'No evidence whatsoever': Left refutes right-wing candidate's election fraud claims -- in Peru

Common Dreams
June 08, 2021

Keiko Fujimori (AFP)

Progressives pushed back forcefully on Tuesday against right-wing Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori's allegations of fraud in Sunday's election, saying there has been no evidence so support such claims.

"There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will," Fujimori asserted at a press conference Monday at which she pointed without evidence to "irregularities" and "signs of fraud."

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it." —Progressive International

The allegations of fraud from Keiko Fujimori, a former dictator's daughter, came as voting results showed leftist rival Pedro Castillo with a narrow lead.

A tally of about 95% of the votes showed Castillo with 50.3% of the vote compared to Fujimori's 49.7%.

Fujimori, whom Bloomberg described as a "market favorite," is the daughter of the nation's former dictator, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, currently serving a 25-year sentence in prison for his role in civilian massacres and graft. Keiko Fujimori has said she would pardon her father if elected.

According to The Associated Press:

Voters across Peru, where voting is mandatory, headed to the polls throughout Sunday under a set schedule meant to minimize long lines. No disturbances were reported at voting sites, which even opened in San Miguel del Ene, a remote village in a cocaine-producing area where two weeks ago a massacre ended with 16 people dead.
Pre-election polls indicated the candidates were virtually tied heading into the runoff. In the first round of voting, featuring 18 candidates, neither received more than 20% support and both were strongly opposed by sectors of Peruvian society.

Regional election observers did not report any voting irregularities, as the Guardian noted.

In a statement Tuesday, the Progressive International strongly rejected Fujimori's fraud accusations and urged "patience and vigilance as the final results are counted—especially in the face of fresh attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic process."

"The delegation of the Progressive International has seen no evidence of systemic fraud in the course of the 2021 Peruvian presidential elections. Neither statistical models analyzing results in real time nor our time physical monitoring of this process have revealed any evidence of fraud," the group said.

The impacts of false accusations of election fraud are clear and dangerous, the Progressive International added. The group pointed to examples including U.S. President Donald Trump catalyzing the "revanchist attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to 'stop the steal'" and the 2019 U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia that ousted the democratically elected government of Evo Morales following unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it," the Progressive International said.

David Adler, General Coordinator of the Progressive International, added in a tweet Tuesday that as "Castillo's lead has grown, this grim prediction has come to pass: Keiko Fujimori is now making accusations of 'systematic fraud'—and bringing large parts of the mainstream press with her."

"Our team is clear," Adler wrote. "There is no evidence *whatsoever* to support Keiko's claim."

And, should Castillo emerge victorious, it would be historic, write CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Latin American policy expert Leonardo Flores.

His win would "be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru's middle class and elites," Benjamin and Flores wrote.

A Castillo victory would also "represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration. He has promised to withdraw Peru from the Lima Group, an ad hoc committee of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela," the pair wrote.

Marjorie Taylor Greene slams virus research:

'I don't believe in evolution, I believe in God'

David Edwards

June 08, 2021

Real America's Voice/screen grab

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday disputed the science behind virus research because she does not believe in evolution.

Greene made the remarks while speaking to Steve Bannon on Real America's Voice, where she argued that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be criminally charged over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Georgia Republican said that she opposed so-called "gain of function" research on viruses.

"That's a bioweapon," she charged. "So we need to be very clear about what was the intent of COVID-19 and these viruses that they experiment with like some sort of Dr. Frankenstein experiment."

"I don't buy it because I don't believe in evolution," the congresswoman said. "I don't believe in that type of so-called science. I don't believe in evolution. I believe in God."

Greene added: "These viruses were not making people sick until they created them and made them into weaponized viruses to be able to attach to our cells and make us sick. This has caused so many people to die all over the world."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

This is why Donald Trump makes no attempt to hide his insurrectionist plots

Amanda Marcotte, Salon

June 08, 2021

Donald Trump speaks at a rally. Image via screengrab.

On Tuesday morning, a new Senate report revealed even more of what is increasingly obvious: The January 6 Capitol insurrection was both surprisingly predictable and yet widely ignored by the people who had the power to stop it.

This article was originally published at Salon

"The U.S. Capitol Police had specific intelligence that supporters of President Donald Trump planned to mount an armed invasion of the Capitol at least two weeks before the Jan. 6 riot," the Washington Post reports, "but a series of omissions and miscommunications kept that information from reaching front-line officers targeted by the violence."

The report itself is incredibly bureaucratic and, being bipartisan, overly delicate with the fragile feelings of Republicans who continue to support Trump despite his overt incitement of the insurrection. But the most important and remarkable aspect of the report is how it lays out that Capitol intelligence officials downplayed the threat of violence, even though, to quote the report author Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., "The attack was, quite frankly, planned in plain sight."

Intelligence officers had a huge amount of information about a planned attack because the insurrectionists were openly talking about it online and in great detail. But despite this, intelligence officials deemed the likelihood of an attack as "remote" and "improbable," choosing instead to ignore right-wing militia types openly sharing maps and strategies for storming the building. There are a lot of theories as to why Capitol intelligence simply didn't take the insurrectionists seriously, but it really may be as simple as this: Hiding in plain sight works — at least when it comes to white conservatives with terroristic inclinations.

