Activision will remove real news footage of the 2022 Seoul crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 in an update on 12 November. The company apologized after families of people who died in the disaster objected to the footage’s use in the game.
Key Facts
The Seoul crush happened in the Itaewon district during Halloween celebrations in 2022 and killed almost 160 people.
Modern Warfare 4 used news footage of rescue efforts and victims in an opening scene depicting a fictional North Korean invasion.
Bereaved families said using the footage in an entertainment product was deeply upsetting.
Activision said it used the footage to establish the fictional story and did not intend to trivialize the disaster.
Activision apologized to families and victims and confirmed the footage would be removed in the game’s next update on 12 November.
The families’ association welcomed the removal but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from Activision.
North and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty since fighting in the Korean War stopped in 1953.
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Blockchain intelligence firms said North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking group was likely behind a theft of about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across ten blockchains. Binance said it froze about $3 billion in affected assets, would cover losses, and expected to resume suspended withdrawals within a day or two.
Key Facts
TRM said the attacker moved about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets, mostly within about 20 minutes.
TRM attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit, with high confidence.
Chainalysis also said the hack was likely carried out by TraderTraitor.
Binance said deposits were unaffected, withdrawals were suspended, and it would cover all losses.
Binance said it had found no evidence that wallet private keys were exposed and would share more technical details after its investigation.
TRM said the theft would be the largest cryptocurrency theft on record; Bybit lost $1.5 billion in a 2025 hack that the FBI attributed to North Korea.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to a felony linked to failing to prevent money laundering, left his CEO role, and received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in 2025.
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A study in mice found that consuming olive oil before a glucose drink slowed stomach emptying and increased hormones involved in blood sugar regulation. A dietitian said human studies support olive oil’s health benefits, but the effects of taking an olive oil shot have not been established in people; she suggested using it in meals instead.
Key Facts
The study was published by the American Diabetes Association and tested mice.
Mice that consumed olive oil before a glucose solution showed slower stomach emptying.
The mice also had increased secretion of glucagon, GIP and GLP-1, hormones involved in blood sugar regulation.
The study authors’ proposed effect of olive oil before carbohydrates has not been tested in humans, according to the article.
Dietitian Lisa Valente said pairing fat with carbohydrates can affect the blood sugar response after a meal.
Valente said a tablespoon of olive oil contains about 120 calories, so taking it before three meals could add roughly 360 calories a day.
Valente recommended adding olive oil to meals rather than drinking it straight.
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Virgin Galactic moved its first Delta-class rocket plane, Apeiron, to Spaceport America for testing ahead of a planned first commercial flight in early 2027. The European Space Agency may miss its target for the first test flight of Themis, while startup Cowboy Space announced plans for a medium-lift rocket called Big Iron.
Key Facts
Apeiron left Virgin Galactic’s Arizona factory on Wednesday and is headed to Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Virgin Galactic plans to complete avionics and flight software work, ground tests, captive-carry tests, a drop test, and a powered test flight above 80 kilometers.
Virgin Galactic expects Apeiron’s first commercial spaceflight in early in the second quarter of 2027.
Themis has completed two countdown rehearsals at Esrange Space Center in Sweden, but winter weather could delay its first flight beyond 2026.
ESA originally expected Themis to make its first low-altitude hop in 2022, and later targeted the first quarter of 2026.
Themis is a single-stage reusable rocket demonstrator powered by a methane-fueled Prometheus engine, built by ArianeGroup for ESA.
Cowboy Space announced its Big Iron rocket, which it plans to launch before the end of 2028.
Big Iron is planned to stand 282 feet tall and measure about 15 feet in diameter.
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After decades of playing video games, the writer has a voice role in Black Tides: Draga’s Wake, a survival horror game set aboard a decaying steamship. He describes recording the character Draga, adjusting his voice to suit the role, and working with a team making the game in their spare time.
Key Facts
Greg Strangis invited the writer to see the game about 16 months before the article was written.
Black Tides: Draga’s Wake is a survival horror game set on a decaying 1900s steamship after a heist goes wrong.
The title character, Draga, is a sailor infected by an ancient god.
Strangis is a character artist who has worked for Rockstar, Naughty Dog and Guillermo del Toro.
