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A tortoise miraculously managed to escape its home and climb on to train tracks, sparking delays for commuters.

After a global IT outage caused havoc for many trying to travel on Britain’s trains on Friday morning, more delays were reported between Ascot and Bagshot later that evening.

South Western Railway told Sky News a train driver spotted the culprit - a tortoise named Solomon - on the track near Ascot station just after 6pm.

Engineers carried Solomon off the tracks - and staff “moved the tortoise to a position of safety on the platform at Ascot, which included a short ride on the train itself”.

While staff had planned to leave the reptile with a vet in Staines, the tortoise’s owner identified Solomon and collected him at around 8pm.

Network Rail added on X: "While we are delighted that this story has a happy ending and can reassure passengers that our everyone home safe, every day ambitions extend to pets, we must remind everyone that the railway is dangerous.

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Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.

Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.

The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.

Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.

The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.

In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.

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On 18 July, Sanrio, the Japanese entertainment company that created Hello Kitty, made an astounding revelation for the iconic character’s 50th anniversary.

In an appearance on the Today Show, Sanrio director of retail business development Jill Koch said: “Hello Kitty is not a cat.”

The revelation sparked a myriad of emotions in fans, ranging from denial to shock, and later, confusion.

“I have never seen a human being with real life whiskers and cat ears,” another commenter posted.

Created by Sanrio employee Yuko Shimizu in 1974, Hello Kitty first appeared on a children’s coin purse in 1975, and in the subsequent decades, the character has become a beloved character, globally known for her sweet and wholesome disposition.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the truth was unearthed by Hello Kitty scholar Christine R. Yano, who devoted her studies to the cultural phenomenon.

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The date for the introduction of the EU’s new entry-exit system has been pushed back again until November, allaying fears of long queues at the border during the October half-term holidays.

The launch of the new biometric checks for foreign travellers, including Britons, entering the EU, has been delayed from 6 October until at least 10 November, with many smaller airports yet to have facilities in place.

The move will again raise questions over the readiness of a system that has been long delayed from the planned 2021 start, with the French insisting the additional border controls should not be introduced before the Paris Olympics.

Under the entry-exit system (EES), non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information – including fingerprints and facial scans – at the border, under the supervision of an EU officer, on their first visit.

There have been warnings of long queues at British points of entry – including the Port of Dover, and Eurostar’s St Pancras terminal – where the French and EU border is physically located in England, before passengers board ferries or trains.

The cross-Channel train operator said the process would add only a few seconds to border queues and not cause chaos, although passengers would have to ensure they arrived in time for the additional layer of biometric checks.

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Country singer Ingrid Andress has apologised and admitted being drunk while performing a much-derided rendition of the US national anthem, at a baseball stadium.Andress’s erratic performance of The Star-Spangled Banner was widely shared after Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, in Texas, on Monday.

“I was drunk last night,” wrote Andress, external, who has previously received four Grammy Award nominations.

"Andress’s a-capella version of the anthem was called “painful” and “one of the worst national-anthem renditions ever”, on social media.The Daily Beast headline said: “America unites over new all-time worst national-anthem performance.”

Some people posted clips of Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm apparently smirking as Andress was singing.But she also received sympathy and support following her apology.

"Country star Martina McBride said: "Sending lots of love and positivity.

"And one fan posted a video of Andress on stage at a concert, external, to show her “true talent”.Andress appeared as an a-cappella singer on NBC series The Sing-Off, in 2010 - and after forging a solo career, was nominated for the 2021 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.She also co-wrote Charli XCX’s hit song Boys and Bebe Rexha’s Girl in the Mirror.

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Fourteen high school students in Tokyo were admitted to hospital after eating “super spicy” potato crisps, police said.

Around 30 students ate the fiery snacks after one of them brought them to school on Tuesday, Japanese local media reported.

Soon, some of them started complaining of nausea and acute pain around their mouth, prompting emergency calls to the fire department and police.The 13 girls and one boy who were taken to hospital were conscious and reportedly had minor symptoms.The company that makes the snack, Isoyama Corp, put out a statement, apologising for “any inconvenience” to customers, and wished the students a swift recovery.

It “forbids” those under 18, external from consuming the crisps which are called “R 18+ curry chips”, because of how spicy they are - and it warns even those who love hot food to “eat with caution”.

