Details released in what Mr Byrne earlier called a breach of “industrial scale” included names of people who work in sensitive areas such as surveillance and intelligence.
He said that at the beginning of Monday there were 45 members of PSNI staff the organisation “hadn’t caught up with” to discuss the breach, adding that things were moving quickly.
Earlier, police said they were investigating an incident where a document was posted on a wall in west Belfast, allegedly showing information released in the breach.
Names were redacted from the document, which was found near a Sinn Féin office alongside a photo of the party’s policing spokesperson, Gerry Kelly.
DUP MLA Trevor Clarke, a member of the Policing Board, said it reinforced that the threat from the leak would have to be “monitored potentiality for some years to come.”
Meanwhile, in a separate development, it emerged on Saturday that 200 officers and staff were not informed of the theft of personal data from a superintendent’s car for a month after it was stolen.
Italy’s far-right ruling party has been ordered to pay damages to a same-sex couple for using a photo of them with their newborn son without their consent in an anti-surrogacy campaign.
Brothers of Italy is a direct political descendant of the Italian Social Movement, which was formed by members of Mussolini’s Fascist Party after the war.
In March, it instructed Milan’s city council to stop registering the children of same-sex parents, leading to protests.
To us, our birth photo represents everything what we stand for; family, acceptance and unconditional love," the couple told the BBC.
“This victory against the Fratelli and the Prime Minister allows us to reclaim our photo, and show the world that family is about love.”
The photo, taken by Lindsay Foster, was also used without permission by independent Irish politician Mary Fitzgibbons in 2016 to push her platform against surrogacy for same-sex parents.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said heavy rains triggered landslides and flash floods in the hill state.
Mr Sukha posted on X about a flash flood and cloudburst - a sudden, very heavy fall of rain - that had occurred in other parts of the state, in which 14 people had died.
Thousands of tourists visit the hill state of Himachal Pradesh, especially its capital Shimla, around the year to enjoy its cool weather and picturesque scenery.
Videos shared on social media over the past few days show vehicles and buildings being swept away by gushing rivers, trees falling on cars and tourists stranded due to road closures.
Incessant rains have also been battering the neighbouring state of Uttarakhand for the past couple of days, where officials fear several people have been buried in landslides.
On Monday, officials said that the Char Dham Yatra - a pilgrimage to the four holiest sites for Hindus in the state - has been suspended for two days due to the rains.
The mountainous town of Hpakant in the Kachin state is home to the world’s biggest and most lucrative jade mines.
Many of those affected are believed to be locals digging through the mud along the cliffs, many of whom work and live in abandoned mining pits.
The intense rain had loosened massive piles of earth more than 150m in height, left over from excavations by mining companies, sending the dirt and debris hurtling down the cliff and sweeping up miners on the way.
These attract huge numbers of migrant workers from other parts of the country who come to search for jade, most of which ends up being sold in China.
“We haven’t found any dead bodies yet,” said the rescue worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being arrested by the military.
There has been frequent fighting there before and after the military coup in 2021, which deposed the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Niger’s military junta has announced plans to prosecute deposed President Mohamed Bazoum for high treason and undermining national security.
But in a sign that it is hardening its position, the junta said in a statement read out on state TV that it had gathered evidence to prosecute “the deposed president and his local and foreign accomplices for high treason and undermining the internal and external security of Niger”.
Junta-appointed Prime Minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine said he was optimistic that talks with Ecowas would take place in the coming days “to discuss how the sanctions against us will be lifted”.
The coup in Niger mirrored similar takeovers in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali, amid an Islamist insurgency and a growing Russian influence in the wider Sahel region through its mercenary group Wagner.
Despite his captivity, Mr Bazoum was able to publish an article in The Washington Post stating that he was a hostage and that the coup would have “devastating consequences for our country, our region and the entire world”.