The writer initially felt his voice did not fit the character and lowered it slightly for the performance.
The writer recorded improvised fight sounds for the game.
The game team members work from different parts of the world in their spare time.
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Ukraine’s reliance on SpaceX’s Starlink and Starshield networks exposed risks after restrictions disrupted battlefield communications and some drone operations during October. A Ukrainian company and Denmark’s GomSpace say they tested OBRIA NANO, a satellite intended to anchor a Ukrainian communications network, as Ukraine and European allies seek alternatives.
Key Facts
HIMERA, a Ukrainian defense technology company, and Denmark’s GomSpace announced the OBRIA NANO test on October 27.
OBRIA NANO launched on October 1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The planned network is intended to provide Ukraine with sovereign communications capacity.
The article says restrictions on Starlink and Starshield disrupted Ukrainian battlefield communications during October.
The disruptions affected some Ukrainian interceptor drones, according to the article.
The article says Ukraine’s military uses SpaceX communications for front-line coordination, drone warfare, and air defense.
The article says questions remain about who authorized the restrictions in Ukraine.
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Elon Musk’s role in a dispute over Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield has drawn attention to his influence in international affairs. After about 10 days of confusion over service restrictions, Musk said SpaceX was responsible for them.
Key Facts
The dispute involved Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield, a military-grade version of the service.
The restrictions led to about 10 days of confusion and finger-pointing over what caused the slowdown.
Musk acknowledged that SpaceX was behind the Starlink restrictions.
The dispute highlighted Musk’s influence on the international stage.
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Binance estimated that a security breach caused about $6.3 billion in financial losses. The exchange said an attacker may have gained access through a DevOps engineer’s compromised laptop, and that it would cover losses with its SAFU fund and company funds.
Key Facts
Binance said its initial investigation points to a DevOps engineer’s compromised laptop as a possible entry point.
The exchange said unauthorized withdrawal transactions caused an estimated $6.3 billion in losses.
Binance reported no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked.
The company said blockchain partners helped freeze about $3 billion in affected assets on-chain.
Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while it conducted security checks.
The exchange revoked authorization for the affected address and contacted law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners.
Binance said user funds were safe and it would cover losses with SAFU and company funds.
The company said it would publish a technical post-mortem and an updated Proof of Reserves after remediation.
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Cybersecurity teams face a sustained rise in attacks, software vulnerabilities and false alarms, adding to long-running burnout across the industry. Companies are using AI and automation to help sort threats and investigate incidents, but some workers worry that these tools could replace them.
Key Facts
Justin Timothy, a threat intelligence consultant at GuidePoint Security, said ransomware groups had returned after a seasonal summer slowdown.
Palo Alto Networks reported that demand for its incident response services rose by double digits over six weeks.
Palo Alto Networks is moving employees from other projects to incident response as it prepares for attacks exploiting recently disclosed PHP vulnerabilities.
Palo Alto Networks' Troy Bettencourt said investigations that once took one consultant can now require teams of five to 20 people.
Armadin's threat intelligence team spent days reviewing hundreds of purported exploits, many of which did not work.
Security firms are adopting AI and automation to identify software weaknesses and speed up investigations.
Cybersecurity workers face heavy workloads as well as concerns that AI tools designed to help them could replace their jobs.
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Video game remakes can reconnect players with cherished memories while introducing older titles to new audiences. Analysts say updating an existing game can also be a lower-cost strategy for companies, though remakes may disappoint fans with high expectations.
Key Facts
Kacey Doran says footage of a redesigned The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time brought back memories of playing the original with her sister as a child.
The original Ocarina of Time was released in 1998, and the remake is due to arrive on the Switch 2 later this year.
Doran teaches an esports course at Rowan University in New Jersey and hopes to share the game with her sister’s children.
Tim Wulf of the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies says games can evoke nostalgia by letting players return to familiar environments and use skills they learned before.
Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis says remakes and remasters can help companies build on established audiences and may cost less than creating a new game.
The article cites recent remakes of Resident Evil 4 and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag as titles that found large audiences.
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Illustrator Axel Scheffler says he is seriously considering legal action against AI companies for reproducing his work without permission. He is exploring a case in Germany, where a court will also hear a separate copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in spring 2027.
