Brighton beach deaths: Family of London sisters reveal mother also died by drowning
Family also hit out at conspiracy theories were fuelled by an image of the sisters circulated by police that was created by artificial intelligence Source link
All posts tagged: Conspiracy
A DOJ for Conspiracy Theorists
Not so very long ago, the Justice Department stood as a bulwark of facts against Donald Trump’s wildest claims. During his first term, a pattern emerged: Trump would make a bizarre assertion (say, that Barack Obama had illegally wiretapped Trump Tower), a litigant would point to this assertion in court to cast doubt on the Justice Department’s arguments, and DOJ attorneys would be forced to explain to an irritated judge that the president’s statements did not actually reflect the government’s position on the matter. Checking Trump’s comments against what a government lawyer was willing to swear in front of a judge was a handy way of demonstrating how Trump’s version of reality measured up to the truth. In the second term, the Justice Department no longer sets itself at a polite distance from the baseless allegations shared by the president in his late-night Truth Social posts. This week, DOJ announced an “anti-weaponization” fund of dubious legality, intended to pay back victims of “weaponization and lawfare”—an apparent reference to prosecuted January 6 insurrectionists. In language that …
US prosecutors allege shipping veteran Teo Siong Seng told others to ‘keep low key’ in price-fixing conspiracy: Court documents
ALLEGED TIMELINE OF EVENTS US prosecutors said in an unsealed indictment that several of the alleged conspirators had begun discussing the scheme as early as March 2019. On or about Nov 14 that year, CIMC, Dong Fang, CXIC and another unnamed co-conspirator had met at CIMC’s headquarters in China to restrict their output of standard dry shipping containers. The goal of this was to raise the price of standard dry shipping containers, said the prosecution. A week later, an executive of Singamas emailed Mr Teo stating that Dong Fang’s general manager, Mr Li, had called for all six factories to meet. On Dec 5 that year, the Singamas executive updated Mr Teo that he had gone for the meeting two days earlier. He stated that the companies discussed limiting the number of shifts and hours that each production line for standard dry containers could run per day, building no additional new production line, installing closed-circuit television (CCTV), and having each factory submit a deposit that would be deducted if anyone broke the agreement. He also …
Trump’s Tech Posse in China, Who’s Winning in Musk v. Altman, and Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories
Brian Barrett: Our best and brightest. Leah Feiger: Yeah. And so I’m just like, no, no, no, this is clearly not just about tech. This is about showing very specifically who Trump’s allies are and being able to position himself in front of a country and leader that he hasn’t spent a lot of time with recently. Zoë Schiffer: Since we’re still talking about the people that he is going to China with, what do we know about why Jensen Huang was left off the list and then re-added last minute? Because my though when I saw it was, oh, this is about export controls and they think it’s going to be kind of weird and complicated to have him on the trip. But then obviously he is now on the trip. Leah Feiger: So someone I cannot name, someone said to me, “Oh, I think the President may have just forgotten him,” to which I laughed. Zoë Schiffer: Oh, you remembered Brett Ratner and you forgot? Leah Feiger: No, I was like, “This is …
Assassination conspiracy theories? Blame Trump
Let’s be clear up front: There is no evidence that Donald Trump has staged any of the three high-profile attempts on his life in the past two years. I’ll likely get some angry reader feedback to that assertion because a lot of people believe at least one of the would-be assassinations — and quite possibly all three — were false flag operations. A new survey from NewsGuard shows that 54% of Americans are open to the theory that at least one of the attacks was staged, with only 38% saying definitively they believe all three were real. When asked about each separate assault — the 2024 shooting that grazed Trump’s ear at a Pennsylvania campaign stop, the arrest of the armed man at the president’s West Palm Beach golf course later that year and the recent incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — fewer than half said these events were authentic. Once in a while, a conspiracy theory may be wrong but still manages to channel authentic frustrations. This particular one is false, but …
A Conspiracy Theory About QR Codes Has Led to Chaos Ahead of Georgia’s Midterms
When WIRED asked Favorito if, despite all the audits and investigations that found no evidence of fraud, he still believed the 2020 election was rigged using QR codes, Favorito responded: “I think it’s a distinct possibility.” Georgia’s bill did not outline what system should replace the QR codes, but it set a July 1, 2026 deadline to end the use of the codes. The effort to demonize QR codes was given added impetus when in March 2025 Trump signed an executive order demanding that the Election Assistance Commission approve new rules to ban the counting of votes via QR codes in most cases nationwide. The commission did not respond to a request for comment. Since then, legislators in Georgia have repeatedly failed to put in place a system to replace QR codes or update the election systems. So with just six months to go before the midterms, election directors in counties across the state have been left in limbo, unsure how to proceed or whether new rules will be put in place. When asked how …