His daughter Zazia, 34, who was on holiday in France during the coup, told the UK-based Guardian newspaper last week that her father, mother and brother had no clean water or electricity and were living on rice and pasta.
I’ve been outside for the last three nights in hopes of seeing it and possibly getting a pic or two, and each time it’s hazy or clouds roll overhead by the time I get to a good dark area to observe anything.
But that’s the beauty of the internet. I can always see it through someone else’s (better) camera at least. It’s nice to hope though…
Closest I got to see anything was I saw a bit of flash out of the corner of my eye twice, but that’s about it. Still going to go out again tonight for a bit and hope for the best… maybe I’ll get lucky.
I wish you luck. It certainly gets frustrating since the “100 meteor/hour” includes the whole sky and very faint meteors. I was at a mild suburban beach outside the metro areas (Bortle class 4/5) and saw maybe 10/ hour. That’s 1 every 6 minutes but could be 2 every 12, 3 after 18 mins, etc. Just gotta keep looking up. I tried to catch more while driving home and while taking out the trash but with much less success lol
Last night (well, early this morn) I did manage to see a few but didn’t manage to get any decent pics. Thankfully I live in a very low light pollution area so it’s not like I have to go far from my house, weather permitting. (according to lightpollutionmap.info my value is 0, but if it’s hazy I can see the glow from nearby towns.)
Teens can unwittingly purchase altnoid vapes from gas stations, smoke shops, instagram, and more.
Buying boof vapes poise a much higher risk than other fake “marijuanas”.
To anyone dabbling in that lifestyle, it is not worth it. Only trust legal dispensaries. On the black/grey markets, you could be inhaling heavy metals, solvents, toxins, and other things you shouldn’t be vaporizing into your lungs.
You only get one pair of lungs, take care of them, lung damage is permanent. Vaping unregulated oils can risk things such as, chest pain, chemical burns, diminished breathing, headaches, lipoid pneumonia, collapsed lung.
It is possible to buy both fake packaging, and prefilled vapes in fake packaging from China.
If that’s not an option, look into making your own distillate. It’s cheaper and cleaner, it tastes better, and you don’t support terrible practices.
Doesn’t the article only mention the banning of disposable vapes? Did you know there is enough lithium in all the disposable vapes used in a year, to make 1200 electric car batteries. Per year. In the UK alone.
Great, but that's not why they were banned. I was talking about the US though, where a great many jurisdictions are totally banning vapes, or banning all flavored vape juice, due to this hysteria.
Because parents have been told they’re not allow to discipline their kids, so instead they have to blame everything else for their failed crotch spawn.
Regulate nicotine. It serves no purpose besides addicting people to a product. Once people are capable of making a real choice, the problem will become much less severe. Over time, it might even disappear completely.
Regardless of the health effects, addiction (and related expenses) can cost you hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. People go to counseling, join support groups, and buy nicotine patches to try and quit.
I say “try” because on average, former cigarette smokers had to try to quit several times before they were successful. Many former smokers say that quitting was extremely hard, maybe even the hardest thing they’ve done. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the same is true with vaping.
I don’t like nicotine because it’s used to manipulate and take advantage of people. The product/delivery method is irrelevant.
The delivery method for vaping is water vapor. The delivery method for cigarettes is to wrap the nicotine in poison and then burn it. And you see no difference?
Of course I see the difference. The fact that cigarettes are dangerous to your health is so screamingly obvious that I didn’t even think that was something we needed to tell each other.
My point is that nicotine makes it much harder to stop vaping or smoking once you decide you want to. That’s what I meant when I said “the product/delivery method is irrelevant”, and why I started my comment with “regardless of the health effects”.
It doesn’t matter how the nicotine gets into your system. It messes with you anyway. Regulating specific products is like playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. The industry will keep finding different ways to get you hooked.
We’ve tried regulating tobacco, so they found a nicotine delivery system that doesn’t rely on tobacco. Let’s attack the addiction problem at the source - regulate the nicotine. That way, when they come up with something new (like an energy drink or something) the existing laws still apply. The slow-moving government doesn’t have to play catch up. Consumers stay protected.
