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The sheriff's office released both chilling notes in full on Friday - one demanding a $4 million ransom and a second, written in a similar tone, claiming Guthrie had died before offering an apology.

Sony says it will proceed with ending PlayStation disc sales in January 2028 despite petitions, boycott threats, and concerns about digital ownership and the disappearance of the secondhand market. PCMag reports: After Sony's recent earnings call, an investor Q&A session saw analysts ask about its controversial decision to end disc production across all of its consoles. The company hadn't publicly commented since its announcement and had reduced activity on social accounts and other marketing channels. Sony's chief financial officer, Lin Tao, broke that silence during the Q&A. "There are various reasons we made this decision," she said through an interpreter. "The biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That's the big factor. It's not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing. "And so when we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion, and we're going to cautiously move this forward," Tao said. "We have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us," said Tao. [...] Tao says Sony wants to "consider" the emotions of disgruntled customers, especially as titles are "connected to people's fond memories in many cases." Tao also alluded to the possibility of future measures to lessen the blow for anyone unhappy with the decision, but it appears Sony hasn't yet finalized what those may be. "In the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore," she said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Cyberattacks targeting municipal water systems have been reported in at least seven states this week, prompting the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency to warn utilities nationwide that hackers are trying to disrupt critical water infrastructure. In a public service announcement Thursday, the agencies said water and wastewater utilities have reported incidents to the FBI, with some malicious activity degrading water operations. The announcement does not name the states. The warning comes after hackers targeted more than 30 municipal water facilities in Minnesota in an attack that had hallmarks of Iranian meddling, according to a law enforcement official. It is still under investigation. A spokesperson for Minnesota's information technology services agency said Thursday there was no indication the breaches contaminated any municipal water supplies. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a separate alert that some larger attacks on water infrastructure had "resulted in boil water notices and sustained manual operations," though it did not say where. [...] The federal advisory said the malicious cyber actors, or MCAs, targeted specific brands of control systems used by municipal water utilities, though the FBI and the EPA urged operators of all systems to take precautions. [...] The agencies said the hackers remotely accessed internet-facing devices, changed IP addresses and passwords, and caused utilities to lose monitoring and control capabilities. The federal advisory calls on system operators to remove programmable logical controllers, or PLCs, from direct internet exposure by putting them behind secure gateways and firewalls; use strong passwords; and limit communications between authorized control system devices through access control lists.

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President Donald Trump launched a fierce attack on Spain's socialist government over a dramatic surge of migrants entering the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

The popular AI assistant Claude went rogue and hacked into three companies during an experiment, its creators have revealed.

Griner, 35, is seeking 'joint legal and physical custody' of the couple's two-year-old son, while also requesting an equitable division of all marital assets.

Persistent sessions could be just the beginning

In the heyday of North Sea oil, 'Granite City' Aberdeen boasted Britain's biggest concentration of millionaires - yet the former boom town has suffered a stark decline.

The body of Elizabeth-Jane Ross, 38, was discovered by a vagrant stuffed into a travel bag in an abandoned car park in Athens.

Google has integrated its Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth, allowing users to place AI-generated events and objects onto real satellite imagery. The company says its AI-generated images contain invisible watermarks detectable through Gemini or Lens, but the BBC found those safeguards and some third-party detection tools can be fooled into labeling manipulated Google Earth images as real. From the report: A collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine's capital were among the images BBC Verify was able to create when testing the feature, which was rolled out on Thursday. Google has not yet responded to questions based on BBC Verify's tests, but in a social media post the company said they "take misinformation seriously" and that "we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections." AI and misinformation expert Henk van Ess has highlighted the risks this feature poses, creating fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the US-Mexico border and a fake hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater next to it. He said Google was allowing "invented" imagery to be "welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery." "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on," van Ess added. UPDATE 7/31/26 10:54 AM: Google is rolling back the image generation inside of Google Earth: "We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. We've seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however we've also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated."

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One of the world's biggest charities has apologised to bosses of JK Rowling's rape support centre after branding it 'anti-rights'.

'The idea that it could even be brought forward, in my view, shows that the FIFA president is the wrong man to lead the organisation,' said Burnham.

Few voices have been as forthright in their disapproval of Gianni Infantino's proposal to sell off the World Cup as UEFA's president Aleksander Ceferin.

alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it's using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressive. Over the past two years, small publishers lost 60% of referrals from search overall, medium publishers 47%, large publishers 22%.

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Like most people who start on weight-loss medications such as Wegovy, Kaylee Lennon had heard about the potential side-effects, including sulphur burps and diarrhoea.

Infantino, 56, is facing a rebellion from his members and is under pressure to quit but is odds-on at 1/4 with Paddy Power to keep his job.

Paris Wilson, 35, fed information on fitness instructor Danny Calahane's whereabouts to a drugs kingpin.

Scott Gough, 56, was found dead at home near Rickmansworth on March 29 2024, a day after a gang of six young men banged on his door and left a threatening note.

He reached into the pram of a two-month-old baby and stole a dummy in one incident