Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
People told to prepare for waves of up to three metres in parts of the Philippines, with smaller waves possible in Indonesia and Malaysia
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook part of the southern Philippines early on Monday, sparking tsunami warnings on some regional coasts, collapsing some houses and killing at least one person.
“Many buildings were affected, but I cannot enumerate them now because we are busy with ongoing rescues,” Master Sergeant Robert Dagon of the General Santos City police told Agence France-Presse.
Continue reading...Russian billionaire offered to take a ‘silent’ message on peace talks back to Moscow, Ukraine’s president says. What we know on day 1,566
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Roman Abramovich, the Russian magnate and former owner of Chelsea football club, had met him in Kyiv where he offered to take a message to the Kremlin on peace prospects. Zelenskyy’s comments to Sky News marked his first acknowledgment that the billionaire had travelled to Ukraine’s capital and was involved to some extent in negotiations. “He came to Kyiv. He said ‘I am messaging direct to you. And I want to take a message from you and give it to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’. But he said it has to be silent without any kind of public messages,” Zelenskyy said.
“You are fighting against us on our territory,” Zelenskyy said of his message to Abramovich. “We will not leave and we will not go out from our territory, no we will not give you victory,” he said, adding he had reiterated his request to meet Putin face-to-face. Zelenskyy said the meeting was “not a secret”, adding that the Russians wanted to know what Kyiv was “ready to do”. Abramovich has been sanctioned by the UK government after ministers accused him of having “clear connections” to Putin’s regime.
Abramovich has not commented on the Kyiv meeting. However, he played a role in unsuccessful negotiations to end the fighting in the first weeks of the invasion, but has been less visible since. Putin has made it clear Russia is not prepared to stop fighting in Ukraine until Kyiv abandons the Donbas region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Zelenskyy met the leaders of the UK, France and Germany in London on Sunday, and discussed the “urgent need” to ramp up production of weapons to combat Russia’s powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles, write Alexandra Topping and Luke Harding. “The leaders underlined the urgent need to scale up the production of interceptors and co-develop anti-ballistic missile and deep strike capabilities,” a joint statement said after the meeting. No details, financial or otherwise, on how this would be done were provided. Zelenskyy will meet King Charles on Monday. Ukraine’s shortage of air defence systems, in part because of the depletion of US stocks during the Iran war, has left civilians especially vulnerable to ballistic missiles, even as Kyiv’s defences stop most of Moscow’s drones and its forces have made advances elsewhere on the battlefield.
A Russian drone struck a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel near Ukraine’s Chornobyl power plant over the weekend. While the structure was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit, writes Peter Beaumont.
Russia fired waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least five people. A bombardment of a public transport stop in the Zaporizhzhia region killed at least two people, while a nearby drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver, authorities said. A separate attack on Dnipro in central Ukraine killed a 59-year-old man, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Ganzha, posted on Telegram.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its air defences had downed 500 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours, Interfax news agency reported.
Moldova’s President, Maia Sandu, said the war in neighbouring Ukraine showed that her country badly needed high-technology interceptor drones and new legislation was required to facilitate their manufacture. Moldova, which is seeking EU membership by 2030, has dealt with numerous incidents of Russian drones flying over its territory or debris landing in areas near the border. Sandu, a fierce critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, expressed particular concern over a drone last month that struck a residence in Galati, a Romanian city near the border with Moldova and Ukraine, injuring two people.
Continue reading...Every reader deserves to be informed about whether what they are reading is human or AI
A few weeks ago, Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic in political science at Macquarie University, wrote an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in which she reported on excessive use of AI chatbots by students to write their essays.
In it, she raised her concern that universities are qualifying lawyers, nurses, financial advisers, engineers and teachers who do not have the essential skills required to perform their roles. If that is the case, the societal consequences are obvious.
Continue reading...Rose Byrne, Sarah Paulson, Daniel Radcliffe, Adrien Brody and others gather to celebrate Broadway’s biggest awards night. The 79th annual Tony awards are hosted by Pink at Radio City Music Hall in New York
Continue reading...
Black Market Tinkerers on Facebook Marketplace Offer to Hide 'Recording Lights' on Meta Smartglasses
People are disabling the "recording light" on Meta's Ray-Ban smartglasses — "by my count, thousands of people," says tech journalist Joanna Stern in a new video report:
STERN: "They're hiring people on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the light for as much as $100. According to our reporting, folks are offering this service in at least 30 states — despite Meta's attempts to stop it... In most states, we found multiple listings. In the New York and New Jersey area alone there were 23 listings."
Stern watched a man in New Jersey disable and then conceal the light with a drill and dental probe in a New Jersey garage (a skill he learned watching YouTube and TikTok videos). He said the same day he'd already been contacted by eight more interested customers, and Stern also found at least 10 other people willing to do the same thing, just in New Jersey. "But what we found is they're all over the country."
