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Aisling Gallagher, a seemingly super healthy young woman, experienced alarming bowel symptoms that ultimately led to a diagnosis of stage-two rectal cancer at age 28, prompting her to raise awareness about the importance of early detection and recognizing warning signs in one's health. #BowelCancerAwareness #EarlyDetection #CancerSurvivor

Operation Dark Clark – Russia built a real organisation around a false identity Most influence operations create fake people, fake websites or fake news stories. Operation Dark Clark appears to have gone considerably further: Russian operators built what looked like a functioning research organisation in Latin America, employed real people to produce genuine research and concealed from those employees who was ultimately directing their work. OpenAI disclosed the operation on 8 October after banning a cluster of accounts originating in Russia. The actors used ChatGPT while targeting countries across Latin America, principally to damage Ukraine’s reputation, manipulate domestic political debates and manage a self-described research organisation called the Social Research Center, or SRC. OpenAI assessed Dark Clark as Category Five on the six-level Breakout Scale, the first operation it has disrupted since beginning its influence-operation reporting to reach that level. A front organisation with real employees The SRC presented itself as a research platform studying subjects including Latin America’s relationship with India and the Indian diaspora. OpenAI found more than 60 articles on its website, most of them apparently original rather than plagiarised. Internal reports produced by the Russian operators discussed hiring, dismissals, salary scales, staffing and unfinished research projects, strongly suggesting that the operators controlled the organisation rather than merely collaborating with it. At the centre of the structure was “Mia Clark”, a fictitious identity reportedly used to manage social-media activity and communicate with staff. According to OpenAI, the available evidence indicates that employees working for SRC in Latin America were probably unaware that the organisation was being directed by Russian actors. They interviewed experts, conducted research and wrote papers in what appears to have been good faith. The deception therefore existed primarily at the organisational level: much of the work was real, but the identity and strategic purpose of the institution commissioning it were not. OpenAI This is one reason Dark Clark differs from the familiar model of a troll farm. A reader encountering an SRC paper might be looking at research genuinely written by a Latin American employee based on genuine interviews. The manipulation lies further upstream, in who built the institution, selected its direction and controlled its infrastructure. From forged emails to real events The operation also appears to have attempted something more ambitious than online persuasion: inducing real people to produce events that could later be turned into propaganda. In May 2026, according to the operators’ internal reports, they created an email address impersonating Lima’s regional education authorities and instructed schools to organise activities about Ukraine for a cultural-diversity event. The instructions included references to Stepan Bandera, whose historical legacy remains particularly contentious in Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. The operators claimed that some schools complied, replied to the false address and sent photographs of the events. OpenAI could not independently verify every claim contained in the operators’ reports. It did, however, find Peruvian reporting matching the story, followed by publications in Poland and an English-language outlet in Hungary. Some coverage included comments from a Polish MEP calling for people displaying what he described as anti-Polish attitudes to be declared persona non grata. OpenAI therefore concluded that the fabricated starting point appears to have entered genuine political debate across national borders. The mechanism is unusually effective because the final photographs need not themselves be fabricated. If people can be tricked into staging a real event on the basis of a forged instruction, the operation creates authentic visual evidence of something that was artificially initiated. The same method in Ecuador and Bolivia Dark Clark’s internal reports describe similar efforts elsewhere. In Ecuador, the operators claimed they used a fake education email to encourage schools to stage ceremonies involving President Daniel Noboa and Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. Ecuadorian media subsequently covered a matching controversy, and the country’s education minister issued a detailed denial. Other Ecuador-focused material included fabricated audio attributed to Ukraine’s consul and a false television report alleging that Noboa’s government was recruiting Ecuadorians to fight in Ukraine. Local fact-checker Lupa found that the supposed Teleamazonas report had never been broadcast, that images had