Hantavirus Conspiracy Theories Are Already Spreading Online
Conspiracy theorists, wellness influencers, and grifters have already started promoting wild claims about the hantavirus outbreak that began aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship on the Atlantic. Some conspiracy theorists compared the outbreak to the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it was another effort to control the global population, while others pushed a false narrative that the Covid-19 vaccine caused hantavirus. Many others promoted ivermectin as a treatment, using the incident as a way to sell emergency medical kits featuring the antiparasitic drug typically used as a horse dewormer. In more recent days, many of these same people spreading conspiracy theories have promoted the baseless and antisemitic claims that the entire incident is a false flag orchestrated by Israel. Conspiracy theories flooding social media in response to breaking news are nothing new, but what is notable about those being pushed around the hantavirus outbreak is just how closely they echo the conspiracy theories promoted during the Covid-19 pandemic. “One of the most striking shifts since the Covid pandemic is how rapidly misinformation narratives now organize themselves …
‘Plandemic, Covid 2.0’: Fact-checking viral conspiracy theories about hantavirus – Truth or Fake
As the world saw with Covid-19, the only thing that spreads faster than a virus is misinformation, and hantavirus is no exception. Despite only a few confirmed cases, conspiracy theories have swirled on social media falsely claiming hantavirus is a planned pandemic, or a ploy to disrupt the US midterm elections. Others alleged it’s a “bioweapon” created by big pharma to “poison” people or even that it’s a side effect of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. Many Covid-era conspiracy theories have been revived since the outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship, likely amplified due to the anti-vaxx movement and fears about a new global pandemic. As with the coronavirus, theorists allege hantavirus is a planned pandemic – or “plandemic” – created by Big Pharma and vaccine manufacturers, a “biological weapon” created in a laboratory to push vaccines onto the masses. Known conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who was notorious for sharing false narratives during the Covid-19 pandemic) amplified these claims on their platforms, with Greene also sharing fake news that anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin could be …
The Alien Conspiracy – The Atlantic
“There has been a threat to publicly release government material long shrouded in secrecy.” This sentence could have been intoned by a TV newscaster anytime in the past few years, about any number of real or alleged cover-ups—of Joe Biden’s mental decline, or the names in the Epstein files, or the origins of COVID‑19. In fact, it comes from the trailer that aired during the Super Bowl for Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s new movie, opening June 12. For people who believe in aliens, or who would like to be able to believe in them, that title leaves no doubt about the kinds of secrets in question: Disclosure refers to the long-awaited moment when the U.S. government will admit what it really knows about visitors to our planet. When President Trump promised, in a social-media post in February, “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life,” he implied that disclosure might be just around the corner. It wasn’t: This morning, the Pentagon released a tranche of historic images …
Fox News viewership linked to belief in a racist conspiracy theory
White Americans who regularly get their political news from Fox News show much higher levels of support for the Great Replacement Theory than those who do not watch the network. By tracking individual viewers over time, researchers found that increases in viewing specific television programs on this network corresponded with an elevated belief in this conspiracy theory. These findings were published in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics. The Great Replacement Theory is a xenophobic framework with origins in right-wing French political thought. It proposes that powerful elites are deliberately relaxing immigration policies to flood the United States with foreigners. Adherents believe these undocumented immigrants will serve as an obedient voting block to keep progressive elites in power indefinitely. The theory claims this process will ultimately replace native-born white citizens and strip them of their political, economic, and cultural dominance. Historically, these demographic fears existed isolated on the obscure margins of political discourse, largely confined to extremist websites. In recent years, high-profile conservative figures have brought these concepts out of the shadows and straight …