Plans for Universal Studios UK confirmed as government agrees deal with US giant Comcast Artist’s impression of how the theme park would look when built The owner of the Universal Studios theme park chain has confirmed it will build its first site in the UK following more than a year of feasibility work and discussions with government. Keir Starmer said today he had “closed the deal” with Universal Destinations & Experiences (UDE) for the 476-acre scheme in Bedfordshire, which could become the largest theme park in Europe when it opens in 2031. A planning application for the project, which is expected to cost several billion pounds to build, will be submitted in the coming months with construction scheduled to start as soon as next year, according to UDE, a subsidiary of media giant Comcast. The firm said today in a letter to locals it would be a “world-class theme park with several themed lands featuring Universal’s distinct brand of immersive storytelling, thrilling rides, innovative attractions and exciting entertainment”.  It will also contain a 500-room hotel and a retail, dining and entertainment complex, along with upgrades to the nearby Wixams railway station, a new station on the East West Rail line near the resort and new slip roads off the A421. The government said it will ”commit to a major investment” in infrastructure around the site to support the delivery of the project as part of the deal with UDE. Keir Starmer meeting Comcast president Michael Cavanagh Universal is also looking at buying more land to increase the size of the site to more than 700 acres, which would improve transport links. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “At a time of global change, this investment is a vote of confidence in Britain as a place to do business. Universal’s investment will bring billions to the economy and create thousands of jobs to the UK, putting more money in people’s pockets.” The government has claimed the park would become the largest visitor attraction in the UK, with 8.5 million visitors expected in its first year and generating nearly £50bn for the economy by 2055. Around 80% of employees at the theme park are expected to come from local areas, with ministers looking at the project as key part of plans to boost growth in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor which include the East-West rail scheme. Mike Cavanagh, president of Comcast Corporation, which owns UDE, said: “We could not be more excited to take this very important step in our plan to create and deliver an incredible Universal theme park and resort in the heart of the United Kingdom, which complements our growing US-based parks business by expanding our global footprint to Europe.” He added: “We appreciate the leadership and support of prime minister Keir Starmer, chancellor Rachel Reeves, minister for investment Poppy Gustafsson, culture secretary Lisa Nandy and their teams, as we work together to create and deliver a fantastic new landmark destination.” Aerial view of the 476 acre site in Bedfordshire UDE chairman and chief executive Mark Woodbury added: “Bringing a world-class theme park and resort to the United Kingdom is a tremendous opportunity and is part of our strategy to introduce the Universal brand and experiences to new audiences around the globe.   “We appreciate the incredible support for our proposed project and look forward to bringing it to life in the years ahead.” The firm’s 541-acre Universal Studios Florida is among the most visited theme parks in the world and was the first of a chain which now includes parks in Los Angeles, Japan, China and Singapore. The venture was given a boost last December following news that plans for a major rival, the £3.5bn London Resort which would have been built on the Thames Estuary, had been scrapped. The 465ha park, which had also been billed as Europe’s largest, was first proposed more than 14 years ago but the High Court has ordered the company behind the scheme to be wound up.

The 15 Ultra can take stunning photos, but it needs your help to do so.

