The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Dolly Parton’s manager drops complaint accusing nephew of harassment

Tennessee filing gives no reason for withdrawal over Bryan Seaver after estate secured restraining order against him

Dolly Parton’s longtime manager on Thursday dropped a complaint that accused the late singer’s nephew of threatening her estate and its employees.

She’s Alive, the entity founded to manage and protect Parton’s estate, had secured a temporary restraining order against Bryan Seaver and his security company, Squadron Augmented Protection Services, in September.

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Peru airport officials discover 3,000 tarantulas smuggled inside dirty socks

Three suitcases’ worth of the spiders were on their way to Germany, where they could fetch an estimated €1.5m

More than 3,000 tarantulas were seized at an airport in Lima on their way to Germany, Peruvian authorities said.

The spiders were hidden inside dirty socks contained in three suitcases carried by two Germans and a Polish citizen, the National Forestry and Wildlife Service (SERFOR) told Agence France-Presse on Thursday.

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The Shifting Edge

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

The Shifting Edge

Looks like sand being pumped back onto the beach...

Red Sentinel

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Red Sentinel

Port marker at the Mandurah inlet

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Applebee's Exposed Customers' Personal Data After Leaving Database Password In App

Joe_Dragon shares a report from TechCrunch: Applebee's has fixed a security flaw that allowed anyone to access the personal information of its registered customers, after a researcher found a password for an internal database inside Applebee's mobile app, TechCrunch has learned. The popular restaurant chain confirmed [last Thursday] that it had taken action to address the security issue to prevent any unauthorized access to its customer database. [...] The exposed database contained customer names, email addresses (including whether or not the customer verified their email), dates of birth, phone numbers, and ZIP codes. The data also included veteran status, the number of times customers had logged in, when their accounts were created, and the IP addresses of their most recent log-ins, which can be used to reveal the person's approximate location.

[...] When asked by TechCrunch, the spokesperson would not say if the company has server logs that it can review to determine whether anyone accessed the database, or if it has any logs at all. "Our investigation is ongoing, and we will take appropriate steps based on our findings," the company added. It's unclear how many customers were affected by the data exposure. [...] Applebee's had at least 8.5 million customers enrolled in its rewards program as of last year, though the company would not provide a number of how many customers had their personal information exposed by this security flaw.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI Responds to US Midterm Elections With New Commitment to Communities

"OpenAI has published a new National Community Compact and Compute Campus Policy Blueprint, apparently in response to the Blue Wave Midterm Elections," writes ancient Slashdot reader Gilmoure. "Instead of moving into communities like a juggernaut, they say they will be dangling friendly carrots going forward." Here's an excerpt from OpenAI's article: Every future compute campus OpenAI owns and operates will have its own local compact. We'll engage residents early enough to ensure their input shapes project plans, give them a local point of contact throughout the life of the campus, and report publicly each year on how we're doing. Each compact will reflect local priorities and include a common set of commitments:

- Pay our own way on energy and infrastructure. We'll pay the full cost of the electricity we use and the infrastructure needed to serve us. Before major spending begins, we'll provide financial assurances so other customers are protected if a project is delayed, reduced, or canceled.
- Protect local resources and report on our impact. We'll develop a water plan for each campus, prioritize closed-loop or low-water cooling, and publish site-level water and electricity use. We'll publish construction plans and independent noise studies before operations begin and annually afterward. And we will not use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with public officials, allowing only narrow protections covering legitimate security information, trade secrets, or proprietary or competitively sensitive information.
- Create opportunities for local workers and businesses. We'll publish the jobs we expect to create, work with unions and training providers to help residents prepare for them, and report annually on hiring and apprenticeships. We'll also make sustained investments in priorities residents help select.

[...] The investments that help America compete globally can also help communities prosper locally. That starts with giving residents a say while plans can still change and a way to hold developers accountable for delivering on their commitments. That's what we're committing to at the campuses we own and operate, and what we believe people should be able to count on wherever AI infrastructure is built across the country.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Threat actor targets Indian fintechs on weekends when defenders aren’t watching

