Quote:Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes jailed for fraud

'Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her blood
testing start-up that was once valued at $9bn (£7.5bn). The former Silicon Valley star falsely claimed the technology could
diagnose disease with just a few drops of blood.



Holmes, 38, who is pregnant, tearfully told the court she felt "deep pain" for those misled by the scam.

She was found guilty in January after a three-month trial. Holmes is expected to appeal against the sentence, which was
handed down on Friday in a California court...'

Quote:'...Once hailed as the "next Steve Jobs", she was at one time said to be the world's youngest self-made billionaire.
She launched Theranos after dropping out of Stanford University at age 19, and its value rose sharply after the company
claimed it could bring about a revolution in disease diagnosis. But the technology Holmes touted did not work and - awash
in lawsuits - the company was dissolved by 2018...'

Quote:'...Elizabeth Holmes: From tech star to convicted fraudster
At Holmes' trial in San Jose, California, prosecutors said she knowingly misled doctors and patients about Theranos' flagship
product - the Edison machine - which the company claimed could detect cancer, diabetes and other conditions using just a
few drops of blood. They also accused Holmes of vastly exaggerating the firm's performance to its financial backers...'

Quote:'...Jurors ultimately found her guilty on four counts of fraud, with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But they
found her not guilty on four other charges, and failed to reach a verdict on three more. Before Judge Edward Davila
issued his sentence on Friday, Holmes read a speech to the court in which she tearfully apologised to investors and
patients...'

Quote:'..."I am devastated by my failings. I have felt deep pain for what people went through, because I failed them," she said.
"I regret my failings with every cell of my body," she continued.

The judge referred to Holmes as a "brilliant" entrepreneur, and told her: "Failure is normal. But failure by fraud is not OK."...'

Quote:'A warning to Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a place where fortunes can be made and squandered. It's not unusual for investors to lose big sums of money. It's also not unusual for founders to make grandiose claims about their tech.

What is different about Holmes' case, though, is that Theranos' unwinding actually led to fraud charges that stuck.
It is notoriously difficult to get successful prosecutions in cases of white-collar fraud in the US.
When investors lose money, they often simply write it off, or pursue compensation privately.

Holmes' punishment is a warning for Silicon Valley executives that there are real consequences for misleading investors. 
This isn't a slap on the wrist, it's significant time in prison...'

Quote:'She is required to surrender to begin serving her sentence on 27 April.
Holmes and Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, her former business partner and lover, were charged in 2018 with wire fraud and
conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Balwani, who was tried separately, was found guilty of fraud this summer. He will be
sentenced next month.

Prosecutors requested that she face 15 years in prison and pay some $800m in restitution to investors, including several
high-profile figures such as former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who testified against her at the trial, and
software tycoon Larry Ellison.

But Holmes' defence team - who argued she was well-intentioned and trying to help people - said she should spend 18
months under house arrest. The judge on Friday determined that she had caused $121m in losses to investors, including
Rupert Murdoch and the family that owns Walmart. The amount she will be required to repay will be determined at a later
court hearing...'

Quote:'...Over 130 friends, family and former Theranos employees wrote to the judge to appeal for clemency.
The group noted that Holmes is a young mother. She had a son in July 2021 and is currently pregnant with her second child.
It is not known when she is due to give birth. Her lawyers are expected to try to keep her from entering prison until after the baby is born...'

Quote:'...Her partner Billy Evans, in his sentencing memo to the court, told the judge that he fears for "a future in which my son
grows up with a relationship with his mother on the other side of glass armed by guards"...'

Quote:'...Eileen Lepera, a Silicon Valley secretary who lost a chunk of her life savings by investing in Theranos, told the BBC she was "happy" with the sentence. "I think it's fair, considering all the facts of the case," Ms Lepera said. "She [Holmes] knew
it was fraud, and she put people's lives at risk."...'

(11-19-2022, 10:34 AM)BIAD Wrote: Here's a simple one where word-smithing is heavily relied on to report the basic facts, yet not approach the full meaning
of what a preferred person -in this case, Elizabeth Holmes, actually did. The BBC used to be experts in narrative-forming,
but with standards dropping through diversity-overrides-qualified-Journalism, their bar has severely lowered.

