5-year

5-year Havana Syndrome investigation finds new evidence of who might be responsible

This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a team of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious brain injuries to U.S. national security officials and diplomats, and their families, both abroad and at home, that in some cases have led to major health conditions, like blindness, memory loss, and vestibular damage.

This fourth installment brought major developments to the story: a suspected link between attacks in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new evidence that a reliable source calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing done by the same Russian intelligence unit.

A retired Army lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, told 60 Minutes he is confident that Russia is behind these attacks, and that they are part of a worldwide campaign to neutralize U.S. officials.

“If my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, ‘It’s the Russians, stupid,'” Edgreen told 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes Overtime spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey about the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled back layers of government secrecy to speak with victims, identify a potential technology used to attack them, and examine a Russian intelligence unit that may have been behind some of the Havana Syndrome incidents.

“In the first story we said, ‘Hmm. Is this Russia?’ Second round of stories we felt, ‘This is starting to look like Russia.’ And in this story, our sources are telling us that it’s Russia,” producer Michael Rey told 60 Minutes Overtime.

The investigation begins

In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados worked on a 60 Minutes story about the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba under then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media outlets began reporting on a series of strange medical symptoms exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, problems with memory, and impaired vision.

“And we very early on started approaching people within the intelligence community and the Department of State, to find out what these incidents were. That led us to China, which really expanded the story beyond Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados told 60 Minutes Overtime.

“Havana Syndrome” | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

47:41

The first installment of their series of investigative reports, called “Targeting Americans,” focused on Commerce and State Department officials who reported hearing strange sounds in their homes while they were stationed overseas in China. The officials, and family members who lived with them, suffered from mysterious injuries afterward, with symptoms like headaches, nausea, memory problems and difficulty balancing.

Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Department security officer who worked in the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He told 60 Minutes that both he and his wife began to suffer symptoms after hearing bizarre sounds in their apartment in 2017.

“He told us a lot of things when we first met him that we kind of couldn’t believe. And now, years later, we believe everything he told us,” Rey told 60 Minutes Overtime.

Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “metal funnel.” He said he heard the sound four times, always in the same spot and at the same time of day: right above his son’s crib when he put him to bed at night. He said the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard before and “fairly loud.” Shortly after hearing the sounds, he and his wife began to feel ill.

“He suffered through migraines, dizziness, [and] memory issues. And his big concern was that nobody believed him. He had a very hard time convincing his superiors something was up and this needed to be addressed,” Rey explained.

Lenzi told 60 Minutes he believed he was targeted because of his work, using top-secret equipment to analyze electronic threats to diplomatic missions.

“This was a directed standoff attack against my apartment…it was a weapon,” he told Scott Pelley. “I believe it’s RF, radio frequency energy, in the microwave range.”

“Whether it was an intentional use of technology that could be adjusted to hurt people, or whether it was a device that was specifically designed to hurt people…we still don’t know,” Rey told 60 Minutes Overtime.

“We learned to kind of trust what he was saying, that, in his experience, the capabilities exist in the world.”

Domestic cases and microwave technology

In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative series took a closer look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had happened on U.S. soil and had not been previously reported. It also examined microwave technology that could have been used as a potential weapon against these officials and their families.

One of these domestic incidents involved Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who said she was physically struck while descending the steps of the Eisenhower building, just a short distance away from the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C.

“It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head…and I got like, vertigo. I was unsteady. I felt nauseous. I was somewhat disoriented,” she told Scott Pelley.

“I remember thinking like, ‘OK…don’t fall down the stairs. You’ve got to find your ground again and steady yourself,'” she told Pelley.

Another U.S. government official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security at the time, told 60 Minutes he woke up to a strange sound in his apartment near Capitol Hill in 2018.

“I went to the window, opened up my window, looked down at the street… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”

Taylor said he felt “off” and “sick” the next day. About five weeks later, it happened again. He said he felt “concussion-like symptoms,” like he’d been “knocked pretty hard in a sport.”

While reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados began hearing about other cases of U.S. officials who said they were attacked while overseas and then later attacked again after they had returned to the United States.

Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Department official, and his wife Britta Garfield told 60 Minutes that they had heard strange sounds in the night when they were living overseas in Shanghai, China. This was followed by symptoms of memory loss, impaired vision, and difficulty with balance, for both them and their two children.

