A joint congressional report describes a spam operation that turned tens of thousands of fake podcasts into search-engine bait for illegal pharmacy and scam sites. For the past year, Spotify has been quietly purging tens of thousands of podcasts that advertised illegal online pharmacies. A report released Thursday by Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, faults the company for acting only after news outlets exposed the content and her office spent nearly a year pressing for answers. None of what it removed was sent to law enforcement, the report says. Spotify reportedly removed more than 57,000 podcast episodes and 3,000 shows, and took enforcement action against 3,500 accounts, all pushing links to illegal online pharmacies advertising opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants for sale without a prescription.

Generating music with coherent structure, harmonious instrumental and vocal elements remains a significant challenge in song generation. Existing language models and diffusion-based methods often struggle to balance global coherence with local fidelity, resulting in outputs that lack musicality or suffer from incoherent progression and mismatched lyrics. This paper introduces SongBloom, a novel framework for full-length song generation that leverages an interleaved paradigm of autoregressive sketching and diffusion-based refinement. SongBloom employs an autoregressive diffusion model that combines the high fidelity of diffusion models with the scalability of language models. Specifically, it gradually extends a musical sketch from short to long and refines the details from coarse to fine-grained. The interleaved generation paradigm effectively integrates prior semantic and acoustic context to guide the generation process. Experimental results demonstrate that SongBloom outperforms existing methods across both subjective and objective metrics and achieves performance comparable to the state-of-the-art commercial music generation platforms.

'I found out because I bought a new Amazon Alexa and while setting it up realized this is linked via our family prime account,' the woman shared on Reddit. 'Found in history, 'Alexa play beautiful love songs,' followed by the sound of them having sex.' To find such recordings saved to an Amazon Alexa, open the Alexa app, tap More, go to Alexa Privacy, then select Review Voice History to see recordings by date or device. Users can play back clips, delete individual recordings or delete their entire voice history. If you own a Google Home, open the Google Home app and tap Activity to review recent home events, including camera, doorbell and device activity. To check Assistant recordings, go to your Google Account activity controls and review or delete Google Assistant activity.

White House releases results of Donald Trump's physical amid mounting pressure Mom who faked her baby's kidnapping SOBS as she learns her fate after he was tortured to death The REAL story behind society heiress Belle Burden's sordid divorce saga is far more scandalous than everyone thinks. Truth behind explosive claims Justin Trudeau is Fidel Castro's son. Harry's fears of being'overshadowed' by his brother's children are beginning to come true with the huge interest in George's schooling - THIS is where I believe William and Catherine will send the young prince, ANDREW MORTON tells Palace Confidential Jennifer Lopez's child Emme unveils new trans identity: Emotional photos show vibrant celebrations, a new name and a touching connection to former stepdad Ben Affleck Ben Stiller's wife Christine Taylor finally reveals why she took the actor back after'challenging' 5 year split United Airlines flight forced to make emergency landing after'passenger ranting in Russian tried to storm cockpit' Grammy-winning folk music icon known for his boyish good looks is unrecognizable in yearbook photos... can you guess who he is? Hillary Clinton's swipe at Trump's treatment of the White House backfires as she gets brutal reminder of her own scandals while in residence Owner's beloved cat'killed by coyotes' after pet sitter lost her within five minutes of arriving Secret White House plan for disclosure of alien life LEAKED... Trump insiders have told me they fear mass panic as UFO videos are released: CHRIS SHARP Sydney Sweeney's boyfriend Scooter Braun reveals how he REALLY feels about her X-rated Euphoria scenes Judge makes stunning U-turn and reopens Trump IRS suit in major blow to president's $1.8bn'aweaponization fund' Lauren Sanchez Bezos flashes trademark grin while clinging to husband Jeff at her daughter's graduation... just hours before Blue Origin rocket exploded in huge fireball Dennis Quaid's bid to stop paying child support takes new twist: Insiders reveal his shameless attempt to involve Trump and brutal message for kids John Travolta's daughter Ella Bleu towers over the 6ft2in actor... so how tall is the 26-year-old nepo baby? Nancy Mace hits out at Trump snub and claims she lost president's endorsement over her push to release Epstein files I've spent five decades researching UFOs and speaking to highly confidential sources. This is what I've discovered about the CIA, China and aliens, writes top barrister JONATHAN CAPLAN KC. To most people, the idea that the US, China and other countries are in possession of crashed alien spacecraft is preposterous. Any suggestion that these craft have been recovered with non-human intelligences inside, dead or alive, stretches credulity to breaking point.