(11-19-2022, 06:47 PM)GeauxHomeLittleD Wrote: We flat out stopped watching the news and reading newspapers. It's all a bunch of lies and propaganda twisted to make criminals look like heroes and heroes look like criminals. Reporters are the new lawyers- slick with their wording to sway the opinion of the public and when we watch that nonsense we become members of the jury. These "lawyers" don't care about the guilt or innocence of their subjects, they just put the correct amount of spin needed to sway the "jury" in the direction their bosses want it to go. Nowadays a news anchor is equivalent to an OJ Simpson defense team member during the trial for the murder of Nicole Simpson Brown- just not paid as well.

(11-19-2022, 09:31 PM)Nightskyeb4dawn2 Wrote: My Brother was just saying this today.

He said it is frustrating the way they portray those that protest their evil agenda as CT quack pots, and terrorist, while propping up those protestors that want to remove everything that supports family, community, country, and morals.

It is indeed frustrating, yet we continue to let them get away with it because we are not committed enough to sacrifice for the change, and our numbers are too few to make it happen.

(11-19-2022, 10:34 AM)BIAD Wrote: ...If one clicked on their web page of this article, it can be seen that the sentence that tells the reader Elizabeth Holmes is
pregnant is a solitary acknowledgment. This is meant to show that her pregnancy is relevant to the reader on an emotional
level solely due to the writer's belief-system. Holmes wilfully committed a crime when she wasn't with child, but mercy
should be shown now by the reader -not the Judge, because of the writer's wish to display the female as a victim of
circumstance and not someone who accountable for her actions. ...

Quote:It’s one thing to hope for a better community online, and another, very different one, to build it. Just ask the users and administrators of journa.host, which was started by journalists concerned over the direction of Twitter.

“Come on in, the water’s confusing but fine — and more swimmable,” the journalist Virginia Heffernan wrote on journa.host on Nov. 6.

On Nov. 7 the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted: “I feel like a new kid in a new school.”
The network is the brainchild of Adam Davidson, a journalist who helped found “Planet Money” and has worked at The New York Times and The New Yorker. He said the jump from Twitter to the new site reminded him of his family’s move to Vermont from New York City, a few years ago.


Journa.host is part of Mastodon, a vast network of thousands of servers that look and function much like Twitter. Over the past three weeks, hundreds of thousands of people, seeking an alternative to Twitter as Elon Musk took over, have signed up for Mastodon, according to Eugen Rochko, who created the software in 2016. Many of them are journalists.

But because so much news happens on Twitter — and because Twitter itself is such a news story — the social network symbolized by a tiny bird casts a very large shadow over the social network named after a giant prehistoric beast.

Shortly after Mr. Musk bought Twitter, he offered up the blue check mark verification to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. (The rollout has since been put on pause.) To Mr. Davidson, this was a crisis for journalists. If anyone could pass themselves off as, say, Adam Davidson, who could trust that Adam Davidson was Adam Davidson?


“It felt scary to imagine a world where false verification would reign,” Mr. Davidson said.
Indeed, a wave of verified impostors followed Mr. Musk’s decision, including a fake LeBron James account that tweeted a trade request and a fake Eli Lilly account that claimed the drugmaker would be providing insulin to the public for free.

On Nov. 4, Mr. Davidson started journa.host. To join, applicants have to prove that they are journalists, through a working professional email account, say, or recent clips.

...

For the many journalists who use Twitter, it serves several roles: assignment editor, ombudsperson, sourcing tool, clubhouse, hype machine, pillory, legitimizer.

Journa.host bills itself as “a reliable home for journalists,” and it has greater ambitions than just verifying journalists’ identities, though its rollout has not been without bumps.


Mr. Musk’s early run at Twitter has been chaotic, as he has slashed thousands of jobs and reinstated banned accounts. Many journalists have publicly criticized these and other moves, often on Twitter itself, and some have started, or joined, conversations about Twitter alternatives.