April 9, 20257 min readTrump Orders Protect Aging, Polluting Coal Plants, and Allow More MiningPresident Trump signed executive orders Tuesday that keep aging coal generators running and undermine efforts to rein in pollution, including mercury and arsenic emissionsPresident Donald Trump speaks Tuesday during an executive order signing ceremony related to expand the mining and use of coal in the United State in the East Room of the White House. Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump on Tuesday made an unprecedented peacetime intervention in the electricity sector, using executive orders to force aging coal-burning plants to stay open and feed soaring energy demand from American tech companies.At a White House signing ceremony that resembled a campaign-style rally, Trump signed orders squarely aimed at reviving coal mining and coal power, which have both been in decline for more than a decade. Among other things, they direct Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to identify which regions are at risk of electricity shortages and bar the shutdowns of coal plants deemed essential.“Unlike wind and solar, coal plants can run 24 hours a day in rain, sleet or snow,” Trump said, flanked by rows of coal miners donning hard hats. “From now on, we’ll ensure our critically needed coal plants … remain online and fully operational.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The president signed a total of four executive orders after a speech that downplayed the danger of climate change, blasted the “green new scam,” lauded “beautiful clean coal” and attacked past administrations pursuing tough pollution standards and for making it harder to mine for coal.The announcement was quickly followed by a slew of policy shifts, including the Interior Department’s lifting of a ban on leasing in the Powder River Basin, one of the biggest coal-producing hubs in the nation. Conservation groups immediately warned the orders would catapult carbon emissions and dangerous pollution.“Trump’s attempt to bail out coal is a recipe for raising prices for consumers,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, public lands director at the Center for American Progress. “Coal’s decline was a problem of economics, and its revival only works if prices increase. These executive orders threaten to make energy costs higher for Americans while continuing to ignore real solutions to energy independence.”Through his order, Trump reiterated the need to meet the demand of the tech industry build-out of data centers. The nation’s ability “to remain at the forefront of technological innovation depends on a reliable supply of energy from all available electric generation sources and the integrity of our nation's electric grid,” Trump’s order states.But the pace of electricity demand to serve future data centers is still guesswork. The centers could consume between 7 percent and 12 percent of U.S. electricity output in 2028, from 4.4 percent now, according to estimates. Total peak power demand for centers could range from 74,000 to 132,000 megawatts in 2028.In the meantime, tens of thousands of megawatts of coal plant capacity were expected to shut down through the end of the decade. Coal generation that accounted for half of U.S. electricity in 2001 is now at about 15 percent. Most of the planned or proposed generation to replace it has been solar or wind power, along with battery storage. But the projects have struggled to get under construction. And they now face a more hostile Trump administration.Power companies looking to build new natural gas generation are also seeing longer wait times for turbines. That makes the next few years a time of unusual risk for power operations, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the interstate grid’s security monitor.'Go through hell'Wright’s review of what coal generation is needed and where is due in 90 days. No other deadline were set for taking action under the order. Trump’s action is tied to a 90-year-old provision in the Federal Power Act, section 202(c), that was written for wartime use, according to legal scholars, but has been used in recent decades in short-duration grid emergencies.At the event, the Trump aide handing the president his documents blamed “Democratic states, radical leftist states, enacting policies, enacting an agenda that discriminates against coal.” Trump’s orders mirrored that sentiment. Singling out California, New York and Vermont, Trump’s order contends, “Many states have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”Trump has branded experts’ warnings of future climate-related consequences as “lunatic.” One of his orders directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to take legal action to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and regulations that address "climate change" or involving "environmental, social, and governance" and “greenhouse gas” emissions. Twenty-four states have greenhouse gas reduction goals or other climate policies, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.Wind is blowing pollution from a coal burning power plant.DWalker44/Getty ImagesBondi, under the order, must work with agency heads to identify local and state rules and laws that “are or may be unconstitutional, preempted by Federal law, or otherwise unenforceable,” according to the order.Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said it’s ultimately up to the courts to halt state or local programs, and it’s not clear what Bondi will do.In his White House remarks, Trump pledged to build a policy wall of some kind around coal operations, to prevent a future Democratic president from reversing his policies to reduce coal’s impact. “Republicans are very much for clean coal, and we're going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs of the world of politics,” Trump said. Democrats in the future are “going to have to go through hell to close you up.”But Ted Kelly, a lead counsel on utility policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, attacked Trump’s actions as a threat to public health and safety.