• New National Water Alliance Aims to Predict Water-Related Hazards, Manage U.S. Water Resources

    The new Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) is composed of 28 academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and government and industry partners across the United States and Canada, aiming to better predict water-related hazards and manage the nation’s water resources.

  • The Financial Risks of Water Resilience Planning in California

    California’s Water Resilience Portfolio Initiative is a multi-billion dollar effort that encourages different water utilities and irrigation districts to work together to build shared infrastructure to reduce the effects of droughts, but a number of questions remain regarding how best to structure these agreements.

  • Iran Vows to Continue Nuclear Activities

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said Iran will continue nuclear development activities as talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers remain stalled. The nuclear deal collapsed four years ago when former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, allowing Iran to vastly expanded its nuclear work.

  • Unmasking “Clandestine,” the Figure Behind the Viral “Ukrainian Biolab” Conspiracy Theory

    “Clandestine,” the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, has been identified as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights how a fringe QAnon figure, harnessing the power of social media, sparked a viral conspiracy theory which, in just a few weeks, made its way from QAnon to the world stage, amplified by Tucker Carlson, extreme far-right activists, the Proud Boys, Steve Bannon – and even the Kremlin.

  • ‘Ukraine Biolabs’: How Attempts to Debunk a Conspiracy Theory Only Helped It Spread

    As Russian forces moved into Ukraine on 24 February, stories of U.S.-funded biolabs and bioweapon research in Ukraine began to spread on social media. The false claims spread from right-wing circles but became more wide-spread, and were soon picked up by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. It wasn’t long until the Russian government, which had spread tales of Ukrainian biolabs in the past, adopted the narrative as a belated justification for the invasion. But, ironically, the very effort to debunk the Russian propaganda promoted by Carlson and Russia only gave to story more oxygen.

  • Facebook Fails to Appropriately Label 80% of Bioweapon Conspiracy Articles n Its Platform

    Facebook failed to label 80 percent of articles on its service which promote conspiracy theories about U.S. labs in Ukraine and Ukraine’s supposed intent to use CBW against Russia.

  • Draft Trump Executive Order Shows How False Foreign Interference Claims May Be Used to Undermine U.S. Elections

    In December 2020, as President Donald Trump grasped for ways to overturn his electoral defeat, a draft executive order circulated in his White House which would have empowered the U.S. military and intelligence community to intervene in the vote certification process. Emerson T. Brooking writes that the draft executive order made far-reaching assertions, each one of them false. “The draft order elevated and legitimized these falsehoods, seeking to use the power of the White House to write them into the federal record… [the order]. prescribed a military takeover of U.S. voting infrastructure, to be overseen by appointees who owed their positions and authority to a president who had just lost re-election.”

  • Curbing Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas

    The Ukrainian city of Mariupol is one of the latest examples of a populated area that has been turned to rubble by the relentless use of heavy explosive weapons. Destroyed cities and towns in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Syria, among others, provide other examples. An international agreement under negotiation at the United Nations this week seeks to reduce harm to civilians by curbing the use of heavy explosive weapons in cities, towns and villages.

  • Shared Water Resources: Source of Both Peace and Conflict

    From the Euphrates to the Mekong, dams that ensure one country’s water supply risk leaving others parched. But shared water resources can be a source of peace as well as conflict.

  • Are Conceptual Frameworks of Radicalization Leading to Involvement In Terrorism 'Observable'?

    A new report examines whether better-known frameworks of radicalization leading to terrorism involvement are readily observable through available data. “Perhaps the most valuable contribution of analytical frameworks is the guidance they can provide to support the interpretation of constellations of WHO, WHY, HOW and WHERE indicators in context,” the researchers say.

  • Deepfakes and Fake News Pose a Growing Threat to Democracy: Experts

    Experts say that both fake news and deepfakes have the negative effect of delegitimizing real news. They say fake news and deepfakes decrease the amount of true information available, reduce consumers’ trust in authentic media, and put an added burden on fact-checkers to authenticate the vast amount of content online.

  • Five Fact-Checking Tips from Disinformation Experts

    Saturday, 2 April, was the International Fact Checking Day. The European Digital Media Observatory is an EU-wide platform to combat disinformation while protecting the core value of freedom of expression.

  • Russia's Failure Leads to the Next Phase of the Ukraine War: Interview

    Russia’s failure to achieve its initial objectives in Ukraine – and achieve them quickly and cheaply — has led to a rethinking in Russia about the next phase of the war. “You can’t bomb urban areas into submission. You can’t even bomb entrenched soldiers into submission. Military history proves that you have to eventually close the distance and take what you want,” say a military expert. “[Russia] would like to get reinforcements and resupply the southeastern fight. If they really want that objective of connecting the separatist areas [to Crimea] and pushing back the Ukrainian military and [that] being what they’re able to negotiate as their win, that’s still a tough fight that [they will] have to close the distance for.”

  • Ukraine War’s Impact on Critical Materials Supply, Green Energy

    The elephant in the room is Europe’s dependence on the vast quantities of hydrocarbons that flow from Russia into Europe, but Putin’s war on Ukraine has the potential to affect many key supply chains for materials that will contribute to the clean energy transition.

  • Russia’s Energy Clout Doesn’t Just Come from Oil and Gas – It’s Also a Key Nuclear Supplier

    As Western nations look for ways to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas, another aspect of the Ukraine crisis has received less attention: Most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain. Economic fallout from the war in Ukraine could disrupt access to fuel for the nuclear power industry.