Latest News
Last updated 01 May, 11:29 AM
BBC News
Man appears in court charged with attempted murder of two Jewish men - Essa Suleiman, 45, is also accused of attempting to murder a third man on the same day.
Woman charged over fatal Wimbledon school crash - Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau died after a car crashed into the Study Preparatory School in July 2023.
Superdry co-founder found guilty of rape - James Holder, 54, attacked the woman after on a night out in Cheltenham in May 2022.
No evidence of widespread fuel price-gouging, watchdog says - Profit margins were "broadly unchanged" between February and March, the UK's competition watchdog says.
How did Banksy put up a statue in central London? - The sculpture depicts a suited man walking forward off a plinth while carrying a flag that covers his face.
The Register
SpaceX rocket set for unintentional Moon landing – well, a piece of it anyway - But unlike most junkers, it'll be traveling faster than the speed of sound, claims astronomy software dev An astronomy software dev claims a Falcon 9 upper stage will hit the Moon in August, traveling at several times the speed of sound.…
Pro-Iran crew turns DDoS into shakedown as Ubuntu.com stays down - 313 Team tells Canonical: pay up or the packets keep coming Canonical says its web infrastructure is under attack after a pro-Iran hacktivist group instructed its members to target the open source giant.…
UK pensions dept goes shopping for spy-van tech with £2M surveillance tender - Covert cameras, live-streaming systems, and in-vehicle recording kit sought to catch out fraudsters The Department for Work and Pensions has gone shopping for covert cameras, live-streaming kit, and vehicle-based recording gear as it lines up a £2 million upgrade to watch fraud suspects in real time.…
Who needs ghost train scares when Windows is such a fright? - Things that go bork in the night Bork!Bork!Bork! What frightens you? What, as an IT professional, would make you shriek like a small child? What tech horrors are lurking under your bed?…
Passport to £££: Home Office adds £216M to travel doc contract before a single bid's been placed - Start date pushed back a year, annual cost up a third, and UK's now handing out eight million passports a year The Home Office has increased the annual value and overall duration of its new passport production contract, increasing it to a total of £576 million as it starts a third round of engagement with suppliers.…
New Scientist - Home
Oak trees use delaying tactics to thwart hungry caterpillars - An infestation of caterpillars can make an oak tree postpone when it opens its leaves next year by three days, wrong-footing the insects when they attack again
Why I explore our inevitable love for robots in my novel Luminous - Silvia Park, author of the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, reveals how a book that was originally intended to be for children took a darker route following a death in the family
Read an extract from Luminous by Silvia Park - In this extract from Luminous, the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet a mysterious robot discovered in a salvage yard in Seoul, in a future reunified Korea
New Scientist recommends New York's Bone Museum and Gecko Gallery - The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Will Colombia summit kick-start the end of the fossil fuel era? - With progress at COP climate meetings stalling, 57 countries took part in the first of a new series of conferences aiming to develop roadmaps away from fossil fuels, but big emitters like China and the US were absent
Hacker News
Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables - Comments
A beginner's guide to Sourcehut (2025) - Comments
The Rotary Un-Smartphone - Comments
Auto Polo - Comments
Show HN: Perfect Bluetooth MIDI for Windows - Comments
Slashdot
The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious - fjo3 shares a report from the Washington Post: Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow -- from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth's food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won't get the nutrients they need to thrive. "The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing," said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington's Center for Health and the Global Environment. People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia -- a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said. Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis -- but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. [...] For the past several years, [Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey] and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2. They tracked down hundreds of studies, ranging from tightly controlled lab experiments to sprawling global analyses of real-world crops. Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels -- and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. That figure may seem small, ter Haar said, but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact causes of this change. Extra CO2 can make plants grow faster and produce more carbohydrates, but without a matching increase in mineral uptake, nutrients like zinc, iron, and protein become diluted. Higher CO2 also causes plants to open their leaf pores less often, reducing the amount of water -- and dissolved minerals -- they absorb through their roots. At the same time, higher temperatures can further disrupt soil chemistry, affecting how plants take up nutrients and, in some cases, increasing their absorption of harmful substances like arsenic. