33 jili WASHINGTON — A top White House official said Wednesday at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations were impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign. Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. FILE - The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Zhangjiakou, China, on Feb. 2, 2022. A top White House official on Wednesday said at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations have been impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File) Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future. White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could grow. The U.S. believes the hackers were able to gain access to communications of senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures through the hack, Neuberger said. “We don’t believe any classified communications has been compromised,” Neuberger added during a call with reporters. She added that Biden was briefed on the findings and the White House “made it a priority for the federal government to do everything it can to get to the bottom this.” US officials recommend encrypted messaging apps amid "Salt Typhoon" cyberattack, attributed to China, targeting AT&T, Verizon, and others. The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the accusations that it was responsible for the hack Tuesday after the U.S. federal authorities issued new guidance. “The U.S. needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cyber security to smear and slander China,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. The embassy did not immediately respond to messages Wednesday. White House officials believe the hacking was regionally targeted and the focus was on very senior government officials. Federal authorities confirmed in October that hackers linked to China targeted the phones of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, along with people associated with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. The number of countries impacted by the hack is currently believed to be in the “low, couple dozen,” according to a senior administration official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said they believed the hacks started at least a year or two ago. The suggestions for telecom companies released Tuesday are largely technical in nature, urging encryption, centralization and consistent monitoring to deter cyber intrusions. If implemented, the security precautions could help disrupt the operation, dubbed Salt Typhoon, and make it harder for China or any other nation to mount a similar attack in the future, experts say. Trump's pick to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation Kash Patel was allegedly the target of cyberattack attempt by Iranian-backed hackers. Neuberger pointed to efforts made to beef up cybersecurity in the rail, aviation, energy and other sectors following the May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline . “So, to prevent ongoing Salt Typhoon type intrusions by China, we believe we need to apply a similar minimum cybersecurity practice,” Neuberger said. The cyberattack by a gang of criminal hackers on the critical U.S. pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel used along the Eastern Seaboard, sent ripple effects across the economy, highlighting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the nation’s aging energy infrastructure. Colonial confirmed it paid $4.4 million to the gang of hackers who broke into its computer systems as it scrambled to get the nation's fuel pipeline back online. Picture this: You're on vacation in a city abroad, exploring museums, tasting the local cuisine, and people-watching at cafés. Everything is going perfectly until you get a series of alerts on your phone. Someone is making fraudulent charges using your credit card, sending you into a panic. How could this have happened? Cyberattacks targeting travelers are nothing new. But as travel has increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, so has the volume of hackers and cybercriminals preying upon tourists. Financial fraud is the most common form of cybercrime experienced by travelers, but surveillance via public Wi-Fi networks, social media hacking, and phishing scams are also common, according to a survey by ExpressVPN . Spokeo consulted cybersecurity sources and travel guides to determine some of the best ways to protect your phone while traveling, from using a VPN to managing secure passwords. Online attacks are not the only type of crime impacting travelers—physical theft of phones is also a threat. Phones have become such invaluable travel aids, housing our navigation tools, digital wallets, itineraries, and contacts, that having your phone stolen, lost, or compromised while abroad can be devastating. Meanwhile, traveling can make people uniquely vulnerable to both cyber and physical attacks due to common pitfalls like oversharing on social media and letting your guard down when it comes to taking risks online. Luckily, there are numerous precautions travelers can take to safeguard against cyberattacks and phone theft. Hackers can—and do—target public Wi-Fi networks at cafés and hotels to gain access to your personal information or install malware onto your device, particularly on unsecured networks. Travelers are especially vulnerable to these types of cybersecurity breaches because they are often more reliant on public Wi-Fi than they would be in their home countries where they have more robust phone plans. This reliance on public, unsecured networks means travelers are more likely to use those networks to perform sensitive tasks like financial transfers, meaning hackers can easily gain access to banking information or other passwords. One easy way to safeguard yourself against these breaches is to use a virtual private network, or VPN, while traveling. VPNs are apps that encrypt your data and hide your location, preventing hackers from accessing personal information. An added bonus is that VPNs allow you to access websites that may be blocked or unavailable in the country you are visiting. To use a VPN, simply download a VPN app on your phone or computer, create an account, choose a server, and