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ExplainedWorld· Developing
Pope Leo XIV underwent successful surgery at Rome's Gemelli Hospital to remove a localised cancerous nodule from his right lung. Doctors confirmed the growth was completely excised, leaving the pontiff requiring no further therapy as he resumes his public schedule.
World· Verified
SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Yonhap) -- Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean lead...
World· Verified
Italy's government approves sending 500 troops to Milan after clashes and protests.
Health· Verified
Test results have confirmed his diagnosis as a lung adenocarcinoma that was localised.
World· Developing
Families say they are struggling to provide nutritious meals for their children as commercial supplies are disrupted.
World· Developing
Tehran had 'nothing new' to tell Washington after latest nuclear proposals reportedly offered by mediators.
Science· Verified
A new UN report warns that exceeding 1.5°C of global warming is now unavoidable, but aggressive emissions cuts could curb peak temperatures and reverse warming by the century's end.
Technology· Verified
Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators around the world scrambling to protect their systems. Developers of the PHP programming language on Wednesday released urgent new fixes to vulnerabilities that had quietly been lurking in their software for years until they were uncovered using AI, saying that all users were “encouraged to update immediately.” With tech firms warning that some hackers were already exploiting the flaws, government agencies across Europe were among those that took sites offline as a precaution. Because a fix is now public and artificial intelligence tools are able to reverse engineer the bug with little effort, experts said they were bracing for a wave of intrusions as hackers jumped to get ahead of fixes. AI was powering a “race to exploit,” said Costin Raiu, co-founder of cybersecurity research and incident response firm TLP: Black. He said the next step was the “mass compromise of every vulnerable web server on the internet”. PHP, a language that dates back to the early 1990s and initially stood for “Personal Home Page”, underpins huge parts of the public-facing web and is baked into WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento sites, meaning that any critical vulnerability potentially has enormous knock-on consequences. “All servers using any version of PHP released in the last 20 years will be vulnerable,” said Tiffany Farriss, the interim chief executive of the Drupal Association. “This issue impacts the majority of the Internet.” Cybersecurity agencies in Europe, Australia, Japan and Britain have urged PHP users to update immediately or take websites offline until patches can be applied. The Dutch cybersecurity agency itself went offline, saying it had done so as a precaution because of the vulnerabilities. The operator of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia also said it had taken down an unspecified number of systems until they could be safely patched. Even some world leaders, who don’t typically get involved with software updates, weighed in. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in a post on X, said website owners should “check whether your live site uses PHP and prepare to apply the new fix.” Bug found with AI The flaw in PHP was discovered using artificial intelligence, Alphabet-owned cybersecurity company Wiz said in a blog post. The vulnerabilities remained hidden in the PHP codebase for more than a decade and would have been extraordinarily complicated for a human hacker to have taken advantage of, the post said. “Pre-AI, this manual work would be difficult to implement and even harder to scale,” it said. “With AI, this is no longer a barrier.” Wiz said its research relied on Wiz Atlas, its autonomous AI vulnerability research tool, as well as Google’s Gemini 4 Argon and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. Wiz said it coordinated with the PHP team, OpenAI, and the cybersecurity company Calif on the discovery of the vulnerability and patch verification. The company said it also partnered with Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft, WordPress.com operator Automattic, and other companies such as Fastly, Akamai, Imperva, and Vercel to protect customers and prepare mitigations. In a statement, the White House said it was made aware of the flaw on Friday. “This discovery demonstrates exactly why American leadership in SI is so critical,” the White House said, referring to President Donald Trump’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. “This is American innovation strengthening our national security. Critical software When a visitor loads a page, a server running PHP assembles the content and sends it to the browser. It is free, open-source software maintained by volunteers. Because of its ubiquity, PHP runs roughly 75 per cent of websites whose programming language can be identified, according to web technology tracker W3Techs, and because the vulnerabilities are considered so dangerous, experts are anxious about a potentially vast pool of sitting ducks. AI-assisted hacking campaigns, which have proliferated in recent weeks, would only make things worse, said Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London. “The scale is huge, and with AI, exploitation may happen instantly, on a large scale,” Olejnik said. The risk is particularly acute for small websites run by individuals or organisations with limited technical resources, often on shared hosting services where customers do not directly manage the underlying servers. Security experts said such sites could take longer to patch and remain exposed well after fixes become available. Mass outages In the Netherlands, several organisations followed the example of the National Cyber Security Centre and took public-facing websites offline, including the Port of Rotterdam, government portal Overheid.nl, the national football association KNVB, the websites for the country’s five largest political parties and several hospital websites. Danish municipal IT company Kombit said it had shut down several services, including the national school communication platform. Disruption was even more widespread in Finland, where state IT services provider Valtori said government public network services had been taken offline “as a precautionary measure”. France’s Interior Ministry said it had placed all of its websites into preventive maintenance. Japanese cloud service provider Sakura Internet said on Wednesday it had suspended a database appliance function. A screen displays the unavailable French government website, info.gouv.fr, as cyber agencies warn that websites may be taken offline while PHP prepares a critical fix, in Berlin, Germany on October 21, 2026. — Reuters
Technology· Verified
Meta Platforms was ordered to pay a groundbreaking US$25 billion civil penalty to the state of New Mexico in a consumer deception case spurred by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The fine issued by state court Judge Francis Mathew is among the largest verdicts issued in US legal history. The award comes after a jury in Santa Fe determined that Meta had violated the state’s consumer protection over 43 million times based on widely viewed deceptive statements made by the company and its top...