Most of us, including intelligence officials, reasonably expect that people engaging in a criminal conspiracy prefer to do so in secret. (Cue the scene from "The Wire" of Stringer Bell dressing down an underling for "taking notes on a criminal f--king conspiracy!") But it appears that scheming right in the open was more effective for the Capitol insurrectionists precisely because it cut across the "common sense" expectation. All the guns and maps talk was easy for intelligence officials to write off as mere fantasy play-acting, instead of a serious plan.

And really, is it any surprise that the Capitol insurrectionists pulled off the "hiding in plain sight" strategy? They were only following the lead of the chief instigator of the insurrection, Trump himself. For years, Trump successfully demonstrated that the best way to get away with crimes is to commit them loudly. From the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape to the flagrant public bribe-taking to giving Russian conspiracists instructions on camera to witness tampering on Twitter, Trump realized that being bold about crimes and corruption keeps people from taking it seriously.

The reason it worked is simple: Trump didn't bother to hide his corruption. That lulled people into believing it couldn't really be that bad. It was easy for Trump apologists to write it off as "jokes" or otherwise no big deal, because if it was serious, then he would take pains to hide it, right? It was only when Trump did take measures to hide his behavior — in the attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian president into falsifying evidence for a smear of Joe Biden — that his malfeasance finally got the attention it deserved. And it was all because that particular scandal fit our pre-existing notion that if it's really a crime, the criminals try to hide what they're doing.

Trump used this "hiding in plain sight" strategy to organize and incite the January 6 insurrection.

In the days after the Capitol was stormed, the Just Security blog put together a comprehensive timeline of Trump's year of incitement and what was remarkable is how open Trump was about what he was doing. He repeatedly heaped praise on right-wing militias that used threats of violence against public officials and Biden campaign staff. He started in early on the Big Lie, insisting for months ahead of the election that the only way he could lose is if it were stolen. He even used a presidential debate stage to issue instructions to the Proud Boys, telling them to be on "stand by" before he gave them the time and place for the storming in an infamous tweet reading, "Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

The extremely public nature of Trump's incitement, however, perversely gave congressional Republicans the cover they needed to claim he didn't do the thing he obviously did. Repeatedly, Republicans insisted that Trump was merely speaking metaphorically and not literally with all his "fight" and "take back" language. That Trump didn't hide or show shame aided this nonsense excuse, because it really is just that hard to believe that someone would be so bold and public about a criminal conspiracy. And because Trump left the detailed work of the insurrection to the people who organized it online — basically, crowdsourcing an insurrection — it allows Republicans to pretend that he wasn't the ringleader.

Many Stringer Bell jokes were made about how Trump and his cronies do their crimes right out in the public view and how supposedly foolish this was. But really, was it?

Most of Trump's cronies are walking around free. Trump openly and flagrantly attempted a coup, and he's not only not in jail for it, but he's still the de facto head of the Republican Party. Whenever anyone points out that he's a literal seditionist, Republicans just shrug and pretend all of that violence and insurrection talk was just jokes and fantasies. Because of the politics of tip-toeing around Republican feelings, the Senate report focuses on "better planning, training and intelligence gathering," according to the Washington Post, and "its contents steer clear of offering any assessment or conclusion about Trump's responsibility for the riot." That is unfortunate because while intelligence failures were a problem, the real reason the Capitol riot happened is because Trump was empowered by the GOP and right-wing media to spread his lies and incite violence without consequence. And that problem hasn't been addressed in any meaningful way at all. If anything, it's just gotten worse. Trump has been using the media to disseminate yet another date for his followers to take action — sometime in August — just as he targeted January 6. And he used a platform offered to him by the Republican party, a big speech at a North Carolina event, to continue stoking insurrections by claiming that Joe Biden's electoral win was the "crime of the century."

Putting more cops around the Capitol Building doesn't address this larger issue. If there is more violence, it's unlikely to target the Capitol, in no small part because Trump's followers understand that it's likely to be more secure than it was January 6.

No, the real issue here is the "hiding in plain sight" problem.

Trump and his cronies have figured out how to use media and social media as a tool to crowdsource ideas or a fascistic takeover of the U.S. government. They throw out conspiracy theories and let the MAGAheads figure out the details for themselves about how to make it happen. It's inefficient, sure. Many of the schemes that the red hats tease out online fail to manifest in person. Still, it allows Trump to keep his hands relatively clean because he gets to pretend he's just spitballing instead of giving instructions. It's on other people to work out the details, from the Republicans passing state laws to make it easier to steal elections to the red hats who have now been given a new date to fixate on as a possible next target. As long as people's heads remain in the sand about what Trump is doing, the threat of more violence remains active.

Russia threatens to leave International Space Station program over US sanctions: reports


By Elizabeth Howell about 7 hours ago

The International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)

Russia's space chief is threatening to leave the International Space Station (ISS) program in 2025 unless the United States lifts sanctions against the Russian space sector.

