United States | News & Politics

A key source named by The New York Times as an expert helping to verify the authenticity of internal Hamas documents in a major report in October told Drop Site News he had raised concerns about the veracity of the documents in his interviews with the Times. Israel provided the paper with alleged Hamas meeting minutes as part of its campaign to directly link Iran to the planning of the October 7 attacks.

Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, whom the paper described as “a Hamas member and a former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul,” said a Times reporter only permitted him to review one page of the 30 pages of documents the Times asked him to verify. Al-Awawdeh, according to WhatsApp messages seen by Drop Site News, told a Times reporter that without seeing more of the document “it is hard to judge” its authenticity.

“I asked for the other pages and he said he couldn’t send them to me but he said he could read them to me at a later time and I told him that wouldn’t work, if I could see the pages, it would be preferable,” al-Awawdeh told Drop Site. The Times never provided al-Awawdeh with additional pages and subsequently cited him in an October 12 story as the only named source for its verification of what it described as “Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings” that “provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23689894

from #972Magazine [published in Israel]
By Ahmed Moor
December 17, 2024

Dec 16 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) said on Monday it had formed a subsidiary that will help U.S. defense companies incorporate artificial intelligence into their operations.

Companies across sectors have leaned more on AI over the past few years to help optimize their workflow. However, defense companies have remained cautious given the sensitive data required to train models in the sector.

Earlier this month, privately held defense tech company Anduril Industries partnered with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to develop and deploy advanced artificial intelligence solutions for national security missions.

The space entrepreneur Elon Musk is unlikely to receive government security clearances if he so applied, even as his SpaceX launch company blasts military and spy agency payloads into orbit, according to a report on Monday.

The billionaire, a close ally of Donald Trump, who is set to join the incoming administration as an efficiency expert and recently became the first person to exceed $400bn in self-made personal wealth, is reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been advised by SpaceX lawyers not to seek highest-level security clearances owing to personal drug use and contacts with foreign nationals.

Musk currently holds a “top-secret” clearance that took years to obtain after he discussed use of marijuana on a 2018 podcast with Joe Rogan, according to the outlet. But that may not be enough to have access to information about US government payloads in his rockets.

Typically, candidates undergoing federal security screenings by the department of defense may not receive clearance if the agency expresses concerns about drug or alcohol use, criminal conduct, psychological conditions, sexual behavior or allegiance to the US.

some sources

• https://seekingalpha.com/article/4359594-real-unemployment-rate-is-21-percent-and-heading-higher
• https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/what-its-like-to-be-evicted-during-the-coivd-19-pandemic.html
• https://firstfocus.org/update/nearly-5-million-children-have-lost-health-care-due-to-unwinding/
• https://jedfoundation.org/mental-health-and-suicide-statistics/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/26/report-american-billionaires-have-added-more-than-1-trillion-in-wealth-during-pandemic/

Two faculty members at New York University (NYU) were arrested on Thursday during a demonstration on campus where pro-Palestinian supporters were demanding that the university divest from companies profiting from the Israeli war on Gaza, according to the university's Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter.

The arrests occurred during a sit-in at NYU, where students were nonviolently blocking access to the Bobst Library. According to the American Association of University Professors, the professors were not involved in the protest itself but were there to ensure the safety of the student demonstrators.