Juliet Stevenson: ‘Do I have a nemesis? Where do we start? Putin, Musk, Trump, Erdoğan, Modi, Netanyahu’

Former German spy chief had contacts with Chinese official, Spiegel reports

BERLIN, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Germany's former spy chief August Hanning, who has been placed under arrest ​for suspected espionage, had longstanding contacts to ‌a former senior Chinese general, Spiegel magazine reported.

The magazine said Hanning, who left Germany's foreign intelligence service ​in 2005, had travelled to China ​several times, where he knew a former ⁠official who had served in China's embassy ​in formerly communist East Germany.

It said the former ​major general, whom it identified as Wang Jianzheng, was an established expert in German-related issues and had translated ​a number of German books into Chinese.

Hanning ​was detained this week on suspicion of sharing information ‌from ⁠confidential documents provided by his former chief of staff with foreign intelligence agents. The alleged activities took place after his retirement, when he ​worked as ​an independent ⁠security consultant…

 ‘I am not saying I am a good spy’: How a wartime spook got sprung by a simple mistake

Central Ukraine: He does not claim to be Russia’s brightest spy.

Alexander had really wanted the job, though. He was born in Ukraine but believed in Russia. And it was hard getting by on his shifts at McDonald’s. So when two Russian operatives approached him with the offer of a piecework spying gig, he jumped.

Juliet Stevenson: ‘Do I have a nemesis? Where do we start? Putin, Musk, Trump, Erdoğan, Modi, Netanyahu’

The British actor on the genius of Bend It Like Beckham, the role she lost to Emma Thompson and why some actors get worse with age

‘Looks Like They’re Firing Whistleblowers’: Alarm as OpenAI Reportedly Ousts Safety ExpertsCommon Dreams

French protests over school conditions spread as students set fires and put up blockades Euronews

Palantir founder purchases large swath of forest in Sweden Arctic Today

DLA Piper Is Defending The Paywall On Trump’s Presidency

Above the Law: “The administration is trying to sell early access to the president’s thoughts, and DLA Piper is the Biglaw firm defending it. Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept Media sued the president and White House officials last month, saying efforts to charge for advance access to his government announcements via Truth Social are “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.” 

The product at issue is Truth API, a data feed Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. rolled out over the summer that charges subscribers $60,000 to $100,000 a month for faster access to the president’s market-moving posts. The president, for his part, is Trump Media’s largest shareholder, with a stake worth roughly $1 billion held in a trust overseen by Donald Trump Jr. So the president announces military operations, ceasefires, and the firing of agency heads on a platform he owns, and the company he owns sells a head start on those announcements to anyone with six figures a month to spare. You do not need a Con Law seminar to spot the problem. 

But according to reporting by Bloomberg Law, Trump Media (which isn’t a party to the lawsuit) hired DLA Piper to defend the proposition. DLA Piper partner Caryn Schechtman and other firm attorneys submitted a letter as counsel for the company on Tuesday, arguing against the preliminary injunction sought by the two organizations. The firm’s argument is that the plaintiffs are trying “to constitutionalize TMTG’s independent commercial decisions regarding the distribution of publicly available content.”

See also EFF: “Americans’ First Amendment right to equal access to official government statements is violated by the Trump administration’s use of Truth Social’s preferential treatment scheme, which blocks people who won’t pay Trump’s company up to $100,000 a month for early access to government news, EFF told a federal court. The First Amendment guarantees that members of the public have equal access to public officials’ public comments, we reminded the court. EFF filed an amicus brief in support of a motion for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by The Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation against President Trump and other administration officials. The lawsuit challenges their use of Truth Social as their primary social media method of making official announcements when that platform provides people who pay a fee for early access to such posts.

 Trump uses his Truth Social account as his primary means of communicating with the public, including to announce military operations and ceasefires, foreign and domestic policy, and the removal and appointment of heads of federal agencies. Earlier in the year, Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, announced “Truth API,” a service that provides investors early access to “market-moving” messages from the president and other high-ranking officials for a fee of up to $100,000 per month…”

People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms

NPR: “…Johnson is one of a growing number of voters using chatbots to research their ballots for the first midterm election since AI has taken the country by storm. 

About half of American adults report using AI-powered chatbots and about 42% of users said they use it to search for information, according to the Pew Research Center. Several voters NPR spoke with said they rely on chatbots for down-ballot races with thinner news coverage, to make tables comparing candidates for governors’ races and to verify or debunk viral claims. Some have been using it to create tools to help others look up their own ballots. 

Experts say the properties that make chatbots useful also make them subtly persuasive and eager to please. “It might select some things that would reinforce and persuade you even more towards the way that you were leaning already,” said Rafael Batista, a postdoctoral fellow at John Hopkins University, who studies the societal and behavioral impacts of AI. “So you leave more confident, without necessarily learning more about the world.” 

Since AI companies don’t disclose how their commercial models are trained or how they choose which sources to draw on, it’s hard to know what biases might shape their answers, Batista said. Anthropic, the company that owns Claude, a chatbot, and Gemini, a Google-owned chatbot, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for OpenAI directed NPR to its election information and safeguards page which notes that the company continues to “monitor bias in our models to keep ChatGPT’s responses politically neutral.”

• See also beSpacific – Pentagon taps Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to help decide what the military should do next
• See also Trump signs executive order to launch AI-powered ‘America.gov’ 29 Sep 2026 Links to all the urls referenced below are here https://www.bespacific.com/trump-signs-executive-order-to-launch-ai-powered-america-gov/ Trump Announces His Own AI Platform Will Take Over The American Government – the site is powered by artificial intelligence from Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok.
•  [Just a suggestion – do not use this website…“Trump’s new AI chatbot wasn’t hallucinating, he lost the 2020 election. But when the newest rollout from the White House contradicted Trump’s rhetoric, they pulled the plug. Now when asked about it, the AI tool says “I do not offer political commentary on elections” and dismisses the question…” See also: NextGov/FCW – 
• “The Trump administration launched an artificial intelligence-powered one-stop shop for citizens interested in federal services and information on Tuesday with the help of former Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] employees. 
• The website currently allows users to ask a chatbot questions about everything from qualifying for Medicare to finding a job to renewing a passport, without ever creating an account. Users receive AI-generated answers derived only from official federal sources. 
• Phase two of America.gov, which is set for early 2027, will allow Americans to apply for, enroll in and track progress of benefits such as Social Security directly within the chatbot. The order also directs the head of the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies on implementing their covered services into America.gov. 
• The National Design Studio, a Trump administration creation that includes former DOGE employees, designed and engineered America.gov. The General Services Administration is operating the website amid a major shakeup to its web design system staff.