connect. If your phone falls into the wrong hands, there's a good chance you won't be getting it back. Out of those 91,000 phones stolen in London in 2022, only 1,915 (or about 2%) were recovered. The good news is that you can take precautions to make the loss of your phone less devastating by backing up your data before you travel. With backed-up data, you can acquire a new device and still access your photos, contacts, messages, and passwords. Moreover, if you have "Find My Device" or "Find My Phone" enabled, you can remotely wipe your stolen phone's data so the thief cannot access it. It's safest to back up your data to a hard drive and not just the cloud. That way, if you have to wipe your device, you don't accidentally erase the backup, too. In order for the previous tip on this list to work, "Find My Phone" must be turned on in advance, but remotely wiping your device isn't the only thing this feature allows you to do. The "Find My Phone" feature enables you to track your device, as long as it's turned on and not in airplane mode. This is particularly helpful if you misplaced your phone or left it somewhere since it can help you retrace your steps. While this feature won't show you the live location of a phone that has been turned off, it will show the phone's last known location. With "Find My Phone," you can also remotely lock your phone or enable "Lost Mode," which locks down the phone, suspends any in-phone payment methods, and displays contact information for returning the phone to you. If your phone was stolen, experts caution against taking matters into your own hands by chasing down the thief, since this could land you in a potentially dangerous situation and is unlikely to result in getting your phone back. 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A robotic rat learned how to befriend real rats using AI. The wheeled rat was designed to provide companionship for lab rats, which can live pretty secluded and lonely lives. The robots have movements and appearances similar to real animals and even emit the same odor. The rat was designed by researcher Qing Shi and his colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China. It moves using a bionic spine that can bend into various body postures. It’s also equipped with two front arms and two wheels that act as its rear legs. The researchers put the robotic rat through a series of three half-hour trials to see just how it would interact with a real rodent. They watched as the robot used an onboard camera to visually detect and track the real rat before it approached to see if it was open to an aggressive or friendly social interaction. s showcased how the rats reacted to the robot. They often emit more vocal alarm sounds when being pinned by it. However, they also expressed more vocal positive sounds when the robot engaged in playful nose-touching or even pouncing. Sign up for the most interesting tech & entertainment news out there. By signing up, I agree to the and have reviewed the Previous attempts to engage robotic rats with real rodents has proven difficult, too, because of how intelligent rats are at a basic level. However, the researchers believe the addition of AI training is what helps their robot stand out above the others that have been created in the past. Ultimately, researchers hope that by using robots like this, they can learn more about the well-being of rats and help improve their living conditions by providing them with social companionship. Robots like this can help pursue that without introducing the unpredictable aggression of a live rat to the mix. Because , it’s important to ensure that laboratory rats are treated humanely and given good lives despite the tests they might be put through. Adding robotic rats to the mix of various enrichment attempts—like —could help put the rats in a much better environment overall.

The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP) — Ketron Shaw scored 30 points to lead Maryland Eastern Shore past Bryn Athyn 91-65 on Saturday. Shaw also contributed seven rebounds and six assists for the Hawks (2-11), who ended a seven-game slide with the win. Chris Flippin added 22 points and five rebounds. Evan Johnson had 14 points. Isaac Marshall and Jalen Cary both scored 15 to lead the Lions. Jalen Parker had 14 points, two steals and two blocks. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .

SuperMotocross 250 countdown: No. 11, Garrett Marchbanks pivoted twice on his way to the playoffsThe story begins with a resolute woman’s quest to find her missing husband in China, leading her on a profound journey of truth, love, and perseverance as she faces the oppressive forces that shatter her family. The narrative takes viewers on a challenging journey in pursuit of truth and justice. Set in Toronto, the story transcends time and geography, weaving together multiple perspectives and interlaced timelines. Through its narrative, the film immerses the audience in the characters’ memories and realities, highlighting their struggles against the backdrop of both Canadian and Chinese settings. Delving deep into the lives of ordinary individuals and their families persecuted for their beliefs or speech, the film offers a moving and thought-provoking examination of their hardships. With its powerful social significance and emotional depth, “Where Are You” aims to resonate with audiences and inspire greater awareness and support for those fighting for freedom and human dignity. Yang said that this is more than just a story of searching for loved ones—it is a call for freedom and human dignity. The film seeks to shed light on voices often ignored, highlighting how standing up for truth and humanity is treated as a criminal act. Yang is known for “Claws of the Red Dragon” (2019), “Coming for You” (2019), “Eternal Fifty Minutes” (Coming for You 2) (2020), and “Once We Were Divine” (2023). His “Claws of the Red Dragon” was nominated for Best TV Movie at the 2020 Canadian Screen Awards. That film, also inspired by true events, delves into the arrest of “mega hi-tech Chinese heiress” and CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada, which sparked a political firestorm involving the United States, China, and Canada.

