Google has been fined 403 million euros ($463 million) for breaching the European Union’s strict privacy rules because it mishandled users’ location data.

The post Google Hit With $463 Million Fine for EU Location Data Rule Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Google €403 million ($463M) for multiple GDPR violations related to processing users' location data. [...]

Google has released the September 2026 security patches to address 110 vulnerabilities affecting its Pixel devices, including one zero-day flaw actively exploited in targeted attacks. [...]

Criminal and state-sponsored adversaries are increasingly using AI to automate and scale their attacks, according to GTIG.

The post AI Is Giving Lesser-Resourced Attackers Nation-State-Level Reach, Google Warns appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Google has patched 230 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, including another actively exploited Chrome zero-day bug, the seventh such vulnerability patched since the start of the year. [...]

Threat actors are increasingly switching from AI-powered coding assistants to multi-agent frameworks that automate every stage of an attack. [...]

ISSUE 23.36 • 2026-09-07 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Spirit Airlines, an ultra-low-cost carrier that served nearly 90 destinations in the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean, went bankrupt and ceased all flight operations on May 2, 2026. Google, the search giant, won a competitive bidding process and will pay $10 million to buy Spirit’s […]

"A team at Google's research arm used Google Maps to reroute a small portion of drivers in 10 U.S. cities," reports SFGate — including San Francisco and Los Angeles. "Through their experiment, which was published in the journal Nature Cities in June, the researchers sought to evenly spread traffic down more corridors as the drivers head to similar destinations, in the hopes of reducing congestion." The experiments nudged up vehicle speeds by 2% on average on the congested roads, and shortened travel times by a modest 0.7%. Scientists have long thought that traffic could be eased this way, and this now demonstrates how it could actually work in the real world. The researchers collected data on weekdays in the 10 cities, which included Seattle, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Atlanta. While they studied a variety of types of roads, from city streets to highways, they found that in cities such as Los Angeles where they targeted highways, their diversions had the biggest effect, with driving speeds in those areas increasing by about 4.6%. Most cities, though, saw a smaller improvement with speeds across them increasing by just 0.5% during peak times. The Google study's findings confirm what other researchers have long suspected, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who was not involved in the study. "This is a pretty nice empirical illustration of a longstanding idea," he said. If a clogged traffic artery is on the verge of a long delay, he said, rerouting a small number of vehicles away from the bottleneck produces a "not gigantic but noticeable result...." As with other traffic interventions, there's a risk that Google's approach to spreading traffic could backfire. This concept, known as "induced demand," also applies to efforts like adding a lane to a critical highway, which temporarily relieves congestion, until traffic rises again. "You can do this, but you cannot be too successful, because if you are too successful, then more people will start driving, and essentially you'll be back to ground zero," [said Alexandre Bayen, a co-author of the study and director of UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society]. "That's why when we did the study, we only operated at the margin." The idea is to make minor improvements, enough to matter in the aggregate but not so significant that people notice and start driving more, canceling those improvements... The Google Research study also considered the potential environmental benefits of its traffic improvements. The paper highlights the carbon dioxide emission reductions resulting from the slightly smoother traffic flow and shortened travel times, which add up to a savings of about 1,000 metric tons annually. That's equivalent to the emissions of about 200 vehicles, a drop in the bucket for cities with millions of cars, the majority of which are still gas guzzlers, even in San Francisco and LA. Bayen acknowledges that while emphasizing the cumulative benefit if such efforts were sustained for a longer time. For Manville, the study is a useful proof of concept. "It is a demonstration that if we managed roads better, air would probably be cleaner," he said. According to the article, "Google's study might not just be a one-off, and city officials could decide to make use of the Google research findings, Bayen said, such as by trying to improve traffic congestion on a larger scale..." "Google declined SFGATE's requests for comment on whether the company informed city authorities or rerouted drivers about the study," the article points out.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is investigating an issue causing the Defender for Office 365 security software to mistakenly block access to legitimate Google search links. [...]