In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes again, saying they had been attacked again, in the middle of the night, in Philadelphia, where they had been receiving treatment for the injuries they sustained in China.

Late one night, Britta Garfield awoke suddenly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their kids and booked a room at a hotel. But whatever had “hit” them in their apartment before had followed them to their hotel.

“And we woke up, around, I believe, 2 a.m., with strange vibrations in our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield told Pelley.

Concerned, he ran to his children’s bedside to check on them and saw an eerie scene.

“Both were thrashing in their beds— asleep. But both kicking and moving aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down next to her head. And I heard a very distinct sound, just right there, sort of like water rushing,” Garfield said.

They reported the event to the FBI. The family continues to work on improving their balance, eyesight, and memory.

“This is the most difficult aspect of this whole issue for me are the children who’ve been impacted, both mine as well as many others. I personally know the parents of, I believe, eight other children. I can tell you I’ve personally seen balance issues in children that have never had that,” Garfield told Pelley.

“One of the arguments that came out from researchers around the Havana Syndrome issue was that this is psychosomatic, that people are hearing of these symptoms, they’re stressed, they’re nervous. It’s a normal reaction,” Rey told 60 Minutes Overtime.

“One of the things that dissuaded us of that was the fact that children were getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There were seizures happening in children. And then pets reacting to noises or pressures that people were feeling at the same time.”

60 Minutes Overtime examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who were also interviewed for “Targeting Americans,” who said they were attacked in their homes while they were stationed in Havana, Cuba. They said their children suffered from symptoms like nosebleeds, fainting, vision problems, and dizziness afterward.

The youngest victims of “Havana Syndrome”

06:14

The 2022 installment of “Targeting Americans” also examined the possibility of microwave technology being used as a potential weapon against these officials and their families.

“We haven’t found the smoking gun, literally. But there is a lot of scientific research out there that is concrete on this type of technology,” Zill de Granados told 60 Minutes Overtime.

In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and leading authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he discussed the existence of portable microwave transmitters that could damage the tissues of the brain. He said these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.

“There are many kinds, and they can go anywhere in size, from a suitcase all the way up to a large tractor trailer unit. And the bigger the device, the longer the range,” he explained.

He said the devices can transmit microwave energy through walls, glass, and brick. “Practically everything,” he told Pelley.

“It’s been developed widely in, perhaps, a dozen countries. The primary countries are the United States, Russia, and China.”

Unit 29155

The latest installment of “Targeting Americans” brought a major development to the story with the help of a renowned investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.

Grozev famously identified the men behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He also identified other men who attempted to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, who later became a double agent for the United Kingdom, and his daughter Yulia.

In 2018, Grozev was the first to identify the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He told 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically advanced equipment on their targets.

Grozev believes he has found a document that can link the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic energy weapon.

Grozev worked with investigative partners, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: a magazine called The Insider and German news publication Der Spiegel.

He tracked down an email that he says is for services provided to the Russian government by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”

“Which told us that this particular unit had been engaged with somewhere, somehow, empirical tests of a directed energy unit,” he told Scott Pelley.

60 Minutes sources said that a suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who is also the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the subject of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Americans living in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Grozev found Albert Averyanov’s phone was turned off during the Tbilisi incidents. But 60 Minutes sources say there’s evidence someone in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s personal email during the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— placing him in the city at that time.

“We believe members of Unit 29155 were there in order to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon,” Grozev told Pelley.

Questions remain

Producers Rey and Zill de Granados told 60 Minutes Overtime that much remains unknown. Despite their recent findings, there is no clear answer as to who, or what country, was behind these incidents. There is also no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome symptoms they experienced were the result of a deliberate attack.

In 2022, about a month before the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim assessment that said, “We assess it unlikely that a foreign actor, including Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”

Last year, in 2023, the Director of National Intelligence said that it’s “very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible,” but some intelligence agencies had only “low” or “moderate” confidence in that assessment.

“This has never, for us, been an adversarial process. Because who are we to tell the intelligence community of the United States, ‘We are right and you’re wrong’? That’s not our job,” Rey explained.

“Our job is to ask questions and share information that we’ve learned that may counter the narrative that’s out there…if you say there’s no evidence of a foreign adversary involved, then what are we looking at?”