“The period in which Twitter served as a clubhouse for journalists was valuable for journalism as a profession,” said Steven I. Weiss, an investigative journalist who is one of the moderators of journa.host.
Mastodon is an idiosyncratic place, a so-called federation of nearly 8,000 servers, many with their own community norms. Users pick a server — such as journa.host — and can interact with other users throughout Mastodon, with exceptions. If this all sounds complicated, that’s because it is; links to guides and F.A.Q.s about the service are frequently “boosted” (similar to a retweet).

Journa.host users are figuring out almost everything about Mastodon on the fly, including, for starters, what to call Twitter. For many, it’s “the bird site.” For others, it’s “the bird app” or “the Bad Place.” For years, the Mastodon equivalent of “tweets” were “toots,” as from a trunk. On Nov. 14, as part of a software update, the service replaced “toot” with “publish.”

Using journa.host feels a little like crossing the border to a kinder, more rule-bound, less dynamic country. Susanne Althoff, a user and former magazine editor, compared journa.host to zine culture.


Frequent topics on journa.host include the deficiencies of Twitter (hate-filled, attention-addled, ruled by an impulsive billionaire), the deficiencies of Mastodon (hard to use, lacking a quote-retweet function, boring), and journalists’ ambivalence about the transition.

“I am having a hard time letting go of the birdsite but I was raised by an alcoholic so I understand what a trauma bond is,” the political journalist Ana Marie Cox wrote on journa.host on Nov. 20.

On Nov. 18, the journalist Mike Pesca, who hosts the popular news podcast “The Gist,” posted a link to a Times story about health concerns associated with the puberty-blocking drugs sometimes prescribed to transgender youths, writing, “This seemed like careful, thorough reporting.”

In response, Parker Molloy, a journalist who writes the Substack newsletter “The Present Age,” accused Mr. Pesca of anti-trans bigotry, and then posted angrily at Mr. Davidson for not removing the post.

“@adamdavidson’s decision not to take action on anti-trans content isn’t inspiring confidence and I totally understand why other places are doing instance-level blocking,” she wrote on journa.host. (Instance-level blocking refers to the ability, on Mastodon, for one server to block content from another.)


Zach Everson, one of the journa.host administrators, responded that he agreed with Ms. Molloy, then added, “Banning someone for posting a link to an NYT article sets a precedent that we really need to work through.”

On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca, who was informed via a text message from Mr. Davidson, a longtime friend. (The two are currently writing an exchange of letters hosted on Substack, about the nature of cancel culture.) According to Mr. Pesca, Mr. Davidson told him he had been suspended for referring to Ms. Molloy as an “activist,” which was dismissive. The suspension “seemed arbitrary and ad hoc,” Mr. Pesca said in an interview; Ms. Molloy didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

“We want to be a place for passionate engaged discussion,” said Mr. Davidson, who recused himself from the decision because of his relationship with Mr. Pesca. “But we don’t want to be a place where people insult each other.”

Also on Saturday, Ms. Molloy appeared on a different Mastodon server, and announced that she, too, had been suspended from journa.host for her posts.

“So far no Nazis in my Mastodon feed,” Bill Grueskin, a Columbia Journalism School professor, wrote in a post on journa.host on Monday, referring to the widely held perception that Mr. Musk has relaxed restrictions against hate speech. “But these ladies are now arriving.”


Mr. Grueskin attached a picture of a young woman who said her name was Emma, from another Mastodon server, who had tagged him in a post. She appeared to be a bot.

“Your photos look so elegant,” it read. “I love meeting new people and learning by sharing with each other, I think it’s good for improving yourself too.”

(11-22-2022, 10:15 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: Leftists angry at Elon have set up a Twitter alternative for "journalists" and immediately start censoring each other.  

(11-19-2022, 10:34 AM)BIAD Wrote: Here's a simple one where word-smithing is heavily relied on to report the basic facts, yet not approach the full meaning
of what a preferred person -in this case, Elizabeth Holmes, actually did. The BBC used to be experts in narrative-forming,
but with standards dropping through diversity-overrides-qualified-Journalism, their bar has severely lowered.

Quote:Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes jailed for fraud

...


Holmes, 38, who is pregnant, tearfully told the court she felt "deep pain" for those misled by the scam.