picked up right at the start of the school year when it returned with season three, similar to how season one began. But this year, the girls are now sophomores. Over the summer, Leighton (Reneé Rapp) and Alicia ( ) traveled across Europe with Leighton’s dad, Kimberly ( ) worked, Whitney ( ) was in Washington D.C., with her senator mother (played by Sherri Shepherd), and Bela ( ) and Leighton visited Whitney and even had dinner with Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff. When season three picks up, Kimberly and Whitney are still at odds, not having spoken all summer because Kimberly lied to Whitney about kissing her ex, Canaan (Christopher Meyer), at the end of last year. And Bela’s efforts to transfer out of Essex College after hitting rock bottom are thwarted when a counselor, played by Rose Abdoo, tells her that her 1.8 GPA is too low to transfer to any school. So, she decides to turn over a new leaf: No more comedy or leading with her sexuality. Elsewhere, the first episode also set up from the show to pursue a career in music full-time. Alicia tells her girlfriend that she’s leaving college for a job working for the newly elected mayor of Boston. Leighton, being Leighton, assumes this means their relationship is over, but Alicia tells her she loves her and has no desire to break up with her. So, they agree to take things one day at a time. When the incredibly advanced math class Leighton signs up for doesn’t have enough people taking it and gets canceled, the professor suggests that she take a long bus ride to a local grad school and take classes there. But, after one day of commuting, Leighton tells the professor that she will never do that again. So, he offers to speak to a friend at MIT, who may be able to accommodate a transfer, which makes way for Leighton and Alicia to ride off into the Boston sunset together. “Really, the only thing that could happen was that she would transfer to a different school,” co-showrunner Justin Noble tells of Rapp’s impending departure. “But as we started talking about it, [co-showrunner] Mindy [Kaling] and I were chatting, we’re like, ‘This is Leighton Murray we’re talking about. The only thing Leighton Murray does is win.’ There’s no world where she would leave other than to take a massive step towards what would be her best, most powerful life moving forward.” Below, Noble teases what’s to come over the next nine episodes, talks about the introduction of two new characters who become a part of the core group and how much longer he sees the show running. *** This season is so interesting, because sophomore year is a really unique time in the college experience. You come into school as a first-year, and you don’t know anything at all, and you’re shell-shocked. Three months ago, you had to call your parents to pick you up at the mall because you got a Wetzel’s Pretzels with your friend and you needed a ride home. And now you’re like, “I’m a full-blown adult,” and life smacks you in the face. Then, sophomore year, you have the same thing happen but in a different way because it’s like, “Oh, I know everything about college. I’ve been here for a full year. Oh, you’re a first-year. You need to know how this works.” Meanwhile, based on when your birthday is, you are like six months older than these people. It’s fun to see our girls start to interact with the class underneath them. It’s fun to see the world getting bigger. That’s what happens in college, in my experience, and in the writers’ experiences that we talked about so much. Your first year, you hang on to the people in your life so close, because you’re in it together, and you’re like, “This is my close circle of friends.” And then as you get more comfortable, you’re joining clubs, and you’re meeting more people; your world just gets bigger and bigger. I think we start to see that a little bit in the first episode. But obviously, we have a lot to accomplish between season two cliffhangers and switching up the cast a little bit. So we’re just starting to meet some people who we’ll interact with more. The thing about trios is that Bela has told us that is asymmetrical, and it’s not gonna work. So I don’t know. I feel like we won’t be in a trio for long. No, it’s just so not the DNA of the show. We’re not really interested in doing girl-on-girl warfare. I think that if we had done that, the audience would be like, “What’s happening? Like, why?” We want to be a show that people enjoy watching. We’re not . We’re not trying to produce anxiety-driving episodes of TV. At the same time, I want to make sure that we aren’t making falsehoods about perfect lives and people who never have any conflict whatsoever. I think it’s important to show that moment in friendships that happens regardless of gender, where it’s like, “Oh, there’s a little bit of messiness between someone liking someone, especially when everyone’s in close quarters.” But we wanted to quickly get by it and wrap things up and have our group back together. We have 10 short episodes to tell in a season. I don’t want multiple of them to have a fractured group. I think they would have been able to if Kimberly hadn’t lied. The lie is the thing. That felt true to the Kimberly character, to all of us, that she would lie about it. That was very intentional that we did it that way, because she’s so terrified to let people that she loves down. She tried to cover up her tracks as she figured out where she’s at with Canaan. Little did she know, Whitney witnessed the thing that she was not being truthful