The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.

Source link

5-year “Havana Syndrome” investigation finds new evidence of who might be responsible

5-year “Havana Syndrome” investigation finds new evidence of who might be responsible – CBS News

Watch CBS News

60 Minutes producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados discuss the evolution of their 5-year investigation into “Havana Syndrome,” which led them to what one source calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapon testing done by a Russian intelligence unit.

Source link

Humans wasted 1 billion meals daily in 2022, U.N. report finds

Humans wasted 1 billion meals daily in 2022, U.N. report finds – CBS News

Watch CBS News

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, humans wasted 19% of all available food in 2022. That’s equivalent to one billion meals per day. Brian Roe, agricultural and environmental economics professor at Ohio State University, joins CBS News to discuss the implications.

Source link

Despite attempts to be less ‘divisive,’ Kari Lake finds it hard to shed her MAGA instincts

PHOENIX — This winter, Kari Lake was facing a daunting reality: The voters who rejected her in her 2022 run for governor could now jeopardize her entire political future. If Lake — “Trump in heels,” as she has referred to herself — didn’t begin to quickly change the minds of those she had shunned or ridiculed, she could lose, again, in her 2024 Senate bid.

“I have never thought of myself as divisive. But it’s not enough for ME to believe that. I need to prove it,” Lake wrote in a social media post in December, acknowledging the need to step away from her tendencies to make incendiary comments, like when she gleefully declared that she had driven “a stake through the heart of the McCain machine” — referring to Sen. John McCain, the popular Arizona Republican who died in 2018 — and broaden her appeal.

But with just over seven months until the election, several key Arizona Republicans tell NBC News that they believe Lake’s campaign is facing an increasingly uphill battle.

“What I hear is, everybody has just resigned themselves that we’re going to be stuck with a Ruben Gallego — that’s what I hear from all the major players, the big-money people,” Shiree Verdone, a longtime GOP fundraiser in Arizona, said, referring to Lake’s Democratic Senate opponent. “I haven’t heard anyone say, ‘Kari Lake is going to win.’”

Verdone, who voted for Lake in 2022, served as Trump’s campaign finance chair in the state in 2016 and 2020 and was a campaign manager for McCain. She said that she will vote for Trump, again, in 2024 and that she believes Lake’s best hope is to ride his coattails.

But Verdone has shifted her own attention to races other than Lake’s Senate bid, even attending a fundraiser in the Phoenix area last week for a non-Arizona Republican Senate candidate — Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick.

“He’s a serious guy. I like what he’s talking about, and I think we all relate to it,” Verdone said. “With Kari, I don’t know what she’s doing.”

Lake continues to deny that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, tweeting this month about President Joe Biden: “81 million votes, my a–.” She continues to call her 2022 election loss “a sham,” promotes right-wing provocateurs like Laura Loomer — whom she called a “warrior” — and hosts fundraising events with controversial political figures like Roger Stone at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club.

Since launching her Senate bid, Lake has set up meetings to mend relationships with other Republicans she cast aside during her run for governor, like Kathy Petsas, a former local party chair in Lake’s home legislative district. Lake’s campaign tweeted at her in 2022: “Kathy, You’re exactly the type of demographic that we feel no need to appeal to.”

“I don’t know one person that she’s gotten on her side of the people who she offended,” Petsas said, suggesting Lake’s overtures have fallen flat. “There’s nobody from my circle that she’s gained, and she’s even alienated some previous supporters, too, who I know.”

Petsas met with Lake last winter for iced tea at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, where, she said, Lake talked to her about the need to “unify the party.” She said she named a number of Republicans who deserve apologies from Lake.

“She couldn’t even say their names,” Petsas said. “She did not apologize at all. She cannot say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

When asked by NBC News to identify any individuals she had wooed to her corner since her failed governor’s race, Lake responded: “I have reached out to so many that I can’t even name them all, OK, and we’re doing great. A lot of them have jumped in and supported me. I’ve been reluctant to talk about my private meetings with people because I know, frankly, how the press operates and we’re working to come together and solve Arizona’s problems.”

Another target Lake has sought to win over: her former gubernatorial primary rival Karrin Taylor Robson, whom she previously derided as a “gold digger.”