Key Facts
Scheffler illustrated The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson and first published in 1999.
Scheffler said he wants AI companies to stop using artists’ work without permission.
He said AI-generated images closely reproduced his mouse and Gruffalo characters, and that he had contacted a lawyer in Germany.
Scheffler has not named an AI company he might pursue.
Intellectual property lawyer Nick Buckland said German cases involving song lyrics could offer a route for creators, but proving infringement may be difficult.
Penguin Random House and author-illustrator Ingo Siegner are suing OpenAI over alleged copying of the children’s character The Little Dragon Coconut.
The Munich Regional Court is expected to decide the OpenAI case in spring 2027.
OpenAI says its models were trained on various sources and that copyright holders can submit disputes directly to the company.
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An investigation by Investigate Europe and the Guardian examined migrant workers’ conditions at datacentre projects in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. It reported serious injuries, unpaid wages, poor housing and exploitative work practices, including the case of electrical tester Sandu, who was badly burned in an electrocution at a Google datacentre in Belgium.
Key Facts
Sandu says he was asked to do a last-minute electrical test after working nearly 10 hours and did not retrieve a protective suit.
Sandu says managers told him the electrical lines were de-energised, but they were live during the test.
Hospital records reviewed by the outlets say the arc flash burned 12% of Sandu’s body, including second-degree burns to his face and neck and third-degree burns to his right shoulder and fingers.
Belgium’s local labour inspectorate closed its investigation in late October and found no wrongdoing; the article says no company or contractor appears to have been held liable.
Dornan Engineering said it was committed to safe working conditions and compliance with labour laws.
The investigation reported debilitating injuries, poor living conditions, an unreported infectious outbreak, unpaid wages and exploitative employment practices at datacentre sites.
The article says Europe has more than 2,300 datacentres, with hundreds more under construction.
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Binance said a security breach had an estimated $6.3 billion impact, potentially making it the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. The exchange said it had recovered or frozen about $3 billion and temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while it investigated.
Key Facts
Binance said its initial investigation suggested a hacked laptop belonging to an engineer may have enabled unauthorized withdrawals.
The company gave no update on the remaining $3.3 billion and said it would cover all hacking losses.
Binance said user funds remained safe and that it was working with law enforcement and industry partners.
Bitcoin fell more than 3% to $76,368, while ether dropped more than 3% to $2,178 during early Asian trading.
BNB fell 5% over 24 hours to $709.70, according to CoinGecko.
Coinbase shares fell 4.8% and Strategy shares dropped nearly 6% in extended U.S. trading.
Binance reported 335 million registered users and about $162.8 billion in assets under custody in its 2025 annual report.
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Researchers at King’s College London found that some fruit and vegetable parts people often discard contain substantial amounts of fibre. They say using edible scraps may help people increase fibre intake, but recommend washing produce and increasing fibre gradually; some parts, including green potatoes and rhubarb leaves, should not be eaten.
Key Facts
The researchers analysed 12 raw or uncooked fresh foods, including broccoli, kiwi, pineapple and watermelon.
Watermelon rind contained 2.10 grams of fibre per 100 grams, according to the study.
Butternut squash skin and seeds contained 9.25 grams of fibre per 100 grams.
Pineapple skin and core contained five times more fibre than the flesh.
In a nine-week university canteen trial, root-to-tip dishes accounted for a third of hot-menu sales, and diners choosing them were less likely to finish their meals.
A dietitian suggested washing produce thoroughly and chopping or cooking tough stalks; she advised people to increase fibre gradually, especially those with IBS.
The British Nutrition Foundation warns that green potatoes and rhubarb leaves contain toxic compounds; tough stalks and seeds may also be unsuitable for young children.
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Binance said it was investigating reports of a potential security issue after its founder said the incident appeared to be a hack. The exchange had not confirmed that funds were stolen, while stablecoin issuers said they froze funds linked to the incident.
Key Facts
Binance described itself as reviewing relevant information and said it would provide updates through its official channels.
A Binance spokesperson said user funds were safe.
Binance had not explicitly confirmed that hackers stole funds.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company froze more than $800 million in currency associated with the incident, in coordination with law enforcement.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than $1.5 billion in currency related to a potential Binance exchange hack.