been taken from Instagram, that the audio was AI-generated and that a company named in a supposed recruitment contract did not exist in Ecuador’s corporate registry. In Bolivia, an internal report described a fake audio recording supposedly made by an employee of state water company EPSAS during anti-government protests. It claimed that water supplies to La Paz would be cut and a state of emergency declared. The allegation produced a fact-check and an official denial. OpenAI says the operators explicitly described their objective as worsening the political crisis surrounding the demonstrations. Possible links to the post-Wagner influence machine Dark Clark did not emerge in a vacuum. The operators repeatedly asked ChatGPT about Politology and La Compania, names associated in previous investigations with the Russian influence apparatus that developed from structures once connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Forbidden Stories and its partners obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents describing a network known as “The Company”, which they reported had grown to almost 100 operatives and was conducting influence projects across roughly 30 Global South countries. Their investigation found that the organisation moved under the supervision of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, after Prigozhin’s death. Its documented budget for ten months of activity in 2024 was approximately €7.3 million. Two older Argentina campaigns claimed in Dark Clark’s internal reports — a false story about Javier Milei buying Cartier collars for his dogs and the staging of anti-Milei graffiti — had already been independently attributed by investigative journalists to Politology/La Compania. That is significant corroboration, but it is not enough to prove that every Dark Clark activity was run by the same organisational structure. AI was the back office, not the mastermind Perhaps the most important finding concerns artificial intelligence itself. In most documented cases, the Russians were not using ChatGPT to generate the propaganda seen by the public. Their principal use was administrative: drafting reports for an unknown superior, summarising operations, translating material and recording the supposed success of campaigns. Those reports also expose a weakness in the operators’ own measurement. OpenAI found instances in which they tried to claim credit for developments they had probably not caused, suggesting that they were not only attempting to manipulate Latin American audiences but also presenting an inflated picture of their effectiveness to whoever was supervising them. Dark Clark nevertheless broke further into the real world than any influence operation OpenAI had previously disrupted. Under the Brookings framework, Category Five means that an operation has escaped its original network and been amplified by high-profile individuals such as politicians. Dark Clark crossed that threshold because fabricated narratives appear to have provoked governmental denials, mainstream reporting and political comment in several countries. Its most important innovation was therefore not a particularly convincing deepfake. It was the construction of a partly genuine institution around a concealed foreign controller. The research could be real. The employees could be real. The interviews could be real. What was false was who they were ultimately working for. Sources OpenAI — Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/ Forbidden Stories — Propaganda Machine: Russia’s foreign influence strategy across three continents https://forbiddenstories.org/propaganda-machine-secret-documents-reveal-russias-foreign-influence-strategy-across-three-continents/ Forbidden Stories — Ghost Journalists, Cash and Kremlin Scripts: Argentina https://forbiddenstories.org/ghost-journalists-cash-and-kremlin-scripts-how-russian-operatives-tried-to-influence-argentinian-media/ openDemocracy — Russian influence operation in Bolivia https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/russia-bolivia-south-america-putin-evo-morales-wagner-prigozhin-covert-operations-propaganda-disinformation-foreign-interference/ Lupa Media — Fake Teleamazonas report about recruiting Ecuadorians for Ukraine https://lupa.com.ec/verificaciones/noboa-mercenarios-ucrania-ecuador/ Brookings Institution — The Breakout Scale https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-breakout-scale-measuring-the-impact-of-influence-operations/ Keywords: #DISINFORMED #Episode17 #OperationDarkClark #DarkClark #Russia #LatinAmerica #RussianInfluence #RussianDisinformation #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #FalseFront #FrontOrganisation #FakeInstitution #SocialResearchCenter #SRC #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #OpenAI #NarrativeManipulation #SourceLaundering #InstitutionalManipulation #ForgedDocuments #FakeAudio #PoliticalInfluence #CovertInfluence #Peru #Ecuador #Bolivia #Argentina #Ukraine #Politology #LaCompania #TheCompany #SVR #WagnerLegacy #PropagandaMachine #GlobalSouth #BreakoutScale #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