“Burning coal releases deadly pollution into our air, including mercury that causes brain damage in young children and other toxics that cause cancer, heart and lung diseases," Kelly said in a statement. "It’s also the main cause of climate change, which is causing the increasingly extreme fires, floods and storms that put us all at risk.”Kelly also challenged the use of section 202(c) emergency authority under the Federal Power Act as the basis for Trump’s action.“That law is designed for, and limited to, sudden emergencies creating an immediate risk of blackouts or other grid instability," Kelly said. “Power plant retirements driven by economics are properly addressed by planning and action by utilities and their regulators — not by irrational and unlawful emergency actions.”The limits of the law have never been directly tested in a U.S. Supreme Court review, a recent law review analysis said.“Nothing here seems to change the economics, and it’s the economics that have held coal-fired power production down,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies. “We have seen no evidence that any company is considering building a new coal plant or that supply chains or manufacturing could support it.”'Mine, baby, mine'Trump's array of orders aimed at boosting the production and use of coal in the U.S. will undoubtedly face headwinds — from legal challenges to market conditions, including competition with cheap natural gas and renewables.One order aimed at “reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” lays out a multipronged approach for expanding mining. It calls on Wright to determine whether coal used to produce steel should be defined as “critical” under the Energy Act of 2020 — a designation that would open coal to both streamlined permitting and federal funding.It also “directs relevant agencies to identify coal resources on Federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on those lands.”The president also took aim at regulations affecting coal, and through his order directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality to help agencies in adopting “coal-related categorical exclusions” under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. He also directed the secretary of the Interior to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands, which has repeatedly been slapped down in court.Within minutes, the Interior Department reversed a ban on coal leasing on federal lands and reopened the Powder River Basin to coal leasing. The agency also lowered the rate coal miners must pay to extract coal from public lands and scrapped a Biden-era rule change around notifications of mine safety violations.“The Golden Age is here, and we are starting to ‘Mine, Baby, Mine’ for clean American coal,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.Critics of the order were quick to point out that coal production on federal land has fallen steeply in recent decades. According to federal data, coal companies as of 2023 held 279 federal leases on almost 422,000 acres of public land. That's a sharp dip from 489 leases on more than 730,000 acres of public land in 1990.'Immediate relief'Trump also granted some coal plants a reprieve on compliance with EPA regulations that tightened the limits on emissions of mercury and other dangerous metals.The president inked a proclamation that pushes back the compliance deadline for the agency’s updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for those plants from July 2027 to July 2029. Under the Clean Air Act, the standards are aimed at limiting emissions of mercury, arsenic and almost 190 other pollutants tied to serious health effects such as cancer and birth defects.As justification, Trump cited a waiver provision that allows the extension if he determines both that the delay benefits national security and that the technology needed to meet the stricter standards does not exist. Neither White House nor EPA staffers responded Tuesday night to requests for a list of the plants getting the additional two years to comply.In making that determination, which will likely face a legal challenge from environmental groups, Trump reasoned that the regulations risk the shutdown of many coal-fired plants, thereby undermining national security. He added that the needed pollution control technology does not exist “in a commercially viable form” to meet the 2027 deadline.EPA under former President Joe Biden took the opposite position. The required controls were available to close a loophole on mercury emissions for plants that burn the low-grade form of coal known as lignite.The updated regulations also slashed a soot emissions rate for all coal-fired plants that serves as a regulatory stand-in for releases of arsenic, nickel and other hazardous metals. Taken together, the package modestly strengthened the original MATS issued more than a decade ago. The regulations are among a number of Biden-era air toxics rules that the Trump administration now plans to revisit and possibly repeal.In the interim, EPA last month offered similar compliance breaks to companies in eight other sectors if they emailed their applications for a “presidential exemption” by March 31. While EPA has declined to name the applicants, the power sector appears to be the first to benefit from the exemption program.Trump on Tuesday also said he is directing DOE’s Wright to keep the Cholla Power Plant in Arizona operating, even though it was slated to close this month. The president also said his administration was offering up "immediate" relief to 47 companies operating 66 coal plants across the nation.“We’re going to be crushing Biden-era environmental restrictions,” Trump said.