Bitcoin fell 3.2% Thursday afternoon to below $79,000.
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Binance is investigating a suspected cyberattack after analysts estimated that between $1.7 billion and $5.7 billion in cryptocurrency may have been taken. The exchange said user funds are safe, while it and other platforms restricted withdrawals or froze more than $1 billion in crypto; Binance has not confirmed the attack’s scale or who was responsible.
Key Facts
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said the exchange appeared to have been hacked; he is no longer a company executive.
Analysts and traders estimated that the suspected theft involved between $1.7 billion and $5.7 billion.
Binance said its security teams were urgently reviewing relevant information.
Zhao and a Binance spokesperson said user funds are safe.
Binance limited withdrawals, and Tether and Circle froze more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency, according to Zhao.
If the largest estimates are confirmed, the incident would exceed the approximately $1.5 billion crypto theft from Bybit in 2025.
Polymarket said it faced a separate cyberattack, paused trading for an hour, and reported at least $2.7 million in user funds taken.
Binance had not confirmed the suspected theft’s total value or identified who was behind it.
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A 2026 survey of 2,221 Victorian lawyers found that 55% used AI in their work, up from 37% the year before. Only 26% said AI had lowered client fees, while many reported spending extra time correcting inaccurate information and documents brought in by clients.
Key Facts
The Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner’s research centre conducted the 2026 survey.
AI use was highest in trade practices, at 85%, and lowest in criminal law, at 29%.
Among respondents who used AI, 79% reported using consumer chatbots; 22% used legal-specific tools.
Lawyers were more likely to report lower fees for business clients than for individual clients: 34% versus 23%.
Eighteen percent said AI let them take on work that had previously been uneconomical.
Forty-six percent of lawyers said clients arrived with inaccurate or misleading information, and 41% said clients brought AI-generated documents that needed correction.
Nearly half of lawyers said clients’ AI use increased the time and effort required; 19% said it reduced that work.
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Reddit plans to test a login requirement in select markets outside the U.S. in Q4, CEO Steve Huffman said in a shareholder letter. The company says logged-in use could support ad targeting and user engagement as search referrals decline; it will use the tests to shape a possible global rollout.
Key Facts
Huffman said Reddit is shifting toward a primarily logged-in experience.
Reddit plans to begin testing the login requirement in select non-U.S. markets in Q4.
Huffman said Reddit's search referral traffic fell meaningfully in Q3, with logged-out and web traffic taking the largest hit.
In October, search referrals declined by an average of more than 1 million per week, according to Huffman.
Huffman said continued referral declines could lead Q4 daily active unique users to fall by a low-double-digit percentage from a base of 130 million.
Reddit's average daily active unique users rose 12 percent year over year in Q3.
Reddit reported Q3 net income of $283 million on revenue of $895 million.
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The Pentagon is investigating late-August freezer malfunctions at at least six U.S. military commissaries as possible cyber incidents. U.S. officials have not said what caused the malfunctions, whether anyone deliberately caused them, or who may be responsible.
Key Facts
The reported incidents affected at least six military commissaries in late August.
At Fort Huachuca, officials said freezers entered defrost mode overnight, spoiling frozen food.
Other affected locations included Fort Irwin, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Naval Station Newport, Columbus Air Force Base and Travis Air Force Base.
U.S. Cyber Command is working with government agencies and law enforcement partners on the investigation.
Army CID said its Cyber Field Office is working with the Defense Commissary Agency and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
Army CID is also coordinating with French law enforcement over refrigeration outages in Europe.
Officials have not publicly established the cause of the U.S. outages or confirmed that they were cyberattacks.
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Finnish police opened a criminal investigation into Google’s work on a planned data center in northern Finland. The probe follows the clearing of hundreds of acres of forest before required environmental reviews were completed and adds scrutiny to Google’s planned $1.5 billion investment in Finnish AI infrastructure.
Key Facts
Finnish police opened the investigation on Thursday.
The investigation concerns Google’s work on a planned data center in northern Finland.
Hundreds of acres of forest were cleared for the project.
The forest was cleared before required environmental reviews were completed.
Google’s planned investment in AI infrastructure in Finland is $1.5 billion.
The investigation adds to scrutiny of Google’s expansion plans in Finland.
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