World News News - Page 1

Officials with Meta have warned that foreign companies are likely to attempt to influence the 2024 election with a wave of fake social media accounts spreading propaganda.

This election cycle is different as the United States government has chosen to stop proactively sharing information with Meta, along with other social media platforms, about foreign government online influence operations. Meta informed reporters of this new change on Wednesday, and according to Meta's global threat intelligence lead, Ben Nimmo, "We believe that it's important to build on the progress the defender community has made since 2016, and make sure that we work together to keep evolving our defenses against foreign interference."

Notably, Meta's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, informed reports that the drip feed of information from the US government stopped in July. Gleicher declined to comment on why the US government has stopped providing social media platforms with information. Furthermore, before the 2020 election, the US government gave vital information to Meta to prevent online influence campaigns by Russia, Mexico, and Iran - all of which the company now warns will, and particularly, be attempting this election cycle.

The United States has announced that it has destroyed its entire supply of chemical weapons, according to a new report by The Guardian.

The stockpile of toxic weaponry included 51,000 M55 rockets that contained GB nerve agent, or more commonly known as sarin gas. These rockets have been in storage since the 1940s and have been since been "irreversibly destroyed". The effort by the US to remove its stockpile of chemical weapons has been decades-long, beginning after the cold war when the country was harboring more than 30,000 tons of chemical weaponry.

However, that effort has now come to its end, ahead of schedule as well as the United States had until September 30 to complete its elimination of chemical weaponry, per the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997 and was joined by 193 countries.

A new report has revealed that encrypted Chinese chips are being used by multiple U.S. government agencies as well as NATO and the U.K. military.

A new report from Wired has revealed these encrypted chips were supplied by Hualan Microelectronics and were used to store confidential information related to the agency's responsibilities. Notably, the report states that in 2021 the U.S. added Hualan to its "Entity List" written by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which states Hualan has been sanctioned for "acquiring and attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of military modernization for [China's] People's Liberation Army."

The new report states that U.S. governmental agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. Navy, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) all purchased these potentially compromised chips. Security researchers have warned that these Chinese-supplied chips may have a hidden backdoor that enables China's government to access the encrypted data on each of the microchips, which, if true, essentially makes them all compromised.

Iran's Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Coordinating Deputy of the Islamic Republic's Army (and former Commander of the Navy), alongside Imam Khomeini University of Marine Sciences and Technologies (RA), has unveiled what it is calling the "first product of the quantum processing algorithm."

Essentially, a newly-designed quantum computing board that is apparently already being used by the Iranian Military to "counter navigation deception in detecting surface vessels using the quantum algorithms." And with the hardware showcased as part of a photo-op, it didn't take long for someone to notice that the hardware being shown is an off-the-shelf ARM-based FPGA SoC development board (ZedBoard) built by the US-based Digilent.

In fact, you can see the ZedBoard branding in close-up shots of the "quantum" computing product, so it looks like there was no real effort to make what was being shown look different from the off-the-shelf product. Perhaps it was chosen because the radial circuitry pattern looks futuristic.

The name Steve Jobs is one that will go down in history as the co-founder of Apple and the man that saved the company from the brink in the 1990s. He died in October 2011 and his legacy lives on - and now you can own a little piece of history by picking up a check he wrote on behalf of Apple way back in 1976.

The check was for just $175 which was probably a lot more back then than it is in 2023. It's a business check made out from the Apple Computer Company account and is signed by Jobs himself. And right now it's up for auction with an expected selling price of around $25,000.

At the time of writing the bidding is at $16,500 and the auction ends on May 11, so there's still plenty of time for you to get in on the act.

A journalist has received a USB drive in the mail, and it turned out to be a bomb that detonated when they plugged it into a computer at the newsroom.

According to a report from the BBC, the journalist that received the USB drive was just one of many journalists across Ecuador that received similar USB drives. Luckily, other recipients either discarded the drive entirely or the bomb failed to detonate. The Ecuadorean attorneys-general's department confirmed it has opened a terrorism investigation following the explosion and explained that at least five news outlets were targeted.