India’s Computer Emergency Response Team has warned the nation’s financial services industry of a “significant escalation” in attacks by what it describes as an “AI-assisted financial threat actor” that has re-targeted victims after they flubbed remediation efforts. CERT-IN first detected the attacks in October and issued advisory in which it warned digital lending platforms, fintech entities, payment service providers, and wallet operators that attackers were targeting internet-facing applications, exposed APIs and privileged endpoints. If the attackers found a way in, they tried to use payment APIs to steal money. On Thursday, the CERT published an update in which it said it continues to hear of successful attacks, including from outfits that tried to remediate their systems after earlier incidents. “The same entities have been deliberately re-targeted, including after incomplete remediation and attacks have been timed to coincide with holidays, weekends and other low-monitoring windows to delay detection and response,” the CERT warned. CERT-IN has decided the attackers need a name and chose “CRAFTY FALCON.” The security org has also revealed that the crew uses AI-enhanced tools including the ARTEX pen-testing tool, the Cairn attack search engine, and the CyberStrikeAI framework – all of which have been linked to users who appear to speak Chinese. CRAFTY FALCON’s tactics see it go looking for internet-exposed environments used for testing or development, where it finds artefacts such as shared credentials, tokens, or network paths that help it move into production systems. If it gets in, the crew re-writes victims’ applications so they do things like make unauthorized API calls. Victims’ defenses assume that only legitimate apps would call those APIs, so activity conducted by the re-written apps aren’t flagged as an attack. Even if victims suspect an attack, they have a lot to cope with because CERT-IN says CRAFTY FALCON creates many “functionally identical variants refined in rapid succession; a pattern consistent with AI-generated code and iterative AI-assisted development.” The crew also quickly exploits newly discovered vulnerabilities to keep its attacks fresh. Once it gets a toehold, the criminal crew makes tiny payments of about $0.01 to test if its attacks work. If those transfers work, CRAFTY FALCON makes larger payments. When the target is a cryptocurrency exchange or virtual digital asset service provider, the crew steals wallet keys and empties cryptocurrency wallets. Vendors of observability tools will be warming up their Indian sales teams today, because CERT-IN’s advice to Indian businesses includes improving their ability to log events, monitor for anomalies in real time, and send alerts. It also urged keeping test environments off the internet, and restricting access to cloud resources because CRAFTY FALCON is fond of using them to run its attacks. CERT-IN also warns that the attacks are “active and escalating” and therefore worthy of 24x7 monitoring. Interestingly, the CERT’s advisory mentions attacks on “entities” across banking, financial services, and insurance, but only names the kind of businesses mentioned above as having reported attacks. The Register points this out because India is home to literally thousands of banks, many of them small operations that sometimes lack basic infosec protections. CRAFTY FALCON therefore has a target-rich environment in India should it choose to expand its activities. ®

Japanese Momiji, Autumn

Jon Siegel has added a photo to the pool:

Japanese Momiji, Autumn

Aomori Bay Bridge and Nebuta Museum

Sergiy Galyonkin has added a photo to the pool:

Aomori Bay Bridge and Nebuta Museum

Aomori Bay Bridge cuts diagonally across the sky beside the red facade of Nebuta Museum Wa Rasse on the waterfront in Aomori, Japan. July 2026.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Hegseth wacht mogelijk volgende week afzettingsprocedure in Huis

WASHINGTON (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - Thomas Massie, een Republikeins lid van het Huis van Afgevaardigden, heeft tegen persbureau Bloomberg gezegd dat hij "absoluut" een voorstel tot afzetting indient tegen minister van Defensie Pete Hegseth zodra het Huis volgende week weer bijeenkomt. Om zo'n procedure te starten is een gewone meerderheid in het Huis genoeg.

Massie probeerde al eerder om Hegseth af te laten zetten vanwege het voeren van een oorlog met Iran zonder toestemming van het Congres. Destijds hield de Republikeinse meerderheid de procedure tegen. Dat ligt wellicht anders nu de door Hegseth bepleite oorlog tegen Iran mede heeft bijgedragen aan het enorme Republikeinse verlies tijdens de midterms, denkt Massie.

Het voorstel van Massie om een afzettingsprocedure tegen Hegseth te starten, kan naar verwachting rekenen op brede steun van de Democraten. Massie schat in dat ook genoeg Republikeinen voor zijn voorstel zullen stemmen. Zij willen immers niet publiekelijk hun steun uiten voor de onder vuur liggende Hegseth.

Massie heeft zo'n haast met zijn voorstel omdat hij in januari, als het nieuwe Congres wordt ingezworen, niet in het Huis zal terugkeren. In het volgende Congres zullen de Democraten meerderheden hebben in zowel de Senaat als het Huis.