Robson has also withheld her endorsement in the Senate race so far. Two sources familiar with her conversations with Lake said that the two are in talks to meet again.

Lake’s actions, however, have often not mirrored the pitch that her campaign team has often made to those reticent to lending their support.

“What’s odd is that she says one thing one day and then acts completely counter to that the next,” a Republican strategist with ties to Arizona said. “You open up Twitter, and there’s the Nimarata tweet.”

On March 6, the day that Nikki Haley exited the 2024 GOP presidential race, Lake used Haley’s birth name, Nimarata — and misspelled it — in a post on X to knock her: “Nimrata Haley will suspend her campaign today after more humiliating, landslide loses on Super Tuesday.”

The strategist continued: “Her instincts seem to be to quadruple down on ultra MAGA and all that entails.”

This week, Lake also chose to not contest her liability in a defamation suit filed against her by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a move that most likely allows her to avoid turning over evidence that Richer sought in order to prove that she had made claims against him with actual malice. Lake had repeatedly accused Richer of having “sabotaged” Election Day voting and costing her the governorship in 2022.

Richer, a fellow Republican, posted on X in response: “You will now have a judgment entered, in court, against you, for lying about our elections and me. It was all B.S. Now on to damages.”

A looming cash crunch

Beyond the ever-fraying personal relationships, Lake is also facing a cash imbalance.

At the turn of the year, Lake had raised just over $2 million toward her Senate bid, compared to the more than $13 million hauled in by Gallego, the Democratic congressman who started his campaign more than eight months before her, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

A Lake adviser said the campaign expects to report a stronger fundraising haul in the beginning of this year than in its first three months in the race. Another source close to major GOP donors said that Lake has remained in active contact this spring trying to court new financial backers and raise significant money.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has also backed her bid. The group’s chair, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who is campaigning next week in Arizona with her, said in his February endorsement: “Kari Lake is one of the most talented candidates in the country. Kari is building out an effective campaign operation that has what it takes to flip Arizona’s Senate seat in November.”

The Senate GOP’s major outside group, the Senate Leadership Fund, and its affiliated groups have booked more than $135 million in advertising time to boost Republicans in Montana and Ohio. Like Lake, Montana Republican candidate Tim Sheehy and Ohio Republican nominee Bernie Moreno, who won his primary earlier this month, are both backed by Trump.

But none of those GOP groups have booked advertising time in Arizona as of now. By comparison, a major Democratic super PAC has reserved $23 million of air time in Arizona this fall to help Gallego.

Lake has also not revealed how much she has raised through the Save Arizona Fund, a 501(c)4 organization that she launched with her key political aides in the aftermath of her gubernatorial defeat, or how she has used or intends to use the funds.

NBC News has requested the Save Arizona Fund’s 990 tax filing, a financial disclosure form that the IRS requires nonprofit organizations to file annually; neither Lake’s senior adviser nor her lawyer have responded to the request.

The money cannot be spent directly on her Senate bid. A person close to Lake said “a lot of the money” was spent on her lawsuits around the 2022 campaign.

Lake must also still defeat Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the GOP primary in July, though, at the end of the year, he had only $256,000 in his campaign coffers.

In recent days, close allies of Lake have called Lamb to urge him to drop his bid, according to a senior adviser to Lamb.

In mid-March after publicly challenging Gallego to a debate, Lake dismissed the relevance of Lamb’s candidacy when asked if she would agree to a debate with him: “I am focusing on the general election.”

But Lamb, a one-time ally of Lake, refuses to leave the race, contending that he has the best chance to win in November.

“If I didn’t think I was the best candidate in the general election, I’d certainly step aside and let that Republican go forward,” Lamb said in an interview with NBC News. “But I do believe we’re in the best position for the general election.”

He also noted that he would like the opportunity to debate Lake.

“I think a lot of the issues we’re going to be aligned on,” he added. “What I think it’ll show is the unevenness in experience — the experience I bring to the table on the border, crime and the economy.”

Lake and her allies once urged Lamb to run for the Senate seat that they’re now trying to get him to step away from.

Lamb said that Lake had told him to run for months and even introduced him to Trump in December 2022 one evening at Mar-a-Lago. The sheriff said he had been speaking at an event in West Palm Beach earlier that day.

