RUSSIA - The Pravda network has published hundreds of thousands of articles since November, including falsehoods about King Charles and Keir Starmer. A Russian disinformation site is targeting Britons with thousands of articles attempting to undermine support for Ukraine and bogus stories about the royal family and senior politicians. European agencies have flagged the Pravda network as a Kremlin operation that has more than doubled in size since late last year. Researchers have also warned that it is distorting the output of AI chatbots by flooding the large language models that power them with pro-Kremlin falsehoods. The network publishes in countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East in almost 50 languages, and in February alone it carried more than 350,000 articles. “It is the continuous hammering of disinformation that in the end erodes consensus, weakens democracies, and pushes Kremlin talking points. The Pravda network is consistent with this effort.”

RUSSIA - More and more people are using AI-driven chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Le Chat or Copilot instead of search engines to find information online. The advantage in this is that these large-language models (LLMs) not only provide links to the information they reproduce but also summarize content in a concise way that lets users access more information faster. However, this approach is also prone to errors. After all, it is not uncommon for chatbots to make mistakes. This phenomenon, known as hallucination, has been known for a long time. According to the internet watchdog NewsGuard, some Pravda pages only have around 1,000 visitors per month, while the website of RT, the Russian state-controlled international news channel, has more than 14.4 million visits per month. Analysts are convinced that the sheer volume of articles affects chatbots' outputs.

USA - Texas taxpayers paid nearly $122 million to provide Healthcare to illegal migrants in November alone, says the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). The Texas HHSC is reporting that the costs to the state for health care for illegal migrants has topped $121.8 million in unpaid care in just the month of November alone. And that estimate is probably low. In its report, the HHSC reported that non-citizens utilized hospitals in the Lone Star State more than 31,000 times during November of last year. Still, this is the first report of its kind in Texas and if every month is similar going forward, the yearly total would approach $1.46 billion per year.

USA - Pamela Geller is reporting that Washington state has become the first state to recognize Islamic Holidays as official State holidays. Geller quoting The Daily Wire notes, “The state of Washington, which does not officially recognize Easter or Yom Kippur as state holidays, became the first state in the nation to recognize the two Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as unpaid state-recognized holidays when Democrat Governor Bob Ferguson signed the legislation into law this month.” No other state currently accepts these as official holidays. This is an example of diversity upending the traditions of the founders, who believed in Biblical values and worshipped accordingly.

USA - US banks are currently sitting on $482 billion in unrealized losses on their investment securities primarily long-dated Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities bought during the 0% interest rate era. This figure has jumped 33% in just the last quarter, making it the worst paper loss environment banks have faced in modern history, even worse than during the 2008 financial crisis. On the surface, these losses are “unrealized,” meaning banks don’t have to formally recognize them on their balance sheets unless they are forced to sell. The problem is: what can stay “unrealized” for years can suddenly flip into catastrophic reality under certain conditions. The entire post-2020 economic structure rests on the assumption that these unrealized losses stay hidden indefinitely. History shows that assumption is fragile.

UK - Amongst great fanfare and waving of flags the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales (HMSPoW) sailed from Portsmouth this week, bound for an epic eight-month deployment which will take her to the Indo-Pacific and back. It appears that HMSPoW and its accompanying escorts will then transit the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, where the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been lobbing missiles and seaborne armed drones at international shipping since November 2023, and have sunk two ships and injured many crew members. What if the Houthis have a pop at HMSPoW and her escorts as they sail by? I suspect that the temptation will be too much for them and that they will indeed have a go. Would they be able to hit Prince of Wales or any of its escorts? It is quite possible but unlikely given the vast array of defensive weaponry the task force will deploy. We just have to remember, though, that the defence has to be successful all of the time whereas the Houthis only have to be successful once to achieve their aim.

UK - The lift shudders to a halt, in total darkness. You reach for your mobile phone. No signal. You find the alarm button. No answer. As the seconds, minutes and hours go by, you can contemplate the vulnerability of our highly sophisticated society to breakdowns, and recall stories of corpses found in abandoned lifts. The power cuts that plunged Spain and Portugal into darkness this week caused few fatalities. But they are a timely reminder of how vulnerable our physical and social infrastructure is to breakdown. Trains stopped in tunnels. Payment systems froze. Communications packed up. Millions of people suffered stress, cost and inconvenience. And it is still unclear why. At least with the cyberattack that crippled Marks & Spencer we probably know the culprit: a greedy, wily gang of pseudonymous teenage cybercriminals. Not that it helps in trying to catch them. The fragility of our systems will not escape our enemies’ notice.

UK - Pembrolizumab is one of the first immunotherapy drugs for cancer. It harnesses the body’s own immune system and teaches it to attack tumours. It’s fair to say drugs such as Keytruda have transformed the landscape of cancer treatment. But there is a price to pay – and it’s a ‘grotesque’ one, according to Dr Andrew Hill, a visiting research fellow in the department of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool. ‘These cancer drugs are sold routinely for between 100 and 1,000 times what they cost to make,’ says Dr Hill. Global Justice Now estimates that pembrolizumab costs the NHS around £775 per 50mg, but its actual cost to manufacture, according to its calculations, is estimated to be no more than £18 per 50mg. The typical dosage for a single treatment varies depending on the cancer, but can be 200mg every three weeks. The UK is far from alone in its growing reliance on pembrolizumab, with Keytruda generating a staggering £19 billion in revenue globally for pharmaceutical giant MSD in 2023 alone.

USA - The cost of living squeeze is real and it’s making Americans completely stuck. Buying and renting are both out of reach for most Americans. $1 million 30 year mortgage at 6.85% (current national average) = $6,553/monthly payment. Annualized that is a $31,224 difference. If you took out a mortgage or refiled with a mortgage that begins with 2 percent, why would you ever move now? The cost of rent is out of control in America. These 2 bedroom apartments in California are $2,779 per month. They look like a dump. This is not abnormal, the average cost for a 2 bedroom in many areas of Southern California is over $2,700 per month. A 1 bedroom averages $2,200.

USA - The CEOs of some of the United States’ largest retailers, including Walmart, Target, and Home Depot, visited President Donald Trump at the White House this week, with a very stern warning: consumers could be seeing empty shelves in their stores soon, due to Trump’s tariffs, especially from goods imported from China, the country with the highest current tariffs. Trump tried to calm their fears and the markets by promising a deal would be made with China soon, and stating that President Xi had already called him “several times.” But China mocked Trump’s comments, stating that there were currently no discussions underway, and that there would be none until Trump dropped his tariffs against China.