How Are Kids Supposed to Learn to Be Smart Online If Adults Are Such Big Dummies?
How Are Kids Supposed to Learn to Be Smart Online If Adults Are Such Big Dummies?
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Momo Challenge Is Not Real: Sharing Rumors Legitimizes Hoax
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How Are Kids Supposed to Learn to Be Smart Online If Adults Are Such Big Dummies?
By Madison Malone Kircher @4evrmalone
Sorry, but here’s Momo. Photo: j_s_rock via Instagram
Momo is not real. Kids being scared after seeing a picture of a freaky statue designed by a special effects company, that’s real. Parents being alarmed after noticing a clip with instructions on how to slit one’s wrists spliced into an otherwise innocuous YouTube video for kids. Also real. Child predation going down in YouTube comments. Real, too. But Momo, the viral meme dating to 2016 and circulating on the internet again this month, allegedly appearing in YouTube videos telling kids to kill themselves, is not real.
The thing is, unless you did your homework, you might have a hard time figuring that out. Meaning you really did your homework, and did it armed with a decent working knowledge of weird internet phenomena, along with a meme dictionary. Headlines across the globe have been declaring Momo a timely danger all week. “Viral ‘Momo Challenge’ Encouraging Child Suicide Terrifies Utah Kids.” “Dangerous, Viral ‘Momo Challenge’ Causing Concern for Parents.” “What Is the Momo Challenge? Sick WhatsApp ‘Suicide’ Game Targeting Young Kids.” ( Nieman Labs has a good roundup of local news stories peddling Momo bs .)
Kim Kardashian West screenshotted a copy-and-paste Facebook status warning about Momo, which she kindly shared with her 129 million Instagram followers without bothering to do any research. (The Facebook status she screenshotted calls out organizations including the FBI and World Star Hip Hop, but does not link to their respective pages. It’s a telltale sign of copy pasta, or a status that has been copied and shared ad nauseam.) “YouTube, help!” Kardashian West wrote, tagging the platform.
It’s not just worried parents and lazy media outlets spreading Momo hysteria. Police in Northern Ireland warned about the “ game ” in a Facebook post. “When downloaded [Momo] tells your child to communicate with them via WhatsApp and a number of other widely used apps,” they wrote. A sheriff’s office in Florida called it an “ application ,” describing it in a nonsensical tweet claiming Momo appears in video games, YouTube videos, and chat apps. Nobody who claims to have seen Momo can provide a link to a specific video or photos to prove they “saw” “Momo.” A colleague of mine forwarded me an email sent from her kid’s public school district in New Jersey, which to be fair included a fair amount of hedging about Momo, but still told parents and guardians “news outlets report that a frightening avatar asks its viewers to perform violent and dangerous tasks” and included links to several breathless pieces of coverage.
Overnight, some of our youth in St. Johns County saw a re-emergence of the application called “Momo” and it has evolved. pic.twitter.com/LypnWymLJW
— SJSO (@SJSOPIO) February 28, 2019
Earlier this week, YouTube published a statement denying any “ recent evidence of videos promoting the Momo Challenge on YouTube .” Then on Instagram, YouTube screenshotted Kim Kardashian West’s screenshot about the Momo threat and said they were on it. The company included a link to the statement, but the text in its Instagram story just thanked Kardashian West, saying “we take these reports really seriously.” YouTube didn’t highlight any other information for its 18 million Instagram followers — not a “this was never a real threat” or “after further investigation, we’ve determined this is a hoax.” Kardashian West later shared the company’s reply. To anybody who didn’t bother to swipe to YouTube’s press release, it looked like a celebrity saved their children from a scary (and nonexistent) YouTube monster.
A mom slid into my Instagram DMs berating my story debunking Momo and insisting she had sources inside at Google and YouTube who told her “off the record” that the company actually knows Momo videos exist, and how they are getting in front of children, and is “basically going to try to fix this while everyone forgets about it.” (She warned me about a setting that allows YouTube Kids — the app just for children’s content — to pull similar videos from the wider world of non-vetted YouTube. Here’s a helpful guide from Wired on ways to keep your kids safer using the app that explains the setting fully.)
I’m all for healthy, even passionate skepticism when it comes to tech companies and what they’re telling us. This is good online literacy, the kind we can only hope Generation Momo absorbs to use as adults in the real world. A different colleague told me she witnessed a fellow member of a parenting Facebook group come under attack after asking for more information from a person who claimed a friend’s child had seen Momo on YouTube. The question-asker was eventually forced to recant and apologize for questioning the poster’s credibility. It’s this, the teetering into conspiracy-theory peddling without real proof, that is actually dangerous. It helps viral “challenge” after challenge — Tide Pod eating, condom snorting — gain legitimacy. And it enables hoaxes like Momo to live a much longer life online than they should.
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Gen Z tries to cancel ‘offensive’ Eminem but millennials push back
Gen Z tries to cancel ‘offensive’ Eminem but millennials push back
“Listen, little kiddies, lemme make this quite clear: This man was around before you were here.”
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Gen Z tries to cancel ‘offensive’ Eminem but millennials push back
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March 4, 2021 | 2:04pm | Updated
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Now young people think the older folks’ music is offensive.
An attempt by Generation Z haters to cancel Eminem over controversial lyrics has been shot down by millennials, who feel the youngsters were talking out of school. Videos defending Slim Shady — whose real name is Marshall Mathers — are taking social media by storm.
The controversy kicked off in February when a “zoomer” (or Gen Z member) posted a TikTok clip condemning the rapper’s 2010 hit “Love the Way You Lie,” featuring Rihanna, for reportedly glorifying violence against women. They highlighted the verse “If she ever tries to f–king leave again I’ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.”
The hater’s on-camera diss caused 30-somethings to — in the words of an Eminem song title — “just lose it,” as many of them grew up on the 48-year-old Detroit native’s tunes.
Enlarge Image
Millennials have rallied to Eminem’s defense. WireImage
In the most viral clip, with 5.6 million views, an Eminem die-hard defends the “Real Slim Shady” singer in a rap beautifully set to the “Forgot About Dre” beat.
Eminem performs onstage during the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Getty Images for iHeartMedia
“Listen, little kiddies, lemme make this quite clear: This man was around before you were here,” she spits, adding that modern rappers mumble “gibberish.”
The number ends with this lyrical coup de grâce: “One day you’ll grow up and see how everyone went and forgot about Z.”
Another inspired TikTok sketch depicts an Eminem-loving millennial having a mock argument with himself as a Gen Zer, who says, “We gotta cancel Eminem.” The millennial responds, “Why?” and is then asked by his offended younger doppelgänger, “Have you heard his lyrics?”
The creator, back to playing his millennial Fireball-drinking self, responds: “Heard ’em? I was raised screaming them all through grade school.”
“Listen, little kiddies, lemme make this quite clear: This man was around before you were here.”
Undaunted, the zoomer says the lyrics are “full of hate,” to which the millennial claps back, “So is my angsty little teenage soul, but look at me now. I turned out fine.”
Other Slim Shady stalwarts pointed out that “Love the Way You Lie” is tame compared to some of the Grammy winner’s older hits, such as “Superman” and “Guilty Conscience” — the latter depicting a man murdering his cheating wife and her lover.
In addition, Rihanna has said herself that the “Stan” rapper’s aforementioned verse was actually a condemnation — and not a celebration — of domestic abuse.
For now, it appears Eminem is safe from the social-media guillotine. Especially since, as one Twitter user noted, “more powerful people” have tried and failed to cancel the hip-hop icon, including two US presidents. They were likely referencing former commanders-in-chief George Bush and Donald Trump, both of whom the rapper has skewered in song.
Mathers has yet to weigh in on the intergenerational rap battle.
Filed under cancel culture , eminem , generation z , millennials , 3/4/21
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Pentagon UFO report: They ‘acknowledged the reality,’ whistleblower says
Pentagon UFO report: They ‘acknowledged the reality,’ whistleblower says
‘This is not a conversation like fine wine where the longer we keep a cork on it, the better it gets.’