"If the sanctions … remain and are not lifted in the near future, the issue of Russia's withdrawal from the ISS will be the responsibility of the American partners," Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said during a Russian parliament hearing on Monday (June 7), according to NBC News.

"Either we work together, in which case the sanctions are lifted immediately, or we will not work together and we will deploy our own station," Rogozin added. Russia is about to launch a new docking module to the ISS this summer that could serve as the hub of an independent complex.

Related: The International Space Station: Inside and out (infographic)

Rogozin also claimed that Russia cannot launch some satellites because the U.S. sanctions forbid his country from importing some microchips required for the Russian program, Reuters reported. (There is also a global shortage of microchips associated with manufacturing shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic.)

"We have more than enough rockets but nothing to launch them with," Rogozin said, according to Reuters. "We have spacecraft that are nearly assembled, but they lack one specific microchip set that we have no way of purchasing because of the sanctions."

In 2014, Rogozin famously remarked that NASA should use trampolines instead of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the ISS. The comments came after the United States and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russian officials — including Rogozin himself — related to Russian military actions in Crimea. (After NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, the Soyuz was the only orbital astronaut taxi available. That situation changed last year, however, when SpaceX began flying crews to and from the ISS.)

Other recent sanctions came in the wake of what U.S. officials described as Russian-led cyberattacks and election interference — a claim Russia has denied, Reuters noted. In December, the administration of President Donald Trump alleged that Russian space entities TsNIIMash (the Central Research Institute of Machine Building) and the Rocket and Space Center Progress have ties to the nation's military, NBC reported. Such a designation means that U.S. companies need to acquire licenses before selling to these organizations.

These entities were among dozens that came under scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Commerce during Trump's tenure, in both Russia and China. Fresh tensions came after new U.S. President Joe Biden called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a "killer" earlier this year, according to Reuters, while imposing more sanctions on Russia.

Rogozin had an "introductory phone call" with new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Friday (June 4), NASA said that same day in a statement, framing the conversation as a "productive discussion about continued cooperation between NASA and Roscosmos." The statement, quoting Nelson, also said that NASA is "committed to continuing that very effective ISS partnership."

Yet a statement by Roscosmos on Friday said that the sanctions and a lack of official information about the future of the ISS are "substantially hindering the cooperation" between Russia and the U.S. in the space realm, which extends back to 1975's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. The current ISS agreement is set to end in 2024, although numerous partners are negotiating an extension until at least 2028.

Russia indicated that it needs more assurances to move forward after 2024. "This is about the sanctions introduced by the American administration against the enterprises of the Russian space industry, as well as the absence of any official information in Roscosmos from the U.S. partners on the plans to further control and operate the ISS," Roscosmos said in Friday's statement.

Related: Building the International Space Station (photos)

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin speaks virtually at the 71st International Astronautical Congress on Oct. 12, 2020. (Image credit: International Astronautical Federation/YouTube )

Both NASA and Roscosmos said they do plan to continue discussions, including face-to-face. Nelson is expected to come to Russia soon, and negotiations will be ongoing with the Europeans until "end of June 2021," Roscosmos said.

One opportunity for discussion is the Global Space Exploration Conference, which will be held in St. Petersburg from June 14 to June 18. That meeting is co-hosted by Roscosmos and the International Astronautical Federation.

The Americans and the Russians have been the major partners in the ISS program since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the space station agreement was modified to bring in Russian participation — in part due to international concerns about where Russian space engineers would go amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. Getting ready for ISS long-duration missions was also one of the reasons NASA offered to ferry Americans to the Soviet-Russian Mir space station in the 1990s.

At the time that Russia was invited to join the ISS project, Europe, Japan and Canada had been working on another NASA-led program called Space Station Freedom. Freedom never got off the ground due to complex technical, funding and policy problems during its development.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Washington state kicks off 'Joints for Jabs' to promote COVID-19 vaccinations



Photo by: Ted S. Warren/AP
In this April 12, 2018, photo, a worker at the Hollingsworth Cannabis Company packages pre-rolled marijuana joints near Shelton, Wash. America's marijuana supporters have a lot to celebrate on this 420 holiday: Thirty states have legalized some form of medical marijuana, according to a national advocacy group. Nine of those states and Washington, D.C., also have broad legalization where adults 21 and older can use pot for any reason. Michigan could become the 10th state with its ballot initiative this year. Yet cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and it still has many opponents. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)


By: ABC News
Posted  Jun 08, 2021

Adults can claim a complimentary joint of marijuana in Washington state this week when they receive a COVID-19 vaccine shot.

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board announced Monday that the promotion, called "Joints for Jabs," was effective immediately and would run through July 12. During the afforded time period, state-licensed cannabis retailers are permitted to give one free pre-rolled joint to customers who are 21 or older when they receive their first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at an active, on-site vaccination clinic. Customers can only claim the complimentary joint from the retail location during the same visit as receiving the jab, according to the board.

The board said it has "received multiple requests from cannabis retail licensees to engage in promotions to support state vaccination efforts." The board recently allowed for a beer, wine or cocktail to be provided at no cost for those 21 or older who are vaccinated by June 30.