(11-24-2022, 12:22 AM)Ninurta Wrote: Oh, I'm certain she felt "deep pain", but question her claim that it was due to "those mislead", and am more inclined to believe that it was because she got caught. Her "deep pain... for those mislead" was conspicuously absent when the misleading was afoot...

Quote:Wed 23 Nov 2022 18.53 GMT

Revealed: Tory peer Michelle Mone secretly received £29m from ‘VIP lane’ PPE firm

'Documents suggest husband passed on money from PPE Medpro, which secured £200m contracts after Mone
lobbied ministers The Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her children secretly received £29m originating from
the profits of a PPE business that was awarded large government contracts after she recommended it to ministers,
documents seen by the Guardian indicate...'

Quote:About the Role

The Centre for Information Resilience is a UK based, independent, non-profit social enterprise. We counter disinformation, expose human rights abuses through open source and combat online harms targeting women and minorities.
We have established ourselves as a trusted, innovative NGO among UK media and policymakers. We work frequently with UK government colleagues to help in the areas above. We are now looking for an experienced disinformation expert to raise our profile among policymakers, media and potential donors based in the United States. This is a key role in a growing organisation. You will work closely with the cofounders and will be a leadership figure - mentoring and leading more junior members of the organisation.

We require a self-starter, comfortable with taking the initiative and seizing opportunities. You will be adept at briefing senior policymakers and talking to US media organisations, both on and off the record.

Specific tasks will include:

Act as an ambassador for CIR on the Hill, within the Federal Government, media, among tech companies / Silicon Valley, on “K Street”, and among potential philanthropic organisations.

Identify and build relationships within those groups, prioritizing who you think will provide greatest impact for a) raising awareness of CIR and b) providing funding for CIR - keeping cofounders aware of activities through regular updates.

Act as a spokesperson for CIR, appearing on US media organisations, in consultation with the Head of Media / co-founders. Develop relationships with key US outlets, and advise the Head of Media on where specific investigations may land / be appropriate for partnerships.

Quote:Could Vladimir Putin be punished for war crimes?

'...Adam Rutland, of the Centre for Information Resilience, told ITV News: “We’re able to get that footage,
we’re able to verify it, we’re able to handle it, archive it in a way that international prosecutors can use when
the time comes.” He added: “They should be able to track down the guilty.”...'

Quote:How an army of investigators is being raised to take down despots hiding in media shadows

'...Now a London-based non-profit organisation, Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), is rebuilding networks
of Burmese and Afghan journalists and giving them technological skills and a media platform to report on their
homelands once again.

Satellite cameras, Google Earth and a population with phones make it hard for despots to operate unseen, even
in remote lands. Under CIR’s programmes, journalists are trained in the geolocation (place) and chronolocation
(time) of video material recorded by civilian witnesses on phones...'

'...The CRI has assembled a team of Afghan journalists based in the UK, India, Dubai and Afghanistan itself.
“Before Kabul fell there was a strong and burgeoning media sector,” says Ross Burley, co-founder of CIR.
“It’s about reconnecting that network that already existed.”...'

Quote:LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - The number of people who have dropped out of Britain's job market since 2019 and who now cite a long-term illness or mental health problems has risen by half a million or about 25%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The increase in long-term sickness started in 2019, before the pandemic, before rising sharply by 363,000 between early 2020 and the three months to the end of August 2022 to reach 2.5 million, it said.

The analysis adds to the Bank of England's worries as it seeks to tame inflation, now at a 40-year high. The BoE is concerned that the number of people leaving Britain's workforce will fuel inflationary pressures and the latest labour market data pointed to a record workforce exodus.

Long-term sickness was the reason given by 28% of people who were neither working nor looking for work between June and August 2022, up from 25% at the start of the pandemic.

However, most people who now cite long-term sickness as their reason for not being in work or looking for a job originally dropped out of the labour market for another reason.

The most common, and fastest-rising, category of ill health was 'other health problems or disabilities' - although the ONS doubted whether the increase was primarily driven by long COVID, as the biggest rise occurred in 2019.