Ep. 1 | USS Nimitz, Tic Tac UFO, AATIP, FAA, the Navy and Pentagon | The Basement Office |
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Pentagon UFO report: It's a 'reality,' whistleblower says
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Pentagon UFO report: They ‘acknowledged the reality,’ whistleblower says
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April 24, 2021 | 8:43am | Updated
April 24, 2021 | 8:43am
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UFOs are "real" and information is coming, says controversial Pentagon whistleblower Luis Elizondo. Mystery Wire
The US government is actually gearing up to share information about the “reality” of UFOs with the public — and not a moment too soon, says the man who claims to have run the Pentagon’s UFO program for 9 years.
Former President Donald Trump’s $2.3 trillion appropriation bill for 2021 contained a mandate that the Pentagon and spy agencies must file a report about “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAP. Most of us just call them flying saucers or UFOs.
Whatever the jargon, noted whistleblower Luis Elizondo — former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which operated out of the secretive fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring — told The Post about the resulting blockbuster document, which is reportedly slated for release in June.
Tied to the mandate, Elizondo said the upcoming report touches down on the unexplainable. Longtime UFO believers are hungry for explanations of the tic-tac-shaped objects the Navy encountered in 2004, the strange “cubes within spheres” seen by Navy pilots in 2014, or the mysterious black triangles continually reported around the world.
Such details promise to come via the much anticipated report — and at least one evolution of belief: “I think the government has acknowledged the reality of UAP,” Elizondo exclusively told The Post, despite signing what he refers to as a “lifelong” NDA before he resigned from the Pentagon in 2017. “I think they all want answers and I think they are all willing to ask the hard questions.”
‘This is not a conversation like fine wine where the longer we keep a cork on it, the better it gets.’
Luis Elizondo, former head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
During a press conference this week, Elizondo made clear that UFOs have been observed to have qualities that are nothing less than otherworldly. He described vessels flying at 11,000 miles-per-hour and being able to turn “instantly.” Providing a comparison, he explained, for our most advanced jets going at the same speed, “if you wanted to make a right-hand turn, it would take you about half the state of Ohio to do it.”
He also detailed Spielberg-worthy operational capabilities that fall into the realm of “transmedium travel.” Elizondo explained that the eye-popping vessels can fly 50-feet above the Earth’s surface or 80,000 feet in the sky and even submerge underwater without a compromise in performance: “When you see that, you recognize you are dealing with a technology more advanced than ours.”
That was despite apparent threats to security of the United States. Elizondo was particularly disturbed by the locations where UFOs or UAPs tended to hover.
Even the way in which these inexplicable flying-machines manage to lift-off blows away rational engineering. “ [These] things have no wings, no cockpits, no control surfaces, no rivets in the skin, no obvious signs of propulsion — and somehow they are able to defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity,” Elizondo said. “How is that possible?”
The existence of the AATIP wasn’t revealed until 2017, along with what Trump described as a “hell of a video” montage captured by the Navy featuring a dark circular object flying in front of a military jet, along with another small object racing over land at astonishing speeds in 2004 and 2015, respectively. The Department of Defense confirmed the authenticity of the footage, and a Navy spokesman confirmed the objects in the videos to be UAP.
The Pentagon officially released three videos taken by US Navy pilots showing mid-air encounters with what appear to be UFOs. The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy confirmed in 2020 that they were authentic. The Department of Defense said it “was releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.”
DoD/AFP via Getty Images
At the time, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took credit for arranging $22 million in annual funding for the AATIP, telling the New York Times that it was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”
By 2019, the Pentagon had confirmed to The Post for the first time that they research and investigate UFOs and continue to do so.
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Meanwhile, UFO sightings in NYC were up 31% in 2020 — 46, compared to 35 the previous year — marking a whopping 283% spike from 2018’s dozen, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
However, for generations, and for all the wrong reasons, national security bigwigs did not want to release more information to the public, Elizondo claims.
“They felt that it made them look inept,” he said. “They felt in some cases that it challenged their philosophical and theological belief systems … They just couldn’t process it.”
“There seems to be a very distinct congruency between UAP activity and our nuclear technology,” he continued. “That’s concerning to the point where we’ve actually had some of our nuclear capabilities disabled by these things … There is absolutely evidence that UAPs have an active interest in our nuclear technology.”
If this starts to sound like a “Twilight Zone” episode – Elizondo talks about UFOs pulling as many as 700 G-forces when our most technologically advanced aircraft can stand only 17 before falling apart (and that’s to say nothing about pilots at the controls) — it’s easy to hope for a fast and satisfactory wrap-up.
Clearly, that is what Elizondo is gunning for.
“This is not a conversation like fine wine where the longer we keep a cork on it, the better it gets,” he said. “This is a conversation like rotten fruit or vegetables in the refrigerator. And the longer it stays in there, the more it’s going to stink.”
Filed under aliens , donald trump , the pentagon , ufos , 4/24/21
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Blue Whale: What is the truth behind an online 'suicide challenge'?
Blue Whale: What is the truth behind an online 'suicide challenge'?
Origin story
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Why blue whales?
The suspect
'Shivers on my skin'
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Reporter responds
Blue Whale: Fact or Fiction?
Prisoner

Blue Whale: What is the truth behind an online 'suicide challenge'? - BBC News
Blue Whale: What is the truth behind an online 'suicide challenge'?
By Ant Adeane
BBC Trending
Published
13 January 2019
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The "Blue Whale challenge" was reported to be an online "suicide game" aimed at teenagers which set 50 tasks over 50 days. The challenge was alleged to be linked to numerous deaths around the world. But little about the "game" was quite as it seemed.
The first tasks were fairly innocuous: "Wake up in the middle of the night" or "Watch a scary film". But day by day, the tasks grew more sinister.
"Stand on the ledge of a tower block."
"Cut a whale into your arm."
The final challenge? A demand that the user kill themselves.
The challenge was alleged to have started in Russia, but reports of it soon spread to other countries: Ukraine, India and the United States.
Hundreds of deaths were reported to be linked to the so-called "suicide game".
But closer investigation has revealed something curious. The game, at least as it was initially reported, doesn't seem to have existed at all.
Origin story
The story of the Blue Whale challenge began with Rina Palenkova.
On 22 November 2015, Rina, a teenager living in south-eastern Russia, posted a selfie.
In the photo she is standing outside. A black scarf is wrapped around her mouth and nose. She is sticking her middle finger up at the camera. It looks like it's covered in dried blood.
The photo's caption read: "Nya bye". The next day, she took her own life.
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Rina Palenkova's death was discussed in a certain type of chat room hosted by Russia's largest social network VKontakte. These forums were places where teenagers met to talk about everyday things like school and which classmates they fancied, as well as darker subject matter: depression, loneliness and suicide.
Scary stories were exchanged. The spookiness of these stories came from how real they seemed, something often achieved through fake pictures or doctored footage.
It is the online equivalent of the claim made by classic horror films that they are "based on true events". Because at the heart of any good ghost story is a sliver of plausibility.
It was in these groups, where the line between fact and fiction was often blurred, that users posted feverishly about Rina. In some instances, they lauded her for ending her life. Videos purporting to be her final moments were posted online.
But amid the rumours, there was a problem.
"Nobody actually knew the true story behind her suicide," says Daria Radchenko, a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration who has looked into the so-called Blue Whale challenge.
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And shortly thereafter, Rina's story merged with other stories of teenage suicide.
On Christmas Day 2015, 12-year-old Angelina Davydova killed herself in the Russian city of Ryazan. A little over a fortnight later, so did Diana Kuznetsova, a teenager from the same city.
When the parents examined the online accounts left behind by their daughters, they found something curious - the two girls were part of similar online groups.
In these groups were drawings of Rina Palenkova, posts about suicide and numerous mentions of blue whales.
Why blue whales?