“[My wife and I] met her husband [and two advisers] — and they said, ‘You have to run for Senate. You have to do this. This is how you can do it. It’ll be great,’” Lamb recounted. “Then we walked over to Trump’s table — she said, ‘He’s going to run for Senate.’”

Months later, Lake changed course and announced her own run for the Senate seat — now held by Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who is not seeking re-election — and the effort to readjust her public persona commenced.

‘I got MAGA in my bone marrow’

When asked by NBC News this month whether she regretted any of her past statements, Lake responded: “We’re all human. We make mistakes occasionally. I do as well. I’m not perfect, and I never want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But you know, politics is a rough and tumble game, and sometimes things are said.”

Lake also rejected the premise that she needed to change.

“I haven’t changed,” she argued after casting her ballot for Trump in Arizona’s GOP presidential primary last week. “I’m still the same person that people invited into their homes for nearly 30 years here in Arizona.”

Before her first run for office two years ago, Lake was a prominent local news anchor on Phoenix television.

Despite that history, Trump is outperforming her in Arizona, but in a state that’s seen three competitive Senate races in a row, this year’s Senate matchup is not expected to be an exception. However, in a February poll by Noble Predictive Insights, 49% of Arizona voters already held an unfavorable view of Lake, compared to just 26% for Gallego.

The last Republican to lose statewide office twice in Arizona was Martha McSally, who lost both her 2018 and 2020 Senate races by a margin of 2.4% and struggled in those campaigns to find a balance between embracing the MAGA wing of her party and not dismissing figures opposed to Trump’s grip on the GOP, like McCain and then-Sen. Jeff Flake.

In turn, Lake has worked hard to not lose her close relationship with Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, paying his senior advisor Jason Miller to also consult for her campaign and even traveling to Trump’s election night victory parties in Iowa and New Hampshire as well as multiple events at his Palm Beach estate.

“I got MAGA in my bone marrow,” Lake boasted at a rally in Cave Creek, Arizona, this month before telling the crowd that she had just filed a case with the U.S. Supreme Court “to get rid of those damn machines that are so corrupt.”

Lake’s petition claims electronic voting machines used in Maricopa County are “susceptible to hacking.” It’s the same argument that has repeatedly failed to pass muster in several courts and led to a $787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems last spring.

Despite Lake alienating some of the Arizona electorate, her would-be general election opponent, Gallego, is untested statewide, only having run in a Democrat-dominant Phoenix congressional district.

“Kari Lake is going to not only win the Republican primary in a landslide, which every poll shows, she is also best positioned to defeat Ruben Gallego in every single private and public poll that we have,” Garrett Ventry, a senior adviser to Lake, said. “She is President Trump’s endorsed candidate, and the NRSC and Arizona grassroots voters are behind her.”

Jon Seaton, a former McCain aide and a longtime Arizona GOP consultant, said he believes the current race is a “toss-up.”

“Gallego obviously has the advantages of money and, for the most part, a unified Democratic Party behind him,” Seaton said. “But I think our side has a lot to shoot at in terms of his voting record. He’ll be perceived as very weak on the border, and well to the left of most Arizona voters.”

But Verdone, the longtime fundraiser, surmised that Lake’s window for changing the trajectory of the race is narrowing.

“She needs to reach out and show that she’s willing to — the only term I can think of is — normalize,” she said. “But I think it’s almost too late. There would have to be something drastic for folks to say, ‘Let’s go rally around Kari.’”

Verdone paused, then added: “Maybe that happens.”

Source link

Shadowy Russian actors spread Princess Kate conspiracies, analysis finds

LONDON — Social media accounts linked to a prominent Russian disinformation campaign were all too happy to capitalize on conspiracy theories about the whereabouts of Kate, Princess of Wales, according to an analysis by British security experts.

The role played by these shadowy Russian actors may serve as an alarming test case, experts said, in a year when elections in Washington and Europe will be buffeted by the long-standing fake news threat — which is now being supercharged by artificial intelligence.

However, clear as the malicious foreign involvement in the #KateGate conspiracy was, the researchers at the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University in Wales were quick to point out that these actors were not responsible for originating rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding the princess, before she revealed last week that she was being treated for cancer.