After decades risking arrest, South Korea's tattoo artists step into the limelight When Kim Tae-nam took the stage last Saturday in Seoul, it was a moment he had long been waiting for - the career he had chosen was no longer illegal. He couldn't stop smiling, the relief spilling into his voice: This was only possible because of our effort, all your sweat and tears. Let's hear it from everyone: Tattoos are art! They had gathered on a rooftop in Seongsu, a hip Seoul neighbourhood, for Ink Bomb: more than 90 local tattooists and artists openly celebrating body art, which had thrived in the shadows for decades. Just days before, South Korea's top court had overturned its 1992 ruling that defined tattooing as a medical act - bringing to an end Korean tattooists' decades-long fight for legitimacy.

Universal rejects billionaire Bill Ackman's takeover bid Universal Music Group, the entertainment giant behind acts such as Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Kendrick Lamar, has rejected a takeover offer by billionaire Bill Ackman's investment firm. The music giant said Pershing Square's $64.3bn (£48bn) takeover offer was not in the best interests of the company, shareholders, artists, fans and other stakeholders. Universal said the offer fundamentally and materially undervalues the business, which also runs Abbey Road Studios and owns labels such as EMI and Island Records. Pershing Square, which already owns a stake in Universal, declined to comment on the rejection. The investment firm launched its takeover bid for the world's largest music company in April, a move which would have seen it listed as a new company in America.

Moment Dame Helen Mirren is called an'evil Zionist b****' as she is accosted by pro-Palestine stranger on London street'Hell on Wheels' teen Mackenzie Shirilla's diva demands and disturbing obsession with fame revealed in prison calls with mom Girl, 14, was enjoying evening walk through her leafy Midwest neighborhood... then a stranger in a black car pulled up alongside her and horror ensued Scandalous underbelly of America's new high-stakes obsession: Secret backroom games, brazen cheating allegations... and savage public humiliations I know the devil, he's far more terrifying than in the movies... you can feel his power He became a MAGA star at Trump rallies dressed as the border wall... find out what happened to'Brick Suit Guy' in the free DC Insider newsletter Rich Christians in the'Hamptons of South' are turning on their new neighbor - beach-baptizer and MAGA convert Russell Brand Hugh Jackman's girlfriend Sutton Foster admits she feels'really alone' after she was pictured looking tense with actor and says'women shouldn't be pitted against one another' amid ongoing comparisons to his ex-wife Naomi Osaka doubles down with new French Open'fashion show', despite infuriating opponent, as she adds an ivory train to her'problematic' Eiffel Tower dress as part of £7.5m Nike deal Every man I date has the same vile bedroom kink... it's a total turn off, but I keep saying yes: DEAR JANE Russia's tactics in Ukraine reach a new hellish low as troops are forced to crawl for miles through underground pipes - with a life expectancy of ten minutes at the other end Our perfect summer body secrets: We've found the ultimate shortcut to the'after' photo... and the easy '30:30' diet that sparked a 22-pound transformation Triumphant Trump nominee's bold statement: Cheater Ken Paxton struts out in Margaritaville mode as secrets of his love nest with mistress are exposed Iran attacks US airbase after Trump condemns Tehran's peace plan and strikes regime drone site near Strait of Hormuz Kim Kardashian is introduced to Lewis Hamilton's mother Carmen Larbalestier as new couple dine out with their families in Los Angeles Trump's DHS chief rocked by wild rumor about his WIFE... as furious staff leak scandalous details about his life of luxury Meghan Markle adds luxury matchboxes to As Ever product range as she reveals'limited edition' item will be part of £190 candle set How I dropped from 17.5st to 10st WITHOUT getting loose, saggy skin. So many women struggle with unsightly wrinkles and flapping folds left by extreme weight loss. Here's how to avoid them Uber is making a major update to improve safety for millions of passengers in the UK. Riders will now be able to make audio recordings of their journey through the Uber app if they feel unsafe. Users can activate the feature either before or during the trip and start recording at any point with the press of a button.