There has been much speculation about how whales became linked to suicide in these groups. Some journalists claim it is because whales have been known to beach themselves, a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists. Others say that it is a reference to lyrics from a Russian rock band named Lumen.
It's difficult, of course, to say why certain images particularly resonate. Whales are solitary-seeming, sad-looking animals. They make for good memes. One of the most widely shared images was of a whale flying over a city at night. It captured the spirit of these groups - melancholy and quietly surreal.
But it wasn't until May 2016 that speculation about blue whales and suicide became part of the national conversation in Russia.
An article by journalist Galina Mursalieva in Novaya Gazeta, an investigative newspaper, sent the story into overdrive.
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Mursalieva suggested that inside certain online groups, some of them with enigmatic names like "Ocean Whales" and "f57", existed a game.
In this game, so-called "curators" would set players 50 tasks over 50 days. On the last day the user was instructed to take their own life.
The Novaya Gazeta report estimated that 130 children might have killed themselves between November 2015 and April 2016 because of their participation in these groups. It would come to be known worldwide as the Blue Whale challenge.
It did not take long for the story to cause considerable alarm. The governor for Ulyanovsk in western Russia went on television to compare the Blue Whale challenge to the Islamic State group.
Soon the panic spread outside Russia. In Georgia, US, a 16-year-old girl killed herself. It was only later when her family had learned about the Blue Whale challenge that they realised the significance of the metre-high paintings she had finished at school shortly before she died.
They appeared to be of blue whales.
Then came other suicides: a boy named Isaiah Gonzalez, also in the United States, a 19-year-old in Hyderabad in India, and two Russian girls, Yulia Konstantinova and Veronika Volkova. A few days before she died, Konstantinova had posted an image of a blue whale on her Instagram account.
The suspect
In November 2016, 21-year-old Philipp Budeikin was arrested, charged with inciting teenagers to suicide.
Budeikin appeared to admit culpability. He told Russian media outlet Saint-Petersburg.ru: "There are people, and then there is biodegradable waste. I was cleansing our society of such people. Sometimes I start to think that it's wrong, but in the end I had the feeling I was doing the right thing."
He liked computers and was an aspiring producer of "witch house", an electronic music genre with occult themes. A former psychology student, the impression given by the media was that he had used highly developed tactics to manipulate teenagers into killing themselves.
He said he had created the game in 2013 under the name "f57", combining the sound of the start of his name, Philipp, and the last two digits of his phone number. On 10 May 2017 he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
'Shivers on my skin'
It seemed like an open-and-shut case. Further investigation, however, has revealed that little about the Blue Whale challenge was quite as straightforward as it seemed.
Evgeny Berg was on his way to work when he first read about the Vkontakte chat rooms.
"It made a strong impression on me. It was May but it was very gloomy. I thought 'Oh my God, there is a man out there who is trying to kill a lot of children in Russia.' And I felt shivers on my skin."
Berg, an investigative journalist at Meduza, a Russian-language independent media organisation, decided to dig deeper. His research took him to Sergey Pestov, the father of one of the girls who died around Christmas 2015.
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After his daughter's death, Pestov and his wife founded an organisation called Saving Children from Cybercrime. They produced a brochure. It implied that foreign intelligence might be to blame for their daughter's death and that operatives were destroying the Russian people by inciting their children to suicide.
Pestov became a key source of statistics for the original Novaya Gazeta piece.
"He used media sources and open sources to count a bunch of cases all over Russia which were, in his opinion, connected with suicide groups," says Evgeny Berg. "And this number was 130."
This is the same number that was first quoted in the Novaya Gazeta piece. "So that's where the number started" says Berg, "with the father of a girl who tragically died at the end of 2015."
In a story shrouded in rumour and hearsay, this 130 figure is one of the very few widely reported "facts". But even though it is still being used by many news outlets, the figure is tenuous. According to Evgeny Berg and Meduza, it originates with a parent trying to unravel the reasons behind a personal tragedy.
The Novaya Gazeta article has been viewed over one and a half million times, according to the paper.
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Reporter responds
We took Evgeny Berg's allegations - that the foundations of the Novaya Gazeta article were, at best, unsteady - directly to the reporter, Galina Mursalieva. She rejected the claim that her report relied on a single flawed statistic.
"This number 130 wasn't based on the conclusions of one father who lost his child," says Mursalieva. "No. This is absolutely wrong. It was based on the conclusions of over 200 parents who lost their children. The father of the girl who died just helped during that period of time. I don't have any reason not to trust them. I checked many things."
Mursalieva had worked on the story for months and included interviews with the parents of deceased children and experts in law and psychology. She says she published it because she wanted to spur into action investigators who she thought weren't taking the problem seriously enough.
But despite the considerable column inches dedicated to the "challenge" over the years, not a single suicide has so far been proved to be linked to these groups, neither by journalists nor police.
"There have actually been way more than 130 cases," claims Mursalieva. "But tell me - who could confirm that this happened? How can it be confirmed?"
That seems to be the crux of it. How can the cause of a suicide ever be "proved"? It might be more accurate to say that teenagers suffering from depression, some of them suicidal, could be drawn to groups that deal with that topic. These same children may use similar images, like blue whales, to articulate their feelings online.
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Blue Whale: Fact or Fiction?
With its surreal memes and creepy stories that blur fact and fiction, the subculture of teenage messaging boards is easy for adults to misinterpret. It is possible that journalists and concerned parents accessed these groups and brought together disparate elements into a story that wasn't really there.
That reading tallies with the findings of Alexandra Arkhipova, a professor in Folklore Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities. When she and her colleagues entered the online groups alleged to be connected with the Blue Whale challenge, they found something strange.
"All of these 'curators'," says Arkhipova, "turned out to be children aged 12 to 14."
Far from being manipulative adults, all the curators seemed to be just kids who had read or heard about the game. In fact, Arkhipova's research suggests that the "challenge" might not have really existed in any substantial way before the Novaya Gazeta article was published.
Arkhipova says that the "curators" she came across online were copycats, acting out step by step the parts of a game that was being widely reported in the press.
"In all these groups people, mainly young people, were waiting for this game," says Arkhipova. "This game never starts."
Prisoner
But where does that leave the story of Philipp Budeikin, the man who confessed to creating the game? Oddly, it might have something to do with his music career.
Friends of Budeikin, speaking to the investigative journalist Evgeny Berg, disputed the claim that he is an evil mastermind.
In fact, they say that he filled online groups with "shock" content related to Rina Palenkova and suicide in order to get as many followers as possible - and then advertise his music.
It is a common practice on VKontakte, where people exploit access to a large amount of followers to advertise other projects or sell products.
When Budeikin was arrested, there were 15 charges against him. By the following month, all but one had collapsed.
The truth at the heart of the Blue Whale challenge is surely both more sad and more mundane than the breathless articles might have us believe. Russia's suicide rates are high especially among the young. It has one of the highest rates of adolescent suicide in the world.
Yes, some teenagers appear to have been drawn into online forums where suicide was being discussed. And in those forums, blue whale memes were being shared. But the idea of a sinister game, one that slowly roped in vulnerable teens and led them down an increasingly tortured path to suicide, seems to be a simplistic explanation for a complex problem.
There is no silver bullet for tackling suicide amongst teenagers. Nor is there a bogeyman that can be locked up to prevent it.
Do you have a story for us? Email BBC Trending.
Story by Ant Adeane
With reporting by Olga Robinson, BBC Monitoring
If you need support for mental health issues, advice is available via the BBC Action Line.
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People's dependence on smartphones and modern technology could bring about the coming of the Antichrist, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has warned. READ NOW
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Carlos Ghosn: How did the Nissan ex-boss flee from Japan?
Carlos Ghosn: How did the Nissan ex-boss flee from Japan?
'Mission impossible'
The role of Carole Ghosn
Three passports
What now?

Carlos Ghosn: How did the Nissan ex-boss flee from Japan? - BBC News
Carlos Ghosn: How did the Nissan ex-boss flee from Japan?