Actu Foot reported, citing Sami Mokbel from the BBC, that Tottenham was set to go on a training camp in Marbella after their trip to Old Trafford. Roberto De Zerbi wanted to take advantage of the nine days separating the matches against Manchester United and Coventry to rejuvenate the team and strengthen group cohesion, the account indicated. #PremierLeague #Tottenham #Football (translated)

The author described a contribution from the British Telegraph about Christine Lagarde as apt. In it, the ECB president was portrayed as one of the most self-righteous personalities the author has encountered on the world stage. Additionally, the Telegraph reported that Lagarde intends to publish her autobiography at the beginning of next year. #Lagarde #EZB #Autobiographie #DE #GB #EU (translated)

If I come with a minimum amount today, that would be arbitrary. I can't base that on anything. In a letter to the House of Representatives, Letschert previously stated that she wants to give sectors the space to determine the amount of the internship allowance themselves. #stagevergoeding #studenten #onderwijs (translated)

The cabinet has temporarily decided not to introduce a minimum amount for internship compensation, much to the dissatisfaction of student unions that advocate for a mandatory compensation to prevent financial problems for interns. #stagevergoeding #studenten #onderwijs (translated)

Emmanuel Ruimy criticized students from the 6th arrondissement whom he accused of presenting themselves as spokespeople for high school students. He described the blockades as an extracurricular activity for young people who, in his view, could rely on their parents' support: private tutoring at 80 euros an hour if their school closed for three weeks, private prep if the baccalaureate didn’t open doors for them, or an internship with a family friend if the job market closed off. He estimated that the bourgeoisie lent their radicalism to less privileged youth while leaving them to bear the consequences, and he said that this appropriation particularly disgusted him. #Éducation #Révolution #Bourgeoisie (translated)

Cristiano Ronaldo claimed that the Portuguese coach had proposed a plan for him to participate in international matches, which he accepted. According to him, the plan stipulated that he would play in the first and last match and would not go to Norway or Denmark. However, he had agreed to play 30 minutes in Norway at the coach's request. Ronaldo then reproached the coach for breaking his word. He said they had agreed that the coach would acknowledge in a press conference that he had proposed the plan, that Ronaldo had never asked to play, and that it was wrong of him to make him warm up without putting him in the game. Simão Coutinho, a manager at Al Nassr, had witnessed their exchanges, he specified. Ronaldo felt that the tone of the coach during the press conference was different from that of their private conversation. The Portuguese captain acknowledged that he had been wrong not to greet the supporters after the match and for leaving the gathering. He apologized to them, as well as to his teammates, while explaining that the breach of trust had led him to leave. He also stated that he accepted the Federation's sanction and indicated that he would remain available for the national team after his suspension, provided he was fit and playing for his club. #CristianoRonaldo #ÉquipeNationale #Football (translated)

Actu Foot relayed a text presented as a statement from Cristiano Ronaldo, in which the player explained the exchanges he claimed to have had with the Portuguese coach before the last gathering. Ronaldo stated that after the 2026 World Cup, he had prepared a letter intended for the Portuguese to announce his definitive departure from the national team. According to him, the president of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) had then urged him, during the return flight from the United States, to reconsider his decision. The president had also asked his opinion on the current coach, whom Ronaldo claimed to have supported the appointment of. The player recounted that the coach had proposed that he play in the first and last match, while considering that he would not travel to Norway and Denmark. Ronaldo said he had refused, believing that his role as captain required him to travel with the team. He added that Simão Coutinho, sporting director of Al-Nassr, had witnessed their exchange. The day before the gathering, the coach reportedly came to his home in Lisbon, and the principles discussed in August would have been maintained. Ronaldo indicated that he had played at Alvalade before giving up his place without protest and passing the armband to Bruno Fernandes. For the match in Norway, he said he expected not to play, with his next match scheduled for the 4th at Dragão. He recounted that an assistant had then informed him that the coach wanted to speak with him, and then the coach had asked him if he could play for thirty minutes. Ronaldo claimed to have agreed and was invited to be ready. #CristianoRonaldo #EquipeNationale #Football (translated)

Karmine Corp stated that it took a few days for them to digest their elimination from the Champions Shanghai, where the club believed its team could achieve great things. It retraced its journey, from the last places to a qualification and a promising tournament at the EWC, then to a Stage 2 that revealed a new team in the group stage. The club also recalled the qualification for the Champions in the playoffs and the title of European champion, which it deemed undoubtedly deserved. Karmine Corp said it was proud to have seen the team reach the Champions, even though the "group of death" ended its run, and asserted that they would return. The club thanked the supporters for their trust and for allowing it to play on the biggest stage of Valorant. It also mentioned AvezValo, suygetsu, N4RRATE, LewNvlr, dos9gg, ZE1SHH, simozVAL, and RocaboyYouenn. #KCORP (translated)