Steve Wynn were known as the king and queen of Las Vegas. After their divorce, Ms. Wynn became a force in her own right.

The signed memorandum of understanding was thin on details, and the White House did not comment. But President Trump has said he expects to sign a minerals deal with Kyiv soon.

The head of the federal Department of Transportation promised on Thursday to take away control of the project from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Demonstrators rallied on Columbia’s campus and marched in Manhattan, three days after Mohsen Mahdawi was detained by immigration officials after arriving for a U.S. citizenship appointment.