More than 44% of the Evergreen State's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the latest data from the Washington State Department of Health. Meanwhile, over 42% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington is not the only U.S. state to get creative in incentivizing people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. In Arizona, a cannabis dispensary is handing out free pre-rolled joints and gummy edibles in exchange for getting vaccinated. On April 20, a day widely considered the unofficial pot holiday, cannabis reform activist group D.C. Marijuana Justice (DCMJ) gave away more than 8 pounds of locally-grown cannabis rolled up into over 4,200 joints at 30 vaccination sites across Washington, D.C. Then New Jersey partnered with 13 local breweries to offer free beer to residents who got their first vaccine dose in May.

Meanwhile, several states have launched COVID-19 vaccine lotteries in which vaccinated residents are eligible to win cash prizes.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 33 million people across the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 600,000 have died from the disease, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

Australian cops, FBI created backdoored chat app, told crims it was secure – then snooped on 9,000 users' plots

Hundreds of arrests already in Oz, details of European and US ops to be revealed soon

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor

Tue 8 Jun 2021 

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has revealed it was able to decrypt messages sent on a supposedly secure messaging app that was seeded into the criminal underworld and promoted as providing snoop-proof comms.

The app was in fact secretly built by the FBI, and designed to allow law enforcement to tune into conversations between about 9,000 users scattered around Earth.

Results in Australia alone have included over 500 warrants executed, 200-plus arrests, the seizure of AU$45m and 3.7 tonnes of drugs, and the prevention of a credible threat to murder a family of five. Over 4,000 AFP officers were involved in raids overnight, Australian time. Europol and the FBI will detail their use of the app in the coming hours.

The existence of the app — part of Operation Ironside, which quietly began three years ago — was revealed at a press conference in Australia today, where AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw said that, during informal meetings over beers, members of the AFP and the FBI cooked up the idea of creating a backdoored app. The idea built on previous such efforts, such as the Phantom Secure platform.

The app, called AN0M, was seeded into the organised crime community. The software would only run on smartphones specially modified so that they could not make calls nor send emails. These handsets were sold on the black market between criminals as secure messaging tools. The app would only communicate with other AN0M-equipped phones, and required payment of a monthly fee.

“We were able to see every handset that was handed out and attribute it to individuals,” Kershaw said.

“Criminals needed to know a criminal to get a device,” reads the AFP’s announcement of the operation. “The devices organically circulated and grew in popularity among criminals, who were confident of the legitimacy of the app because high-profile organised crime figures vouched for its integrity.”

But the software had a backdoor. Commissioner Kershaw said the organisation he leads “provided a technical capability to decrypt the messages,” and that as a result his force, the FBI, and Europol were able to observe communications among criminals in plain text.

“All they talk about is drugs and violence,” Kershaw said. “There was no attempt to hide behind any kind of codified information.” Intercepts included comments about planned murders and information about where and when speedboats would appear to shift contraband.

Kershaw said the surveillance enabled by the app is legal under the terms of Australia’s Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018. Law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions also had legal cover for their use of the software.

However, some of those authorities were set to expire. That, and an operational decision to end the operation due to the opportunity to act on intelligence gathered using AN0M, led to today’s disclosures.

AN0M gave us insights we never had before

“The use of encrypted apps represents significant challenges,” Kershaw said. “AN0M gave us insights we never had before.”

The commissioner acknowledged that criminals will now adjust their behaviour as a result of this news, but suggested the AFP is working to develop similar capabilities. “This was a small platform. We know there are bigger ones. We will ensure we have the technology to disrupt criminals."

FBI International Operations Division legal attaché for Australia Anthony Russo offered similar comments, saying: “Criminals should be on notice that law enforcement are resolute to continue to evolve our capabilities.”

Kershaw somewhat smugly suggested that organised crime will take a while to bounce back from this operation, as intercepts of AN0M conversations suggest that arrests made before the app was revealed have sparked internecine warfare and revenge plots.

By the way, it turns out someone was able to figure out the FBI's ruse in March this year, though they thought the software had been backdoored by its makers and not the Feds. A blog post describing the workings of the code was later deleted. ®
FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

From hidden master keys to pineapples stuffed with Bolivian marching powder — this story has it all

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

Tue 8 Jun 2021 // 22:58 UTC
3

The FBI has revealed how it managed to hoodwink the criminal underworld with its secretly backdoored AN0M encrypted chat app, leading to hundreds of arrests, the seizure of 32 tons of drugs, 250 firearms, 55 luxury cars, more than $148M, and even cocaine-filled pineapples.

About 12,000 smartphones with AN0M installed were sold into organized crime rings: the devices were touted as pure encrypted messaging tools — no GPS, email or web browsing, and certainly no voice calls, cameras, and microphones. They were "designed by criminals, for criminals exclusively," one defendant told investigators, Randy Grossman, Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of California, told a press conference on Tuesday.