The kick from your chilli can have side effectsThe Japanese firm, in fact, advises people not to "eat the chips when they are alone” and says they could cause diarrhoea if eaten “excessively”.

In one video, external, a user who appears to be wincing, described it as “painful” and said it reminded him of the time he had urinary stones.X owner Elon Musk also weighed in, saying “they must be next-level spicy!”

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Cisco on Wednesday disclosed a maximum-security vulnerability that allows remote threat actors with no authentication to change the password of any user, including those of administrators with accounts, on Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem devices.

In a bulletin, Cisco warns that the product contains a vulnerability that allows hackers to change any account’s password.

“This vulnerability is due to improper implementation of the password-change process,” the Cisco bulletin stated.

“An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to an affected device.

A successful exploit could allow an attacker to access the web UI or API with the privileges of the compromised user.”

One possibility is that the web user interface and application programming interface the attacker gains administrative control over make it possible to pivot to other Cisco devices connected to the same network and, from there, steal data, encrypt files, or perform similar actions.

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Rite Aid, the third biggest US drug store chain, said that more than 2.2 million of its customers have been swept into a data breach that stole personal information, including driver’s license numbers, addresses, and dates of birth.

The data provided included the purchaser’s name, address, date of birth, and driver’s license number or other form of government-issued ID.

“We detected the incident within 12 hours and immediately launched an internal investigation to terminate the unauthorized access, remediate affected systems and ascertain if any customer data was impacted.”

On its dark web site, RansomHub said it was in advanced stages of negotiation with Rite Aid officials when the company suddenly cut off communications.

Rite Aid has also declined to say if the employee account compromised in the breach was protected by multifactor authentication.

The chain filed for bankruptcy in October, largely to seek protection from lawsuits surrounding the opioid crisis.

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Just two days after the attempted assassination at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI announced it “gained access” to the shooter’s phone.

Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have several tools at their disposal to extract data from phones.

The bureau famously butted heads with Apple in late 2015 after the company refused to help law enforcement get around the encryption on the San Bernardino, California shooter’s iPhone.

Early in the following year, Apple refused a federal court order to help the FBI access the shooter’s phone, which the company said would effectively require it to build a backdoor for the iPhone’s encryption software.

“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor,” Cook wrote.

Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Pensacola shooting was one of the last times federal law enforcement agencies loudly denounced encryption.

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An England football fan who had “Euro Winners” tattooed on his leg before the final says he will not cover it up and has no regrets.Dan Thomas, from Swindon in Wiltshire, received a tattoo of the Henri Delaunay Cup and the words “England Euro 2024 Winners” ahead of the final that England went on to lose 2-1 against Spain on Sunday.Mr Thomas, 29, now says he is confident the Three Lions will win the next Euros tournament in 2028 - when the UK and Ireland are the hosts - and may get an alteration.He said he “still loves” the tattoo and has urged other England fans to get their own to show their support ahead of the next tournament.

"Spain substitute Mikel Oyarzabal scored in the final four minutes to inflict a second successive European Championship final defeat on Gareth Southgate’s side in three years.

Mr Thomas described the results of the match as “bittersweet” and praised the team for reaching the final.

“The result wasn’t what we wanted, but a great achievement to reach yet another final,” he said.

Tattoo artist Tinashe Chikerema applied the ink to Mr Thomas’s skin, not before he “triple checked” he wanted it done.

Fair play to him for being so confident in the team," Mr Chikerema told PA.Mr Thomas’s friend, Jack Wilkinson, who owns Reign Barbers and Tattoos, did not believe Mr Thomas would go ahead with the tattoo “until the needle actually touched the skin”.

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Switzerland won the right to host the world’s largest live music event after the Swiss singer Nemo triumphed in Sweden with The Code.

The Christian conservative Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) party, however, has said it will seek to make use of the country’s direct democracy system to put the bidding cities’ loan applications to the vote.

Samuel Kullmann, a senior EDU politician, told the Swiss broadcaster SRF his party was disturbed by Eurovision’s increasing “celebration, or at least tolerance of … satanism and occultism”.