about. But, that being said, to answer your question more directly, Whitney and Canaan were done. Lila [Ilia Isorelýs Paulino] has a very fun run on that in the premiere. I think if Kimberly had just been honest and said she had a crush on Canaan and sort of done the girl code thing of being like, “I’m gonna gut check with you and ask how you feel about this,” I think Whitney Chase would have been like, “Yeah, sure, I’m good.” Even if she was harboring some feelings that were unresolved for him or anything, I think she still would have said it because you can’t just claim people forever. Some people absolutely do, but you have to see where your friends land on it. That’s part of being in a friendship, seeing what’s going to bum them out. It’s interesting. The show is called . It’s a lot about their relationships with their significant others, but the show is a love story about the friendships, and so anything that bumps on the friendship stories is gonna have to go away. The friendship stories are what’s front and center. So Kimberly couldn’t have stayed with Canaan if it was gonna bum Whitney out — and we chose a way to do it that would have — so they couldn’t be together. Also, there’s something interesting to me about crushing on someone and then being like, “It’s not quite right.” I made out with my best friend in college, who was a woman, and we look back on it, and we’re like, “What were we both going through? What was happening where we, in a million years, thought that that would have been right?” Then, it just has led to such funny moments the rest of our lives. She officiated my wedding to my husband. I fainted at her wedding. I was her bridesman, and I fainted, and everyone was like, “Oh my God, he’s still in love with her.” And I was like, “No, I just stayed up making a gift for her.” But I think it is true that sometimes you don’t quite know what those feelings are, and you’re like, “I think I like them, like them.” And then you’re like, “Oh no, I don’t. I don’t.” I think that she, over 20 episodes, had chosen a bunch of pretty selfish behaviors. We’re trying to tell a story about ambition, where a lot of people, especially in entertainment — and Bela pursues that — are so driven and ambitious, and they know how much of a rat race it is and how hard it is, and sometimes you end up stepping on people on your way up. Bela started doing that in college because she’s so pop-culture obsessed that she knows that’s what it is and that’s what it takes to survive. Meanwhile, she did not need to start that as a first-year student at a comedy magazine, and so I think she just had to learn that lesson, that that’s not the best way to collaborate with people. And I like that she has a bit of a redemption arc, and we’ll see where it leads. I think it might lead to some good character development for her. I love her season that’s coming ahead. But I mean, she brought herself to rock bottom for sure. Poor Eric. Look what she did to Eric [Mekki Leeper]. She had to sleep with John Reynolds! I linger in the blue sky stage of what a season of TV can be for a bit. I’m not one of those showrunners who’s like, “I want to talk about it for five days, and then we’re going to dig in on what episode one is in detail.” We spend a bit in the writers room talking about the full season arc and putting up fence posts literally surrounding all four walls with different girls and what the start of their season is, the middle of their season, the late middle of their season, where we think they might end, and then we start to overlap them. So that it’s not like, “OK, well, if Kimberly’s learning this important lesson in the middle, maybe that’s not when Bela should be learning this thing, because it’ll feel too similar.” So we really plan it all out, and then Mindy sits in the room with us, and I pitch it all out, and she has very smart reactions to it all. And we go from there and switch things up. But we really take our time at those early stages. So to start with , [who] we get a taste for [in the premiere], Taylor is absolutely going to be a complicated thorn in Bela’s side for a good bulk of the season. It’s just so fun and delicious for me because Bela is like the thirstiest character in television history. No one is more dehydrated than Bela Malhotra, and the idea that she would briefly have status and be like, “I’m an upperclassman over all you first years.” And then there’s this girl who’s like, “No, I refuse to give you my status,” and Bela having to suffer and be like, “But I do have status?” and then the girl being like, “Sorry, I’m just not going to give it to you.” It’s just a fun, interesting dynamic for them to have comedically. Taylor will have a lot of vulnerability that we’ll learn a little bit more about very soon, and we’ll get a sense of what her dating life looks like and her past. And she’s just performed so well and funny, and she’s an interesting flavor to the show that we haven’t had before. She’s very British dry, which I just love, too. I love British comedy, so it’s fun to have an actual funny British girl on the show. Gracie, who we’ll meet in episode three, is so incredible this season. When we started talking about new characters that would be the same year as our girls — because Gracie’s character will be the same year, she’s a transfer student — the writers and I had like 800 ideas for what that character might end up being. Gracie’s character started as a card that said “girly girl,” because that’s not a flavor that we’ve had on the show before, and it