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WASHINGTON (AP) — A relatively trouble-free presidential election was good news for those working to restore faith in the system. Less encouraging was a flood of misinformation that sought to undermine trust in voting and sow chaos, something experts say is likely to get worse in the years ahead. The most significant test for officials on Election Day was a series of bomb threats reported in five battleground states, some of which forced polling places to be evacuated temporarily. The day otherwise played out like most other election days, w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A presidential candidate's phone is hacked. A fake video falsely shows ballots burned in Pennsylvania. National security officials warn that U.S. adversaries may incite violent protests after Election Day. These developments — all revealed in the past week — show how Russia, China and Iran have increased the pace of efforts to meddle in American politics ahead of next month's election, just as intelligence officials and security analysts had predicted. At the same time, officials, tech companies and private researchers have...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and Iran may try to encourage violent protests in the U.S. after next month's election, senior intelligence officials warned Tuesday in a declassified memo, citing two recent examples of foreign intelligence agencies seeking to sow discord ahead of the vote. The memo, released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said both countries could support violent protests either by covertly organizing events themselves or by encouraging participation in those planned by domestic groups. The aim, the o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is "deeply concerned" about the unauthorized release of classified documents on Israel's preparation for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran, a White House spokesman said Monday. The Biden administration is still not certain if the classified information was leaked or hacked, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. Officials don't have any indication at this point of "additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain," he said. Kirby added that the Pentagon is i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The facts emerging from Hurricane Helene's destruction are heartrending: Businesses and homes destroyed, whole communities nearly wiped out, hundreds of lives lost, hundreds of people missing. Yet this devastation and despair is not enough for the extremist groups, disinformation agents, hucksters and politicians who are exploiting the disaster to spread false claims and conspiracy theories about it and the government's response. According to former President Donald Trump, the federal government is intentionally withholding a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden's campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump's campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday. There's no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations approached over the summer with leaked stolen information have also said they did not respond. Kamala Harris' p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The leader of a conservative think tank on Thursday misrepresented partisan differences in political violence in the United States, wrongly suggesting that people associated with left-wing causes commit more violence than those on the right. ___ HERITAGE FOUNDATION PRESIDENT KEVIN ROBERTS: "Most political violence in the last 25 years has been initiated by the left." THE FACTS: Roberts' remarks came in response to questions about comments earlier this month in which he said the country was in the midst of "the second A...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former president is wounded in a shooting, the gunman quickly neutralized, and all of it is caught on camera. But for those who don't believe their eyes, that's just the start of the story. For some supporters of Donald Trump, the failure of the Secret Service to prevent the attempted assassination of the Republican former president points to a conspiracy orchestrated by Democratic President Joe Biden. For some of Trump's critics, however, the details of the shooting don't add up. They wonder if Trump staged the whole t...
A range of false claims and conspiracy theories have surfaced since Saturday's assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term in the White House. They started within minutes of the shooting as "false flag" claims that the incident had been staged rolled out over social media and just keep surfacing, as many questions remain unanswered. Among the false claims circulating on Tuesday was a photo identified as showing Trump's ear on Monday with no damage. The photo is from September 2022. The assassination...
Mexican voters are poised to elect their first female president, a cause of celebration for many that has also touched off a flurry of false and misogynist online claims, blurring the lines behind fact and fiction. The two leading candidates, both women, have had to respond to demeaning attacks about their appearance, their credentials and their ability to lead the nation. The candidate considered the favorite in Sunday's contest, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, has also faced slurs about her Jewish background as well as repeatedly...
WASHINGTON (AP) — At first his stories seemed harmless. Tales about secret organizations plotting to take over the world, about the good guys working to save it, and about the proof that, if you knew where to look, was hiding in plain sight. To Ramona, her boyfriend Don's tales of conspiracy theories sounded like a movie. A lot of it didn't make much sense, but Ramona would nod along anyway. Don enjoyed telling his stories and showing off what he'd read online. He always knew the answer. The pair met while still in high school. They worked at t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans on the right and the left have a lot more in common than they might think — including their strong distrust of each other. A survey published on Wednesday finds that when asked about core values including fairness, compassion and personal responsibility, about nine in 10 Democrats and Republicans agreed they were very or extremely important. Yet only about a third of either group said they believed the same was true for the opposing party. The results of the survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago and...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Maybe they came from China. Maybe from somewhere farther away. A lot farther away. The downing of four aerial devices by U.S. warplanes has touched off rampant misinformation about the objects, their origin and their purpose, showing how complicated world events and a lack of information can quickly create the perfect conditions for unchecked conjecture and misinformation. The presence of mysterious objects high in the sky doesn't help. "There will be an investigation and we will learn more, but until then this story has creat...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Unfounded claims about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines proliferated in the hours and days after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during Monday's game, revealing how pervasive vaccine misinformation remains three years after the pandemic began. Even before Hamlin was carried off the field in Cincinnati, posts amassing thousands of shares and millions of views began circulating online claiming without evidence that complications from COVID-19 vaccines caused his health emergency. While cardiac specialists say it's t...