Published
8 January 2020
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Carlos Ghosn, the former boss of Nissan, managed to leave Japan where he was awaiting trial
He was once a titan of the car industry who held hero status in Japan. He then became one of the country's most well-known criminal suspects. Now he's an international fugitive.
Carlos Ghosn, the multi-millionaire former boss of Nissan, spent months preparing to stand trial on financial misconduct charges. At least, that was what the Japanese authorities were led to believe.
He posted 1bn yen (£6.8m; $8.9m) in bail in April. He was monitored by a 24-hour camera installed outside his house. His use of technology was heavily restricted and he was banned from travelling abroad.
Then, in a move that left Japan red-faced and his own legal team baffled, he appeared in Lebanon on New Year's Eve. "I have escaped injustice and political persecution," he declared in a statement.
"I am dumbfounded," his lawyer, Junichiro Hironaka, told reporters in Tokyo shortly after learning of Mr Ghosn's flight. "I want to ask him, 'How could you do this to us?'"
Another pressing question is: how did he do it at all?
'Mission impossible'
On 8 January, in his first public comments since fleeing, Mr Ghosn refused to say how he managed to leave Japan.
He told a news conference in Beirut that he would clear his name despite being on the run, and joked that he was used to "mission impossible".
Reports suggest that description may not be wide of the mark.
The former CEO's getaway from Tokyo to Beirut was meticulously planned over a period of several weeks or months, according to numerous media reports.
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Mr Ghosn walked out of his Tokyo house despite cameras and other security measures
Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that CCTV footage showed Mr Ghosn leaving his house and walking about 800m to a nearby hotel in the middle of the afternoon on 29 December. There he joined two men, thought to be Americans.
The three then boarded a train to Osaka and went to a hotel near Kansai international airport. Two hours later, the two men were seen leaving with two large containers, according to NHK. No cameras captured Mr Ghosn - the implication being that he was inside one of the containers.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, said a team was carefully assembled to carry out the plot. The group reportedly included accomplices in Japan who transported Mr Ghosn from his house and onto a private jet bound for Istanbul. From there, he continued his journey to Beirut where he arrived in the early hours of 30 December.
The plane tracking site FlightRadar24 showed a Bombardier Challenger private jet arriving at Beirut-Rafic Hariri international airport shortly after 04:00 local time. Mr Ghosn then met his wife Carole, who was born in the city and was heavily involved in the operation, the Wall Street Journal says.
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The ex-Nissan boss was pictured leaving prison while disguised as a workman in March 2019
An earlier MTV Lebanon report, which now appears to be inaccurate, suggested Mr Ghosn fled with the assistance of a paramilitary group who were disguised amongst a band of musicians.
The 65-year-old was said to have hid in a large musical instrument case. The broadcaster provided no proof for this theory which, unsurprisingly, spread rapidly across social media.
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Mr Ghosn's wife, Carole, told Reuters news agency that reports of the musical escape were "fiction".
Donning a spy-movie disguise is not beyond Mr Ghosn, however. In March, in a bid to throw journalists off his scent, he left prison disguised as a construction worker. He was quickly identified and his lawyer soon apologised for the "amateur plan".
The role of Carole Ghosn
Mr Ghosn denies his wife helped him, insisting he organised his escape "alone" and she has declined to provide details of the escape.
But several reports have said Carole Ghosn was a major figure behind the plan for her husband to get out of Japan. She spoke to him for more than an hour on 24 December, Mr Ghosn's Japanese lawyer said. The couple had previously been banned from meeting or communicating under Mr Ghosn's bail conditions.
After her husband arrived in Lebanon, Mrs Ghosn told the Wall Street Journal that their reunion was "the best gift of my life".
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Mr Ghosn's wife Carole told the BBC in June that Japanese officials were trying to humiliate her husband
Mr Ghosn has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He has also said media speculation that his wife had played a role in his escape was "inaccurate and false", adding: "I alone arranged for my departure."
Several media reports said private security operatives helped smuggle Mr Ghosn out of house arrest.
The Financial Times reported that the operatives had been planning the escape for months, and had allegedly split into several teams working in different countries. Two people familiar with the situation said the preparations were assisted by Mr Ghosn's Japanese supporters.
The former Nissan boss made his escape by flying out of Japan's Osaka airport on a private jet, the newspaper reported. It said Mr Ghosn was not required to wear any electronic tags while on bail.
Two unnamed sources close to Mr Ghosn told Reuters news agency that even the pilot of the private jet was unaware of Mr Ghosn's presence on board.
Three passports
Questions remain about the documents Mr Ghosn used to enter Lebanon. He holds three passports - Brazilian, French and Lebanese - but his legal team maintain that they were in possession of all of them when he left Japan.
It is not known whether Mr Ghosn was holding duplicate passports - as businesspeople are sometimes allowed to do. It has also been reported that he may have had a diplomatic passport issued by Lebanon although this has not been confirmed.
While the French newspaper Le Monde said he travelled on an ID card, others have reported that he may have used a French passport or even forged documents.
A spokesperson for Mr Ghosn told the Financial Times he had used a French passport to enter Lebanon but would not disclose how he had left Japan.
Ghadi Khoury, from the Lebanese foreign ministry, said the former Nissan boss had entered the country on a French passport and Lebanese ID, according to the newspaper.
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Mr Ghosn grew up in Beirut and remains a popular figure in the city
The embarrassment caused by Mr Ghosn's flight soon sparked a reaction from Japan. One Japanese politician asked whether he "had the support of some country". A former governor of Tokyo was more forthright, accusing Lebanon of direct involvement.
Mr Ghosn grew up in Lebanon, owns property there and is a popular figure. He even appeared on one of the country's postage stamps.
The two Reuters sources said the Lebanese ambassador to Japan had visited him every day while he was in detention. The ambassador has not publicly responded to this claim.
The Lebanese government has denied any involvement in Mr Ghosn's escape.
"The government has nothing to do with [Mr Ghosn's] decision to come," Lebanese minister Salim Jreissati was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "We don't know the circumstances of his arrival."
Mr Khoury told the Financial Times that Lebanon "had asked for [Mr Ghosn's] extradition", but said the government had not had any involvement in his plan to escape.
France and Turkey have also said they were unaware of Mr Ghosn's plan.
What now?
On 2 January Lebanon received a "red notice" from Interpol for Mr Ghosn's arrest - a request to detain a person pending extradition, surrender or other legal action. However, there is no extradition deal between Japan and Lebanon.
France, meanwhile, has said it would not extradite him if he arrived in the country as he is a French citizen.
Turkey has launched an investigation into Mr Ghosn's reported stopover in Istanbul. Local media say seven people have been arrested - four pilots, a cargo company manager and two airport workers.
Japan gives millions in aid to Lebanon and is likely to want Mr Ghosn returned. But it faces questions about how such a high-profile suspect was able to get out of the country in the first place.


Scientists Are Slamming A Report Saying Microwave Attacks Could Have Caused “Havana Syndrome” In US Diplomats
Scientists Are Slamming A Report Saying Microwave Attacks Could Have Caused “Havana Syndrome” In US Diplomats
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Scientists Slam Microwave Theory For “Havana Syndrome”
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Scientists Are Slamming A Report Saying Microwave Attacks Could Have Caused “Havana Syndrome” In US Diplomats
“The report does not make a coherent argument why microwaves should be involved,” one critic said.
By Dan Vergano
Dan Vergano BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on December 7, 2020, at 8:13 p.m. ET
Miami Herald / Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Workers at the US Embassy in Havana leave the building on Sept. 29, 2017, after the State Department announced that it was withdrawing all nonessential personnel from the embassy.
A microwave attack is the “most plausible” explanation for an outbreak of mysterious injuries that dozens of US diplomats in Cuba reported three years ago, a long-awaited study released over the weekend concluded.