Meta sold 7 million smartglasses in 2025, but a Meta spokesperson insisted to the videomaker that a "majority" of their smartglasses owners aren't blocking the recording light. And furthermore, they added "We aggressively target anyone advertising tampering tools, have removed thousands of violating ads and Marketplace listings for these services, and pursue legal action when appropriate." (The reporter acknowledges "many" of the Marketplace ads disappeared after they brought them to Meta's attention — and Meta also said they were working with other retailers and sellers to take down listings for smartglasses-tampering parts.)
The reporter also heard from one journalist who said they'd used it so they could record the activities of federal immigration agents without being targeted. "Others told me they just don't want people asking questions when they're recording." (There's video of one young man saying "It's already difficult enough to film in public. I don't want to have a blinking light on my face.")
Tampering with smartglasses isn't illegal — though it is against Meta's Terms of Service, and could void your warranty. But a lawyer in the report says recording others without consent may be illegal, depending on a wide range of "jurisdictional nuances" like whether you live in an all-party consent state or a one-party consent state. "This seems to be our new reality," the report concludes: "more cameras, more microphones everywhere, and less certainty about who and what is recording." (Tech blogger John Gruber offered this assessment. "Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.")
Stern's report points out that "People are trying to fight back. Apps have popped up that use Bluetooth to scan for nearby camera glasses." (In the video one app-maker wonders why Meta isn't offering the same service themselves. "There are technical solutions to these problems.")
Ironically, when I watched the report on YouTube, it was preceded by... an ad for Meta's Ray-Ban AI smartglasses.
STERN: "They're hiring people on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the light for as much as $100. According to our reporting, folks are offering this service in at least 30 states — despite Meta's attempts to stop it... In most states, we found multiple listings. In the New York and New Jersey area alone there were 23 listings."
Stern watched a man in New Jersey disable and then conceal the light with a drill and dental probe in a New Jersey garage (a skill he learned watching YouTube and TikTok videos). He said the same day he'd already been contacted by eight more interested customers, and Stern also found at least 10 other people willing to do the same thing, just in New Jersey. "But what we found is they're all over the country."
Meta sold 7 million smartglasses in 2025, but a Meta spokesperson insisted to the videomaker that a "majority" of their smartglasses owners aren't blocking the recording light. And furthermore, they added "We aggressively target anyone advertising tampering tools, have removed thousands of violating ads and Marketplace listings for these services, and pursue legal action when appropriate." (The reporter acknowledges "many" of the Marketplace ads disappeared after they brought them to Meta's attention — and Meta also said they were working with other retailers and sellers to take down listings for smartglasses-tampering parts.)
The reporter also heard from one journalist who said they'd used it so they could record the activities of federal immigration agents without being targeted. "Others told me they just don't want people asking questions when they're recording." (There's video of one young man saying "It's already difficult enough to film in public. I don't want to have a blinking light on my face.")
Tampering with smartglasses isn't illegal — though it is against Meta's Terms of Service, and could void your warranty. But a lawyer in the report says recording others without consent may be illegal, depending on a wide range of "jurisdictional nuances" like whether you live in an all-party consent state or a one-party consent state. "This seems to be our new reality," the report concludes: "more cameras, more microphones everywhere, and less certainty about who and what is recording." (Tech blogger John Gruber offered this assessment. "Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.")
Stern's report points out that "People are trying to fight back. Apps have popped up that use Bluetooth to scan for nearby camera glasses." (In the video one app-maker wonders why Meta isn't offering the same service themselves. "There are technical solutions to these problems.")
Ironically, when I watched the report on YouTube, it was preceded by... an ad for Meta's Ray-Ban AI smartglasses.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MANILLA (ANP) - Na een zware aardbeving voor de kust van het Filipijnse eiland Mindanao is maandagochtend vroeg een tsunamiwaarschuwing afgegeven. Naast de Filipijnen zelf geldt de waarschuwing voor onder meer kustgebieden in Indonesië en Japan.
De beving had volgens het Amerikaanse geologische instituut USGS een kracht van 7.8. Geautomatiseerde meldingen van het Filipijnse Instituut voor Vulkanologie en Seismologie PHIVOLCS-DOST geven een kracht van 7.0 aan.
JEREVAN (ANP) - De Armeense premier Nikol Pasjinjan heeft de overwinning uitgeroepen bij de parlementsverkiezingen. Tijdens een persconferentie in de nacht van zondag op maandag noemde Pasjinjan de overwinning van zijn partij Burgercontract een "historische zege".
De persconferentie volgde op de bekendmaking van de eerste uitslagen door de Armeense kiescommissie. De regeringspartij stond toen op 54,5 procent van de stemmen, tegenover 21,9 procent voor grootste rivaal Sterk Armenië.
Pasjinjan heeft in de afgelopen jaren meer afstand genomen van oude bondgenoot Rusland en toenadering gezocht tot de Europese Unie. Dit tot onvrede van het Kremlin, dat in de aanloop naar de verkiezingen handelsrestricties oplegde. Pasjinjan zei zondag na het uitbrengen van zijn stem dat het slechts ging om "een zakelijke kwestie" en dat er bij de verkiezingen geen sprake was van een keuze tussen Rusland en het Westen.