However, AN0M was forged in a joint operation by Australian and US federal law enforcement, and was deliberately and surreptitiously engineered so that agents could peer into the encrypted conversations and read crooks' messages. After Australia's police broke the news that the messaging app had recorded everything from drug deals to murder plots — leading to hundreds of arrests — now the FBI has spilled its side of the story, revealing a complex sting dubbed Operation Trojan Shield.


The Dept of Justice's Randy Grossman walks through journalists through Operation Trojan Shield at a press conference on Tuesday

"For the first time the FBI developed and operated its own hardened encrypted device company, called AN0M," Grossman said.

"Criminal organizations and the individual defendants we have charged purchased and distributed AN0M devices in an effort to secretly plan and execute their crimes. But the devices were actually operated by the FBI."
Playing the long game

According to court documents [PDF] this all came about after the shutdown of Phantom Secure, a Canadian biz selling Blackberry phones customized for encrypted chat to the criminal community. CEO Vincent Ramos pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with drug traffickers and was sentenced to nine years behind bars and had $80M in assets seized.

The closure of Phantom Secure put the staff working there on the FBI's radar. The bureau's San Diego office recruited a developer at the company as a confidential human source (CHS), court documents state. This source had previously been sentenced to six years in the clink for importing illegal drugs, and agreed to cooperate with the Feds to reduce any future punishment potentially coming their way.

Crucially, not only had this programmer worked on the Phantom Secure's encrypted messaging software, but they were also doing work on rival encrypted comms service Sky Global — which also sold modified handsets with secure messaging features — as well as developing their own secure customized phone called AN0M.

"The CHS … had invested a substantial amount of money into the development of a new hardened encrypted device," the indictment by FBI Special Agent Nicholas Cheviron reads.

"The CHS offered this next generation device, named 'AN0M,' to the FBI to use in ongoing and new investigations. The CHS also agreed to offer to distribute AN0M devices to some of the CHS’s existing network of distributors of encrypted communications devices."

And so, in October 2018, the three-year sting operation began.

The CHS — who was paid $120,000 plus $59,000 in living and travel expenses by the authorities — worked with the FBI and the Australian Federal Police to hide a master decryption key into the AN0M app. Messages sent by the software's users were quietly copied and sent off to servers controlled by law enforcement, who were able to use the key to decrypt the texts. Technically speaking, each message is effectively BCC'd to a so-called iBot server located outside the United States that strips away the AN0M-level encryption, and re-encrypts the text for law enforcement. This text is then sent to another server, where the contents can be decrypted and viewed by investigators.

The first three distributors for AN0M were based Down Under. As the Australian authorities were ahead of the FBI in getting a legal framework in place to snoop on these conversations, the Oz cops were first in examining the chatter — albeit just conversations involving users either in Australia or with a nexus to it. Presumably, the AN0M app was set up to send the messages to a server in Australia's jurisdiction.

In this beta test, 50 handsets were passed out Down Under, and this phase of the operation was successful; two of the country's biggest criminal gangs were successfully penetrated and the message copying system worked perfectly. Aussie police reviewing the texts said they found 100 per cent were related to crime. Everyone who used the app was assigned a unique ID, and these handles were known to the police.
Let's go global

In the next phase, the CHS expanded the distribution network beyond Australia, and the FBI found itself in a position to collect the data. After negotiations with an unnamed third country, a message-relaying iBot server was set up in that nation to collect the BCC'd conversations, and on October 21, 2019, it began beaming copies of crooks' chats from AN0M handhelds to an FBI-owned system every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The third country's officials had secured a court order for the surveillance, and the FBI used a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, also known as an MLAT, to obtain the decrypted material.

Sales of AN0M grew steadily, and got a boost when French and Dutch police took down the EncroChat encrypted service in 2020. When a similar swoop shuttered Sky Global in 2021, demand skyrocketed. After the latter take-down, AN0M sales tripled to more than 9000 handsets, each costing $1700 with a six-month subscription to the AN0M encrypted messaging network, Grossman said.

The data haul from the application was immense: more than 27 million messages from 100 countries, and between 300 criminal gangs. This included more than 400,000 photos, typically of drugs or guns and, crucially, shipment plans.


A photo shared via the app. It's tuna surprise. The surprise being there's no tuna. It's coke. Source: DoJ. Click to enlarge

Belgian police, tipped off by the AN0M data, in 2020 captured 613 kilos of cocaine hidden in tuna cans. These were traced to an Ecuadorian supplier, who was caught with another 1523 kilos of coke in a container that would have shipped to Antwerp.


Would make for one hell of a Hawaiian pizza — cocaine-stuffed pineapples. Source: DoJ. Click to enlarge

After intercepting chat about cocaine shipments, on May 12 this year Spanish police seized 1595 kilos of cocaine hidden in hollowed out pineapples. The delivery, from a supplier in Costa Rica, had an estimated street value of $70M.

Police around the world have made 800 arrests from AN0M-gathered intelligence, including cuffing six US law enforcement officers. Of all of those detained, they primarily face charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, gun violations, and violent crime.

Grossman also announced Uncle Sam had indicted 17 suspects on RICO charges relating to the use and marketing of the AN0M handsets. Most of these people are said to be distributors, though the prosecutor said three were administrators who helped run the service. Eight of those RICO suspects have already been collared and detained.