Mental illness and nervous disorders rose by 22%, but depression and anxiety were unchanged.

BRITAIN TRAILING

Separate data showed that Britain is trailing behind almost all rich nations in its post-COVID labour market recovery and is on track to become the only major developed country with employment below pre-pandemic levels at the start of 2023.

A combination of factors including a rise in people taking early retirement, long-term illness and lower migration are depleting Britain's workforce, according to the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) which analysed the data.

Britain had 600,000 more people who were not participating in the jobs market compared to 2019. That is despite unemployment shrinking to the lowest in nearly 50 years.

Before the pandemic, Britain had very high employment rates by historic and international standards.

Among developed countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only Switzerland and Latvia have seen bigger post-COVID falls in employment.

"We have record low unemployment, yet hours worked are still below the levels of February 2020," said Neil Carberry, CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. "That makes economic inactivity a huge challenge to our future ability to deliver growth and prosperity."

(11-26-2022, 09:38 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: ...That might be the plan, Turn the West into one big uprooted, homogenized, cheap zombie slave labor plantation.
And that should help push UBI forward, requiring digital ID, Chicom credit scoring and CBDCs of course.

Quote:SPY NEXT DOOR Russia has sprawling network of sleeper agents in UK who could KILL on command,
warns ex-MI6 agent

'Russia has a sprawling network of sleeper agents in the UK who could kill on command, an ex-MI6 agent has warned.
Former spook Julian Richards said Moscow has become so effective at spying in Britain that intelligence agencies "don't
know" just how many rogue operatives are active in the UK.


Run for the hills, the world is full of Russian spies.

The warning comes as suspected Russian spies Sergey Skvortsov and his wife Elena Koulkova were arrested in Sweden.
The couple were well known, well liked, happily chatted with their neighbours - only to be swooped by elite cops in two
Blackhawk helicopters. Both are believed to have been acting as spies for Putin for the better part of a decade - hiding in
plain sight as regular every day citizens.

Putin is said to be obsessed with sending spies into regular civilian roles with aim of draining the West of critical commercial
secrets. In fact, so high is the threat of infiltration that former CIA and MI6 officers have warned Brits to watch over their shoulder amid fears hundreds of Putin's goons are infiltrating the UK.

"Either they’re very, very good at it, in which case there could be a lot of them out there that we just don’t know about,"
Prof Richards told The Sun Online. "Theoretically they could assassinate someone, if they needed to. This is where the
Skripal case is interesting and the Litvinenko case before it. It was the GRU - military intelligence - that was exposed as
being involved."

Known as 'Illegals', these spies spend years blending into normal civilian life and take up regular jobs in critical industries like national defence with the aim of manoeuvring themselves into positions of "access". And the UK, according to Prof Richards, is high on their radar.

"We know that the UK has always been a particular target for the Russians," explained Prof Richard. "They know that we’re
potentially a very useful connection into the American intelligence system." "That was the logic of the Cambridge spies. That
worked beautifully well because weren't only an important intelligence player ourselves but we were also a very, very close
intelligence ally, and that’s the potential - a sort of ‘back door’ into American intelligence."...'

Quote:'...He said these 'invisible' spooks are trained to infiltrate commercial companies providing services to host governments
like British Aerospace. They often start off in menial jobs and make their way up the ladder, sometimes using blackmail
and bribes along the way.

Though the threat remained low and their use largely expensive and ineffective, their real impact can be hard to gauge.
"Either it’s a big problem and we don’t have an idea of the scale of it and how many are out there, but I think it’s more
likely it’s not that big of a problem, and because they are so difficult to do, there probably aren’t many of them out there.
"But there are some, particularly in the UK."

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said Russian 'illegals' could be employed in a company for years before becoming
'operational'. "What you want with an illegal is someone not under surveillance," he told us.

"You can use them for spotting reports. That’s when you find someone like a Pentagon officer, or a State Department officer,
and then you look at who seems interesting, who’s going into an interesting job, and you tell Moscow and maybe later on
someone posted overseas will approach them."