But scientists who collaborated on the National Academies of Sciences report, commissioned by the US State Department, say that the finding about possible microwave attacks is far from conclusive. Outside experts on microwaves and the mysterious “Havana syndrome,” meanwhile, dismissed it as implausible. One scientist dubbed it “science fiction.”
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“In many ways, what we are saying is the US government needs to take this on in a more deliberate and comprehensive manner,” said panel chair David Relman, an infectious disease expert at Stanford. “What is needed is an all-of-government effort to not just study what happened but to anticipate what the future holds.”
The State Department praised the release, saying in a statement released to BuzzFeed News that the report “can add to the data and analyses that may help us come to an eventual conclusion as to what transpired.”
The statement added, “Among a number of conclusions, the report notes that the ‘constellation of signs and symptoms’ is consistent with the effects of pulsed radio frequency energy. We would note that ‘consistent with’ is a term of art in medicine and science that allows plausibility but does not assign cause.”
Roughly 35 diplomats reported the mysterious injuries starting in late 2016, marring US diplomatic relations with Cuba for much of the Trump administration.
In 2017, the State Department first publicized concerns about US Embassy personnel in Havana who had reported hearing loud noises and then experiencing symptoms including ear pain, headaches, and head pressure. Early news reports cited sonic weapons as the cause, triggering deafness, inner ear damage, and a concussion-like syndrome of brain damage — all dismissed by the new NAS report — which Rex Tillerson, then the head of the State Department, called “ health attacks ” on the diplomats and their families.
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Other theories circulated suggesting that the mysterious illnesses were caused by cricket noises triggering mass hysteria or Russian spies somehow zapping diplomats. In 2019, the State Department asked the NAS to review the illnesses with the limited information available and with an emphasis on advising how to collect medical information for any future clusters of cases. The panel met three times in the last year, hearing from medical teams who had treated or examined some affected patients; it also reviewed reports by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health and heard testimony from eight patients in closed sessions.
But the panel was hamstrung by a lack of information about the people involved, the report said, because of security and medical privacy laws. The medical testing data provided was not thorough enough, since it was collected to help treat the patients rather than investigate an outbreak of injuries.
“We didn't have information about individual people, including who was first affected, who was later affected, what their connections were,” said panel member Jeffrey Staab, a professor of psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic. Given those limits, the panel focused on the acute, immediate symptoms reported among the diplomats in Havana — loud sounds, pressure, vibrations, ear pain, and headaches — as most distinctive and informative about the possible explanations. The panel also excluded recent reports of similar injuries in Canadian tourists and US diplomats in China.
“There are real holes in the information,” Staab said. “Even if we had all the security clearances to see everything about everyone, there would be holes in the information.”
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Those same limits constrained what the scientists could say were plausible explanations for the injuries, panel members told BuzzFeed News. A theory that the mysterious illness was caused by an infectious disease, such as the Zika virus, was deemed “highly unlikely” — and a more recent explanation that the outbreak was caused by pesticide poisoning was determined to be “not likely,” though the scientists pointed out that no blood samples remained from the patients to thoroughly rule it out.
“Even if we had all the security clearances to see everything about everyone, there would be holes in the information.”
The scientists also considered a third theory that mass psychological illness was the cause. In this scenario, a cluster of acute symptoms is followed by wider numbers of chronic conditions — notably persistent dizziness, difficulty thinking, insomnia, and headaches — mirroring past outbreaks of injuries spread by social contagion. However, without data on the individuals and their contacts to map out social networks, Staab said, the panel couldn’t draw a definite conclusion. “The hardest to set aside is the psychological, social explanation,” Relman said.
That left a final theory that the illnesses were caused by a “directed radio frequency energy attack.” Based on a real phenomenon called "the Frey effect," where beams of pulsed microwaves aimed at a person’s ears could produce clicking noises that only the person targeted can hear, the panel suggested a “Frey-like effect” was the “most plausible” of the explanations considered.
“It's a little dramatic. But first of all, something important and real happened to these people,” Relman said. “We looked at possible mechanisms and found that one was more plausible than the others and entirely consistent with some of the most distinct clinical findings.”
The report concluded that a microwave attack could cause a compensatory balance and dizziness syndrome afterward, accompanied by depression triggered by their injuries. Chronic injuries often have psychological aspects that shouldn’t be discounted as real symptoms, Staab said.
Some of the report's most important findings were its recommendations to the State Department on how to investigate any future clusters thoroughly, with experts from many disciplines instead of just physicians familiar with brain injuries. “Whatever happens, we can’t let this happen again,” Staab said.
However, experts in both microwaves and group psychology were highly critical of the report’s conclusions.
“The report does not make a coherent argument why microwaves should be involved,” said University of Pennsylvania bioengineer Kenneth Foster, who first described the mechanism behind the Frey effect in 1974. The effect requires very high power levels to produce barely audible sounds, he said, and it’s not known to cause injuries. “Maybe someone went to the trouble to truck in a large microwave transmitter to cause the employees to hear ‘clicks,’ but there are simpler ways to harass people than that,” he said.
“This is not science but science fiction,” said UCLA neurologist Robert Baloh, coauthor of Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. News reports alone, not considered by the panel, paint a picture of illnesses spreading through the patients in ways that look a lot like past group psychology outbreaks, Baloh said. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding these symptoms are real, people are really injured, even among physicians,” he added.
“This is not science, but science fiction.”
Neuroscientist Mitchell Joseph Valdés Sosa of the Cuba Neuroscience Center said the report was a step in the right direction since it invalidated the wilder theories of sonic weapons and brain damage. The findings resemble a 2018 Cuban Academy of Sciences report, coauthored by Sosa, which suggested that early injuries among a few people likely spread by mass psychology to more people throughout the wider diplomatic community. “We don’t agree with the radio frequency pulse finding, of course,” Sosa said, “but this is the first time we have US experts acknowledging psychogenic effects could be important.”
He noted the Cuban hotels and neighborhoods where the microwave attacks supposedly took place are in crowded, open spaces, making it unlikely such a small group would be affected or that the attacks could go unnoticed.
The Cuban Academy of Sciences did reach out to the panel to present its surveys of the neighborhoods near where the injuries were reported, Sosa added. But it was told the panel’s contract didn’t allow for consulting with the Cubans.
None of the panel members seem to have much experience in biological effects of microwaves, which might explain their willingness to consider a Frey-like effect plausible, said Old Dominion University bioengineer Andrei Pakhomov, who said he was skeptical based on his four decades of research in the area. “There are many reports of biological effects from radio frequency fields, but there are no reliable ones.”
Despite the reported suspicions of Russian spies somehow building on Soviet-era research to create such a weapon, Pakhomov, a Russian emigre, said the field is now defunct in Russia.
“I know all the people there who could have done something in this area,” he said. “They are all retired or out of science.”
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Dan Vergano is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Dan Vergano at dan.vergano@buzzfeed.com.
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Britney Spears' conservatorship, explained
Britney Spears' conservatorship, explained
What is a conservatorship?
How did we get here?
Why does Britney want out?
What has Britney said about the case?
What is #FreeBritney?

Britney Spears' conservatorship, explained - CBS News
Britney Spears' conservatorship, explained
By Zoe Christen Jones, Justin Carissimo
February 13, 2021 / 7:08 AM / CBS News
The legal controversy surrounding Britney Spears is no secret. Her father has controlled her career and finances since 2008, a position she's been fighting against for years.
The fight is back in the spotlight following the release of a New York Times documentary, " Framing Britney Spears ," which follows the beloved pop star's rise to fame, public breakdown and recent comeback. The documentary also focuses on the past media coverage of Spears, which many now consider misogynistic.
For years, fans have used the hashtag #FreeBritney to support the singer's desire to leave her conservatorship, a court-appointed role that gives her father, Jamie Spears, the power to control her estate. Britney's lawyers have said she will no longer perform as long as her father is in charge.
Both sides returned to court Thursday to determine the roles her father and a financial company, acting as a co-conservator, will play in handling her estate. The next hearing is scheduled for March 17.