"Operation Trojan Shield has shattered any confidence the criminals may have in the use of hardened encrypted devices," Grossman concluded. ®

There Are At Least 36 Intelligent Alien Civilizations In Our Galaxy, Say Scientists

In Photos: NASA’s Juno Sends Back Epic Images Of Ganymede, The Biggest Moon In Our Solar System

Jamie Carter
Senior Contributor

FORBES
Science
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky



This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS

NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter this week got to within 645 miles/1,000 kilometers of Ganymede, the Solar System’s largest moon.

The spacecraft’s JunoCam imaging system had just 25 minutes to take photographs, just long enough for five exposures, before it then got close to Jupiter for the 33rd time.


Bigger than Mercury and only slightly smaller than Mars, images are now coming back from Juno of Ganymede’s pock-marked, gorgeously grooved and patterned surface.


This image of the dark side of Ganymede was obtained by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit navigation ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS

The Juno science team will now scour the images, comparing them to those from previous missions, looking for changes in surface features that might have occurred in the 20 years since Ganymede was last photographed.

“Things usually happen pretty quick in the world of flybys ... every second counts,” said Juno Mission Manager Matt Johnson of JPL. On Monday, Juno raced past Ganymede at 12 miles/19 kilometers per second and on Tuesday it skimmed the cloud tops of Jupiter at 36 miles/58 kilometers per second.

Larger than both Mercury and Pluto and only a third smaller than Mars, Ganymede has a diameter of 3,273 miles/5,268 kilometers. It’s the largest moon and the ninth-largest object in the Solar System.

The biggest of Jupiter’s 79 moons, Ganymede is one of the four Galilean satellites, the other being Europa, Callisto and Io. These icy Jovian moons were first discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610.

Could Ganymede support life? It does have a thin oxygen atmosphere, but it’s not breathable. However, single-cell microbial life could exist in its subterranean ocean.

About 10 times deeper than Earth’s oceans and thought to contain more water than is found on Earth, Ganymede’s ocean is reckoned to be 60 miles/100 kilometers thick and buried under an icy crust about 95 miles/150 kilometers thick.

“Ganymede’s ice shell has some light and dark regions, suggesting that some areas may be pure ice while other areas contain dirty ice,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “MWR will provide the first in-depth investigation of how the composition and structure of the ice varies with depth, leading to a better understanding of how the ice shell forms and the ongoing processes that resurface the ice over time.”

Ganymede is also the only moon in the Solar System with a magnetic field—a bubble-shaped region of charged particles. Scientists have spotted aurorae—as ribbons of glowing, hot electrified gas—around its poles.


It’s the movement of the aurorae—which rock back and forth as Ganymede’s magnetic field interacts with nearby Jupiter’s—that enabled scientists to determine that a large amount of saltwater exists beneath Ganymede’s crust.


To present the best information in a single view of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, a global image mosaic ... [+] USGS ASTROGEOLOGY SCIENCE CENTER/WHEATON/NASA/JPL-CALTECH

“As Juno passes behind Ganymede, radio signals will pass through Ganymede’s ionosphere, causing small changes in the frequency that should be picked up by two antennas at the Deep Space Network’s Canberra complex in Australia,” said Dustin Buccino, a signal analysis engineer for the Juno mission at JPL. “If we can measure this change, we might be able to understand the connection between Ganymede’s ionosphere, its intrinsic magnetic field, and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”


The shallow, scalloped depression in the center of this picture from NASA's Galileo spacecraft is a ... [+] UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Previously photographed by NASA’s Pioneer 10, Voyager, Galileo and the passing New Horizons spacecraft, Juno’s images reveal a two types of terrain on Ganymede—highly cratered, darker regions and lighter terrain that’s grooved and patterned.

Along with the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) and Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instruments, Juno’s Microwave Radiometer’s (MWR) peered into Ganymede’s water-ice crust, obtaining data on its composition and temperature.


The north pole of Ganymede can be seen in center of this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared ... [+] NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Juno already had a brief look at Ganymede, returning the first-ever images of its north pole after a flyby on December 26, 2019. However, this week’s flyby is by far its closest examination of the giant moon.

Having just completed its core five-year mission surveying the giant planet, Juno’s 34 perijove—close flyby—of Jupiter sees it in a new, shorter orbit of the giant planet. Its new trajectory has been carefully planned to make sure that Juno gets close to two other moons of Jupiter during its remaining 42 orbits through 2025.


The Galilean satellites are the four largest moons of Jupiter—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. GETTY

The furthest solar-powered spacecraft from Earth, Juno will get to within 200 miles/320 kilometers of Europa on September 29, 2022 and then flyby the volcanic moon of Io twice, getting to within 900 miles/1,500 km of it on both December 30, 2023 and on February 3, 2024.

It’s possible that there will be a further mission extension after that if the spacecraft and its battery remain healthy, though ultimately it will perform a “death dive” into Jupiter to prevent it accidentally crashing into—and polluting—one of Jupiter’s moons., all of which are on NASA’s to-do list in its search for traces of life.