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Belgium Plans To Nationalize Nuclear Power Plants - Belgium plans to buy its seven aging nuclear reactors from French power giant Engie in a "full takeover" aimed at securing domestic energy supplies, extending reactor operations, and developing new nuclear capacity. "The move would also mean suspending plans to decommission nuclear operations in Belgium," reports the BBC. From the report: The move would reverse the phase-out of nuclear energy legislation approved in the early 2000s amid safety concerns prohibiting the building of new nuclear power plants and limiting the operating lifetimes of existing ones to 40 years. Only two of Belgium's seven nuclear reactors are operational - located at plants in Doel and in Tihange - and their operating licenses were recently extended until 2035. The other five reactors were shut between 2022 and 2025 and plans to dismantle them will now be suspended. Engie and the government said they aim to reach an agreement on the takeover of the nuclear stations by October 1st. In a joint statement with Engie, the Belgian government said the move also highlights its aim to extend operations of existing nuclear reactors and to develop "new nuclear capacity" in Belgium. "By doing so, the Belgian Government is taking responsibility for Belgium's long-term energy future, with the objective of building a financially and economically viable activity that supports security of supply, climate objectives, industrial resilience and socio-economic prosperity," the statement adds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial - An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Elon Musk wrapped up his testimony on Thursday as the trial in his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman continued into its fourth day. OpenAI's attorney, William Savitt, cross-examined Musk in the morning. He asked Musk about the capped nature of Microsoft's investments in OpenAI, his involvement in negotiations about the company's structure, and whether he knew about the OpenAI nonprofit's recent initiatives. "I don't know what's going on at OpenAI," Musk testified. Savitt also asked Musk about his competing artificial intelligence startup, xAI. While not the main focus of the case, Musk said it is "partly" true that xAI used some of OpenAI's models to train its own models, a process known as distilling. Musk also suggested that xAI has used OpenAI's technology to help build the company. Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and Greg Brockman, the company's president, in 2024, alleging that they went back on their commitments to keep the artificial intelligence company a nonprofit and to follow its charitable mission. He claims that the roughly $38 million he donated to seed OpenAI, a company he co-founded, was used for unauthorized commercial purposes. Once Musk wrapped up his testimony after roughly two hours of questioning on Thursday, his attorneys called Jared Birchall, who manages Musk's billions at his family office, as their next witness. Birchall testified about his knowledge of Musk's specific donations to OpenAI. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers oversaw the proceedings from federal court in Oakland, California. The trial will resume on Monday. Recap: Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Senators Ban Themselves From Prediction Markets Trading - The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a rule banning senators from trading on prediction markets effective immediately. CNBC reports: The move came amid rising concern about insider trading on prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, and about event contracts that can involve death or violence. On April 22, Kalshi said it had suspended and fined one U.S. Senate candidate and two candidates for the House of Representatives for political insider trading on their own campaigns. Earlier on Thursday, a group of Democratic members of Congress called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to issue a rule "that prevents insider trading and corruption in the market and prohibits event contracts on the outcome of elections, war and military actions in the U.S. or abroad, sports, and government actions without a valid economic hedging interest." Kalshi and Polymarket both praised the Senate's action. "I applaud the Senate for passing this resolution to ban Senators and their offices from trading on prediction markets," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour wrote in a post on X. "Kalshi already proactively blocks members of congress and enforces against insider trading. This is a great step to increase trust in our markets by making it an industry standard," Mansour said. "Now, let's pass this in the House!" Polymarket, in its own post on X, said, "We're in full support of this. Our Rulebook & Terms of Service already prohibit such conduct, but codifying this into law is a step forward for the industry. Happy to help move this forward however we can." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Linux 'Copy Fail' Vulnerability Enables Root Access On Major Distros - A newly disclosed Linux kernel flaw dubbed "Copy Fail" can let a local, unprivileged attacker gain root access on major Linux distributions, with researchers claiming the bug affects kernels shipped since 2017. "The POC exploit works out of the box today, but a future version that can escape from containers like Docker is promised soon," writes Slashdot reader tylerni7. "Technical details are available here." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: A newly disclosed Linux kernel vulnerability called Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431) allows an unprivileged user to gain root access using a tiny 732-byte script, and it works with unsettling consistency across major distributions. Unlike older exploits that relied on race conditions or fragile timing, this one is a straight-line logic flaw in the kernel's crypto subsystem. It abuses AF_ALG sockets and splice to overwrite a few bytes in the page cache of a target file, such as /usr/bin/su. Because the kernel executes from the page cache, not directly from disk, the attacker can inject code into a setuid binary in memory and immediately escalate privileges. What makes this especially concerning is how quiet it is. The file on disk remains unchanged, so standard integrity checks see nothing wrong, while the in-memory version has already been tampered with. The same primitive can also cross container boundaries since the page cache is shared, raising the stakes for multi-tenant environments and Kubernetes nodes. The underlying issue traces back to an in-place optimization added years ago, now being rolled back as part of the fix. Until patched kernels are widely deployed, this is one of those bugs that feels less like a theoretical risk and more like a practical, reliable path to full system compromise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.