“It’s not as though these Russia-linked accounts were driving the story; they were jumping on it,” Martin Innes, the institute’s irector, said. “It was already being framed in conspiracy terms, so foreign actors don’t need to set that frame — that’s already there to exploit.”

Conjuring these theories was usually the work of Western influencers with high follower counts, regular social media users engaging with them. While some cracked jokes and posted memes, others took a more sinister tone as people speculated about Kate’s whereabouts. Traditional media played its own role in the feedback loop by amplifying and prolonging the circus.

But Innes and his colleagues said they identified 45 accounts posting about Kate on X that bore the hallmarks of the Russian disinformation campaign known as Doppelgänger. For the researchers who have spent years analyzing this sort of traffic, telltale signs included the accounts’ usernames and the fact that they had apparently been created in batches and were all using the same wording. Some were easy to mark out because they posted pro-Russia or anti-Ukraine content.

The campaign’s aims are twofold, Innes said. First, use the traffic spike associated with Kate to disseminate pro-Russia content, often related to its war in Ukraine. Second, sow discord.

“It’s about destabilization. It’s about undermining trust in institutions: government, monarchy, media — everything,” he said. “These kinds of stories are ideal vehicles by which they do that.”

Doppelgänger was first identified in 2022 by EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit group of experts based in Europe that investigates the spread of disinformation online. In the past, this “Russia-based influence operation network” has worked by cloning the websites of traditional media companies, posting fake articles and promoting them on social media, EU DisinfoLab says on its website. The technology has likely become more sophisticated since then.

“These are not groups that are part of the state security services, as has happened with other operations,” Innes said. Rather, this campaign is run by “commercial firms who are getting contracts from the Kremlin.”

NBC News has emailed the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper also reported this week that Russia might not be the only country involved. Citing anonymous government sources, it reported that China and Iran were also fueling disinformation related to the princess.

When it came to the Russia-linked accounts, they did not come up with their own conspiracy theories in relation to Kate, but rather replied to existing posts, often but not exclusively with pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine content, Innes said. The researchers focused on X because of their ability to collate and analyze its posts quickly. But that may only be the tip of the iceberg.

“For independent researchers, getting a good view into TikTok is really difficult,” he said. “But just to kind of give you some sense of scale, we’ve done a bit of research and the #KateGate story had 14 billion views in one month.” These were overall views and not only those linked to Russian accounts.

The already rich ecosystem of conspiracy theories — hardly dissuaded by blanket coverage in traditional media — gave them an ample canvas on which to work.

The story was “a perfect cocktail in terms of the things that you need for conspiracy theories to thrive,” said Sander van der Linden, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge who researches why people are influenced by misinformation.

The royal family has always been the target of conspiracy theories suggesting they are somehow “conspiring behind the scenes and plotting nefarious goals,” van der Linden said. He added that the edited photo of Kate and her three children that Kensington Palace released earlier this month had played right into this mindset.

Added in the mix are the declining global trust in institutions such as media and governments, a “mass panic about AI and manipulated news and imagery online,” and the “newer development” whereby “everyone with a social media account feels that they can be their own sleuth, uncovering details and having fun playing investigator online,” he said.

These factors are all a big worry for experts in a year that will yield a presidential election in the United States, as well as votes in the European Union, India and elsewhere.

The Russian actors “are seeing right now that this can be hugely successful,” van der Linden said. “They just wait for a controversial issue, then massively amplify it. So this could be a sort of training phase for them almost, to see how they would do it during an actual election.”

Source link

State Department official resigns; most Americans oppose Israel’s Gaza war, new poll finds

‘Moving the needle’

But despite this growing clash between the two governments, some feel the United States has done too little to press its ally to change course in Gaza.

Sheline, who first shared her account with The Washington Post, was recruited to join the State Department as a foreign affairs officer in the bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor as part of an Arabic language fellowship connected to her PhD program — and she quit last week just halfway into her two-year contract.

Sheline said that U.S. policy toward Israel had made her job “almost impossible,” whether it was members of civil society simply not wanting to engage with U.S. officials over the country’s backing of Israel or fearing that engagement with the U.S. government would put them at greater risk.

Sheline said she tried to raise her concerns internally, signing onto dissent cables and speaking with her supervisors, as well as in open forums, but to no avail.