Jupiter as captured by Juno on July 28, 2020. NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN M. GILL

“Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible,” said Bolton. “By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century, both complementing future missions with our unique sensors and helping prepare for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system—NASA’s Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.”

Part of NASA’s New Frontiers program of medium-sized planetary science spacecraft, Juno’s extended mission means it’s now moving from a mission focused on studying the giant planet’s gravity and magnetic fields to a full system-explorer.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

Jamie Carter
I'm an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer writing about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and the author of "A Stargazing Program for Beginners: A Pocket Field Guide" (Springer, 2015), as well as many eclipse-chasing guides.

London assault that killed four Muslim family members a 'terrorist attack': Trudeau


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a statement in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, regarding the recent tragedy in London, Ontario. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Arvin Joaquin, The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, June 8, 2021 5:49PM EDT

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the attack in London, Ont., that killed four members of a Muslim family and left one child in hospital was an act of terrorism.

After observing a moment of silence for the victims, Trudeau spoke in the House of Commons and called the assault “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.”

“Their lives were taken in a brutal, cowardly and brazen act of violence,” Trudeau said. “This killing was no accident. This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred in the heart of one of our communities.”

Police said a man intentionally drove a truck into the family out for a walk on Sunday evening, and that he targeted them because of their faith.

Nathaniel Veltman, 20, faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

Trudeau said he's horrified by the attack and that his government stands in solidarity with the victims' loved ones during this extremely difficult time.

“This is unfortunately not an isolated event,” Trudeau said. “So many other people across the country who faced insults, threats and violence. They were all targeted because of their Muslim faith. This is happening here in Canada and it has to stop.”

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said he grieves with Muslim community members in London and across the country because this is a pain they have known before.

The latest statistics show that in 2017, the year of the Quebec City mosque shooting when a gunman killed six people, the incidents of police-reported hate crimes against Muslims in Canada rose to 349 cases - a 151-per cent increase from the 139 cases recorded in 2016.

However, Statistics Canada says about two-thirds of hate crimes across the country go unreported.

“Some people have said this is not our Canada, and I think about what that means when people say this is not our Canada,” said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. “The reality is our Canada is a place of racism, of violence, of genocide of Indigenous people … Muslims are not safe in this country.”

Singh said many people live in fear because of the way they look. He said most of the hatred stems from prejudice based on identity and faith.

“To Muslim Canadians, I'm so sorry that you have to live like this,” he said. “That you have to live in fear.”

Singh said Canada must acknowledge that the urgent threat to public safety comes from extreme right-wing ideology, white supremacy and hate groups that radicalize people, adding there must be resources to address these dangers.

Trudeau said the government will continue to fund initiatives like the Security Infrastructure Program to protect schools and places of worship for communities at risk. He added the Liberals will also continue to fight hate online and off-line, which will include more action to dismantle hate groups.

“We will continue doing everything we can to keep communities safe.”

Trudeau is scheduled to be at a vigil outside the London Muslim Mosque this evening. The prime minister also offered opposition leaders transport via Challenger to London, Ont.

An adviser to Green party Leader Annamie Paul said she'll also attend the vigil and will go to London via an electric car.

Trudeau's spokeswoman Ann-Clara Vaillancourt said O'Toole and Blanchet have accepted the offer of transportation.

Singh's office said he will travel separately to attend the vigil.

“I will be joining my Muslim friends and family in London today,” Singh wrote in a tweet. “To grieve with them. To pray with them. To be with them. Because that's what we do for the people we love.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2021.

Crowds begin to gather ahead of London vigil for family run down in hate-motivated attack


A vigil is being held for the Muslim family police say were targeted in a hate-motivated attack that killed 4. Watch LIVE here. CP24 LIVE | CP24.com

Community devastated by London attack: friend

Chris Fox, Web Content Writer, CP24
Published Tuesday, June 8, 2021 5:17AM EDT

Crowds are beginning to gather outside a London mosque ahead of a vigil to remember members of a Muslim family who police say were intentionally struck down by a vehicle in a hate-motivated attack over the weekend.

The family was out for an evening walk on Sunday when they were struck by a pickup truck being driven by a 20-year-old man.

Four members of the family ranging in age from 15 to 74 were all killed as a result.

The fifth member of the family, a nine-year-old boy, was seriously injured but is expected to survive.

The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman, allegedly sped away from the scene following the carnage but was arrested at a nearby mall a short time later. He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in the attack.

“This is nothing short of a terrorist attack on innocent people based on their faith and their religion and there is no place for that in Ontario,” Premier Doug Ford told a pool reporter at Queen’s Park on Tuesday morning. “We are a community that sticks together and we will be united behind the Muslim community.”



Vigil set for tonight

Sunday’s attack and the subsequent revelation that it was motivated by hate has sent shockwaves through the London community and has prompted some calls for terror-related charges to be filed.

Tonight's vigil, set for 7 p.m., will be held at the London Muslim Mosque where the family were well known fixtures.

In advance of the parking lot vigil, the Ford government has issued a one-time exemption that will lift all pandemic gathering limits so long as attendees from different households remain two metres apart.