The Last of Us TV show renewed for season three, and the second hasn't even aired yet 'Mazin achievement. Image credit: Eurogamer/HBO News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on April 9, 2025 Naughty Dog has confirmed HBO's acclaimed live-action adaptation of The Last of Us is getting a third season, even before the highly anticipated season two has aired. The Last of Us' TV debut in 2023 was met with huge critical acclaim and brought in record numbers of viewers, so it wasn't much of a surprise when HBO confirmed it had commissioned a second season. And with excitement building ahead of season two's start date this Sunday, 13th April (its already managed to set two records for HBO, even before it's aired), fans will no doubt be thrilled to hear things won't be ending with an abrupt full-stop. Plans for a third The Last of Us season have been discussed previously, of course. In August 2023, showrunner Craig Mazin confirmed the team would need more than one season to cover the events of the second game, noting that "four seems like a good number". That figure was repeated again earlier this year, when HBO executive Francesca Orsi revealed that while a "a complete or final plan" wasn't in place, "it's looking like four seasons" for the adaption. Here's a peek at The Last of Us' second season.Watch on YouTube Addressing today's The Last of Us season three renewal announcement (thanks Variety), Mazin said, "We approached season two with the goal of creating something we could be proud of. The end results have exceeded even our most ambitious goals, thanks to our continued collaboration with HBO and the impeccable work of our unparalleled cast and crew." The Last of Us season two spans seven episodes (one "quite big" in length), with episode one airing this Sunday, 13th April, at 9pm ET/PT via HBO and Max in the US. In the UK, season two airs on Sky Atlantic and NOW, with the first episode becoming available on Monday, 14th April - presumably at 2am for those that want to get ahead of spoilers. The Last of Us season two sees the return of Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Gabriel Luna as Tommy, and Rutina Wesley as Maria, with new cast members including Young Mazino, Alanna Ubach, Ben Ahlers, Hettienne Park, Joe Pantoliano, Robert John Burke, Noah Lamanna, and Kaitlyn Dever as Abby. Additionally, the legendary Catherine O'Hara joins the cast as a Jackson therapist - one with an intriguing connection to a minor game character whose story is set to be expanded in a similar style to season one's hugely acclaimed Bill and Frank episode.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here GSC Game World’s Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a fantastic game that still needs a bit of work. Developed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the survival game’s release is nothing short of a miracle.  Prior to the game’s release, GSC and Xbox released a full-length documentary about the games development. Titled War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, the fantastic documentary has now been nominated by the 2025 Webby Awards for the Best Documentary of the year.  Stalker 2 documentary nominated for Webby Award Revealed by GSC Game World, the brilliant free documentary, which you can watch here or below, can be voted on by fans to snag the win at this year’s Webby Awards.  “Last year, we were honored to show the world Wargame: The making of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 — a documentary created in collaboration with the incredible team at Xbox,” the developer said. “This project had a profound impact on our team. We received thousands of responses and reactions from players, journalists and curious people, all about how important it is to continue talking about the outgoing war in Ukraine.” “But this film is not only about the war,” they continued. “It is about the history of our country and Chornobyl in particular; it is about the people whose lives have changed forever in 2022; it is about the game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which has brought many people together.” Following the release of the survival game, we also talked to the game’s team regarding the game’s launch during the country’s invasion. Despite being invaded, Ukrainian gamers were downloading Stalker 2 so much that it took down the country’s internet, proving just how much love the country had for the survival game series.  Alongside the Webby Awards, GSC Game World explained that it is still continuing to “work on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl improvements”. While fans still wait for an official roadmap release, there’s a lot of updates planned for the survival game.  “All of this is only possible thanks to you and your support,” the dev team said. “We will never forget it.” S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series X Genre(s): Action, Adventure, RPG, Shooter, Survival Horror Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

When Chat GPT 4o came out in late March, I was in Savannah, Georgia, looking at real estate and trying to convince my husband that we could do magic tricks with paint. Describing what you are envisioning to a spouse isn’t easy, and this new version of AI wizardry felt, to me, like a fairy godmother capable of granting all my wishes. For the first time ever, I could quickly create renderings of what I was imagining in the exact same rooms we were looking at: getting my zany ideas across in a way that was unimaginable on Chat GPT even a week before. The night I discovered what the new version could do, I was up until nearly midnight inputting my ideas, gobsmacked when they would be visualized on my laptop in minutes.But for design industry professionals, the concept of Chat GPT 4o has both its perks and its pitfalls. Here’s what you need to know.What is Chat GPT 4o and how do you make renderings with it?Released on March 25th, 2025, Open AI’s Chat GPT 4o allows you to create renderings tailored to exact rooms fairly quickly. It’s helpful to be precise—dare I say (ahem) robotic—in your instructions. For example, to try to show my husband what painting a home’s existing faux Tuscan kitchen cabinets black might look like, I would upload an image of said cook space and then input a very clear command: “Restyle image with black cabinets keep all details.” And yes, the words “keep all details” are important, lest you end up with an entirely different imaginary kitchen. (She’s a good intern, but she can get confused.)How will Chat GPT 4o change things for designers?“When people talk about all the new AI that's coming out, it brings back memories of 15 years ago when Instagram was rolling out,” says Suzanne Sykes, a designer in Winnetka, Illinois. “I feel like there was such a divide in the industry between the older and the younger designers.”Paul Mencel, owner of custom solid wood furniture maker Philadelphia Table Company, uses Chat GPT to convey his ideas. “For me it’s [a tool] like the calculator was, right? I just used it the other day, for example, to pitch a bed idea because it’s expensive and it takes a lot of time to do proper drawings.” Mencel is quick to point out to those he is working with whenever his concepts were ‘drawn’ with AI. “You need to have a ton of language in place upfront basically saying, ‘Hey, this is AI generated. This isn’t exactly what it is. This is just to help convey the ideas a little better.’”Mencel will also purposefully ask the AI program to produce a sketch or a watercolor rather than a photorealistic rendering. “This way it’s not so close to something that somebody can get really attached to. That’s my big fear—that they'd be like, ‘Oh wow, I really love the grain of this wood.’ I’m like, well, that’s a digital creation!”