Nicotine addiction is not a PROBLEM though, no more than caffeine addiction. The problem is when the only legal way to get caffeine is by a cocktail of red bull and arsenic.
Nicotine is not the issue. The delivery method is the whole problem.
I think comparing vaping to drinking water is disingenuous - it is not needed and has active harms. Just because one thing is less harmful than another doesn't mean we can't regulate both heavily.
It does mean that, unless we are stupid or have ulterior motives, we should not regulate them equally heavily.
Besides, the science shows vaping is nearly harmless. I think that, again unless we are stupid, we should not be regulating it "heavily" at all. Just ban it for under-18s. Enforce that ban. That's all.
It should be regulated at least as much as food though don’t you think? Not just ban it for under 18s but specify what can or can’t go into a vape product.
Otherwise you’ll get companies using cheap but dangerous to inhale substances over more expensive safer substances that do the same job.
The science isn’t fully decided on vapes - AFAIK the PG/VG and nicotine are relatively harmless (though nicotine does carry some heart/stroke risks) but the flavours are generally only tested for safety when taken orally, not when atomised and inhaled. Flavourless vape juice is therefore probably safe, though hardly anybody sells it, it’s kinda unpleasant, and it does still carry some health risks.
Let me just rephrase what you said. Instead of "the science isn't fully decided", which paints an incorrect picture, let's rather say "of everything they've tested in a typical legal vape, everything is essentially harmless. Some of the components haven't been tested."
Saying "the science isn't fully decided" implies "eh, maybe it's dangerous, maybe it's not, 50/50". That's not at all the case. It's almost certainly all harmless. Just very addictive.
That’s not true. “The science isn’t fully decided” means that long-terms effects are extremely hard to measure, it literally takes decades. The amount of liquids of different flavors is so big that you can’t realistically test them all. Different flavors require different chemicals, you can get the same taste with different chemicals too. Yes, basic liquid is probably less harmful than cigarettes, but even for that there’s not enough data to say that this is a scientific fact.
It’s simple: he spoke to an undercurrent of emotional resentment that a lot of people had and gave them permission to feel like they were good people (or at least not bad people) for feeling that way. Every seemingly logical explanation that the right twists into place in hindsight is only a justification for that gut reaction.
They want to feel good for having xenophobic, nationalist feelings. He gave them permission and said they were the good guys and everyone who disagrees is wrong. They only care about the facts that back up that perspective, everything else is conveniently discarded to defend their collective ego. 45’s narcissism helps him win this crowd because he’s been ignoring all inconvenient facts his whole life, and whenever that habit catches up with him he always has a scapegoat or 12 ready to go.
the emotional resentment comes from the perpetual victim mentality. the only way their way of life works is if they are constantly under attack by a villain of the week thats simultaneously incompetent and feeble but also sadistic and near unstoppable.
Yeah I guess there’s also underlying issues of feeling lost and insignificant in a complex world. Add to that economic struggle and a lacking class awareness and cognitive dissonance does the rest.
It doesn’t hurt his popularity with his supporters that so many hate him, it fits with the overall narrative of that constituency that people want them silenced.
You can see this is in how many conservatives complain about cancel culture silencing them, they use phrases like “you can’t say anything anymore” enmass on social media and run dozens of media publications and TV about how their voices are being silenced.
The irony of all this is ignored in the fury.
To really understand trump’s popularity you need to see him as a symptom not a cause. People who grew up without exposure to difference, in environments where difference was not tolerated, are feeling upset that the differences are being accepted.
They always believed the narrative that those differences just didn’t exist in the past and so the can see a rapid change in the world which they see as the destruction of the world they know.
Had they known that differences were their all along, only being kept out of sight, they’d know this isn’t a slide towards anything, it’s just a recognition of everything that was always already there.
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