Politics· Verified
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the Trump administration cannot enforce a new policy that restricts treatment for transgender inmates in federal prison.
Finance· Developing
Yield on 10-year government bonds passes 5% amid failure to pass budget and fallout from violent street protests Business live – latest updates France’s borrowing costs have climbed above 5% for the first time in 24 years as political concerns and the government’s failure to agree a much-delayed budget spook the financial markets. With some civic buildings still smouldering from recent riots, a fresh bout of selling pushed up the yield – or interest rate – on bonds issued by the second largest economy in the eurozone. Continue reading...
Politics· Developing
Voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of economy and cost of living, says poll in new low recorded by NY Times/Siena Donald Trump’s approval rating sank to 36% just two weeks before the midterm elections, the lowest recorded in a poll by the New York Times/Siena College, with most respondents expressing frustration over his handling of the US economy, cost of living and Iran war. In an October survey of approximately 3,494 likely voters, 59% said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job, and 52% said they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election. Continue reading...
World· Verified
Pakistan, Qatar, Turkiye and Indonesia on Wednesday signed a multilateral pact to promote cooperation in defence production and capabilities, the Turkish defence ministry said. The Foreign Office has yet to comment on the signing of the defence pact. According to the Turkish ministry, the signing took place in Qatar, with ministers of the four countries attending the ceremony. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who was visible in pictures shared by the ministry, signed on behalf of Pakistan. Turkish Defence Minister Yaşar Güler, Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Sheikh Saud bin Abdulrahman, and Indonesia’s Deputy Minister of Defence Yusuf Jauhari were the other signatories. Haluk Görgün, who heads Turkiye’s Secretariat of Defence Industries, was also present on the occasion. Reuters quoted the Turkish ministry as saying that the pact, titled ‘Badr Memorandum of Understanding’, was aimed at defence cooperation and strengthening defensive capabilities. The ministry said the accord would also support military exercises and training, cooperation on research and development, and contribute to joint efforts to improve the countries’ respective defence industries. Meanwhile, Turkiye-based Anadolu Agency quoted the ministry as saying that the MoU would help develop solutions and industrial sectors aligned with advances in modern defence systems. Pakistan has strong brotherly and historic ties with the three countries, with intense diplomatic engagement seen in recent months with Qatar and Turkiye particularly. Pakistan and Turkiye, along with Saudi Arabia, are members of the Makkah Defence Alliance, under which they are to treat an attack against any of them as an attack against all. Qatar had welcomed that pact as cooperation aimed at regional security and stability. More to follow
Politics· Developing
Coordination by Democratic officials overseeing elections includes Zoom calls and in-person tabletop exercises Democratic state attorneys general, other top state officials and civic groups have accelerated planning to thwart any federal meddling in the November midterm elections by Donald Trump as he continues his false charges of widespread voting fraud and veiled threats of interfering in the process. Since early this year, 24 Democratic attorneys general have expanded coordination with about a dozen Democratic secretaries of state and several civic groups using weekly Zoom calls and in-person tabletop exercises to strategize about countering any federal intervention in the elections. Continue reading...
World· Developing
US warships head east as Iran talks stall: War next?
Business· Verified
Few believe decision will bring back city’s boom years, but workers hope it will keep as many North Sea jobs for now UK approves Jackdaw gasfield in North Sea What does the UK’s approval of the Jackdaw gasfield mean? As recently as 2012, Aberdeen boasted the highest concentration of millionaires in the UK. An ATM reportedly had the highest withdrawal rate in Europe in the 90s, as oil and gas wealth flowed through the city. House prices skyrocketed in the scramble for space as fossil fuel firms transformed the city’s grand granite houses into company offices. But that was then. Today, “for sale” and “to let” signs punctuate the city’s main thoroughfares. Disposable income in Aberdeen has fallen by nearly 20% between 2013 and 2023 – more than any other large UK city – after a 2014 oil price shock sparked a brutal reversal in Aberdeen’s fortunes. Continue reading...
World· Verified
Stephen Hubbard has been taken to Pulkovo Airport, Putin said during talks with US envoy Steve Witkoff.