It's already happened — at least on Google Maps. Google's online maps reflect name changes in official government sources, Google posted Saturday. So when the U.S. Geographic Names Information System formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America," Google also renamed it "Lake America" — for visitors from the U.S. "Those in Canada will continue to see 'Lake Ontario'," Google said. And people from every other country in the world... "will see both names." Though here's how it will be written... Lake Ontario (Lake America) "These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now." Meanwhile, NPR reports that Ontario's Premier posted a billboard reading "Lake Ontario — Now and Always" on Canada's side of the lake (repeating the message in French). And The Daily Beast reports Google move has also drawn some criticism online: "Hey you gave one of the Great Lakes the wrong name; pretty embarrassing mistake so you might want to fix that," one user wrote on X... MapQuest has said it will not be changing the name, and instead launched a new tool that allows users to rename it themselves to whatever they want.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 100 companies and organizations, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, have signed an open letter calling for a global effort to improve cybersecurity defenses as artificial intelligence capabilities advance.

The letter, published Thursday, argues that the timeframe to strengthen defenses before AI-enabled attacks become more widespread and complex is rapidly dwindling. Conversely, the letter says the same advances can give defenders new ways to find and fix vulnerabilities that have accumulated over years, a period the signatories call a “defenders’ window.”

“Each of us can reduce risk now,” the letter reads. “All organizations, cybersecurity companies, technology partners, governments, and AI frontier companies have an important role: accelerate defenders’ priorities with tools, funding, and hands-on support, especially for critical infrastructure organizations with limited budgets.”

Aside from AI-centric companies, financial institutions like Capital One, Mastercard and Visa, and cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Proofpoint, also signed the letter. Organizers describe the effort as ongoing, with more organizations expected to join over time.

The letter states that “status quo security won’t be enough.” It cites longstanding bugs, excessive permissions, misconfigurations, unpatched software, weak authentication and technical debt in legacy systems as sources of exposure. Security teams, particularly those protecting critical infrastructure, have been historically under-resourced, the letter says, and need what it describes as a surge in tools, resources and hands-on support.

In a conversation with CyberScoop Wednesday, top brass from Palo Alto Networks said they had seen enough from internal frontier AI model testing and malicious in-the-wild use of commercially available AI tools to be genuinely concerned.

“I can tell you without exaggeration that we believe that this is a generational shift in cybersecurity,” Sam Rubin, senior vice president of Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence arm, said Wednesday. 

John Doyle, CEO of Cape, a privacy-first mobile network operator and whose company signed the letter, echoed the warning about status-quo security.

“It was already failing us in telecom–critical infrastructure that’s been breached time and again with serious consequences for both our military and regular people,” Doyle told CyberScoop. “It’s going to get immeasurably worse without collective action and leaning into innovative cyber defense.”

The letter further asks every organization to make cybersecurity an immediate leadership priority, fix the highest-risk weaknesses and raise security standards for technology they buy, build and deploy, including AI-generated code. Cybersecurity companies and technology partners are asked to test defenses against frontier AI capabilities and make AI-powered defense accessible to critical infrastructure operators. 

Governments are urged to coordinate defense across borders, fund protection for essential services that lack staff or budget, and impose costs on attackers. Frontier AI companies are asked to provide responsible model access, funding, training and support, and to ensure that AI systems acting autonomously remain traceable and accountable.

The letter frames AI as both a threat and a remedy throughout the document. It mirrors what security experts have been saying for months, positioning the industry as entering an unprecedented two- to three-year period of upheaval, driven by AI systems that are discovering vulnerabilities exponentially faster than defenders can respond and threatening to render decades of security practices obsolete.

The U.S. government has taken steps to stay ahead of AI-enabled cyberthreats. As part of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in June, a federal clearinghouse known as Gold Eagle was stood up for sharing AI cyber threat information between the government and private sector.

You can read the full letter here.

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Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users' home networks. [...]