Instances of racial slurs have soared on Twitter since Elon Musk purchased the influential platform, despite assurances from the platform that it had reduced hateful activity, a digital civil rights group reported Thursday. Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the number of tweets containing one of several different racial slurs soared in the week after Musk bought Twitter. A racial epithet used to attack Black people was found more than 26,000 times, three times the average for 2022. Use of a slur that targets...
He may be good with rockets and electric cars, but don't turn to Elon Musk for public health predictions. "Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April," the world's richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up. It's one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter's new owner and moderator in chief. Playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, Musk's past tweets show how he has used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash...
TikTok may be the platform of choice for catchy videos, but anyone using it to learn about COVID-19, climate change or Russia's invasion of Ukraine is likely to encounter misleading information, according to a research report published Wednesday. Researchers at NewsGuard searched for content about prominent news topics on TikTok and say they found that nearly 1 in 5 of the videos automatically suggested by the platform contained misinformation. Searches for information about "mRNA vaccine," for instance, yielded five videos (out of the first 10...
The young man in the jeans and sunglasses proudly shows off his gun in the YouTube video, then instructs his 1 million subscribers how to fit extra ammo on his belt, and offers a chilling observation. "Pretty cool for active shooter stuff, if you need extra mags." It's a typical video, one of thousands teaching military-style training and tactics to civilian gun owners, offering instructions on silencers and grenade launchers, on shooting from vehicles or into buildings. Other websites sell ghost gun kits, gas masks and body armor. "You...
As governments and social media companies have moved to suppress Russia's state media and the disinformation it spreads about the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin's diplomats are stepping up to do the dirty work. Russian embassies and consulates around the world are prolifically using Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to deflect blame for atrocities while seeking to undermine the international coalition supporting Ukraine. Tech companies have responded by adding more labels to Russia's diplomatic accounts and by removing the accounts from its...
Russia's baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump. Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government. Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths:...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In March, as claims about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help. By altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people's newsfeeds, researchers at the company realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization. "Given these results, I'm a...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Falsehoods about the election helped bring insurrectionists to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and now some who are facing criminal charges for their actions during the riot hope their gullibility might save them or at least engender some sympathy. Lawyers for at least three defendants charged in connection with the violent siege tell The Associated Press that they will blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, much of it pushed by then-President Donald Trump, for misleading their clients. The attorneys say those w...
Los Angeles emergency room nurse Sandra Younan spent the last year juggling long hours as she watched many patients struggle with the coronavirus and some die. Then there were the patients who claimed the virus was fake or coughed in her face, ignoring mask rules. One man stormed out of the hospital after a positive COVID-19 test, refusing to believe it was accurate. "You have patients that are literally dying, and then you have patients that are denying the disease," she said. "You try to educate and you try to educate, but then you just hit...
As the coronavirus spread across the globe, so too did speculation about its origins. Perhaps the virus escaped from a lab. Maybe it was engineered as a bioweapon. Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, guesswork and propaganda flourished. College professors with no evidence or training in virology were touted as experts. Anonymous social media users posed as high-level intelligence officials. And from China to Iran to Russia to the United States, governments...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia didn't have to lift a finger. In the weeks before the U.S. presidential election, federal authorities warned that Russia or other foreign countries might spread false information about the results to discredit the legitimacy of the outcome. Turns out, the loudest megaphone for that message belonged not to Russia but to President Donald Trump, who has trumpeted a blizzard of thoroughly debunked claims to proclaim that he, not President-elect Joe Biden, was the rightful winner. The resulting chaos is consistent with l...