What is a conservatorship?
A conservatorship is legally defined as a court case where a judge appoints an individual or organization, called the conservator, to care for someone who "cannot care" for themselves or who cannot manage their own finances, according to the Judicial Branch of California.
Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a staff attorney with the ACLU, told CBS News conservatorship laws will vary from state to state, making it difficult to determine exactly how many exist across the country.
The law supports conservatorships when less restrictive options are ruled out, Brennan-Krohn said, but too often, they're granted as a "first resort" when someone encounters difficulties or experiences age-related disabilities.
Brennan Krohn said Britney is "one of the untold thousands nationwide" under a guardianship or conservatorship, calling her case unique because of her fame and fortune. "But it is also interesting because it is, in some ways, quite typical. We see across the country that people get into conservatorships and guardianships that they can't get out of."
How did we get here?
In 2008, James Spears, who goes by Jamie, was granted the conservatorship after Britney purportedly struggled with mental health issues and was hospitalized. After Britney was released, a Los Angeles court made the conservatorship permanent, giving her father and another co-conservator power over her finances and medical decisions.
Jamie argues that his conservatorship is working. Under his order, his legal team says, Britney's estate has gone from being in debt to having a valuation of more than $60 million.
In November 2020, his legal team said Jamie has worked hard to restore Britney to "good health, reunite her with her children, and revive her career."
"Throughout his service as Conservator, Mr. Spear's sole motivation has been his unconditional love for his daughter and a fierce desire to protect her from those trying to take advantage of her," Jamie's legal team wrote. "He wants his daughter to be happy, healthy, protected and thriving. His love for Britney is a material factor in how he has been able to turn her estate around from being in the red to what it is now."
Jamie Spears in 2012 and Britney Spears in 2017. AP
Why does Britney want out?
In August 2020, the pop star's court-appointed attorney said Britney "strongly opposed" her father's position as the sole conservator of her estate and asked the court to limit his control. Her attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, said Britney "strongly prefers to have a qualified corporate fiduciary in the role" and she's made several attempts to do so.
Britney requested that Jamie's temporary replacement, Jodi Montgomery, be named the permanent conservator of her person. Montgomery, a professionally licensed conservator, temporarily took over the role in 2019 when Jamie volunteered to briefly step down, citing health reasons.
In November of last year, a judge granted the singer's wish to appoint an outside financial group, Bessemer Trust, as co-conservator. She is still requesting the court to remove her father and allow Bessemer Trust to become the sole conservator of her estate — something Jamie and his legal team have continued to fight, arguing that his powers had been stripped away.
In court, Ingram reportedly called Britney a "high-functioning conservatee" who deserves to know what action her father might be taking over her estate. He also said his client is "afraid of her father" and that she had not spoken to him for a long time.
On February 3, the singer's counsel said "it would be highly detrimental to Britney's interests" to allow her father to be the sole person in charge of her estate.
Attorneys for both Britney and Jamie Spears did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.
Brennan-Krohn, who works on the ACLU's Disability Rights Program, said there are certain risks that could come with the appointment, including "financial, physical and emotional abuse."
"Even when there is no abuse, conservatorships limit a person's ability to advocate for themselves, learn from their decisions and mistakes, and grow and develop. There is a risk in being told that your opinions, your likes and dislikes, don't matter — it makes it harder to stand up to abuse or neglect," she said.
"In any conservatorship, we would want to know that the real risks (and benefits) of both conservatorship and its alternatives have been seriously weighed."
Britney Spears performs in 2016. Christopher Polk/Getty
What has Britney said about the case?
Britney has remained tight-lipped throughout the legal battle, speaking only through her legal team, and by making subtle comments over the years.
The Times series plays a clip from the MTV documentary " Britney: For The Record ," where Britney spoke about the limits to her personal freedom. It's unclear if she was speaking directly to the conservatorship.
"If I wasn't under the restraints that I'm under right now, you know, with all the lawyers and doctors and people analyzing me every day and all that kind of stuff, if that wasn't there, I'd feel so liberated and feel like myself. I'm kind of stuck in this place, and it's like, how do you deal? I just cope with it every day," she told the interviewer. "When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear me but they're really not listening. They're hearing what they want to hear. They're not listening to what I'm telling them. It's bad… I'm sad."
When asked if her life was out of control, she disagreed and said, "It's too in control. There's no excitement. There's no passion. It's like 'Groundhog's Day,' every day."
On Tuesday, Britney tweeted a video of her performing her song "Toxic," along with the message: I'll always love being on stage .... but I am taking the time to learn and be a normal person... I love simply enjoying the basics of everyday life."
In a separate tweet, she wrote: "Each person has their story and their take on other people's stories !!!! We all have so many different bright beautiful lives. Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person's life it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens."
Earlier Tuesday, her boyfriend, Sam Asghari, criticized the singer's father on Instagram. "Now it's important for people to understand that I have zero respect for someone trying to control our relationship and constantly throwing obstacles our way. In my opinion, Jamie is a total d**k."
The 27-year-old added: "I won't be going into details because I've always respected our privacy but at the same time, I didn't come into this country not to be able to express my opinion and freedom."
What is #FreeBritney?
Supporters of Britney Spears outside a Los Angeles courthouse on September 16, 2020. Frazer Harrison/Getty
Many of Britney's fans have staged protests outside the Los Angeles courthouse where status hearings are held in the case. There's even a podcast, Britney's Gram, which is dedicated to dissecting her Instagram and social media posts. Her fans have used the hashtag #FreeBritney to bring attention to her legal battle against her father.
In September of last year, Britney's legal team acknowledged fans following her legal battle.
"At this point in her life when she is trying to regain some measure of personal autonomy, Britney welcomes and appreciates the informed support of her many fans," her attorney said in opposition to her father's attempts to seal information from the public. "Although the sealing motion is supposedly for her 'protection,' Britney herself is vehemently opposed to this effort by her father to keep her legal struggle hidden away in the closet as a family secret."
"In this case, it is not an exaggeration to say that the whole world is watching."


The Blackout Challenge on TikTok Has Sadly Struck Again
The Blackout Challenge on TikTok Has Sadly Struck Again
What is the Blackout Challenge on TikTok?
A young girl died from trying the dangerous TikTok Blackout Challenge trend.
Another child is fighting for his life due to the TikTok Blackout Challenge.
How do you report the Blackout Challenge?

The TikTok Blackout Challenge Has Sadly Struck Again
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The Blackout Challenge on TikTok Has Sadly Struck Again
By Chrissy Bobic
Mar. 31 2021, Updated 10:51 p.m. ET
Using TikTok can be fun, exciting, and even educational. But when children get sucked into trends and challenges that aren't meant for anyone, let alone kids, to attempt, things can turn dangerous quickly. That's what happened when one 10-year-old girl attempted the Blackout Challenge on TikTok and died of asphyxiation. Sadly, her death isn't the only one to come from someone trying out a particular trend or challenge from the app. On March 23, another child ended up fighting for their life.
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Somehow, among the silly baby videos and harmless pranks are the kinds of challenges that remind you why kids should not have solo access to TikTok. But, like YouTube and other social media platforms, it can be hard to totally protect children from the dangerous aspects all of the time.
And even though the Blackout Challenge isn't as widespread as some others, it is gaining a bad reputation.
Source: TikTok
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What is the Blackout Challenge on TikTok?
Similar to the Pass Out Challenge that once gained traction among users, the Blackout Challenge encourages people to asphyxiate themselves however possible until they pass out. The idea is that they wake up moments later, but it's incredibly dangerous and should be avoided. In fact, if you see someone on TikTok participating in the challenge or urging other users to try it out, you should report the video right away.
In February 2020, kids were trying the Pass Out Challenge, which was essentially the same thing, on TikTok. In that challenge, teens moved their heads from side to side as fast as they could until the movement caused them to pass out. They would wake up soon after and record their results on TikTok. It, too, was dangerous and one of many trends that teens and young kids especially are warned to avoid.