“I personally was not expecting to shape policy but it became clear that even moving the needle in a tiny way from the inside just wasn’t going to work,” she said.

State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller has acknowledged a diversity of internal views on the war in Gaza, but he said that while Blinken welcomes employees to “speak up and challenge his thinking,” that doesn’t mean it will lead to a shift in U.S. policy.

Miller told reporters Wednesday that was ultimately up to Biden and senior leaders in his administration.

Sheline is the second State Department official to public resign citing U.S. policy toward Israel since the war began nearly six months ago after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, in which Israeli officials say 1,200 people were killed and around 260 others were taken hostage, with more than 100 still held captive in Gaza.

In October, veteran State Department official Josh Paul left his post with the agency’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs after more than a decade, citing the “blind support” of the U.S. for Israel.

Sheline’s decision to follow suit came as a Gallup poll released Wednesday found that growing numbers of Americans now oppose Israel’s military action in Gaza, an apparent shift in U.S. views.

The poll, conducted between March 1 and 20, found that 55% of respondents said they disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, compared with 45% who expressed disapproval in November.

The share of those in favor of Israel’s actions fell from 50% in November to 36% in March, while the percentage of those who said they had no stance rose from 4% to 9%.

The poll, which surveyed 1,016 adults living across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

It was carried out before the U.N. Security Council on Monday passed its resolution calling for a cease-fire for the rest of the month of Ramadan, which ends April 9.

The U.S. allowed the resolution to pass, in a change of approach.

Sheline said she was concerned that upholding the rule of law had become a political consideration for the administration, which was elected in part on a promise to reestablish U.S. leadership on everything from human rights to international institutions to climate change.

“I continue to be horrified at the largely unconditional support and providing a steady stream of weapons to Israel is considered more important than all of these other extremely significant issues,” Sheline said.

Chantal Da Silva reported from Tel Aviv, and Abigail Williams from Washington.

Chantal Da Silva

Chantal Da Silva is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital based in London.

Abigail Williams

Abigail Williams is a producer and reporter for NBC News covering the State Department.

Jay Marques and Ammar Cheikh Omar contributed.

Source link

Tampa mayor finds big catch off Florida Keys: 70 pounds of cocaine

The mayor of Tampa found a big catch of another sort while fishing off the coast of the Florida Keys: 70 pounds of cocaine floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mayor Jane Castor made the discovery July 23 while on a fishing trip with her family. Castor, a longtime Tampa police officer and the city’s first female chief, immediately recognized the package wrapped in layers of plastic as cocaine, city spokesperson Adam Smith said Tuesday.

Smith confirmed the details of the find that were reported in the Tampa Bay Times to NBC News.

Smith also shared a U.S. Border Patrol post on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that showed dozens of pounds of cocaine “discovered by a recreational boater in the #FloridaKeys.” The drug haul had an estimated street value of $1.1 million dollars, the post said.

After spotting the cocaine, Castor’s family lifted the package, about the size of a microwave, onto her boat. A rip in the package showed it was more tightly packaged in bricks, the mayor told the Tampa Bay Times.

They discovered the cocaine off the Middle Keys city of Marathon. The package was eventually passed to federal agents after Castor called the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, the newspaper reported.

Cocaine floating off the waters of Florida is not a new occurrence, according to authorities.

Last month, a good Samaritan found a floating brick of cocaine, weighing about 2.7 pounds, while boating near the Florida Keys, according to NBC Miami.

The news outlet also reported that in May, a large bundle of cocaine that weighed about 41 pounds was discovered floating near Islamorada.

In May 2021, More than 30 kilograms of cocaine with a value topping $1 million were seized after washing ashore at Cape Canaveral Space Station, according to the U.S. Space Force.

Source link

Just 4,000 daily steps may lower your risk of death, study finds

New research challenges the common idea that people need to reach a threshold of 10,000 steps per day to improve their health.

Walking just 4,000 steps per day is associated with a lower risk of death, according to the analysis published Tuesday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

The research pooled the results of 17 studies that looked at the health benefits associated with step counts across six countries. The least active people in the studies took around 4,000 steps per day and still saw a reduced risk of death from any cause. The more steps people took, the lower their risk of dying.

Each extra 1,000 steps per day was associated with a 15% reduction in a person’s overall risk of death, according to the research.