Among their dirty bag of tricks is luring persons of interest into an affair and using it against them.
Also known as Kompromat, this is a well-oiled technique was used in the KGB and its modern equivalent, the FSB.
'Illegals' are also known to prey on 'financially vulnerable' officials in high positions and work to lure them in with the
guarantee of money. "It’s a lot of money for such a low hanging fruit," Baer explained. "But if they’re good, you just
can’t find them."

Baer claims Putin could very well be sending unprecedented numbers of illegals into the West as he tries to recreate
Russia's past as a spying behemoth...'

Quote:'...He said: "I think Putin’s fascinated with ‘illegals’ and it goes all the way back to the old days when they were so effective
like the Cambridge Five - Rudolf Abel and people like that - they’re historical figures and I think Putin would like to recreate that." Western spy agencies have long struggled to keep its ranks clean of Russian double agents.

In August, a Russian spy reportedly posed as a jewellery designer for ten years and infiltrated NATO by luring commanders
into honeytraps was ousted after going on vacation to Moscow and never returned. This year David Smith, 58, a former
British embassy guard in Berlin, was charged with nine offences relating to breaking the Official Secrets Act after being
accused of spying for Russia.

Last October, eight Russian spooks were expelled from NATO in a major crackdown in the lead up to the war in Ukraine
and another four of Mad Vlad's goons are feared to be operating in Westminster in secret. Former UK intelligence officials
said it's likely the Russian security services have recruited political staffers, party officials and those with "some degree of
political access" inside Parliament.

In recent years Britain's closest ally, the US, has also found themselves rooting out agents working for Putin.
Maria Butina was found to have been acting as a spy and attempting to steer US politics as she embedded herself in Washington DC. She was jailed in 2018 before being deported back to Russia, where she is now a member of Putin's
parliament - the State Duma.

And then Russian model Anna Chapman, the daughter of a KGB official, was arrested in 2010 after she is suspected to
have worked as an agent in the US. She was given back to the Kremlin regime as part of a spy swap deal along with
nine other suspected agents...'

Quote:'...Among those agents was Vladimir and Lidiya Guryev - who lived in New Jersey with their two daughters, 11 and 9,
under the aliases of Richard and Cynthia Murphy. The couple attempted to influence US politics, with Lidiya going after
an associate of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2008.

Another couple with children was also part of the spy swap - Mikhail Kutsik and Nataliya Pereverzeva, also known as
Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills. The duo were rumbled as they claimed be from America and Canada despite their thick
accents - and they operated by received coded radio transmissions.

Mikhail A. Vasenkov and his wife Vicky Pelaez were accused spying for Russia after authorities discovered Vasenkov's
alias - Juaz Lazaro - had died of respiratory failure in Uruguay aged 3 in 1947. Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova
pretended to be Canadian citizens living in the US. Bezrukov claimed to be the son of a Canadian diplomat named Donald
Heathfield and his wife Vavilova pretended to be a real estate agent called Tracey Lee Ann Foley...'

Quote:'...Britain has also been the target of Russian agents in recent years - the most infamous case being the nerve agent
attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Putin's men - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - managed to fly into London
Gatwick and catch the train to Salisbury where they attempted to kill the defector and his daughter with the nerve agent
Novichok in 2018...'

(Link to Archived RN Thread

(Rogue Nation's 'The Skripal Incident

Quote:SPY NEXT DOOR Russia has sprawling network of sleeper agents in UK who could KILL on command,
warns ex-MI6 agent

'Russia has a sprawling network of sleeper agents in the UK who could kill on command, an ex-MI6 agent has warned.
Former spook Julian Richards said Moscow has become so effective at spying in Britain that intelligence agencies "don't
know" just how many rogue operatives are active in the UK.


Run for the hills, the world is full of Russian spies.

The warning comes as suspected Russian spies Sergey Skvortsov and his wife Elena Koulkova were arrested in Sweden.
The couple were well known, well liked, happily chatted with their neighbours - only to be swooped by elite cops in two
Blackhawk helicopters. Both are believed to have been acting as spies for Putin for the better part of a decade - hiding in
plain sight as regular every day citizens.

