Aggregator

Panicked bosses at the broadcaster were locked in crisis talks last night.

The women, who have not been named, have raised serious concerns about the welfare and safety of female participants on the programme, which is also a hit in the US and Australia.

The Darlene de Sedle collection contains chandelier earrings, two bracelets and a ring that were purchased by the legend in 1999. In December the jewels were purchased for Swift.

Labour enshrined in law a promise that its state-run company GB Energy would not fund companies using forced labour.

Even self-described ‘Trump in high heels’ candidate warns bit barns could send power bills soaring

Chip startup NextSilicon's high-performance-computing-focused accelerators get Sandia National Lab's stamp of approval

Nintendo is trying to secure a touchscreen-specific monster-catching patent that could be relevant to Palworld Mobile. Japan's patent office has initially rejected the application for lacking an inventive step over prior art, but the company could appeal or amend the claims. Games Fray reports: The Japan Patent Office (JPO) has now made a new monster-catching patent application by Nintendo public. Patent Application No. 2026-019762 covers monster-catching of the kind already asserted against the PC and console versions of Palworld and is from the same patent family as two of the three patents Nintendo is already asserting against Palworld, but with a touchscreen focus. Potential targets are the upcoming Palworld Mobile game and Tencent's Roco Kingdom: World, which is presently available only in China but likely to expand internationally. Nintendo filed the application this year with a request for a fast-tracked review. The JPO has indeed been quick, and the response is that Nintendo's application lacks an inventive step over the prior art. Nintendo already amended the claims in February and can try to amend them again. It can try to persuade the examiner and potentially appeal the decision. But the initial rejection suggests that Nintendo will not obtain the desired touchscreen monster-catching patent quickly. The rejection was communicated on April 24, 2026. Nintendo could abandon the application now, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they are more likely to try to persuade the examiner to arrive at a different conclusion, even though the reasons for the rejection are strong. In many patent examination processes, the initial rejection is essentially just an invitation to present one's best arguments. Here, however, the rejection notice is so well-reasoned that it will be an uphill battle for Nintendo. Nintendo's application would cover a touchscreen-controlled game in which a player moves through "a field in a virtual space," uses "a capture item for capturing a field character," and can summon "a battle character" to fight that creature. During combat, the game would display "a plurality of commands including at least an attack command and an item command," selected through "an operation input using the touch panel." The key claim is that when the capture item is used "during a battle" or "in a non-battle state," the game performs "a capture success determination," and, if successful, "the field character is captured and set to a state owned by the player."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tejay Fletcher, 38, was the founder and leading administrator of iSpoof which helped crooks fleece 200,000 victims out of £43million in the UK alone.

The teenager has shared a first look at her new home after her wedding to Noah Price over the weekend.

Makeup artist Nina Bakhshi was celebrating her 28th birthday in Cancún when the getaway turned into a 'life changing accident.'

An update about the second phase of UFO disclosure has been released shortly after the president posted an image of himself standing with a handcuffed alien.

Meta is expected to begin cutting about 8,000 jobs this week as it pours more money into AI infrastructure and looks to "offset" other investments, with additional layoffs reportedly possible later this year. According to CNBC, the morale has worsened inside the company. "Internally, there's an emerging sense of dread across wide swaths of the company," the report says, citing current and former Meta employees. "That's in part because more cuts are expected this year, including a potential round of layoffs in August, followed by another round later in the year, some of the sources said." From the report: [...] Whatever anxiety investors are experiencing, the feelings inside the company are more intense, with some longtime staffers questioning Meta's AI pursuits under AI chief Alexandr Wang, while also weighing if now is the time to leave for opportunities at other companies in the AI race, according to current and former employees. Data aggregated by Blind, an anonymous professional network that requires users to verify their employment with a work email address, reveals some of the internal malaise. Meta's overall rating by employees on Blind has declined 25% from a peak in the second quarter of 2024 to the current period, with a 39% drop in its culture rating. In every category other than compensation, Meta has seen a ratings decline and dramatically underperforms rivals Amazon, Google and Netflix, the Blind data reveals. The company's full-court press with AI included the recent debut of an employee tracking tool intended to collect data from staffers' actions, such as mouse movements and keystrokes on their work computers. The Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, as it's called, is part of Meta's efforts to train AI models to power digital agents that can perform various coding and white-collar tasks. Employees have characterized the data tracking tool as "dystopian," according to messages viewed by CNBC, with some workers expressing fear that personal information could be leaked. Some Meta workers have noted that their workplace computers appear slower since the company initiated the project, adding to their frustration, sources said. Meta workers responded by creating an online petition that urges Zuckerberg and leadership to shutter the project. "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace," the petition says. "It should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of AI training." Further reading: NYT: 'Meta's Embrace of AI Is Making Its Employees Miserable'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barry George was found guilty of the murder BBC Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando. He was cleared and released in 2008. George now faces historic charges of rape of a 14-year-old girl.

An American doctor working with a medical missionary organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has contracted Ebola in the African nation's latest outbreak.

Norfolk Police were called to South Beach Parade, Great Yarmouth, on May 16 following reports that two girls had been raped.

Young pupils turn up on the first day of school completely baffled by the traditional methods of teaching after an early childhood dominated by digital devices.

The medical records, payment information and fingerprint scans of at least 1.8 million patients have been stolen in a major data breach.

After three weeks of testimony, which was covered extensively here on Slashdot, a U.S. jury on Monday ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, finding that he waited too long to bring his claims that the company betrayed its nonprofit mission. Reuters reports: The trial had widely been seen as a critical moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should be used and who should benefit from it. Following the verdict, Musk's lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, but the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was a factual issue. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said. In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman of manipulating him into giving $38 million, then going behind his back by attaching a for-profit business to its original nonprofit and accepting tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Musk called the OpenAI defendants' conduct "stealing a charity." OpenAI was founded by Altman, Musk and several others in 2015. Musk left its board in 2018, and OpenAI set up a for-profit business the next year. OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, said in his closing argument. The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments where Musk's and Altman's credibility came under repeated attack. Lawyers for OpenAI embraced each other after the verdict was announced. Microsoft faced an aiding and abetting claim. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims as untimely." Recap: Musk Accused of 'Selective Amnesia', Altman of Lying As OpenAI Trial Nears End (Day Twelve) OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven) Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine) Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight) Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven) Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) 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.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Peter Mitchell is still fighting to find out what happened on that night in November 2021.