The government body condemned the actions and said that any attempt to intimidate journalism and freedom of speech across Ecuador is a "loathsome action" that will be punished with "all rigor of justice". So, where did the devices come from? According to the interior minister, Juan Zapata, all of the devices were sent from the same town, with three USB drives being sent to media outlets located in Guayaquil, and two to newsrooms in the capital, Quito.

Russia's defense ministry released a video of a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile being loaded into a launch silo in Kozelsk, a town in western Russia.

The video was published on Telegram on Thursday by Russia's Defense Ministry, and according to Russia's Defense Ministry, the missile is being loaded into the intercontinental ballistic missile silo, and this procedure takes several hours. The missile is called "Yars" by Russia, a capable nuclear warhead that the nation fired back in October to display its nuclear capabilities.

Notably, Russia has recently threatened to use nuclear weapons in the past, but President Vladimir Putin has recently said that the nation would not be the very first country to use them. This video comes just days after reports emerged that the US is preparing to send an advanced Patriot air defense system to Ukraine. The news about the potential deployment of the Patriot missile system to Ukraine has prompted a strong response from Russia.

Only one day before the US midterms, which are currently being tallied up around the country, "Putin's chef" admits to being involved in election meddling.

That individual is Russian busi9nessman Yevgeny Prigozhin who said on Monday morning that he has previously interfered with US elections and will continue interfering in the future. CBC News reports that this is the "first such admission from a figure who has been formally implicated by Washington in efforts to influence American politics." Prigozhin gave his statements to his press service of his Concord catering firm that later posted the statement to Russia's version of Facebook called VKontakte.

The statement was made a day before the US midterms, and according to Prigozhin, who further elaborated, "During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once". Prigozhin is often called "the chef" as he's the owner of a catering company that undertakes a number of Russian government contracts and has previously been formerly accused of being behind Russian troll or bot farms that are designed to influence US politics.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to warn the public of a scenario that he says may very well cause the collapse of civilization.

Once again, Musk has chimed in on the events that are unfolding between Russia and Ukraine by taking to Twitter and showing his support for specific scenarios that may happen in the near future. The SpaceX CEO began a long back and forth on the social media platform when he was asked about the possibility of battlefield nukes being deployed or the chances of World War 3 erupting out of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Musk wrote that if Russia is forced to decide between losing Crimea or using tactical nuclear weapons, the nation will choose nuclear weapons.

Musk went on to say that in response to battlefield nukes being first used by Russia, the US may respond with its own tactical nukes, which would then cause Russia to nuke the United States. From that point on, we have World War 3, according to Musk. The Tesla CEO further explained that regardless of how someone feels about Crimea, Russia sees it as a vital part of Russia as its the nation's most southern navy base. Musk used an analogy in an attempt to get people to understand his point, with the Tesla CEO saying that Russia losing Crimea would be like the US losing Hawaii and Pearl Harbor.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk found himself in the middle of online controversy after posting what he believes to be a good peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Elon Musk fired off a series of Tweets on October 4 that proposed a peace deal be drawn up between Russia and Ukraine, and while that initially sounds like an idea most people can get behind, the conditions of the peace deal are what caused the division. Musk proposed that elections should be redone in states annexed by Russia, recognize that Crimea is part of Russia, that the water supply of Crimea should be given to Russia under the assurance it remains stable, and that Ukraine should stay neutral.

These conditions sparked major controversy as Musk fans, and Ukrainian officials rallied against the Tesla CEO, with some Ukrainian officials condemning Musk's opinion and even publicly asking if Musk's Twitter account had been hacked by Russians. Musk's tweets even caught the attention of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who took to Twitter to ask Musk which he liked more - Ukraine or Russia. Musk replied that he still very much supports Ukraine.