Putin is said to be obsessed with sending spies into regular civilian roles with aim of draining the West of critical commercial
secrets. In fact, so high is the threat of infiltration that former CIA and MI6 officers have warned Brits to watch over their shoulder amid fears hundreds of Putin's goons are infiltrating the UK.

"Either they’re very, very good at it, in which case there could be a lot of them out there that we just don’t know about,"
Prof Richards told The Sun Online. "Theoretically they could assassinate someone, if they needed to. This is where the
Skripal case is interesting and the Litvinenko case before it. It was the GRU - military intelligence - that was exposed as
being involved."

Known as 'Illegals', these spies spend years blending into normal civilian life and take up regular jobs in critical industries like national defence with the aim of manoeuvring themselves into positions of "access". And the UK, according to Prof Richards, is high on their radar.

"We know that the UK has always been a particular target for the Russians," explained Prof Richard. "They know that we’re
potentially a very useful connection into the American intelligence system." "That was the logic of the Cambridge spies. That
worked beautifully well because weren't only an important intelligence player ourselves but we were also a very, very close
intelligence ally, and that’s the potential - a sort of ‘back door’ into American intelligence."...'

Quote:'...He said these 'invisible' spooks are trained to infiltrate commercial companies providing services to host governments
like British Aerospace. They often start off in menial jobs and make their way up the ladder, sometimes using blackmail
and bribes along the way.

Though the threat remained low and their use largely expensive and ineffective, their real impact can be hard to gauge.
"Either it’s a big problem and we don’t have an idea of the scale of it and how many are out there, but I think it’s more
likely it’s not that big of a problem, and because they are so difficult to do, there probably aren’t many of them out there.
"But there are some, particularly in the UK."

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said Russian 'illegals' could be employed in a company for years before becoming
'operational'. "What you want with an illegal is someone not under surveillance," he told us.

"You can use them for spotting reports. That’s when you find someone like a Pentagon officer, or a State Department officer,
and then you look at who seems interesting, who’s going into an interesting job, and you tell Moscow and maybe later on
someone posted overseas will approach them."

Among their dirty bag of tricks is luring persons of interest into an affair and using it against them.
Also known as Kompromat, this is a well-oiled technique was used in the KGB and its modern equivalent, the FSB.
'Illegals' are also known to prey on 'financially vulnerable' officials in high positions and work to lure them in with the
guarantee of money. "It’s a lot of money for such a low hanging fruit," Baer explained. "But if they’re good, you just
can’t find them."

Baer claims Putin could very well be sending unprecedented numbers of illegals into the West as he tries to recreate
Russia's past as a spying behemoth...'

Quote:'...He said: "I think Putin’s fascinated with ‘illegals’ and it goes all the way back to the old days when they were so effective
like the Cambridge Five - Rudolf Abel and people like that - they’re historical figures and I think Putin would like to recreate that." Western spy agencies have long struggled to keep its ranks clean of Russian double agents.

In August, a Russian spy reportedly posed as a jewellery designer for ten years and infiltrated NATO by luring commanders
into honeytraps was ousted after going on vacation to Moscow and never returned. This year David Smith, 58, a former
British embassy guard in Berlin, was charged with nine offences relating to breaking the Official Secrets Act after being
accused of spying for Russia.

Last October, eight Russian spooks were expelled from NATO in a major crackdown in the lead up to the war in Ukraine
and another four of Mad Vlad's goons are feared to be operating in Westminster in secret. Former UK intelligence officials
said it's likely the Russian security services have recruited political staffers, party officials and those with "some degree of
political access" inside Parliament.

In recent years Britain's closest ally, the US, has also found themselves rooting out agents working for Putin.
Maria Butina was found to have been acting as a spy and attempting to steer US politics as she embedded herself in Washington DC. She was jailed in 2018 before being deported back to Russia, where she is now a member of Putin's
parliament - the State Duma.

And then Russian model Anna Chapman, the daughter of a KGB official, was arrested in 2010 after she is suspected to
have worked as an agent in the US. She was given back to the Kremlin regime as part of a spy swap deal along with
nine other suspected agents...'

