Operations on the International Space Station may have returned to normal on Friday, but concerns over a persistent air leak in the Russian segment of the station remain unresolved. NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens confirmed on Friday that NASA had instructed crew members sheltering in a docked Dragon spacecraft to resume normal operations aboard the International Space Station after Roscosmos paused repair work in the Zvezda service module's transfer tunnel, known as PrK. Reuters reported that concerns over air leaks in the Russian module prompted NASA to order astronaut Chris Williams and the four-member SpaceX Crew-12 team into the Dragon spacecraft as part of a precautionary safe-haven procedure on Friday. The crew entered the spacecraft wearing spacesuits, per Reuters. Stevens did not specify exactly when the crew was instructed to shelter in place. The Roscosmos crew was planning to conduct repairs on the transfer tunnel on Friday, but Stevens said that the plan was paused in order to further assess “measurements and data” regarding the new leaks. “Given this development, NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station,” Stevens said. What’s life in space without some risks? Just how big is this crack, exactly? We’ve known about problems with Zvezda leaks for some time now, as Stevens noted. “The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely,” the NASA mouthpiece said in Friday’s X post about the leak. “NASA and Roscosmos have been working to determine the root cause of the cracks, and Roscosmos manages the issue through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial-repair efforts.” The Register has been reporting on leaks in the Russian segment of the orbital lab since they were first identified in 2020. Multiple repair efforts over the past few years have failed to stop the leaks entirely, and newly identified cracks suggest the problem is continuing. Reuters, citing an unnamed NASA official, said that leaks in the Russian section of the station escalated this week from around a pound of air a day to two pounds. A source The Register spoke with said that the latest discoveries were the longest cracks in the module they’d seen, though we’re still not clear on how large the cracks actually are. Russian news wire Interfax reported that cosmonauts identified two potential air leaks in the transfer chamber, one of which was sealed on Friday with a layer of Germetall-1 two-component sealant, but the second hasn’t been addressed yet. “Efforts are underway to prepare it for hermetic sealing,” Roscosmos said in a statement. We’ll update this story if we hear anything new from NASA, including whether the continued leaks, with cause unknown, could lead to an early retirement for the station. ®
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to give potentially more than a thousand local law enforcement agencies a facial recognition app that would query a database of hundreds of millions of images to verify someone’s immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.
The app would be a dramatic escalation in the technology being used to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are already using Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app that taps into a wide array of DHS and other government databases, on U.S. streets, stopping people and scanning their faces. With that app, ICE officers point their phone camera at a person, the app scans their face, and the app returns a wealth of biographical information and whether they have been issued an order of removal. The app has made mistakes and been used against American citizens.
With this second app, much of that capability would now be in the hands of local police who essentially have become extensions of ICE.
“This embarrassingly cursory document utterly fails to acknowledge the harms that will flow from putting a flawed face recognition app in the hands of many thousands of local police,” Nate Wessler, deputy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Sending local cops out to indiscriminately scan our faces, with a system that is known to generate false matches, that saves our data for 15 years, and that ensnares police into making immigration decisions that they are untrained for and that will undermine community safety efforts, is a recipe for disaster and for terrorizing members of communities across the country. DHS’s privacy regulators fell down on the job. Now it’s up to lawmakers to ensure this dangerous technology stays off our streets.”
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Do you know anything else about this app? Are you a current or former ICE or CBP employee? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
“These ICE non-federal officers will use the TFM [Task Force Module] app during an encounter to verify the target of an operation’s identity, and if warranted, investigate and determine the target’s immigration status (i.e., whether the individual is subject to removal) through facial recognition,” the document reads.
The name of the app is the “ICE Task Force Module App (TFM App),” according to the document. When an officer scans someone’s face, the app will run their face against a database of more than 250 million DHS and State Department records, and then provide instructions to the officer. Either “not detain or arrest under ICE jurisdiction,” or the app will provide a reference code the officer can use to get additional information from ICE.
A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.
404 Media previously reported the existence of Mobile Identify, which appears to be the same app under a different name, in November. It was removed a short while later from the Google Play Store and has not returned. The new document also mentions making the app available through the Apple App Store.
It is not clear when, or if, ICE or other DHS components will roll out the app to local police. DHS did not respond to a request for comment, and the document lists the launch date as September 24, 2025. But the new document describes in detail the plan behind giving this facial recognition app to local police.
“The collection of face images allows ICE non-federal law enforcement officers to verify identity and immigration status (whether the individual is removable),” the document adds. ICE acknowledges in the document that the app may be used on U.S. citizens. “It is conceivable that a photo taken by an ICE non-federal law enforcement officers using the TFM mobile application could be that of someone other than a removable individual, including U.S. citizens,” it reads.
A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.
“ICE non-federal law enforcement officers do not know an individual's citizenship when first encountered and will use the TFM mobile application to determine or verify the individual's identity and confirm that they are a match to CBP TVS,” it reads. TVS is the Traveler Verification Service, the CBP system usually used to verify people entering the country at ports of entry, but which ICE has now turned inwards onto American streets.
The app is designed for members of the 287(g) program, an ICE initiative that grants local and state police certain immigration enforcement powers. It “essentially turns police officers into ICE agents,” according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. More agencies have joined the program recently, including Texas’s Highway Patrol. At the time of writing, 1,220 agencies in 32 states and 2 U.S. territories participate in the program, according to ICE’s website.
These are the agencies that would potentially be given access to the app, as the document points specifically to 287(g) as the legal basis of the app.