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Source: Twitter
A young girl died from trying the dangerous TikTok Blackout Challenge trend.
On Jan. 21, 2021, a 10-year-old girl from Italy was reported brain dead after being rushed to the hospital after she tried the Blackout Challenge. She initially went into cardiac arrest after trying the deadly trend and died not long after. Like the Pass Out Challenge, which is less severe on paper but still dangerous, the Blackout Challenge can have lasting consequences.
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Experts warn that partaking in these types of TikTok trends can lead to fainting, seizures, brain damage, and, yes, death. Users might not always end up permanently injured because of these types of trends, but because of the very real possibility that it could happen, the Blackout Challenge and those like it are too dangerous to try to recreate.
Source: Twitter
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Another child is fighting for his life due to the TikTok Blackout Challenge.
Despite its dangers and the TikTok users reporting videos of the TikTok Blackout Challenge, it's still out there for kids to find. And as of March 2021, another young boy has ended up in the hospital because of it. A family friend shared to The Denver Channel, "I can't even describe the grief and the devastation. Nobody could ever imagine this would happen to a 12-year-old."
Joshua Haileyesus is only 12 years old and was home with his brother when he tried out the deadly trend. His parents said he learned a lot of great things from social media like cooking and playing guitar, but they've now experienced the dangerous side of it as well. His father made clear, "I want others to see what I'm going through, learn for their children."
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Source: Twitter
Now, Joshua is brain dead, staying at Children's Hospital Colorado with his friends and family praying for him to survive. Joshua's father compared social media to guns because of the power it has to take unsuspecting lives. "It's not a joke at all," he said. "And you can treat it as if somebody is holding a gun. This is how dangerous this is."
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How do you report the Blackout Challenge?
If you come across a TikTok video wherein someone is trying the Blackout Challenge or promoting it in some way, you can report the video and help in getting similar content removed from the app. To do this, click on the arrow on the right-hand side of the screen while on the video you want to report. From there, click on the flag that says "report," and select "suicide, self-harm, and dangerous acts" from the list.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
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Netflix's
Operation Varsity Blues
Focuses On Rick Singer, the College Admissions Scandal Mastermind

Netflix's Operation Varsity Blues Focuses On Rick Singer, the College Admissions Scandal Mastermind
The documentary shows how a college counselor orchestrated the largest admissions scam in history.

Where Is Rick Singer Now - The True Story of Operation Varsity Blues's College Admissions Scandal
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Netflix's Operation Varsity Blues Focuses On Rick Singer, the College Admissions Scandal Mastermind
The documentary shows how a college counselor orchestrated the largest admissions scam in history.
By Lauren Kranc
Mar 17, 2021
In total, 50 people—33 wealthy and influential parents, two SAT and ACT administrators, one exam proctor, nine college athletics coaches, and one college administrator—were charged in “Operation Varsity Blues,” the 2019 college admission scandal. The years-long fraud and the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted made splashy headlines —largely about actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman’s arrests and convictions. But Netflix’s new documentary film Operation Varsity Blues, by Fyre director Chris Smith, refocuses the attention onto William “Rick” Singer—the college admissions counselor and confessed criminal mastermind behind the entire scheme. While many of the parents and college employees indicted in the scandal have been charged and sentenced, Singer, who pled guilty to all charges brought against him, is yet to be sentenced.
In 2011, Rick Singer started a for-profit college counseling company called the Key. His business —which he called the “side door” admission to elite colleges—was twofold. One part consisted of facilitating cheating on ACT and SAT entrance exams by having students fake the need for extra time and then having them take the exams with a proctor whom he hired. Singer’s exam proctor would correct his clients’ answers without their knowledge after they finished in order to adjust their scores as needed. The other portion of his criminal enterprise was bribing college athletics directors and coaches with donations to their programs as well as personal payments in order for them to recruit his clients as athletes. As the Netflix documentary explains, the athletic recruitment process is left largely up to a college’s athletics staff, who simply present their recruits to the school for approval every year. With a little photoshop on Singer’s end, all his client had to do was never show up for practice once at college (which they would not have known to do anyway, as the children were for the most part completely unaware what their parents had orchestrated with Singer behind the scenes). Parents paid anywhere from $200,000 to $6.5 million to guarantee admission at elite colleges and universities such as the University of Southern California, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown for their children through donations to Singer’s fake charity called the Key Worldwide Foundation, which he would then donate to college athletics programs or wire to coaches directly.
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From 2011 to 2019, Singer’s “side door” was open for highly profitable business, in which Singer himself collected 25 million dollars. (According to the documentary, the “back door” is a much larger donation than what Singer charged, made directly to the school like, for example, Jared Kushner’s parents the year before he was accepted to Harvard. This method is not only more expensive than Singer’s, but also cannot provide a guaranteed acceptance.) But the scheme began to teeter when a financial executive named Morrie Tobin, who was being investigated in a different financial fraud case, offered investigators a tip about a Yale soccer coach accepting bribes in exchange for admission in an attempt to create goodwill with the FBI. The tip eventually led them to Rick Singer, who was caught in September of 2018.
But in order to spare himself as much as possible, Singer agreed to work with investigators to bring his entire Ponzi scheme down with him. Wearing a wire, Singer made phone calls and in-person visits to his past and present clientele to discuss a fabricated audit of his foundation so that they would implicate themselves by confirming knowledge of phony donations. He did successfully warn or alert some that he was wearing a wire, which he confessed to in court. Ultimately, though, the government’s case was built on this series of recordings Singer made, and Singer himself pleaded guilty to all charges brought against him—racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice—as well on March 12, 2019. His cooperation and guilty plea will result in a lesser sentence for him when his sentencing date comes. The trials and sentencing proceedings in this sprawling case are ongoing, and Singer's case status simply states that “there is no sentencing hearing scheduled at this time.” According to CNN, he faces a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $1.25 million fine.
Rick Singer leaving federal court in Boston on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, after he pleaded guilty to charges against him.
NETFLIX
The FBI began making arrests in March 2019, starting with actress Felicity Huffman. Her and Lori Loughlin, along with other high-powered and influential parents, were charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Mark Riddell, the exam proctor who facilitated the cheating on college entrance exams, was charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, honest services mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Coaches and athletics directors at top U.S. schools were charged with racketeering conspiracy, and some with mail fraud and wire fraud, too. A full list of charges and sentences in the case can be found here.
Felicity Huffman, who was accused of paying $15,000 to Key Worldwide Foundation to facilitate her daughter cheating on a college entrance exam, pleaded guilty on May 13, 2019. She was sentenced to two weeks in prison, one year of supervised release, 250 hours of community service, and fined $30,000. Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannullo were accused of ‘donating’ $500,000 to have their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose recruited to USC's crew team. Loughlin initially pleaded not guilty, but in May 2020 changed her plea. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and was sentenced to two months in prison, two years of supervised release, a fine of $150,000, and 100 hours of community service. Olivia Jade, a popular YouTuber before the case broke, went on Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Red Table Talk in December 2020 to address the scandal for the first time.
Many accused in the largest college admissions scandal case ever prosecuted still await their sentences. As Operation Varsity Blues shows, Rick Singer is one of them. He reportedly enrolled at Grand Canyon University in November 2019 to work towards a doctorate in psychology in an “effort to change his life for the future.” Although his lawyer said he had hoped to be nearly finished with the degree when he was sentenced in 2021 or 2022, Singer dropped out in July of 2020 after completing a total of five courses.
Lauren Kranc Lauren Kranc is an editorial assistant at Esquire, where she covers pop culture and television, with entirely too narrow of an expertise on Netflix dating shows.
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Getting ‘High’ on Air: Oxygen Energy Boost or Health Risk?
Getting ‘High’ on Air: Oxygen Energy Boost or Health Risk?