The Irish singer Bambie Thug’s stage show at the 2024 contest involved a devil-like horned dancer and a circle of candles containing a pentagram, which in its inverted form is a common satanic symbol.

In the final in Malmö, Nemo became the first non-binary artist to win the contest in its 68-year history with a song celebrating their identity beyond male and female gender norms.

Any referendums against Swiss cities hosting Eurovision would not necessarily swing in the political right’s favour, but the threat of plebiscites introduces immense uncertainty for planners.

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More than 1.5 million email servers are vulnerable to attacks that can deliver executable attachments to user accounts, security researchers said.

Tracked as CVE-2024-39929 and carrying a severity rating of 9.1 out of 10, the vulnerability makes it trivial for threat actors to bypass protections that normally prevent the sending of attachments that install apps or execute code.

“I can confirm this bug,” Exim project team member Heiko Schlittermann wrote on a bug-tracking site.

More than 1.5 million of the Exim servers, or roughly 31 percent, are running a vulnerable version of the open-source mail app.

Threat actors can exploit it to bypass extension blocking and deliver executable attachments in emails sent to end users.

Given the requirement that end users must click on an attached executable for the attack to work, this Exim vulnerability isn’t as serious as the one that was exploited starting in 2019.

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In tongue-in-cheek promotion for the show, ITV said: “The government’s stated policy of recruiting 20,000 new police officers in double-quick time has not come at the cost of lowering standards.

“Piglets follows a newly recruited group of six very different would-be cops and the handful of key staff whose thankless task it is to knock them into some kind of shape.”

Its acting national chair, Tiffany Lynch, said the name was “highly offensive to police officers risking their lives to protect the public every day, providing an emergency service”.

“I find it incredulous that this has passed through checks and balances at an organisation made up of people who at any time have or may need the support and assistance of the police,” she added.

Responding to the criticism, ITV said: “Piglets is a fictional new comedy about a police training academy and the title is not intended to cause any offence, it’s a comedic and endearing play on words to emphasise the innocence and youth of our young trainees.”

The show, from the award-winning team behind hit comedies such as Green Wing and Smack the Pony, features Sarah Parish and Mark Heap as two superintendents overseeing the training of the next batch of recruits.

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The Japanese Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) discovered it was under attack using zero-day exploits while working with Microsoft to probe a 2023 cyberattack on its systems.

An investigation ensued, and saw networks taken offline to verify that no classified data on rockets, satellites, or national security was compromised.

And then there’s the mention of zero-day attacks in the last sentence of a section about countermeasures like closer network monitoring and improve remote access security the agency adopted.

“In the course of taking the above measures and strengthening monitoring, we have detected and responded to multiple unauthorized accesses to JAXA’s network since January of this year (including zero-day attacks), though no information was compromised,” the statement reads.

Luckily, the compromised systems are believed to not include sensitive information related to launch vehicles and satellite operations.

Because the attacker used multiple unknown strains of malware, it was difficult to detect the unauthorized access, explained JAXA.

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The company has now concluded its investigation into the attack after previously announcing a “possible” data leak in March.

Despite initially downplaying the likelihood of data theft, Fujitsu confirmed on Tuesday that affected individuals had been directly notified.

“This malware was not ransomware, but rather a type of attack that used advanced techniques, such as disguising itself in various ways to make it difficult to detect,” Fujitsu said.

All of the infected machines were isolated from the network after the malicious activity was detected and connections to external servers blocked, it said.

Fujitsu brought in outside experts to help with its investigation, which involved analyzing communication and operation logs, it said, which is where it found evidence of the malware executing copying commands on various files.

Fujitsu didn’t comment on the scale of the data theft, but given that notifications have been sent directly to affected individuals, per Japan’s data protection laws, the attack must have met at least one of the following conditions set by the country’s Personal information Protection Commission (PPC):

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Threat actors carried out zero-day attacks that targeted Windows users with malware for more than a year before Microsoft fixed the vulnerability that made them possible, researchers said Tuesday.

The vulnerability, present in both Windows 10 and 11, causes devices to open Internet Explorer, a legacy browser that Microsoft decommissioned in 2022 after its aging code base made it increasingly susceptible to exploits.

The company fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-CVE-38112, on Tuesday as part of its monthly patch release program.

