Middle Eastern Politics Headlines at 2:44 p.m. GMT

TechCrunch iPhones might be harder for police to unlock, thanks to new reboot feature New code introduced in the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system could make it more difficult for both police and thieves to unlock iPhones. 404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that phones being stored for forensic examination seemed to be rebooting themselves — something that security experts confirmed in a follow-up story. Apple did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.

'Whatever you want Ben': Inside Ben Horowitz's cozy relationship with the Las Vegas Police Department When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz. "Which deployment are you looking to do?" Horowitz wrote back. "Whatever you want, Ben," Gennaro replied, according to emails seen by TechCrunch.

FBI says hackers are sending fraudulent police data requests to tech giants to steal people's private information The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information — including emails and phone numbers — from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has been widely reported in recent years.

Apple 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro) review: A powerful desktop replacement On Monday, Bloomberg reported on Apple's plans to fully overhaul its laptop line. In fact, MacBook Pro releases are now more or less like clockwork. There's no guarantee that Apple will continue the current release cadence for the M-series of chips, but it seems to be working well for the company so far.

Microsoft Outlook now lets you create personalized AI-powered themes Microsoft announced on Thursday that Outlook is getting a new feature that will allow you to use generative AI to create themes based on your personal preferences. AI-powered themes are available to people who have a Copilot Pro consumer subscription and business accounts with Copilot enabled. With Themes by Copilot, you can build a theme inspired by more than 100 locations or create a theme based on your own location.

Bluesky gears up for Election Day as X goes pro-Trump As Election Day in the U.S. nears, social networking startup Bluesky, now flush with new capital, hopes to demonstrate that its platform can serve as a more trusted, fact-checked alternative to Elon Musk's X. While the latter is dominated by Musk's support for the Trump campaign, Bluesky tends to lean left, thanks to its influx of disgruntled former Twitter users who don't like the platform's new direction. Now, with the U.S. elections upon us, Bluesky is setting up for its biggest test yet: its ability to handle the potential misinformation that can mislead users during these critical national events, including any posts meant to disrupt the voting process or those using new technologies, like AI, to confuse the voting public. While X's other competitor, Meta's Threads app, has distanced itself from politics — even going so far as to no longer recommend users political content — Bluesky has capitalized on the demand for a real-time social network that prioritizes such discussions.