Republicans are discussing a year-long renewal of the nation’s warrantless spy powers in exchange for strengthening current aspects of the law, multiple sources involved in the talks told The Hill. Such a package would scale back the 18-month timeline requested by President Trump in renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which… Source link
Authored by Andrew Korybko, The sequence that Trump threatened if no deal was reached before the expiry of his deadline would have cut China off from half of the oil that it imported by sea last year and likely set Afro-Eurasia aflame in resource wars for the indefinite future that would have derailed China’s superpower rise. Three unnamed Iranian officials reportedly told the New York Times (NYT) that China pressed their country to compromise with the US by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and resuming talks. When asked about whether China played such a role, Trump responded that, “I hear yes. Yes they were.” This was followed by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning revealing that “China made its own efforts in this regard.” Although she didn’t directly confirm the report, she didn’t outright deny it either. Interestingly, Drop Site founder Ryan Grim noticed that the edit history of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s tweet imploring Trump to extend his deadline for destroying Iran’s civilization if a deal isn’t reached saw him originally post “*Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X*”. Grim wrote that “Sharif’s own …
Mercor, a popular AI recruiting startup, has confirmed a security incident linked to a supply chain attack involving the open-source project LiteLLM. The AI startup told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it was “one of thousands of companies” affected by a recent compromise of LiteLLM’s project, which was linked to a hacking group called TeamPCP. Confirmation of the incident comes as extortion hacking group Lapsus$ claimed it had targeted Mercor and gained access to its data. It’s not immediately clear how the Lapsus$ gang obtained the stolen data from Mercor as part of TeamPCP’s cyberattack. Founded in 2023, Mercor works with companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to train AI models by contracting specialized domain experts such as scientists, doctors, and lawyers from markets including India. The startup says it facilitates more than $2 million in daily payouts and was valued at $10 billion following a $350 million Series C round led by Felicis Ventures in October 2025. Mercor spokesperson Heidi Hagberg confirmed to TechCrunch that the company had “moved promptly” to contain and remediate the security …
There’s another question beneath all this: Should it be down to tech companies to prohibit things that are legal but that they find morally objectionable? The government certainly viewed Anthropic’s willingness to play this role as unacceptable. On Friday evening, eight hours before the US launched strikes in Tehran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued harsh remarks on X. “Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal,” he wrote, and echoed President Trump’s order for the government to cease working with the AI company after Anthropic sought to keep its model Claude from being used for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance. “The Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose,” Hegseth wrote. But unless OpenAI’s full contract will reveal more, it’s hard not to see the company as sitting on an ideological seesaw, promising that it does have leverage it will proudly use to do what it sees as the right thing while deferring to the law as the main backstop for what the Pentagon can do …
In February 2021, software giant Ivanti discovered that Chinese hackers had breached the network of Pulse Secure, one of its subsidiaries that provided VPN appliances to dozens of companies and government agencies around the world, according to new reporting by Bloomberg. The hackers exploited a secret backdoor they had planted in Pulse Secure’s VPN software, Bloomberg reported, citing Ivanti’s chief security officer at the time and other sources. The backdoor allowed the hackers to gain access to 119 other unnamed organizations that used the company’s same VPN product. Mandiant was reportedly aware of the breaches as well, alerting Ivanti that hackers had exploited the bug to breach European and U.S. military contractors. The previously unreported breach is the latest example of how acquisitions, layoffs, and cost-cutting driven by private equity firms helped to compromise the quality and security of Ivanti’s most critical technologies. After private investment giant Clearlake Capital Group acquired Ivanti in 2017, Bloomberg reported rounds of cuts — particularly in 2022 — affecting employees who had deep institutional knowledge of the company’s products and …
My husband Kevin and I will be celebrating our 28th anniversary this year. No small feat, for sure. What’s our secret to a thriving midlife marriage, besides not killing each other in our sleep? Being married for a quarter-century or more takes a lot of work, but I’ve boiled it down to a few key “staying strategies.” The important thing to remember about successful marriages is that they’re less about never having problems and more about learning to handle them together. If you and your partner have managed to master these seven things, you’re already doing better than most couples. If you’ve already accomplished these 7 things, you have a more successful marriage than the average couple: 1. You’ve learned to fight fair and productively cottonbro studio / Pexels Every couple argues, but if you want to fight and stay married, you need to abide by a few rules so you don’t end up in divorce court. I’m especially prone to pulling a “kitchen sink,” where I lose focus on the disagreement at hand and argue (for …
Governments worldwide are moving to limit children’s access to social media as lawmakers question whether platforms are capable of enforcing their own minimum age requirements. TikTok recently became the latest tech giant to give in to regulatory pressure when it announced that it would implement a new age-detection system across Europe to keep kids under the age of 13 off the platform. The system, which follows a yearlong pilot in the UK meant to proactively identify and remove underage users, relies on a combination of profile data, content analysis, and behavioral signals to evaluate whether an account possibly belongs to a minor. (TikTok requires users to be at least 13 to sign up). According to a statement from the company, its age-detection system does not automatically ban users. The system flags accounts it suspects are run by users under 13 and forwards those accounts to human moderators for review. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. The European rollout comes amid global conversation around the negative effects of social media on children, and …
Trump’s compromise peace in Ukraine is a strategic opportunity for Europe – POLITICO Skip to main content Source link
Sigourney Weaver’s husband made a major move that changed their marriage a decade ago, as revealed in a new interview. The Oscar-nominated actress, 76, has been married to director and actor Jim Simpson, 69, for 41 years – but for many of those, she was travelling solo for work. “My husband was running a theatre for over 20 years in New York, and he was never able to go on any jobs with me,” the actress recently shared with AARP. The couple co-founded The Flea Theater, where Jim worked as the artistic director, back in 1996. While she was born and bred in Manhattan and still resides there with her husband, Sigourney’s acting has taken her around the globe to places like New Zealand for the Avatar film franchise and the UK to film the 1979 blockbuster Alien. But around 2015, Sigourney’s marriage underwent a big change. Jim retired from the theatre and has since been able to join his wife on her acting adventures. “I mean, Avatar goes on forever and since he’s a surfer, this was …
Braving frigid temperatures outside of City Hall in lower Manhattan, newly inaugurated New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in a rousing speech resisted calls for him to take a more moderate approach to governing than the one he took during his campaign. “Today begins a new era,” he said at the beginning of his New Year’s Day address, saying those in attendance were “warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope.” Referencing those who advised him to use his inaugural address to “reset expecations” for the people of New York about what he could accomplish as mayor, Mamdani defiantly insisted, “I will do no such thing.” “The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations,” he said. “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously,” he added. “We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.” In a reference to New York’s arts community, one of numerous call-outs to the diverse individuals across various industries who call the city home, Mamdani …
