John from Brisbane has added a photo to the pool:

Sunset yesterday, so peaceful on another day of world smashing hostilities in the Middle East that have the critical Strait of Hormuz opening and shutting like the automatic door on our local supermarket. At least the lone walker off Woody Point in South East Queensland is in peace for a while. Our lovely daughter took us for the ride to her favourite sunset photo spot.

The Foreign Resort

Hørd

After two years of failed attempts at relocation and sterilization, Colombia's government has decided it will euthanize 80 of the at least 169 "cocaine hippos" that were once owned by notorious drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

"Without this action it is impossible to control them," said Colombia's environment minister Irene Vélez at a press conference on Monday. Citing estimates that the population could reach at least 500 individuals by 2030, "affecting our ecosystems and native species," she added that "it is our responsibility to take this action." [...]

In 2022 the government launched a sterilization program to slow reproduction of the hippos, which could number up to 200 individuals. At the same time, officials opened talks with seven countries and two international zoo and aquarium associations to relocate the animals. To date, no country has agreed to take even a single hippo, according to the Colombian government, which ultimately led its Ministry of Environment to opt for euthanasia.

Widespread sterilization is not a viable option because it is a "cumbersome, costly and dangerous procedure that progresses at a very slow pace," says Jorge Moreno Bernal, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of the North in Barranquilla, Colombia. A single sterilization requires cranes and puts human lives at risk, he says. "It is not like sterilizing a dog or a cat."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

Higashiiyasugeoi, Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan
日本四国地方徳島県三好市東祖谷菅生

If you look very closely, you can see both vine bridges. Tsuma no Hashi is the bridge in the foreground, while Otto no Hashi can barely be seen in the background. Below is more information about these bridges by JapanGuide.com, one of my favorite resources for all things Japan travel related.

"13 suspension bridges made of mountain vines (kazurabashi) used to exist in the Iya Valley and provided a vital means of getting people and goods across the river in the past. Two of the surviving bridges still stand side by side deep in the inner valley. They are known as the Oku-Iya Kazurabashi (奥祖谷二重かずら橋, Oku-Iya Nijū Kazurabashi).
The larger of the two bridges, Husband Bridge (Otto no Hashi), stretches 44 meters across the river next to a small waterfall, while the slightly lower Wife Bridge (Tsuma no Hashi) spans 22 meters a little ways upstream. The bridges are constructed with steel cables hidden within the vines for safety and are rebuilt every three years. They are connected to each other by a network of paved hiking trails that also lead to camping facilities on the far side of the river."
Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e7829.html

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

Higashiiyasugeoi, Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan
日本四国地方徳島県三好市東祖谷菅生

If you look very closely, you can see both vine bridges. Tsuma no Hashi is the bridge in the foreground, while Otto no Hashi can barely be seen in the background. Below is more information about these bridges by JapanGuide.com, one of my favorite resources for all things Japan travel related.

"13 suspension bridges made of mountain vines (kazurabashi) used to exist in the Iya Valley and provided a vital means of getting people and goods across the river in the past. Two of the surviving bridges still stand side by side deep in the inner valley. They are known as the Oku-Iya Kazurabashi (奥祖谷二重かずら橋, Oku-Iya Nijū Kazurabashi).
The larger of the two bridges, Husband Bridge (Otto no Hashi), stretches 44 meters across the river next to a small waterfall, while the slightly lower Wife Bridge (Tsuma no Hashi) spans 22 meters a little ways upstream. The bridges are constructed with steel cables hidden within the vines for safety and are rebuilt every three years. They are connected to each other by a network of paved hiking trails that also lead to camping facilities on the far side of the river."
Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e7829.html

WENEN (ANP/DPA/AFP) - In Oostenrijk zijn potjes babyvoeding van het merk HiPP vermengd met rattengif. Het gaat vermoedelijk om een afpersingspoging, meldt voedselwaakhond AGES.

Er is tot dusver zeker een potje "wortelen met aardappelen" gevonden waarin het gif zat. Een klant in het dorpje Schützen am Gebirge had het na waarschuwingen van de autoriteiten ontdekt en het potje ingeleverd, meldde de politie. Er was niets van gegeten.

HiPP had vrijdagavond al zijn volledige assortiment teruggeroepen uit SPAR-supermarkten in heel Oostenrijk. De fabrikant stelde vast dat er gerommeld was met de potjes en waarschuwde dat consumptie ervan levensbedreigend kan zijn.

AGES waarschuwt ouders een dokter te raadplegen als bij hun kinderen symptomen als bloeduitstortingen of bleekheid optreden nadat zij HiPP-babyvoeding hebben gegeten. Symptomen kunnen zich twee tot vijf dagen na inname voordoen. Met de juiste behandeling is de vergiftiging goed te behandelen, aldus het agentschap.

Wednesday BleepingComputer reported that more than 30 WordPress plugins "have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them."

A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instructions received from the command-and-control (C2) server. The compromise affects plugins with hundreds of thousands of active installations and was spotted by Austin Ginder, the founder of managed WordPress hosting provider Anchor Hosting, after receiving a tip about one add-on containing code that allowed third-party access.

Further investigation by Ginder revealed that a backdoor had been present in all plugins within the EssentialPlugin package since August 2025, after the project was acquired in a six-figure deal by a new owner.... "The injected code was sophisticated. It fetched spam links, redirects, and fake pages from a command-and-control server. It only showed the spam to Googlebot, making it invisible to site owners," explained Ginder.

"WordPress.org's v2.6.9.1 update neutralized the phone-home mechanism in the plugin," Ginder writes in a blog post. "But it did not touch wp-config.php. The SEO spam injection was still actively serving hidden content to Googlebot.

"And here is the wildest part. It resolved its C2 domain through an Ethereum smart contract, querying public blockchain RPC endpoints. Traditional domain takedowns would not work because the attacker could update the smart contract to point to a new domain at any time."


This has happened before. In 2017, a buyer using the alias "Daley Tias" purchased the Display Widgets plugin (200,000 installs) for $15,000 and injected payday loan spam. That buyer went on to compromise at least 9 plugins the same way.... The WordPress plugin marketplace has a trust problem... The Flippa listing for Essential Plugin was public. The buyer's background in SEO and gambling marketing was public. And yet the acquisition sailed through without any review from WordPress.org.

WordPress.org has no mechanism to flag or review plugin ownership transfers. There is no "change of control" notification to users. No additional code review triggered by a new committer. The Plugins Team responded quickly once the attack was discovered. But 8 months passed between the backdoor being planted and being caught.

Thanks to Slashdot reader axettone for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A series of digital 3D type works created in the style of the Japanese ceramic colour mixing technique, Nerikomi.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo: