An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A controversial bill aimed at enforcing safety standards for large artificial intelligence models has now passed the California State Assembly by a 45-11 vote. Following a 32-1 state Senate vote in May, SB-1047 now faces just one more procedural state senate vote before heading to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. As we've previously explored in depth, SB-1047 asks AI model creators to implement a "kill switch" that can be activated if that model starts introducing "novel threats to public safety and security," especially if it's acting "with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision." Some have criticized the bill for focusing on outlandish risks from an imagined future AI rather than real, present-day harms of AI use cases like deep fakes or misinformation. [...]

If the Senate confirms the Assembly version as expected, Newsom will have until September 30 to decide whether to sign the bill into law. If he vetoes it, the legislature could override with a two-thirds vote in each chamber (a strong possibility given the overwhelming votes in favor of the bill). At a UC Berkeley Symposium in May, Newsom said he worried that "if we over-regulate, if we overindulge, if we chase a shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position." At the same time, Newsom said those over-regulation worries were balanced against concerns he was hearing from leaders in the AI industry. "When you have the inventors of this technology, the godmothers and fathers, saying, 'Help, you need to regulate us,' that's a very different environment," he said at the symposium. "When they're rushing to educate people, and they're basically saying, 'We don't know, really, what we've done, but you've got to do something about it,' that's an interesting environment." Supporters of the AI safety bill include state senator Scott Weiner and AI experts including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. Bengio supports the bill as a necessary step for consumer protection and insists that AI should not be self-regulated by corporations, akin to other industries like pharmaceuticals and aerospace.

Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li opposes the bill, arguing that it could have harmful effects on the AI ecosystem by discouraging open-source collaboration and limiting academic research due to the liability placed on developers of modified models. A group of business leaders also sent an open letter Wednesday urging Newsom to veto the bill, calling it "fundamentally flawed."

Google says it has evidence that Russian government hackers are using exploits that are "identical or strikingly similar" to those previously made by spyware makers Intellexa and NSO Group. From a report: In a blog post on Thursday, Google said it is not sure how the Russian government acquired the exploits, but said this is an example of how exploits developed by spyware makers can end up in the hands of "dangerous threat actors." In this case, Google says the threat actors are APT29, a group of hackers widely attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or the SVR. APT29 is a highly capable group of hackers, known for its long-running and persistent campaigns aimed at conducting espionage and data theft against a range of targets, including tech giants Microsoft and SolarWinds, as well as foreign governments.

Google said it found the hidden exploit code embedded on Mongolian government websites between November 2023 and July 2024. During this time, anyone who visited these sites using an iPhone or Android device could have had their phone hacked and data stolen, including passwords, in what is known as a "watering hole" attack. The exploits took advantage of vulnerabilities in the iPhone's Safari browser and Google Chrome on Android that had already been fixed at the time of the suspected Russian campaign. Still, those exploits nevertheless could be effective in compromising unpatched devices.

OpenAI and Anthropic will give a U.S. government agency early access to major new model releases under agreements announced on Thursday. From a report: Governments around the world have been pushing for measures -- both legislative and otherwise -- to evaluate the risks of powerful new AI algorithms. Anthropic and OpenAI have each signed a memorandum of understanding to allow formal collaboration with the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, a part of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology. In addition to early access to models, the agreements pave the way for collaborative research around how to evaluate models and their safety as well as methods for mitigating risk. The U.S. AI Safety Institute was set up as part of President Biden's AI executive order.

Yelp has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of maintaining its local search monopoly by preferencing its own services over competitors, harming competition and reducing quality. "Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale," adds The Verge. From the report: Yelp wants the court to order Google to stop the allegedly anticompetitive conduct and to pay it damages. It demanded a jury trial and filed the suit in the Northern District of California, where a different jury found that Google had an illegal monopoly through its app store in its fight against Epic Games.

The company was emboldened to bring its own lawsuit against Google after the DOJ's win in its antitrust case about the company's allegedly exclusionary practices around the distribution of search services. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told The New York Times that following that decision, "the winds on antitrust have shifted dramatically." Previously, he told the Times, he'd hesitated to bring a suit because of the resources it would require and because he saw it as the government's job to enforce the antitrust laws. "Yelp's claims are not new," Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement. "Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC, and recently by the judge in the DOJ's case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp's meritless claims."

Three former Backpage executives, including co-founder Michael Lacey, were sentenced to prison for promoting prostitution and laundering money while disguising their activities as a legitimate classified business. The Associated Press reports: A jury convicted Lacey, 76, of a single count of international concealment money laundering last year, but deadlocked on 84 other prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges. U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa later acquitted Lacey of dozens of charges for insufficient evidence, but he still faces about 30 prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges. Authorities say the site generated $500 million in prostitution-related revenue from its inception in 2004 until it was shut down by the government in 2018.

Lacey's lawyers say their client was focused on running an alternative newspaper chain and wasn't involved in day-to-day operations of Backpage. But Humetewa told Lacey during Wednesday's sentencing he was aware of the allegations against Backpage and did nothing. "In the face of all this, you held fast," Humetewa said. "You didn't do a thing." Two other Backpage executives, Chief Financial Officer John Brunst and Executive Vice President Scott Spear, also were convicted last year and were each sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison. The judge ordered Lacey and the two executives to report to the U.S. Marshals Service in two weeks to start serving their sentences.

The Philippines' $38 billion outsourcing industry faces a seismic shift as AI tools threaten to displace hundreds of thousands of jobs. Major players are rapidly deploying AI "copilots" to handle tasks like summarizing customer interactions and providing real-time assistance to human agents, Bloomberg reports. Industry experts estimate up to 300,000 business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs could be lost to AI in the next five years, according to outsourcing advisory firm Avasant.

However, the firm also projects AI could create 100,000 new roles in areas like algorithm training and data curation. The BPO sector is crucial to the Philippine economy as the largest source of private-sector employment. The government has established an AI research center and launched training initiatives to boost workers' skills.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being "exploitative" after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys. Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter, shared by The Register, to Mansukh Mandaviya, India's minister of Labor and Employment. It requested that the Indian government intervene "to prevent exploitation of young IT graduates by Infosys."

The letter, signed by NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja, claimed that NITES received "multiple" complaints from recent engineering graduates "who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices" from Infosys after being hired for system engineer and digital specialist engineer roles. According to NITES, Infosys sent these people offer letters as early as April 22, 2022, after engaging in a college recruitment effort from 2022â"2023, but never onboarded the graduates. NITES has previously said that "over 2,000 recruits" are affected.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Over 192,000 publicly available charging ports are now online, and approximately 1,000 new chargers are being added each week. To build on this momentum, the federal government has awarded $521 million in grants to further expand the national network, with new chargers being deployed across 29 states, two Federally Recognized Tribes, and the District of Columbia.

The $521 million investment is divided into two key areas: 41 community projects ($321 million) and 10 corridor fast-charging projects ($200 million). The grant awards also support President Biden's Justice40 Initiative, which aims for 40% of the overall benefits of federal investments to flow to disadvantaged communities, with over half of the funding going to sites in disadvantaged communities. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg emphasized the importance of this initiative, stating, "The Biden-Harris Administration has been clear about America leading the EV revolution, and thanks to the historic [Bipartisan Infrastructure Law] package, we're building a nationwide EV charger network to make sure all drivers have an accessible, reliable, and convenient way to charge their vehicles."

ole_timer shares a report from Ars Technica, written by Beth Mole There's more bad news for the company behind an experimental MDMA therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, which the Food and Drug Administration roundly rejected earlier this month. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the FDA is now expanding an investigation into clinical trials behind the experimental psychedelic therapy -- even though the agency has already rejected it. Agency investigators reportedly interviewed four additional people last week, asking questions regarding whether the trials underreported side effects.

People involved in the trial have previously alleged, among other things, that ill effects, such as suicidal thoughts, went undocumented, and trial participants were discouraged from reporting them to bolster the chances of FDA approval. Overall, the MDMA trials faced crushing criticism amid the FDA's review, with outside experts and agency advisers calling out allegations of sexual misconduct at one trial site, as well as flaws in overall trial designs, multiple sources of biases, and claims that the company behind the therapy, Lykos, fostered a cult-like belief in psychedelics.

According to the Journal, the recent interviews were being conducted by the FDA's Office of Regulatory Affairs, which oversees inspections, and a subdivision of that office called Biomedical Research Monitoring Program, which works to ensure the quality and integrity of data submitted to FDA. Notably, when the agency rejected MDMA, it advised Lykos to conduct a new trial. While the FDA's rejection and expanded investigation are bad enough for Lykos, the company announced this month that it's laying off 75 percent of its staff and overhauling its leadership. The moves were in response to the FDA's rejections, the company said. Additionally, a scientific journal retracted three of the company's MDMA studies, citing "protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct" in its trials, echoing claims raised amid the FDA review.

snydeq writes: CSO Online's Sarah Wiedemar reports on a rising trend in the Russia cybersecurity community: bug bounty programs, which the researcher says could have far-reaching implications as the bounty ecosystem matures. From the report: "Given the current uncertainty that Russian bug bounty hunters and vulnerability researchers are facing when dealing with Western bug bounty programs, Russian IT companies have begun to fill that vacuum. [...] Russian bug bounty platforms have a high probability for substantial growth in the next few years. They provide a credible Western alternative not only to Russian hackers, but also for all other vulnerability researchers located in countries that could potentially face international financial sanctions in the future.

From a Western perspective, a potential problematic development could be that Russian hackers decide to sell vulnerabilities found in Western products to Russian zero-day acquisition companies such as Operation Zero. Thus, instead of reporting them to Western bug bounty platforms for free, they sell to the highest bidder. Those zero-day acquisition companies in turn sell them on to Russian law enforcement and security agencies, which could lead to increased espionage campaigns in Western countries. Western policy makers would do well to keep an eye on the evolution of Russia's bug bounty ecosystem." Although bug bounty programs have existed in Russia since 2012, they weren't widely adopted due to distrust from the government and dominance of Western platforms. Recently, new platforms like Bug Bounty RU, Standoff 365, and BI.ZONE have emerged, attracting thousands of bug hunters and major Russian companies. "In 2023, the total number of bug hunters on these platforms amounted to 20,000 people," notes Wiedemar. The Russian government has also begun participating, launching programs for 10 of its e-government systems.

However, legal ambiguities remain, as ethical hacking is still considered illegal in Russia, with potential prison sentences. Despite this, there are ongoing legislative efforts to legalize ethical hacking, alongside broader government initiatives to enhance cybersecurity, including increased fines for data breaches and the potential creation of a cybersecurity agency akin to the US CISA.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.

By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.

The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities. Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more vocal about "government pressure" to censor COVID-19-related content. He also acknowledged that Meta shouldn't have demoted a New York Post story about President Biden's family before the 2020 election. The Hill reports: Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured" Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to "censor" content in 2021. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken," he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction -- and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again," Zuckerberg added.

The Meta CEO also said the company "shouldn't have demoted" a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden's family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it. The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted. Zuckerberg also said in Monday's letter that he does not plan to make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this cycle, like he did during the 2020 election.

The contributions, which were "designed to be non-partisan," were accused of being unfairly distributed between left-leaning and right-leaning areas and labeled "Zuckerbucks" by Republicans. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other," Zuckerberg said. "My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another -- or to even appear to be playing a role." House Judiciary Republicans touted the letter as a "big win for free speech," writing on X: "Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story."

"Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won't spend money this election cycle. That's right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity," it added.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night by French authorities on allegations that his social media platform was being used for child pornography, drug trafficking and organized crime. The move sparked debate over free speech worldwide from prominent anti-censorship figures including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. and Edward Snowden. However, "the immediate freakout came from Russia," reports Politico. "That's because Telegram is widely used by the Russian military for battlefield communications thanks to problems with rolling out its own secure comms system. It's also the primary vehicle for pro-war military bloggers and media -- as well as millions of ordinary Russians." From the report: "They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army," Russian military blogger channel Povernutie na Z Voine said in a Telegram statement. The blog site Dva Mayora said that Russian specialists are working on an alternative to Telegram, but that the Russian army's Main Communications Directorate has "not shown any real interest" in getting such a system to Russian troops. The site said Durov's arrest may actually speed up the development of an independent comms system. Alarmed Russian policymakers are calling for Durov's release.

"[Durov's] arrest may have political grounds and be a tool for gaining access to the personal information of Telegram users," the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma Vladislav Davankov said in a Telegram statement. "This cannot be allowed. If the French authorities refuse to release Pavel Durov from custody, I propose making every effort to move him to the UAE or the Russian Federation. With his consent, of course." Their worry is that Durov may hand over encryption keys to the French authorities, allowing access to the platform and any communications that users thought was encrypted.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the arrest of Durov was "in no way a political decision." The Russian embassy has demanded that it get access to Durov, but the Kremlin has so far not issued a statement on the arrest. "Before saying anything, we should wait for the situation to become clearer," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. However, officials and law enforcement agencies were instructed to clear all their communication from Telegram, the pro-Kremlin channel Baza reported. "Everyone who is used to using the platform for sensitive conversations/conversations should delete those conversations right now and not do it again," Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan said in a Telegram post. "Durov has been shut down to get the keys. And he's going to give them."

OpenAI said in a letter that it supports California bill AB 3211, which requires tech companies to label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based OpenAI believes that for AI-generated content, transparency and requirements around provenance such as watermarking are important, especially in an election year, according to a letter sent to California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who authored the bill. "New technology and standards can help people understand the origin of content they find online, and avoid confusion between human-generated and photorealistic AI-generated content," OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters.

AB 3211 has already passed the state Assembly by a 62-0 vote. Earlier this month it passed the senate appropriations committee, setting it up for a vote by the full state Senate. If it passes by the end of the legislative session on Aug. 31, it would advance to Governor Gavin Newsom to sign or veto by Sept. 30.

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire co-founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested in France in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement, prosecutors announced on Monday. From a report: Durov, who has French citizenship, was detained at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, on Saturday evening after arriving from Azerbaijan on his private jet. His surprise arrest has sparked debate over free speech worldwide and led to an outcry in Moscow. The Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the investigation concerned crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities.

Earlier in the day the French president, Emmanuel Macron, gave the first confirmation that Durov had been arrested as part of a judicial inquiry in relation to Telegram. "In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights," Macron wrote on X, adding that the arrest was "in no way a political decision." "It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law," he said. A senior official at Ofmin, a French agency set up last year to prevent violence against children, said Durov's arrest was linked to Telegram's failure to properly fight crime on the app, including the spread of child sexual abuse material.

President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the French government was not involved in the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. From a report: "The arrest of Telegram's president on French territory took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide," Macron said. Durov was detained Saturday night after his private jet arrived in Paris. The Paris prosecutor has not yet communicated the reasons for the arrest of Durov, who founded the messaging app in 2013.

The tech chief currently remains in policy custody. The arrest follows probes "accusing Telegram of being complicit in numerous affairs linked to drug trafficking, apology for terrorism and cyberbullying," French daily Le Monde reported. In a statement, Telegram said that its CEO -- a Russian-born French-Emirati citizen -- had "nothing to hide" and that the company abided by EU law.

[...] "More than anything else, France is committed to freedom of expression and communication, innovation and entrepreneurship," Macron said Monday. "In a state governed by the rule of law, on social networks as in real life, freedoms are exercised within a framework established by law to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights."

IBM is the latest American company to downsize its presence in China amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. From a report: China's efforts to decrease its dependence on the West have ratcheted up local market competition -- and U.S. tech giants including Microsoft are looking elsewhere to house their operations. IBM will shut down its research and development department in China, impacting about 1,000 jobs, multiple outlets reported Monday.

The Chinese government has encouraged domestic companies to overtake and push out U.S. tech dominance out of the country in a bid for self-sufficiency in the sector, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. IBM has faced mounting competition in China in recent years, IBM executive Jack Hergenrother told employees virtually Monday, per the Journal. IBM reportedly plans to move its R&D operations to other overseas facilities. According to the company's 2023 annual report released earlier this year, the company saw its revenue in China drop 19.6% last year.

This weekend NASA said they'd turn to SpaceX to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, notes the Associated Press, "rather than risk using the Boeing Starliner capsule that delivered them." (They add that Boeing's capsule "has been plagued by problems with its propulsion system.")

But Reuters reported that even before the setback, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were "in talks to sell their rocket-launching joint venture United Launch Alliance to Sierra Space, two people familiar with the discussions said." A deal to sell ULA, a major provider of launch services to the U.S. government and a top rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, would mark a significant shift in the U.S. space launch industry as ULA separates from two of the largest defense contractors to a smaller, privately held firm.

The potential sale comes after years of speculation about ULA's future and failed attempts to divest the joint venture over the past decade. In 2019, Boeing and Lockheed Martin reportedly explored selling ULA but couldn't agree on terms with potential buyers... Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Cerberus Capital Management had placed bids in early 2023 for the company, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Rocket Lab had also expressed interest, two people said. None of those discussions led to a deal...

A potential deal could accelerate deployment of [Sierra Space's] crewed spaceflight business, analysts said. A ULA acquisition, they said, would give the company in-house access to launch vehicles that could send its spaceplane and space-station components into Earth's orbit, rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars for those launches as a customer...

ULA has faced challenges in scaling Vulcan production and upping its launch rate to meet commercial demand and fulfill contract obligations with the Space Force, which in 2021 picked Vulcan for a sizable chunk of national security missions alongside SpaceX's Falcon fleet. A sale of ULA would unshackle the company from Boeing and Lockheed, whose boards have long resisted ideas from ULA to expand the business beyond rockets and into new competitive markets such as lunar habitats or maneuverable spacecraft, according to former executives.
While Reuters's sources say the negotiations could still end without a deal, they also said ULA could be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion, giving Boeing some cash while shifting its focus to its core businesses of aerospace and defense.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

A long-time Slashdot reader writes: Recent reports have indicated a near-complete collapse in the population of Snow Crabs in the Bering Sea. Scientists with the US Government's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that warming in the environment has led to vast numbers of snow crabs starving to death.

There has been a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of argument on whether or how much humanity has had an effect on the fundamental ecology of our planet... Here is a fine example of anthropogenic change to the planet's weather, ecosystems and even the planet's very ability to feed us.
From the government's findings on the NOAA web site: "What is particularly noteworthy is these boreal conditions associated with the snow crab collapse are more than 200 times likely to occur in the present climate (1.0 degrees -1.5 degrees of warming rate) than in the preindustrial era," said Mike Litzow, lead author and director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's Kodiak Lab. "Even more concerning is that Arctic conditions conducive for snow crabs to retain their dominant role in the southeastern Bering Sea are expected to continue to decline in the future." [...] Litzow and his team expect to see Arctic conditions in only 8 percent of future years in the southeastern Bering Sea.
The warmer temperatures brought existential threats including including a fatal disease and more crab-eating predators, their study found. CNN reports that the crabs' "horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported... Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic." Billions of crabs ultimately starved to death, devastating Alaska's fishing industry in the years that followed... The decline of the Alaskan snow crab signals a wider ecosystem change in the Arctic, as oceans warm and sea ice disappears. The ocean around Alaska is now becoming inhospitable for several marine species, including red king crab and sea lions, experts say...

The Arctic region has warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet, scientists have reported. Litzow called what's happening in the Bering Sea a "bellwether" of what's to come. "All of us need to recognize the impacts of climate change," he said.

Reuters reports that the Iranian hacking team which compromised the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump "is known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of its victims, enabling them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones, according to researchers and experts who follow the group." Known as APT42 or CharmingKitten by the cybersecurity research community, the accused Iranian hackers are widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran's military, known as the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC-IO. Their appearance in the U.S. election is noteworthy, sources told Reuters, because of their invasive espionage approach against high-value targets in Washington and Israel. "What makes (APT42) incredibly dangerous is this idea that they are an organization that has a history of physically targeting people of interest," said John Hultquist, chief analyst with U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who referenced past research that found the group surveilling the cell phones of Iranian activists and protesters... Hultquist said the hackers commonly use mobile malware that allows them to "record phone calls, room audio recordings, pilfer SMS (text) inboxes, take images off of a machine," and gather geolocation data...

APT42 also commonly impersonates journalists and Washington think tanks in complex, email-based social engineering operations that aim to lure their targeting into opening booby-trapped messages, which let them takeover systems. The group's "credential phishing campaigns are highly targeted and well-researched; the group typically targets a small number of individuals," said Josh Miller, a threat analyst with email security company Proofpoint. They often target anti-Iran activists, reporters with access to sources inside Iran, Middle Eastern academics and foreign-policy advisers. This has included the hacking of western government officials and American defense contractors. For example, in 2018, the hackers targeted nuclear workers and U.S. Treasury department officials around the time the United States formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Allison Wikoff, a senior cyber intelligence analyst with professional services company PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"APT42 is still actively targeting campaign officials and former Trump administration figures critical of Iran, according to a blog post by Google's cybersecurity research team."