Grand Theft Auto VI, widely heralded as the game event of the decade, took a significant hit last week after a cybercriminal sent much of the internet into pandemonium after publishing gameplay footage a week before the game’s publisher planned to reveal core portions of the game to the public.  

The files posted by the online persona “CyberLeek” indicate either a hacker had direct access to Rockstar Games’ most sensitive systems or was given proprietary data by an insider, eventually becoming one of the highest-profile data extortion attacks of the year — a vexing, almost-daily occurrence hitting industries of all types.

While most data extortion attacks rattle companies due to regulatory or privacy concerns, this particular incident has caused an outsized response from Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive Software, because it has an audience. While no lives are at risk, as they would be in an attack on critical infrastructure, the financial and reputational stakes are magnified precisely because people are watching every drip of stolen footage become a news story or a trending topic. 

“IP theft — whether it’s conducted by a cybercriminal, an insider, or even potentially [an artificial intelligence] model — rips away the hard work, passion, and livelihood among employees and companies that created the product in the first place,” Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president of Halycon’s ransomware research center, told CyberScoop.

The game’s prior release, GTA V, along with its online component, has sold over 230 million copies and earned Take-Two over $11 billion since its release in 2013. Industry analysts say GTA VI is on pace to make between $3.3 billion to $5.2 billion in cumulative global sales by the end of its launch week in November. 

“The crown jewels of a company are whatever makes it differentiated and special,” said Kaiser, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division. “For some, that means customer data or source. For a studio in the final stretch before launch, the crown jewel is the surprise.”

While Take-Two hasn’t said anything publicly about the leaks, it has responded feverishly via its legal team. The company petitioned a federal court for subpoenas under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against Discord, Google, Microsoft and X, seeking the identity of CyberLeeks and other user accounts it accuses of copyright infringement.

Federal judges granted the subpoenas against Discord, Microsoft and X, but the petition against Google remained unapproved as of Monday. Take-Two’s legal representatives also sent copyright notices to the four companies, informing them of the copyrighted material published on their platforms, but it’s unclear if any of the tech companies have been formally served with the signed subpoenas. 

Take-Two and Rockstar did not respond to a request for comment.

The subpoenas may have been enough to spook those responsible for the leaked footage. As of Monday, the websites where those behind CyberLeek were posting leaked information and links to a memecoin were offline.

Zach Edwards, staff threat researcher at Infoblox and a self-proclaimed fan of the series, initially thought the leaks were part of a Rockstar guerrilla marketing campaign. But the company’s response “confirms that this is a real investigation, and the content being shared is likely real to some degree,” he said. 

Take-Two’s actions thus far indicate the company is approaching the breach and leaks like an insider threat investigation, Edwards said. Whoever leaked the footage may have had access to an actual build of the game, he added. That could point to an insider, someone who could have saved a copy to a cloud service, uploaded it to a file-hosting site, or walked out with it on an external drive.

CyberLeek’s conflicting motivations

The hacker or group behind CyberLeek claim they are releasing the gameplay videos to protest Rockstar’s decision to not release physical copies of the game. Yet, watermarks on the leaked videos include addresses to crypto wallets, which indicate CyberLeek is also, and perhaps primarily, seeking a payout. 

“The persona behind the leaks, CyberLeek, published an anti-corporate manifesto targeting digital pre-orders and disc-less releases to frame the breach as hacktivism,” Ben Bernstein, manager of Huntress’ cybersecurity advisors team, told CyberScoop. “Yet behind the political posturing, there’s clear financial monetization and clout-chasing.”

Kaiser draws the same conclusion. “Let’s separate stated motive from observed behavior,” she said. “Threat actors who talk about principle while running a monetization channel are usually only telling you what they think will land with an audience, not actually what is driving them.”

Katie Moussouris said “this is what the alternative vulnerability economy looks like.” The founder and CEO at Luta Security has spent decades building legitimate channels for people who find security problems to get paid without turning to crime.

“The leaker launched a cryptocurrency token, watermarked stolen footage with a buy link, and offered to sell ad space on future leaks. Each of those pays out in proportion to how many people are watching. The manifesto is what keeps them watching,” Moussouris said. 