prompted a super interesting convo with the writers, where they were like, “Would Kimberly be friends with a girly girl?” And then we’re like, “Would Whitney be friends with a girly girl?” Then we’d be like, “But it’s not bad. It’s not a bad thing to be a girly girl. It’s just a different thing than we had on the show.” So she kind of feels like a lot of people that we, in the writers room, knew in college, or our friends, or frankly, some of the writers were in college. But she’ll be around our girls quite a bit. She’ll have a lot of interesting events in her romantic world, and we’ll see Gracie Lawrence — who is an incredible, stunning singer in real life — have a little bit of a musical theater, girly journey. We honestly didn’t. We kind of landed on this pretty quickly. I mean, when you start to think about ways that college students leave, you’re pretty limited. It’s not like Reneé’s character was gonna go on a hike, and then Kimberly’s like, “You mean the rocky, dangerous hike near the cliff?” And then, she falls off or something. Really, the only thing that could happen was that she would transfer to a different school. But as we started talking about it, Mindy and I were chatting, we’re like, “This is Leighton Murray we’re talking about. The only thing Leighton Murray does is win.” So there’s no world where she would leave other than to take a massive step towards what would be her best, most powerful life moving forward. The interesting thing is I very rarely think about the ending zone for the girls. I think about the chapters we’re in. I don’t really think beyond the season too much. Then, as we knew we were writing toward an ending for Leighton, I started to just see what the rest of her life would look like. It’s almost like I was allowed to think it because I had shut off that valve because I knew more was to come. But once I knew it was the end, it kind of felt like an appropriate tee-up to a future where Leighton just wins because we want the best for our girlies. We don’t want them to make too many mistakes. We want funny mistakes. We want Bela to have a horrific, ill-advised dating story. But we want them to land in good zones for their lives. So, yeah, we kind of thought that she would just pursue her own best life. The other side of it is the Alicia side, which I am just team Leilicia and always will be. I cringe whenever anyone’s like “Tatum!” [Gracie Dzienny], and I’m like, “No! Why are you shipping pretty blonde girl with pretty blonde girl? It was a joke that she was attracted to herself.” I think we just did too good of a job in terms of shipping Tatum, but Alicia was fundamentally important in the life of Leighton. She changed her as a person through the women’s center, and I like to think of them together. It looks busier, frankly. It’s really interesting to say that about someone leaving, especially someone who was fundamentals of the first 22 episodes of the show. But we have more mouths to feed than ever. I’ve said before in press, but the sweetest criticisms we ever got in season two were people being like, “Longer episodes!” Then, as we introduced these new characters, frankly, I was like, “How are we going to produce episodes that have this many stories in them and serve as all these people?” Ilia is incredible, and we want to spend more time with Lila and Canaan and Willow [Renika Williams] and all these people. So, the scripts are longer. There’s more to do. We have five main girlies moving forward. So, it grows. The show grows and gets fuller and faster. It’s already so fast, but that’s just what the show is. I think that their loss is something that we really talked a lot about. It actually is fundamental in how we approached Leighton transferring, too. My first year of college, one of my best friends called over the summer and was like, “I’m not coming back.” And I remember being like, “What do you mean? You’re my social circle. What do you mean you’re not coming back?” I like that in the wake of her absence, these other girls need to figure out what that means for them, so as they have maybe a new roommate thrown their way, they’ll have to learn whether or not to embrace someone right out of the gate. But our girls are always a welcoming crowd, and we’ll see how it goes with all these new people in their lives. This is a 34-season television show. We have it all figured out. Thirty-three is, like, a real toughie. We’re still working out what happens in season 33, and then it wraps up in season 34. ( ) The only thing I’ll say is I think that this show is about college. I think that I don’t see a world where we would warp them out of college. I think college is such an interesting, fundamental time that we hadn’t seen much of on TV before. That’s the reason why we tried to pursue it creatively. It’s also why we’ve slowed it down and why two seasons got us through one year. There’s a lot of lessons to learn in college. Our show takes place in college, and we’ll see them through. *** Sex Lives of College Girls THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The Hollywood Reporter

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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — This year marks the third year for Participatory Budgeting in the Spa City, and this year more projects than ever before were submitted.At the Dec. 3 City Council meeting, Participatory Budgeting Committee Chair Norah Brennan presented the proposed projects that will be voted on by the community — starting this Saturday.Participatory [...]