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The author said a New York Times investigation found that the distinction between legally sourced and illicit gold was an industry fiction. They argued that Wall Street, central banks and investors were profiting from trading and stockpiling gold supplies that included metal from illegal sources.

The magistrate Marco Aurélio Bellizze, author of the ruling, warned that if the company, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, does not prove that it has fully complied with the equity measures already ordered by the court, it will double the daily fine to up to one million reais (about 176,000 euros) until the end of the second electoral round, scheduled for next Sunday. #Brasil #Meta #LulaDaSilva (translated)

The Electoral Court of Brazil has demanded that Meta demonstrate its impartiality in dealing with the campaigns of candidates Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, following reports that its platforms have hindered the dissemination of political content from both candidates. #Brasil #Meta #LulaDaSilva (translated)

Someone was looking for the deceased, speeding up the anti-maranza law. Salvini is already pointing to a solution: to include some of the measures contained in the draft security law approved by the government in mid-July and currently under examination by the Senate in a decree. #OrdinePubblico #Giovani #Sicurezza (translated)

Miguel Ángel Durán wrote that the use of artificial intelligence allowed for code to be generated at a speed that made it difficult to review and fully understand. He considered that checking the code before moving it to production remained important and responsible, although he stated that some companies pressured to skip those steps and move faster, as was the case with technical debt. Durán maintained that, although people did not have zero risk of making mistakes, he had recently observed an increase in software errors and vulnerabilities. He added that when he did not review the code, he would often ask the AI to explain why it had been implemented in a certain way. He also noted that he saw frustration among those who felt that AI had taken away an important part of what they enjoyed about their work, and asked how others were coping with it. #IA #Desarrollo #Ingeniería (translated)

JH Fonseca suggested that it would be elegant to remember that in 2002, before the PT took over the government, India and Iraq were behind Brazil in basic sanitation. According to him, after the PT governments, the two countries surpassed Brazil, according to the World Bank. Fonseca attributed this situation to the fact that half of the country does not have piped sewage. #Lula #SaneamentoBásico #Brasil (translated)

Reporters United raised questions to Minister Adonis Georgiadis about the Israel Allies Foundation and the meeting at the Athens Club, which he reportedly described as non-secret. They asked which MPs, ministers, and businesspeople attended, who was part of the Greek group of MPs from the organization and under what terms, and whether the presidency of the Parliament was aware of its creation. Reporters United stated that, according to a report on August 8, 2024, Georgiadis had received 11 messages infected with Predator in 2021—more than any other target in Greece—and that he had been officially informed by the Data Protection Authority. They asked him why he did not take legal action and whether being targeted by illegal surveillance software 11 times constituted a national security issue for a high-ranking minister. The outlet also claimed that filming and photographing the minister in public space while performing his duties was a right of journalists and did not violate his personal data. Finally, it reminded that, as reported, its investigations had led Georgiadis to withdraw on May 30, 2025, a secret contract bearing his signature for the transfer of DNA of hundreds of thousands of infants to private individuals. #Δημοσιογραφία #Πολιτική #Δικαιοσύνη (translated)

Glenn criticized a writer in Aftonbladet for having misunderstood a Generation X attitude towards politics and music, according to him. He argued that Metallica's audience did not want political statements from the band and that James Hetfield and the other members understood their audience. Glenn asserted that Metallica's actions against file sharing via Napster were about protecting the band's music, not about politics. He recounted that a friend received a message saying she had been banned from Napster by Metallica, but they laughed about it. He called it brain-dead to describe Metallica as cowardly for not wanting to dedicate playtime to Palestine, the environment, or Russia. Glenn also wrote that Hetfield's statement about politics and music was hypocrisy. https://t.co/ZKhpjjkCKt #Metallica #musik #politik (translated)

Emanuel Boeminghaus stated that Volkswagen is considering freezing the salaries of more than 660,000 employees worldwide at the level of 2026 until 2030. This would mean four years without salary increases, he explained. However, the global salary freeze has not yet been decided. Boeminghaus said that this would make people poorer while inflation is currently rising faster. He cited a report from Handelsblatt dated October 19, 2026, as the source. https://t.co/mcUUYbyeRN #Volkswagen #Gehaltsstopp #Autoindustrie (translated)

Young Russian officer Lev Stupnikov, who has been sending coordinates to Ukrainian forces for over six months, is putting more than 300 of his comrades in mortal danger, and after defecting to the Ukrainian side, he becomes a target for Chechen special units. #Rusija #Ukrajina #rat (translated)

𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗜, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 A newly exposed US political influence network appears to have been designed around a different target from most election propaganda. Its primary audience was not necessarily the voter reading a website, but the automated systems that search the web on behalf of AI chatbots. Threat-intelligence company VisionHeight initially identified 37 anonymous websites presenting themselves as state or local news organisations, opinion publications and national issue sites. By 15 October, the company's co-founder and chief technology officer, Nitsan Daniel, told CyberScoop that the investigation had expanded the observed footprint to 𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟰 𝗨𝗦 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟰𝟲𝟬 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀. The states identified were Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. The infrastructure shows unusually strong signs of coordination. All 37 domains in the original dataset were registered during a single evening; 36 were registered within approximately eight minutes. On 30 September alone, the network published roughly 𝟭𝟬𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲-𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 using common templates and four recurring layouts. VisionHeight assesses that the scale and production pattern strongly suggest extensive automation, although that does not by itself prove which generative-AI system, if any, produced the text. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹. Candidate profiles can run to about 5,000 words, accompanied by similarly long voter guides containing 50 to 63 questions phrased in the style of queries someone might put to an AI assistant. Across the network, formulations such as a candidate being “the stronger choice” were repeated hundreds of times. One profile contained the phrase 34 times. In several voter guides examined by VisionHeight, the favoured candidate was named more than 110 times while an opponent appeared only six or seven times. The websites were also configured to make themselves unusually accessible to AI. Their crawler instructions explicitly welcomed 17 automated systems associated with companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, Meta, Amazon and Apple. Some pages were marked in machine-readable metadata as news articles, while apparently separate publications cited one another. The result is a manufactured ecosystem in which several apparently independent local sources can reinforce the same conclusion. That is the central technique. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴. The more immediate objective appears to be manipulation of the retrieval and search layer: place highly optimised material online, make it easy for automated crawlers to index, create the appearance of corroboration, and increase the chance that an AI assistant retrieves those pages when answering a political question. There is evidence that the network crossed that boundary. VisionHeight says it confirmed that 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆 cited Tar Heel State Report as the first source in at least one response. Separately, one of the network's candidate pages reached third place in a Google search six days after publication, above Ballotpedia for the tested query. These findings demonstrate that the material can enter AI-relevant search and retrieval pipelines. They do 𝗻𝗼𝘁 demonstrate that the operation changed anyone's vote, nor establish how frequently major chatbots have used the network. The timing matters because AI has become part of the election-information environment. An AAPC Foundation survey of 1,568 likely US voters found that about one in five planned to use AI to investigate a race on their ballot, while 38 per cent reported having received election information through an AI-generated search summary. A separate NewsGuard audit found that leading chatbots frequently cited partisan websites disguised as local journalism without clearly identifying their political affiliations. The newly identified network appears to take that existing vulnerability one step further by constructing content specifically around the way machines search and summarise information. 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁? 𝗔𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿. VisionHeight has not attributed the operation to any individual, campaign, company, political party or foreign government. No confirmed name of an operator has been publicly established. Nitsan Daniel is the researcher who helped expose the network, not a person connected to its operation. Some components have explicitly partisan branding. VisionHeight's indicators include domains such as Affordability Democrats, Democratic Women House, Public Safety Democrats and Republican Incumbent Watch, while the live Affordability Democrats site promotes Democratic candidates across 11 competitive House races. That provides evidence about the political direction of some of the published material, but it does 𝗻𝗼𝘁 establish who commissioned, financed or operated the infrastructure, and it would be unjustified to attribute it to the Democratic Party or any particular campaign. The network also appears broader than congressional politics. The live Tar Heel State Report has carried material on county commission and judicial contests, illustrating why the method may be particularly effective in down-ballot races where established local reporting is thin. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲. Propaganda no longer has to persuade a human being directly. It can instead attempt to shape the information environment from which an apparently neutral machine constructs its answer. 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗦: Active / newly exposed and expanding as of 15–16 October 2026. 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗙𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘: High regarding coordinated infrastructure and AI-oriented design; moderate regarding the full current scale; attribution unknown. 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗖𝗘𝗦 VisionHeight — primary investigation, “Someone Is Manipulating Your AI to Swing Your Vote” https://www.visionheight.com/resources/someone-is-manipulating-your-ai-to-swing-your-vote CyberScoop — Derek B. Johnson, 15 October 2026 https://cyberscoop.com/ai-chatbots-election-influence-hyperlocal-networks/ Tar Heel State Report — live network site used for OSINT verification https://tarheelstatereport.com/ Affordability Democrats — live network site https://affordabilitydemocrats.com/ AAPC Foundation — 2026 AI Voter Study https://theaapc.org/release-foundation-research/ NPR — reporting on voters using AI chatbots for the 2026 midterms https://www.wusf.org/2026-10-05/people-are-asking-chatgpt-to-help-them-decide-how-to-vote-in-the-midterms NewsGuard — “Pink Slime Is Infecting AI Chatbots Ahead of the Midterms” https://www.newsguardtech.com/press/pink-slime-is-infecting-ai-chatbots-ahead-of-the-midterms/ 𝗞𝗘𝗬𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗗𝗦 #Disinformed #Disinformation #Propaganda #InfluenceOperations #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIChatbots #ElectionSecurity #USMidterms #USElections #InformationWarfare #CognitiveWarfare #OSINT #ThreatIntelligence #CyberSecurity #DataPoisoning #RetrievalManipulation #SearchManipulation #GenerativeAI #LLM #AIManipulation #PoliticalInfluence #FakeNews #LocalNews #PinkSlime #Perplexity #ElectionIntegrity #InformationIntegrity #DigitalPropaganda #AIsecurity