“This document confirms our worst fears about the spread of ICE's abusive surveillance technology. Face surveillance was already a dangerous infringement of civil liberties in the hands of ICE agents,” Cooper Quintin, security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the EFF, told 404 Media. “Putting it in the hands of ICE's local partners will subject even more Americans to omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment.”
After 404 Media revealed the existence of both Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify, a group of six democratic lawmakers proposed legislation that would rein in the apps, and entirely kill the local enforcement version.
404 Media obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP. 404 Media previously obtained a similar document from CBP for Mobile Fortify. That document said ICE believes people cannot refuse to be scanned by its app.
At a recent border security conference, Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Law Enforcement Systems & Analysis at ICE, said Mobile Fortify has been used more than 200,000 times, multiple attendees of the conference told 404 Media.
Based on comments from that conference and an DHS source, 404 Media reported that ICE plans to develop its own smartglasses to “supplement” its facial recognition app.
Update: this piece has been updated with comment from the EFF.
Quando cala il buio, le luci si accendono e il bagno pubblico più famoso della città cambia aspetto.
Legno, vetrate colorate, tetti sovrapposti e lampade calde.
Da ogni angolo emerge un dettaglio diverso. Più lo si osserva, più si capisce perché molti lo associano all'atmosfera di Spirited Away.
Dogo Onsen sostiene di essere il più antico bagno termale del Giappone. Che sia davvero il più antico o no, davanti a una struttura come questa la questione passa in secondo piano.
La gente entra, esce, si ferma a fotografarlo o semplicemente lo osserva per qualche minuto.
As darkness falls, the lights come on and the city's most famous bathhouse changes character.
Wood, stained glass, layered roofs, and warm lantern light.
The longer you look at it, the easier it becomes to understand why many people connect it with the atmosphere of Spirited Away.
Dogo Onsen claims to be the oldest hot spring bathhouse in Japan. Whether that is entirely true or not almost becomes irrelevant when standing in front of a building like this.
People arrive, leave, take photos, or simply stop and admire it.
I did the same.
First I looked at it from outside.
Then I went in.
Quando cala il buio, le luci si accendono e il bagno pubblico più famoso della città cambia aspetto.
Legno, vetrate colorate, tetti sovrapposti e lampade calde.
Da ogni angolo emerge un dettaglio diverso. Più lo si osserva, più si capisce perché molti lo associano all'atmosfera di Spirited Away.
Dogo Onsen sostiene di essere il più antico bagno termale del Giappone. Che sia davvero il più antico o no, davanti a una struttura come questa la questione passa in secondo piano.
La gente entra, esce, si ferma a fotografarlo o semplicemente lo osserva per qualche minuto.
As darkness falls, the lights come on and the city's most famous bathhouse changes character.
Wood, stained glass, layered roofs, and warm lantern light.
The longer you look at it, the easier it becomes to understand why many people connect it with the atmosphere of Spirited Away.
Dogo Onsen claims to be the oldest hot spring bathhouse in Japan. Whether that is entirely true or not almost becomes irrelevant when standing in front of a building like this.
People arrive, leave, take photos, or simply stop and admire it.
I did the same.
First I looked at it from outside.
Then I went in.
NEW YORK (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De vraag naar aandelen bij de beursgang van SpaceX is groot. Volgens bronnen van persbureau Bloomberg is die vraag zelfs groter dan het aantal aandelen dat SpaceX gaat uitgeven bij de beursgang in New York die volgende week vrijdag plaats zou moeten vinden.
Het ruimtevaart-, satelliet- en AI-bedrijf van Elon Musk wil bij zijn beursgang 75 miljard dollar ophalen. Daarbij worden bijna 555,6 miljoen aandelen naar de beurs gebracht voor 135 dollar per stuk. Maar volgens Bloomberg is er bij institutionele investeerders zoals pensioenfondsen en vermogensbeheerders meer vraag naar die aandelen dan de hoeveelheid stukken die beschikbaar zijn.
De beursgang wordt dan de grootste ooit. Het huidige record ligt nu nog bij het Saudische staatsolieconcern Aramco dat bij zijn beursgang in 2019 meer dan 29 miljard dollar ophaalde.
Bij de door SpaceX aangegeven introductieprijs zou het bedrijf in totaal bijna 1,77 biljoen dollar waard zijn.
SpaceX, voluit Space Exploration Technologies Corp, krijgt dan een notering aan de technologiebeurs Nasdaq onder het beurssymbool 'SPCX'. Musk wil met het opgehaalde geld onder meer datacenters voor kunstmatige intelligentie in de ruimte gaan bouwen. Hij heeft ook plannen voor missies naar de maan en Mars.
National Portrait Gallery, London The actor’s life in pictures, from mousey-haired teen to American icon to her shocking death at 36, beams with the charm that defined a century. But why aren’t we shown more of what lay behind the smile?
I wanted to hate the National Portrait Gallery’s new blockbuster show, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait. It represents two things that really should be binned: anniversary exhibitions (it marks Monroe’s 100th birthday) and exhibitions of celebrity portraits. Anniversaries rarely signify anything other than the passing of time, which is an inevitable and uninteresting fact of life. As for exhibitions of celebrity photographs – they’re like anniversary shows, only with faces.
And yet … I didn’t quite hate this show, and the reason is Monroe herself. We first see her as Norma Jeane Baker, a regular-looking teenager with mousey brown hair, in a self-portrait taken in a photo booth in 1940. She then becomes the radiant, uncontainable, insanely glamorous film star, cheesecake pin-up and actor seen here in photographs, paintings, and excerpts from her films.
Monaco has always been a special place for Lewis Hamilton, and not just because he has won the Grand Prix on the streets of the Principality three times.