Technology Trump administration backs off Nvidia's 'H20' chip crackdown after Mar-a-Lago dinner Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers the keynote address at the annual Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, Calif. last month. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Justin Sullivan/Getty Images When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended a $1 million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week, a chip known as the H20 may have been on his mind. That's because chip industry insiders widely expected the Trump administration to impose curbs on the H20, the most cutting-edge AI chip U.S. companies can legally sell to China, a crucial market to one of the world's most valuable companies. Following the Mar-a-Lago dinner, the White House reversed course on H20 chips, putting the plan for additional restrictions on hold, according to two sources with knowledge of the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly. The planned American export controls on the H20 had been in the works for months, according to the two sources, and were ready to be implemented as soon as this week. The change of course from the White House came after Nvidia promised the Trump administration new U.S. investments in AI data centers, according to one of the sources. American lawmakers have been pressuring the Trump administration for weeks to place stricter curbs on cutting edge technology related to artificial intelligence. In February, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., jointly called for export controls on the H20 chip after Chinese tech company DeepSeek unveiled a breakthrough AI chatbot that stunned the world in January. The Trump administration's decision to allow Chinese firms to continue to purchase H20 chips is a major victory for the country, said Chris Miller, a Tufts University history professor and semiconductor expert. "Even though these chips are specifically modified to reduce their performance thus making them legal to sell to China — they are better than many, perhaps most, of China's homegrown chips," Miller said. "China still can't produce the volume of chips it needs domestically, so it is critically reliant on imports of Nvidia chips." The White House and the Commerce Department did not return requests for comment. A spokesman for Nvidia declined to comment. It is unclear if Huang spoke directly to Trump during the Friday event, but two sources say until then, the assumption had been that Washington's trade war with China would soon include tight controls on the H20 chip — which were among the chips used by DeepSeek. Since 2022, U.S. regulators have restricted what semiconductor chips Nvidia can sell to China out of fear that Beijing could harness American technology to bolster its AI and military capabilities. The H20 arose under these constraints, becoming the most powerful AI chip it could export to China under the law. This year, the H20 chip has become increasingly coveted by artificial intelligence companies, because it is designed to support inference, a computational process used to support AI models like China's DeepSeek and other AI agents being developed by Meta and OpenAI. As a result, the H20 had appeared as if it, too, would be subject to a Trump administration crack down. And tech companies in China responded. In the first three months of the year, leading Chinese tech firms purchased $16 billion worth of H20 chips, The Information reported last week, stockpiling the components in anticipation there would soon be U.S. export controls on the chip. Despite mounting political pressure to broaden American export controls to cover the H20 chip, the regulatory process has encountered delays, in part because of a lack of staff at the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Commerce Department office responsible for designing and enforcing such controls, according to a third person familiar with the agency's operations who was also not authorized to speak publicly. BIS has been hobbled by federal cuts and reshuffling under the Trump administration. The country's most senior export control expert, Matthew Boreman, left BIS this year as part of an exodus in February of senior agency staff. President Trump has also moved fast to dismantle and reorganize technology policies implemented by the Biden administration, particularly the CHIPS Act, which authorized $39 billion in subsidies for companies to invest in semiconductor supply chains in the U.S. Last month, Trump ordered the establishment of a new investment "accelerator" office which will take over much of the portfolio of semiconductor investment work from CHIPS Act staff laid off from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal agency hit hard by ongoing federal restructuring efforts.