Paul McCartney on playing guitar with Paul Mescal: 'He knew it better than I did!' Hey, I know you! exclaims Paul McCartney, gripping my hand as we walk into his office in central London. And while I'm realistic enough to know he doesn't really hold treasured memories of our previous encounters, I'm impressed by his ability to defuse the tension of Meeting A Beatle. We gather in Soho at lunchtime. Instead of Wild Honey Pie or Savoy Truffle, McCartney has opted for a simple bagel (topping: a terrifying blend of Marmite and hummus), which he prepared in a kitchenette next to his assistant's desk. As he eats, he scans a printed list of film titles - mainly vintage comedies - looking for something to play at his family movie night.

Predictive models trained on observational data often fail to generalise to the distributions they encounter when deployed, especially when the training data is a product of the system being optimised. Recommender systems are a canonical example: they are trained on interaction logs confounded by the deployed policy, past user behaviour, and platform filtering. As a result, the training distribution differs substantially from the candidate distribution scored at serving time, a gap that makes offline metrics unreliable predictors of online performance. We address the distribution shift problem with a method motivated by causal representation learning (CRL). We propose an information-theoretic disentanglement criterion and prove that its optimum depends only on the causal components of the input. We then derive a tractable variational lower bound that makes the criterion optimisable from finite observational data alone. The scope of our method is narrower than that of much of the CRL literature, in that we target better generalisation under distribution shift, not full identification of all latent causal factors. This narrower target is what makes the method practical, requiring only the existing confounded logs, applying to any standard supervised model, and adding no inference-time cost. Our headline evaluation is an A/B test with millions of users on Spotify, applied to a production ranker for personalised playlist generation. A capacity-matched CRL variant performed on par offline but delivered substantial online gains in listener engagement. Complementary evidence on the public KuaiRand recommendation dataset and a synthetic benchmark with known causal structure shows the same pattern: offline parity with baseline, gains under distribution shift. Across all three settings, adding our causal disentanglement objective yields meaningfully better out-of-distribution generalisation.

Trump's secret NATO ultimatum sparks panic as US'pulls jets, bombers and EVERY submarine from Europe' Iraq war widow left speechless at Trump cabinet's actions after she made humble plea for someone to visit husband's grave on Memorial Day Condo bloodbath hits US hotspots as values plunge to lowest in decades and terrified investors issue doom-laden warning: 'Not just a price correction' Scandals plague the'horse girls' of America's'spoiled brat capital': Insiders lift lid on VIP world hit by vile claims and furious backlash Lisa Rinna gets political as she SLAMS Spencer Pratt's run for LA mayor while taking a jab at Donald Trump Kyle Busch's bitter NASCAR rival reveals heartbreaking sign he'wasn't well' in final meeting before he died I'm a doctor, and treat men with premature ejaculation. Furious followers demand REAL story from heiress Belle Burden as she's accused of lying about her finances in divorce memoir Spencer Pratt fires back at The Price Is Right host Drew Carey with Epstein jab after he called LA mayor hopeful a'serial scammer' Ever wish your dog could speak to you? AI collar can translate your pet's barks with 95% accuracy, experts claim The half-price Hamptons: Insiders reveal America's new sanctuary, where the beaches are untouched and a'quiet luxury' charm endures So many of my female friends are resorting to a risky new sex taboo to spice up their marriages. You'll know women secretly doing it too... but we simply can't let this become normal: JANA HOCKING Donald Trump fires back at Joe Rogan's criticism of UFC White House event... amid podcaster's slating of president he endorsed Danielle Fishel, 45, was everyone's favorite girlfriend in Boy Meets World, see her now in rare appearance I got addicted to the stimulant that Trump insiders are secretly using... it can obliterate your sexual performance and ruined my life When Alex suffered a mortifying accident in bed with her new partner, she put it down to an embarrassing one-off. Little did she know she had a condition which is silently affecting thousands of women in their 50s and 60s... Ever wish your dog could speak to you? AI collar can translate your pet's barks with 95% accuracy, experts claim If you've ever wondered what your dog's barks really mean, a new ' AI collar' claims to translate their noises with remarkable accuracy. Chinese startup Meng Xiaoyi has launched a device that it alleges can translate animal sounds into human language.