Speaking with CP24 earlier on Tuesday, London Mayor Ed Holder said that the vigil will be about “London wrapping its collective arms around our Muslim community” as they begin the grieving process.

“The Muslim community has been very much a fabric of our community. They are phenomenal contributors to London's economic and cultural well being. They've always been there for us as community and now it's our turn to be there for them,” he said. “So tonight we'll have a vigil at the London Muslim mosque and this will be London wrapping its collective arms around our little community and saying to them ‘we're in this together.’”

Holder said that Sunday’s attack was an “unthinkable” tragedy that has caused almost “indescribable pain and suffering.”

He said that he appreciates the fear and anxiety that many members of the city’s Muslim community are feeling in the wake of Sunday’s attack and wants them to know that the wider community is feeling their pain.

“We are all Londoners,” he said.




Family remembered for kind nature

Police have not released the names of the victims but relatives have identified them as Salman Afzaal, 46, his 44-year-old wife Madiha Salman, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Salman and Afzaal's 74-year-old mother.

According to an online fundraiser page, Afzaal was a physiotherapist who was known for his “gentle and welcoming smile” while his wife “was a brilliant scholar and a caring mother and friend” who was obtaining her PhD in civil engineering at Western University.

The post said that the couple’s 15-year-old daughter was “a loving friend to many” who was just wrapping up her Grade 9 year while her grandmother “was a pillar of their family that cherished their daily walks.”

“This family struggled very hard and established themselves. They went to school, their kids were very bright and they were there always there with smiles for their neighbours, for everyone. Even when someone was being difficult, they were always very gentle with them,” family friend Saboor Khan told CP24 on Tuesday. “Just the ease and comfort people would feel around them, that friendship, it is gone and it will be missed forever.”

Trudeau, Ford to attend vigil

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend tonight’s vigil, as will Ford.

Conservative Party and NDP leaders Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh will also be in attendance.

Addressing the tragedy at the House of Commons earlier on Tuesday, Trudeau called it a “terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities.”

"What happened on Sunday in London – this act of terrorism and of Islamophobia – is sickening. It is heartbreaking. It’s hard to find words that are enough," he said during a subsequent news conference "What can be said when yet another family has had their loved ones ripped away? When a child is in hospital? When a community is in mourning? So all I can say is this: To everyone who is grieving, who is angry, who is afraid – your neighbours stand with you. Your community stands with you. We will not let hate divide us"

Few details have emerged about the suspect and his motivations at this point, though CTV News did obtain a photo of him on Tuesday afternoon.

Gray Ridge Egg Farms also released a statement acknowledging that the suspect was a part-time employee at its Strathroy plant and extending their “heartfelt sympathy to the family and the Muslim community."

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Nutritional supplement proves 92% effective in boosting brain function

Individuals with communication disorders report improvement with focus, speech, and motor skills, after using a patented nutritional supplement

CHERAB FOUNDATION

Research News

 

An international subject pool was studied to confirm the effectiveness of a whole food complete vitamin and meal replacement product, IQed. The article, co-authored by Lisa Geng; Francine Hamel, EdD, SLP-CCC; Doreen Lewis, Ph.D., appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, Alternative Therapies (Altern Ther Health Med 2021 Mar;27(2):11-20

The findings indicate that the carefully developed nutritional supplement, IQed Smart Nutrition, can help bolster key functions for people with a wide range of prevalent diagnoses including Autism, Apraxia, and ADHD, and other obscure, but equally challenging, diagnoses encompassing speech and motor processing disorders.  

Deficits in speech and communication were the highest reported area of difficulty for this population, prior to taking the supplement, afflicting 83.8% of respondents. After supplementation, expressive speech improved for 85.7% of the participants with the increased vocalizations (sounds, words) factor showing the highest observed improvement (88.1%) among all speech and communication factors combined.

In all other categories, more than 67% of the survey respondents reported improvements in all measured areas: speech (77.6%), oral motor skills (63.2%), receptive ability (69.6%), focus (65.1%), motor planning (77.6%), mood (62.3%), social skills (59.3%), and physical/ behavioral health (47.3%).

"As a mom of special needs children that runs a nonprofit, I have found that specific essential nutrients are key for the acceleration of progress," said Co-author Lisa Geng, founder, and president of the Cherab Foundation. 

The main aim of this study funded by the nonprofit Cherab Foundation, and its subsequent article, is to guide future research into the dietary interventions and potential management of neurological conditions using natural food products, vitamin and mineral supplements, and Ayurvedic and botanical ingredients, with a focus on improving the quality of daily living and specific developmental milestones for children and adults with disabilities. 

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Reference: Results of a Consumer Survey on the Effectiveness of a Nutritional Blend Reported on Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms, Apraxia, and Other Conditions Involving Motor and Speech Delays (Geng, Hamill, Lewis, 2021) Alternative Therapies In Health And Medicine 11-20 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32088673/

The Cherab Foundation is a registered 501(c)3 with a focus on Communication Impairments. Cherab's main areas of focus are Awareness, Education and much needed Research.