The link, however, incorporated two attributes—mhtml: and !x-usc:—an “old trick” threat actors have been using for years to cause Windows to open applications such as MS Word.

“From there (the website being opened with IE), the attacker could do many bad things because IE is insecure and outdated,” Haifei Li, the Check Point researcher who discovered the vulnerability, wrote.

“The second technique is an IE trick to make the victim believe they are opening a PDF file, while in fact, they are downloading and executing a dangerous .hta application.

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A man has been caught trying to smuggle more than 100 live snakes into mainland China by cramming them into his trousers, according to the country’s customs authority.

“Upon inspection, customs officers discovered that the pockets of the trousers the passenger was wearing were packed with six canvas drawstring bags and sealed with tape,” the statement said.

An accompanying video showed two border agents peering into transparent plastic bags filled with squirming red, pink and white snakes.

China is one of the world’s biggest animal trafficking hubs, but authorities have cracked down on the illicit trade in recent years.

The country’s biosecurity and disease control laws forbid people from bringing in non-native species without permission.

“Those who break the rules will be … held liable in accordance with the law,” the customs authority said, without specifying the man’s punishment.

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SiegedSec, a collective of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” has claimed credit for breaching online databases of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that spearheaded the right-wing Project 2025 playbook.

On Wednesday, as part of a string of hacks aimed at organizations that oppose transgender rights, SiegedSec released a cache of Heritage Foundation material.

In a post to Telegram announcing the hack, SiegedSec called Project 2025 “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The attack was part of the group’s #OpTransRights campaign, which recently targeted right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice, the Hillsong megachurch, and a Minnesota pastor.

In his foreword to the Project 2025 manifesto, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, rails against “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” The playbook’s other contributors call on “the next conservative administration” to roll back certain policies, including allowing trans people to serve in the military.

They included an archive of the Heritage Foundation’s blogs and a Heritage-aligned media site, The Daily Signal, as of November 2022.

SiegedSec targeted the Heritage Foundation in early June, according to vio, who denied involvement in the earlier attack.

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After years of fan pressure, the American hip-hop group reached out to the LSO over social media and a deal was struck.The one-night only performance in London is based around their acclaimed Black Sunday album.

It sold more than three million copies in the US and spent a whole year on the UK charts.The LSO will perform unique orchestral arrangements of the band’s most iconic songs including Insane in the Brain and I Wanna Get High.Cypress Hill have sold more than 20 million albums worldwide and are one of hip-hop’s biggest acts.

“It’s been something that we’ve talked about for many years since the Simpsons episode first aired,” B-Real (real name Louis Mario Freese) told the BBC.

"They’re still waiting for a reply.LSO first violin and board vice-chair Maxine Kwok said “people are beyond excited at the idea of these diverse musicians mixing on the stage”.

This isn’t the first time an event in The Simpsons has accurately predicted what has happened in reality many years in the future.In a March 2000 episode, Bart is shown a vision of the future in which his sister Lisa becomes US president and declares: “We’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.” This was a full 16 years before Donald Trump became president.Springfield had their own equivalent of the Las Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy, a duo called Gunter and Ernst.

Exactly a decade later, during a show at the Mirage casino, Roy Horn survived an attack by one of their white tigers.Winter Olympics Curling was the subject of a 2010 storyline, with Homer and Marge being selected for the US team.

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Just last Monday the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam began requiring face scans on phone banking apps as proof of identity for all digital transactions of around $400 and above.

Late last month, US cyber security firm Resecurity flagged similar concerns when it found a spike in leaked identity documents containing selfies of Singaporeans on the dark web.

Resecurity asserted that some were captured by cyber crime groups that run fake telemarketing or customer support scams and gather selfies so they can sell them to other miscreants.

“Using selfies for identity verification has been growing steadily for around the last five years, but the inflection point was during the pandemic when people were forced to engage digitally,” VP analyst at Gartner, Akif Khan, told The Register.

In his experience, businesses that rely on simple still selfies are typically smaller outfits that have experienced fraud and have implemented a selfie-based stopgap as they scramble to put a proper solution in place.

Khan thinks concern about identity theft from still images and picture IDs found on the dark web is overblown, as most entities will require liveness checks for opening bank accounts and other tasks.

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