Quote:'...Among those agents was Vladimir and Lidiya Guryev - who lived in New Jersey with their two daughters, 11 and 9,
under the aliases of Richard and Cynthia Murphy. The couple attempted to influence US politics, with Lidiya going after
an associate of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2008.

Another couple with children was also part of the spy swap - Mikhail Kutsik and Nataliya Pereverzeva, also known as
Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills. The duo were rumbled as they claimed be from America and Canada despite their thick
accents - and they operated by received coded radio transmissions.

Mikhail A. Vasenkov and his wife Vicky Pelaez were accused spying for Russia after authorities discovered Vasenkov's
alias - Juaz Lazaro - had died of respiratory failure in Uruguay aged 3 in 1947. Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova
pretended to be Canadian citizens living in the US. Bezrukov claimed to be the son of a Canadian diplomat named Donald
Heathfield and his wife Vavilova pretended to be a real estate agent called Tracey Lee Ann Foley...'

Quote:'...Britain has also been the target of Russian agents in recent years - the most infamous case being the nerve agent
attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Putin's men - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - managed to fly into London
Gatwick and catch the train to Salisbury where they attempted to kill the defector and his daughter with the nerve agent
Novichok in 2018...'

Quote:First UK coal mine in decades approved despite climate concerns

'Michael Gove has approved the first new UK coal mine in 30 years despite concern about its climate
impacts among Conservative MPs and experts. The proposed mine in Cumbria would dig up coking
coal for steel production in the UK across the world.



Critics say the mine would undermine climate targets and demand for coking coal is declining.
But supporters claim the mine, near Whitehaven, will create jobs and reduce the need to import coal.
The fate of the West Cumbria Mining project had been hanging in the balance for two years after the
local county council initially approved the mine in 2020.

The project's approval was suspended in early 2021, ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow,
after the government's climate change adviser said it would increase carbon emissions. The government's
advisory Climate Change Committee (UKCCC) pointed out that 85% of the coal produced by the mine
would be exported.

'European market'
Lord Deben, chairman of the CCC, branded the proposal "absolutely indefensible" and said its approval
would damage the UK's leadership on climate change. Planning authorities reviewed the original decision
and sent a report to the secretary of state of communities to review and make a final judgement.

A letter outlining the decision said Mr Gove - the communities and levelling-up secretary - agreed with
the planning inspector's recommendation to approve the mine.

The letter says Mr Gove was "satisfied that there is currently a UK and European market for the coal".
The secretary of state agrees with the assessment that the effects of the development on carbon emissions
"would be relatively neutral and not significant", the letter says.

The department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said the decision was consistent with the
government's policies on curbing carbon emissions. But opposition parties and environmental groups
condemned the decision as harmful for the climate and the UK's transition to a greener economy.

Friends of the Earth said the decision was a "misguided and deeply damaging mistake that flies in the face
of all the evidence". "The mine isn't needed, will add to global climate emissions, and won't replace Russian
coal," said Friends of the Earth campaigner, Tony Bosworth.

Low carbon steel
Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, producing almost twice the emissions of natural gas.
West Cumbria Mining says the coking coal it produces will be used for steelmaking in the UK and Europe.
The local council had granted permission to dig for coking coal until 2049, with the mine expected to create
about 500 jobs.

But the two companies that still make steel using coal in the UK - British Steel and Tata - say they plan to
move to lower carbon production methods. Steel industry expert Chris McDonald estimates that, at best,
they will use less than 10% of the output of the mine and, by the mid-2030s, none at all.
That means the new mine will export virtually all the coal it produces...'

Quote:'...Labour's shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband said the mine was "no solution to the energy crisis" and
"does not offer secure, long-term jobs". The Green Party suggested the decision had been "cynically delayed"
until after the UK's presidency of COP ended and had left the government's environmental credentials "in tatters".

The decision could expose divisions within the Conservative Party, whose greener MPs have spoken out against
the plans. Senior Conservatives - including the former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and COP President Alok Sharm
- had argued the mine would conflict with the UK's climate targets.

But some Northern Tory MPs had campaigned for the mine on the basis it would provide jobs and investment.
In a tweet, former Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry said the decision was "good news for the North and
for common sense"...'