Great news for fans of PlayStation and whimsical, colourful gameplay. Astro Bot won a BAFTA award last night, and not just any award. It took home the Game of the Year award, beating out other fantastic games like Helldivers 2 and Balatro. Read more

The chosen few.Pre-orders are one thing, but there's something about lotteries and 'invitations' to pre-order hot-item electronics which rubs me the wrong way. "Here, it's our honour to let you give us hundreds of your hard-earned currency units, you lucky sausage! Gis a card number."Still, it's the name of the game if you're a Switch 2 fan, and we Europeans should think ourselves lucky that we're not in the uncertain position of our friends across the Atlantic when it comes to guaranteeing (as much as you can) that there'll be a new console on your doorstep come 5th June.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

NSO Group’s notorious spyware Pegasus was used to target 1,223 WhatsApp users in 51 different countries during a 2019 hacking campaign, according to a new court document.  The document was published on Friday as part of the lawsuit that Meta-owned WhatsApp filed against NSO Group in 2019, accusing the surveillance tech maker of exploiting a vulnerability in the chat app to target hundreds of users, including more than 100 human rights activists, journalists, and “other members of civil society.” At the time, WhatsApp said around 1,400 users had been targeted. Now, an exhibit published in the court document shows exactly in what countries 1,223 specific victims were located when they were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.  The country breakdown is a rare insight into which NSO Group customers may be more active, and where their victims and targets are located.  The countries with the most victims of this campaign are Mexico with 456 individuals, India with 100, Bahrain with 82, Morocco with 69, Pakistan with 58, Indonesia with 54, and Israel with 51, according to a chart titled “Victim Country Count,” that WhatsApp submitted as part of the case. There are also victims in Western countries like Spain (12 victims), the Netherlands (11), Hungary (8), France (7), United Kingdom (2), and one victim in the United States.  The court document with the list of victims by country was first reported by Israeli news site CTech.  “Numerous news articles have been written over the years documenting use of Pegasus to target victims around the world,” said Runa Sandvik, a cybersecurity expert who’s been tracking victims of government spyware for years. “What’s often missing from these articles is the true scale of the targeting — the number of victims who were not notified; who did not get their devices checked; who opted not to share their story publicly. The list we see here — with 456 cases in Mexico alone, a country with documented, well-known civil society victims — speaks volumes about the true scale of the spyware problem,” Sandvik told TechCrunch. Contact Us Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop. Another piece of data that shows the scale of the government spyware problem is that the hacking campaign targeting WhatsApp users occurred over a period of only two months, “between in and around April 2019 and May 2019,” as WhatsApp wrote in its original complaint. In other words, in just two months, NSO Group’s government customers targeted more than a thousand WhatsApp users. It’s important to note that it is not clear if the fact that there is a victim located in a certain country means that specific country’s government was the customer using NSO Group’s spyware against those victims. It’s possible that a government customer could be using Pegasus to target someone outside of the country.  As CTech noted, Syria appears on the victim list, but NSO Group cannot export its technology to Syria, a country that’s sanctioned by countries all over the world.  The number of victims also gives an insight into who may be NSO Group’s highest-paying customers. Companies like NSO Group, and other predecessors like Hacking Team and FinFisher, determine what price to offer their surveillance products to their customers in part by the number of targets that can be concurrently infected with the spyware.  Mexico, for example, was reported to have spent more than $60 million on NSO Group’s spyware, according to a 2023 New York Times article that cited Mexican officials, which could explain why there are so many Mexican targets in this list.  Last year, WhatsApp scored an historic victory when the judge presiding over the lawsuit ruled that NSO Group had breached U.S. hacking laws by targeting WhatsApp users. The next step in the lawsuit is an upcoming hearing that will determine the damages that the spyware maker will have to pay to WhatsApp.  Apart from this list of victims, the court case brought by WhatsApp has led to other revelations, including the fact that NSO Group disconnected 10 government customers after reports that they abused the spyware, and that the WhatsApp hacking tool produced by NSO Group cost up to $6.8 million for a one year license, which in total netted the company “at least $31 million in revenue in 2019.” WhatsApp spokesperson Zade Alsawah declined to comment. NSO Group did not respond to a request for comment.