The analysis included people who took as many as 20,000 steps per day and did not find an upper limit to the health benefits of walking. Younger adults saw a greater reduction in the overall risk of death compared to older adults, the results showed.

“The main message is that we should have as many steps as possible and we should start as early as possible in order to have the highest health benefits,” said Dr. Maciej Banach, the study’s lead author and a cardiology professor at the Medical University of Lodz in Poland.

The studies that his team analyzed included almost 227,000 participants in total, most of whom were generally healthy, and followed people for an average of seven years. The participants came from Australia, Japan, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

When looking at the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease in particular, the researchers found that walking at least 2,337 steps per day lowered the risk, with each extra 500 daily steps associated with an additional 7% reduction in risk.

The study suggested that for people under age 60, walking between 7,000 and 13,000 steps per day lowered the overall risk of death by 49%. For those ages 60 and older, walking 6,000 to 10,000 daily steps lowered the risk by 42%.

The notion that 10,000 steps is the crucial daily quota is a misconception, though it is a healthy target, according to Amanda Paluch, an epidemiologist and kinesiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“It’s not an all-or-nothing situation,” she said.

The recommendation likely originated from a 1965 Japanese marketing campaign for a pedometer called “Manpo-kei,” which translates to “10,000 steps meter.”

There’s a reason it caught on, Paluch said: “It’s a nice, clean number. It is doable for a portion of the population, so it really stuck, but it has not been based on scientific evidence.”

For people who are minimally active, she added, 5,000 daily steps could be a good goal. The average person in the U.S. takes 4,774 steps per day, according to a 2017 study.

Paluch’s own research, which was included in the new analysis, found that people who walked a median of around 6,000 to 11,000 daily steps had a 50% to 60% lower risk of death, relative to those with a median of around 3,500 steps.

Plenty of past research has similarly shown that walking improves heart health and reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes and dementia.

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends that people get 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate physical activity like riding a bike, 75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous physical activity like jogging or running, or some combination. The guidelines also suggest doing muscle-strengthening activities at least two days a week.

A good rule of thumb is to be active enough that your heart rate is at least slightly elevated — meaning you can talk, but you can’t sing. A brisk walk or uphill hike meets that criteria, though Paluch said daily steps are usually considered light physical activity, so they wouldn’t count toward the federal guidelines.

“To really optimize your health in terms of being physically active you should incorporate both aerobic and resistance training,” she said.

Source link

Americans think they need $1.8 million to retire comfortably, survey finds

Americans think they need $1.8 million to retire comfortably, survey finds – CBS News

Watch CBS News

Americans believe they will need at least $1.8 million to retire comfortably, up from $1.7 million last year, according to a new survey from Charles Schwab. Medora Lee, a money and personal finance reporter for USA Today, joined CBS News to talk about the number, which she said is likely out of reach for most people.

Source link

War crimes by Myanmar’s military ‘more frequent and brazen’, UN probe finds

GENEVA (Reuters) – War crimes committed by Myanmar’s military, including the bombing of civilians, have become “increasingly frequent and brazen”, a team of United Nations investigators said in a report published on Tuesday.

The report by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), which covered the period between July 2022 and June 2023, said there was “strong evidence that the Myanmar military and its affiliate militias have committed three types of combat-related war crimes with increasing frequency and brazenness”.

These crimes include the indiscriminate or disproportionate targeting of civilians using bombs and the burning of civilian homes and buildings, resulting at times in the destruction of entire villages, it said.

The report also cited “killings of civilians or combatants detained during operations”.

“Our evidence points to a dramatic increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country, with widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, and we are building case files that can be used by courts to hold individual perpetrators responsible,” said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM.

Since a junta seized power two years ago, Myanmar has been plunged into chaos, with a resistance movement fighting the military on multiple fronts after a bloody crackdown on opponents that saw Western countries re-impose sanctions.

A spokesperson for the junta could not be reached for comment on the findings made by U.N. investigators.

The junta has previously denied atrocities have taken place, saying it is carrying out a legitimate campaign against terrorists.

Although it has justified bombings as attacks against military targets, UN investigators said the Myanmar military “should have known or did know” that a large number of civilians were in or around the alleged targets when the attacks took place.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Thu Thu Aung; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source link