Plumpaquatsch writes: Investigators teamed up with colleagues from the Balkans and Lebanon in raids set up by months of intense surveillance. Authorities say the operation thwarted over 10 million euro in damages and led to 21 arrests. Dubbed 'Operation Pandora,' the sting began in Germany in December 2023, after a suspicious bank teller contacted police when a 76-year-old customer from Freiburg sought to hurriedly withdraw 120,000 euro ($128,232) from her savings account to hand over to a fake police officer. When real police investigators tracked the internet-based telephone number that had been used to lure the woman, they discovered a veritable goldmine. Rather than shutting down the number, authorities instead went on the offensive, setting up their own call center in which hundreds of officers from Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and Saxony worked around the clock monitoring some 1.3 million calls in real time, as the number from the initial scam was tied to an entire network of fraud call centers. Police were able to trace and record data from the calls, as well as warn potential victims of what was in fact happening, in turn winning valuable time to put together the April 18 sting. Police say their efforts allowed them to thwart some 10 million euro in damages in roughly 6,000 cases of attempted fraud.

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Microsoft is making security its number one priority for every employee, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. The Verge: After a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that "Microsoft's security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul," it's doing just that by outlining a set of security principles and goals that are tied to compensation packages for Microsoft's senior leadership team. Last November, Microsoft announced a Secure Future Initiative (SFI) in response to mounting pressure on the company to respond to attacks that allowed Chinese hackers to breach US government email accounts. Just days after announcing this initiative, Russian hackers managed to breach Microsoft's defenses and spy on the email accounts of some members of Microsoft's senior leadership team. Microsoft only discovered the attack nearly two months later in January, and the same group even went on to steal source code. These recent attacks have been damaging, and the Cyber Safety Review Board report added fuel to Microsoft's security fire recently by concluding that the company could have prevented the 2023 breach of US government email accounts and that a "cascade of security failures" led to that incident. "We are making security our top priority at Microsoft, above all else -- over all other features," explains Charlie Bell, executive vice president for Microsoft security, in a blog post today. "We will instill accountability by basing part of the compensation of the company's Senior Leadership Team on our progress in meeting our security plans and milestones."

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Labour Together have commissioned a poll of who Tory members would vote for in a mock leadership contest. Not particularly helpful polling for Sunak…

Apparently (out of the 537 members surveyed), 46% think Sunak should quit if the Tories lose more than half of the seats they’re defending in the locals, while 38% think he should resign as leader full stop.[…] Read the rest

Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey says the election results show it is time for change.

Labour's David Skaith becomes the first mayor of York and North Yorkshire.

The new role will cover Derby, Nottingham, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

The Conservative candidate has secured his third term as Tees Valley Mayor.

Conservatives remain gloomy about the general election but mayoral win provides a psychological boost.

Labour would have won 34% and Tories 25% if local results were replicated across the country, says Sir John.

samleecole writes: Utah set up an online form for people to accuse other citizens and public establishments of violating the state's recently-enacted transphobic "bathroom bill." The submission form is being flooded with memes and troll comments, and the auditor also left the submissions database open to the public -- without a password, authentication, or any other protections that would keep anyone from viewing other people's submissions. After 404 Media contacted the auditor's office for comment, they changed the permissions to require authentication. The form link has been posted to Twitter, and people have repeatedly posted screenshots of themselves uploading memes. In the database, those included photos of Barry Wood, characters from Bee Movie, and Shutterstock images of bull testicles. Twitter users have also found a link to the database that the form is connected to, which is hosted on a public Google cloud console bucket that as of Thursday, required no authentication to view. I tested the form, and found that my submission -- a photo of the yelling table cat meme -- appeared instantly in the Google Console bucket. The submission form offers anonymity with the option for the state auditor to contact submitters for more details. I haven't seen names and contact information shared in the database, but comments and image attachments were easily viewable.

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Starmer is reeling in glory having successfully taken back Blackpool South with the third biggest swing from Conservatives to Labour in post war election history. Guido did some digging in to the new Labour MP, Chris Webb. It turns out Webb is a Trustee of a charity whose submissions to the Charity Commission are seriously overdue…

The charity, Communication Workers Union Humanitarian Aid, is currently 185 days overdue to submit annual returns, accounts and trustees’ annual report (TAR).[…] Read the rest

Elyakim Libman was a security guard at the Nova music festival when Hamas attacked on 7 October.

Stuart Everett's remains were found at a nature reserve and two men were later charged with his murder.

More than 200 people work at the site, with the firm moving to a larger one in the East Midlands.

Google has asked a U.S. judge not to impose sweeping changes to the Alphabet unit's app store Play that were proposed by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games in the companies' closely-watched antitrust fight. From a report: Google made its filing late on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, where Epic last year persuaded a jury that the tech giant unlawfully stifled competition with its controls over apps downloads on Android devices and payments to developers for in-app transactions. Epic's proposal "would make it nearly impossible for Google to compete," Google's filing said. The gaming company in March asked U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco to force Google to make it easier for users to download apps from other sources and to allow developers more flexibility in offering and charging for purchases. The Cary, North Carolina-based company also said it should be allowed to bring its Epic Games Store to Android "without delays and barriers." Google agreed in December to pay $700 million to resolve the states' case and, among other reforms, will allow more alternative billing options for in-app purchases.

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Alfie Lewis, 15, died in hospital after being stabbed twice in Horsforth, Leeds, last November.

The Christmas special in 2019 left 17.1 million viewers on tenterhooks with a cliffhanger ending.

It's been warming up this week but could rain spoil your plans for the long weekend?

It is the third event in four days for the King, who is undergoing cancer treatment.

Homerton Fertility Clinic will stay shut while the loss of at least 32 embryos is investigated.

Employers in the US added 175,000 jobs in the US in April, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%.

A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems. From a report: On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales. Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 -- the year he was arrested -- by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion. "Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.

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