“That is a genuinely new monetization model for stolen pre-release content, and it means the usual playbook of negotiating a ransom payment quietly or paying to make it stop won’t work,” she added.

Different flavor, same crime

Despite its unique characteristics, the rhythm of the attack and its fallout is familiar territory for cybersecurity experts. 

“Steal, publish a sample, promise more, deliver, repeat. Just like ransomware attacks, in cases like these criminals use every lever of pressure they can against a company — including the fear of what is coming next — to profit from their actions,” Kaiser said. 

“The attackers are crowdsourcing their pressure tactics. A meaningful share of the player base is treating the leaks as free content and amplifying them,” she added.

Kaiser also sees some clear parallels with previous attacks targeting major entertainment companies, including the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures and the HBO hack in 2017. 

“The Sony comparison is useful for how these things escalate, but this incident reminds me more of the Iranian hackers’ leak of ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes a few years back,” she said. “North Korea attacked Sony for political purposes, destroying its data along the way; Iranian threat actors compromised HBO, along with hundreds of universities and over forty other companies, in a hacking-for-hire scheme stealing American intellectual property.”

Federal authorities earlier this month unsealed a second wave of indictments against 17 Iranians affiliated with the tech firm Mabna Institute who allegedly stole troves of data from government agencies and dozens of companies, including HBO.

This isn’t the first time Rockstar has been hit with a security incident. In 2022, an 18-year old British man who was a member of the Lapsus$ cybercriminal gang was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after leaking gameplay footage. According to the BBC, the incident cost Rockstar, along with ridehauling company Uber and chipmaker Nvidia, over $10 million. 

The subpoena that worries security experts

Security professionals expect the situation to escalate on all sides. Leaks have hit the internet daily for the past eight days, including a series of leaks Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, Take-Two has not relented on its subpoenas. Its broadest move was a subpoena against Discord, seeking identifying data on CyberLeek, two other users and every member of three Discord servers where the copyrighted material was posted.  

Moussouris said the scope of that inquiry should worry people well beyond this case. 

“Take-Two asked for Windows device identifiers, login records, and cloud storage contents for every person who spoke in three Discord servers going back to June,” she said. “The people with the best chance of uncovering the culprits are those doing the unglamorous investigation forensics work of figuring out how the build may have leaked.”

Discord would not say whether it had been formally served or what it has done in response. A company spokesperson said it reviews and complies with valid subpoenas when they are received. 

While the breach and leak of ‘GTA VI’ material is a serious matter, Edwards noted that Take-Two is also benefiting from greater interest in the unreleased game on a daily basis. 

“The threat actor leaking these videos has failed by essentially creating a successful underground marketing campaign for the game while also putting themselves at serious risk of being eventually caught,” he said. 

“This incident is playing out like a classic insider threat exploitation scheme. Someone got access to sensitive data, they had a political agenda which clashed with the owner of the sensitive data, and they decided to do something stupid to try and force a change,” Edwards added. “This attack has done nothing but spread ‘GTA VI’ content further than it would have otherwise, and it’s creating ripples across other industries like cybersecurity who would have never covered ‘GTA 6’ issues previously.”

The post The GTA VI leaks are breaking the internet. Security researchers have seen this before. appeared first on CyberScoop.

Apollo Global Management confirmed it was among several financial institutions impacted by a string of social engineering attacks that hit the sector last month, the company said Friday. 

Attackers gained unauthorized access to some of the private equity firm’s cloud platforms between July 6 and July 10, the company said in a data breach notification filed in California. Apollo did not say when or how it became aware of the intrusion and did not respond to a request for comment.

Apollo is the first victim to formally disclose that sensitive personal data under its care was compromised by a wave of attacks that have hit large private equity firms, law firms, financial rating agencies and medical technology companies. 

The company did not name the group responsible for the attack. Yet, Google earlier this month attributed the ongoing campaign to BlackFile, a threat group affiliated with The Com, that recently split its extortion operations across four brands with shared infrastructure: Redact, Pink, Helix and Falcon. 

