Author: Jeff Donn
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Russian hackers targeted more than 200 journalists globally
PARIS — Russian television anchor Pavel Lobkov was in the studio getting ready for his show when jarring news flashed across his phone: Some of his most intimate messages had just been published to the web. Days earlier, the veteran journalist had come out live on air as HIV-positive, a taboo-breaking revelation that drew responses…
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FBI didn’t tell US targets as Russian hackers hunted emails
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EDITOR’S NOTE: One in a series of stories on the findings of an Associated Press investigation of the Russian hackers who disrupted the U.S. presidential election in 2016 Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up.…
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Inside story: How Russians hacked the Democrats’ emails
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WASHINGTON — It was just before noon in Moscow on March 10, 2016, when the first volley of malicious messages hit the Hillary Clinton campaign. The first 29 phishing emails were almost all misfires. Addressed to people who worked for Clinton during her first presidential run, the messages bounced back untouched. Except one. Within nine…
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Supreme Court nominee from Colorado has defended free speech, religion
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has been a defender of free speech and a skeptic of libel claims, an Associated Press review of his rulings shows. His record puts him at odds with President Donald Trump’s disdain for journalists and tendency to lash out at critics. On other First Amendment cases involving freedom of religion,…
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Medical benefits of dental floss unproven
HOLMDEL, N.J. — It’s one of the most universal recommendations in all of public health: Floss daily to prevent gum disease and cavities. Except there’s little proof that flossing works. Still, the federal government, dental organizations and manufacturers of floss have pushed the practice for decades. Dentists provide samples to their patients; the American Dental…
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Medical benefits of dental floss unproven
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HOLMDEL, N.J. — It’s one of the most universal recommendations in all of public health: Floss daily to prevent gum disease and cavities. Except there’s little proof that flossing works. Still, the federal government, dental organizations and manufacturers of floss have pushed the practice for decades. Dentists provide samples to their patients; the American Dental…
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NRC and industry rewrite nuke history
ROCKVILLE, Md. — When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story — insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a…
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U.S. nuclear regulators weaken rules to keep plants running
LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have…
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Groups stunned that government is ignoring 27,000 wells
Leading environmental groups and a U.S. senator on Wednesday called on the government to pay closer attention to more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico and take action to keep them from leaking even more crude into water already tainted by the massive BP spill. The calls for action…
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Emerging oil rig evidence shows lack of regulation
WASHINGTON — The first firm evidence of what likely caused the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil blowout — a devastating sequence of equipment failures — drives home a central unsettling point about America’s oil industry: key safety features at thousands of U.S. offshore wells are barely regulated. Wednesday’s hearings by congressional and administration panels —…