Busting the Oxygen Bubble
Potential Health Risks of Recreational Oxygen Use
NEWSLETTERS
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Getting ‘High’ on Air: Oxygen Energy Boost or Health Risk? | Everyday Health
Heart Health
Getting ‘High’ on Air: Oxygen Energy Boost or Health Risk?
Oxygen bars and recreational oxygen inhalers promise to improve your well-being. Find out if they really deliver.
By Karen Asp
Last Updated: May 6, 2015
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Oxygen bars don’t replace medical-grade oxygen. Kimihiro Koshino/Getty Images
A new wave of oxygen bars is popping up across the country. Originally popular in the 1990s, these bars essentially market and sell air, and some make health claims for their inhaled product.
Claims for canned, inhaled oxygen are intoxicating, to say the least. Who doesn’t want to relieve stress, ease muscle aches, increase energy, concentrate and focus more effectively, sleep better, slow the aging process, and recover quickly from jet lag and hangovers?
If all of that sounds too good to be true, it undoubtedly is, which is why you should cast a doubtful eye on these oxygen products. Here’s what you need to know before you inhale.
Busting the Oxygen Bubble
Recreational oxygen therapy rests on a relatively simple premise: By delivering higher concentrations of oxygen than you would normally get from the air around you, you reap the above health rewards.
Just how much more oxygen do you get? While the air you breathe is made up of 21 percent oxygen, many oxygen bars and canned oxygen products claim to give you about 95 percent oxygen.
In reality, most of these products, especially those offered in oxygen bars, deliver only about 35 percent to 40 percent oxygen, says Frank LoVecchio, DO, MPH, co-medical director of the Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center at Banner Health and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.
While that’s still more oxygen than you get from the air around you, the truth is that healthy people just don't need the extra oxygen. “Humans have evolved to live in an atmosphere with 21 percent oxygen,” says Jason Turowski, MD, pulmonologist with the Cleveland Clinic Respiratory Institute in Ohio.
“Once your blood gets enough oxygen, you can’t load any more onto your red blood cells,” Dr. Turowski says. He likens it to trying to squeeze more people onto an already-packed New York City subway car.
The one exception for otherwise healthy individuals? Athletes doing vigorous exercise, like football players; they might have just run 70 yards for a touchdown and then suck oxygen on the sidelines. “That oxygen will make that athlete feel better, but it won’t do anything for the average individual,” says Norman H. Edelman, MD, senior scientific advisor with the American Lung Association and professor of preventive medicine, internal medicine, and physiology and biophysics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The numerous health claims these oxygen bars tout simply don’t hold merit, some experts say. “The reason for your hangover or muscle pain has nothing to do with hypoxia, a condition in which your body is deprived of oxygen, which is why it doesn’t make sense to give oxygen for these conditions,” Turowski notes.
Why then do so many people report feeling better after going to oxygen bars? “Blame the placebo effect,” Dr. Edelman says. It may be all in your head.
Potential Health Risks of Recreational Oxygen Use
Oxygen bars and the like may not pose major health threats for healthy people. “It might be better than going to a bar to drink,” Edelman says. But there are some aspects of recreational oxygen use that could pose health risks.
First, the cleanliness of breathing devices at oxygen bars needs to be considered. “Unlike medical-grade oxygen therapy where we provide sterile tubing, I’m not sure oxygen bars are subjected to any oversight, whether the tubing is exchanged between users, and how the non-medical grade oxygen concentrator is maintained or whether humidification is provided,” Turowski says.
Without fresh tubing or devices to sterilize that tubing, mold and bacteria could grow, which could be troublesome for people with existing lung problems. In fact, if you have medical conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, sarcoidosis, scleroderma, or congenital heart or vascular disorders, it’s best to avoid oxygen bars. This is especially true if you’re using medical-grade oxygen.
“You could increase the likelihood of developing an unintended but possible complication like infection or exacerbation due to circumstances related to cleanliness and lack of standardization of equipment,” Turowski says.
Many oxygen bars infuse the oxygen with scents that aren’t designed to be in your lungs in high concentrations. Although the consequences of these scents aren’t known, there could be potential ill effects on your lungs, especially for people, like those with asthma, who might react to strong smells, Turowski says.
Although certainly trendy, oxygen bars and inhaled oxygen products may be little more than hot air for healthy people who aren’t climbing Mount Everest, where supplemental oxygen is required.
A better option? Take a walk through the woods and get a real sensory journey while inhaling Mother Nature’s fresh — and free — oxygen.
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Cancer: Can cannabis really cure it?
Cancer: Can cannabis really cure it?
Cancer Patient Success Stories With Medical Pot
Doctors Cautious About Weed for Cancer
Science Shows Cannabis Has Anti-Cancer Properties

Cancer: Can Cannabis Really Cure It? | Marijuana & Cancer | GreenState | GreenState
Health
Cancer: Can cannabis really cure it?
November 26, 2017 Emily Earlenbaugh
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Cancer researchers in Israel. JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Cancer is a disease that looms large. It is one of the leading causes of death and one in three of us will be diagnosed with it during our lifetimes. Unfortunately, the cancer rates are only rising. The National Institute of Cancer estimates that by 2030, its death toll will have increased by 60%. Some are looking to cannabis to cure this deadly disease. But is cannabis a cure – or is this just wishful thinking?
Cancer Patient Success Stories With Medical Pot
Anecdotal accounts abound of patients curing their own cancer using high-potency edible cannabis extracts. Take Dennis Hill, a prostate cancer patient who decided to forgo chemotherapy and try cannabis instead. His story of complete recovery after six months of cannabis use is available online – along with his medical record and journal of his progress. Or Kelly Hauf – who decided to try cannabis oil in the months leading up to a scheduled surgery to remove a brain tumor. After eight months of treatment, there was nothing left of her tumor to remove. These stories are hard to ignore – but many doctors advise patients not to assume that cannabis was the cause of these incredible recoveries.
Doctors Cautious About Weed for Cancer
Dr. Abrams, a leading oncologist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine says he has seen cannabis help many with the side effects of cancer but cautions against assuming cannabis is a cure. He says given his high proportion of cannabis using patients, ‘if cannabis definitively cured cancer, I would have expected that I would have a lot more survivors.’
Cannabis is well-established as a treatment for the side effects of cancer and chemotherapy, like nausea, vomiting, pain, anxiety, insomnia, and lack of appetite. But in a comprehensive review of the cannabis literature, researchers from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found there to be insufficient evidence to say that cannabis can treat cancer directly. Without large-scale, placebo controlled clinical trials, doctors and researchers don’t have the solid evidence they’d need to recommend cannabis for cancer treatment.
Science Shows Cannabis Has Anti-Cancer Properties
Still other scientists are more hopeful about cannabis’ potential efficacy, and point to laboratory and animal studies that show cannabinoids like CBD and THC kill cancer cells in laboratory conditions — without harming the healthy cells nearby. While clinical trials on human subjects is still a ways off — given cannabis’ status as a controlled substance – the preclinical data gives reason to hope that patients stories of success aren’t just flukes.
“There is a large body of scientific data which indicates that cannabinoids specifically inhibit cancer cell growth and promote cancer cell death” explains Dr. David Meiri, the lead researcher on an Israeli project studying 50 varieties of cannabis and its effects on 200 different cancer cells. Meiri and his team have successfully killed brain and breast cancer cells through exposure to cannabis and they are hopeful they can find more varieties of cancer cells that respond to this treatment.
Still, experts caution against forgoing traditional treatment options. Dr. Meiri’s research suggests that not all cancer cells respond to cannabinoids in the same way. Even if cannabis can help with some cancers, it might not work the same for all. Additional research, specifically placebo-controlled clinical trials, are needed to fully understand how to handle each type of cancer individually.
With a condition as deadly as cancer, it is crucial to know whether a high cannabinoid regimen would work for any particular case, before foregoing alternatives that might help. Still while clinical research on cannabis continues to stall, patients must decide whether to wait indefinitely or follow in the footsteps of patients before them – experimenting with cannabis on their own.
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