“Upon detecting the incident, we promptly notified law enforcement, engaged leading outside cybersecurity and forensic experts, enhanced our security protocols, and launched an investigation,” Matthew Breitfelder, global head of human capital at Apollo, wrote in the disclosure notice. 

As part of its ongoing investigation, Apollo said it determined on Aug. 12 that personal data including names, dates of birth, contact information, home addresses and Social Security numbers were compromised. The company did not say how many people were impacted, but noted it’s thus far found no evidence any data was posted online or used for identity theft or fraud.

Apollo is one of the world’s largest private equity firms, with $1.05 trillion in assets under its management at the end of June, according to a regulatory filing.

Researchers previously told CyberScoop some of Apollo’s largest competitors, including Blackstone and Bain Capital, were also targeted with malicious infrastructure, but it’s unclear if those firms were compromised.

BlackFile and its various affiliates have impacted organizations in multiple industries, including healthcare, technology, transportation, logistics, wholesale, and retail and hospitality since the beginning of this year.

The extortion group shifts from one sector to the next, impersonating IT support in voice-phishing and social-engineering attacks before threatening its alleged victims with extortion demands, which often start around $3 million and are typically negotiated down to less than $1 million.

Google researchers also previously said some of the group’s recent victims have been subject to threatening messages and other forms of escalation, including swatting incidents, a tactic adopted by several subsets of The Com.

The post Apollo discloses data breach from ongoing wave of attacks hitting financial sector appeared first on CyberScoop.

Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a massive trove of anonymized Spirit Airlines data following the carrier's shutdown, including internal communications, spreadsheets, booking and frequent-flyer records, transactions, and employee information. CNN reports: Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google's artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it's been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of that is planes, equipment, and real estate, there's other things that are valuable, too. It was disclosed late Monday that the company agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information as well as human resources information on its employees. The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to the court filing. But it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cybercrime group responsible for a string of recent attacks against private equity firms, law firms and financial rating agencies remains active and continued to target new victims as of late last week, according to researchers.

BlackFile, which Google Threat Intelligence Group tracks as UNC6671 and associates more broadly with The Com, has been active since the start of the year, shifting its focus from one sector to the next. 

“We have seen continued targeting against the financial sector with additional targeting of other organizations including in the med tech space,” Austin Larsen, principal threat analyst at GTIG, told CyberScoop.

The extortion group impersonates IT support in voice-phishing and social engineering attacks, and recently split its extortion operations across four brands with shared infrastructure: Redact, Pink, Helix and Falcon.

Several organizations received new extortion demands from Redact in the last week, according to Google. 

BlackFile and its various affiliates have impacted organizations in multiple industries, including healthcare, technology, transportation, logistics, wholesale, retail and hospitality.

“BlackFile does go after some of the largest organizations in the sectors that they go for. They’re not going after small companies,” Larsen said. “This is big-game hunting.”

The group’s extortion demands often start around $3 million and payments, including several in the past few weeks, have typically been negotiated down to less than $1 million, according to Google.

Flashpoint researchers told CyberScoop they have observed malicious infrastructure targeting Blackstone, Bain Capital, Moody’s, CME and Apollo, but it’s unclear if any of those firms were compromised. 

BlackFile’s steady pace of activity underscores the persistent threat it poses, as it targets an average of 1.5 new victims daily, researchers said.

Some of the group’s recent victims have been subject to threatening messages and other forms of escalation, including swatting incidents, a tactic adopted by several subsets of The Com, according to Google. 

The attackers use hundreds of callers, often lower-level people that are recruited for a small fee or an opportunity to earn goodwill with the group, who make the voice phishing calls to obtain initial access. Larsen estimates less than a dozen core operators run the different brands under the BlackFile umbrella.

“From the intrusion data that we’re seeing, this does appear to be essentially the same group,” he said, adding that different people may be operating the various brands, but they’re all linked back to the same threat cluster using shared infrastructure.

Mandiant incident responders encounter BlackFile often, having been engaged by more than two dozen organizations successfully compromised by the threat group since January. New victims in the financial sector were calling Mandiant in for help earlier this month.

Voice-based phishing attacks for data theft extortion aren’t sophisticated or novel, but BlackFile and other cybercrime groups consistently prove their continued effectiveness across virtually any sector or organization. “They’re really hitting on the human weakness element here,” Larsen said.

The post Details emerge on BlackFile’s recent attacks on financial companies appeared first on CyberScoop.

A federal judge has ordered Google to remove what he called "anticompetitive friction" that makes rival Android app stores harder to find and install. The order is part of the remedies stemming from Epic's antitrust victory, which already requires Google to carry competing app stores inside Google Play and give them access to its app catalog. The Verge reports: It's been nearly three years since a jury unanimously decided that Google had an illegal monopoly over Android apps, and almost two years since Judge James Donato decided the best way of undoing that monopoly would be to crack open Android app distribution. Donato ordered Google to carry rival Android app stores inside its own Google Play Store, and to provide rivals with complete access to Google's full catalog of apps, for several years. But Epic argued that Google is still making it too difficult to install rival app stores, showing the entire courtroom a live demo of how many steps it currently takes -- and Judge Donato agreed that some of those steps were unnecessary "anticompetitive friction" and ordered Google to remove them. [...] The judge wants these changes fast. "Have it done by a week from today," he told Google. "If there's some problem with that, let me know."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has unveiled the $29 Pixel Tag, its long-awaited AirTag rival that combines UWB with Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding for two forms of precision tracking. It launches November 11. The Verge reports: The Pixel Tag is a slim oblong device available in one grayish color -- Fog -- that weighs about 12g, or 0.4oz. Like the AirTag, it has no built-in hooks or clips for attaching to objects you want to track. There's a single button that will trigger a sound on your phone, for the rare occasion when you've got the Tag but have lost your main device. It also has an IP67 rating, so it should be safe from dust and rain. As for the battery, the Pixel Tag takes CR2032 coin batteries, and says one battery should last for over a year. Naturally, it'll be compatible with Google's Find Hub network, which leverages the Bluetooth capabilities of Android devices worldwide to help locate lost objects. [...] Once you're close enough to the Pixel Tag, UWB lets the Find Hub app display the distance and direction to the tracker, so long as you're using a phone with a UWB chip. Channel Sounding is a newer development that can display the exact distance, but not direction, and it will work with any phone or tablet that includes Bluetooth 6.0. The Moto Tag 2 is the only other tracker to currently support it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google says Chrome's anti-abuse systems reduced unwanted notifications on Android by more than 7 billion per day during the first quarter of 2026. [...]

Google's $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped. Reuters reports: The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has hailed the project as historic and transformational, has denied allegations that the project was fast-tracked without weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife. But the growing opposition could become an early test for Google's biggest-ever India investment, which is facing several legal challenges over its impact on water supplies and proximity to a wildlife sanctuary that is home to leopards and pangolins. In recent weeks, activists and children have marched in Visakhapatnam city, holding banners saying "We cannot drink DATA" and painting handcuffs on the Google logo, social media posts show. On Sunday, Reuters attended a public gathering where activists chalked out plans for holding door-to-door awareness campaigns and beach protests in coming days. "Development should not be at the cost of livelihood of the people," Raja Rama Mohan Roy, founder of non-profit Green Visakha said at the event where he presented statistics on Visakhapatnam's stressed water supply and demand. The government says the city receives 410 million liters of water a day from its reservoirs and rivers, against a requirement of 480 million. Rationing of water supplies is common in the city with a population of 2.5 million people. [...] The state's top court on Monday asked the government to defend against allegations leveled by activist group Jal Biradari (Water Community), which says the project will strain water availability by putting stress on a nearby reservoir. The Andhra Pradesh High Court will next hear the public interest litigation on August 24.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.