The Philadelphia Inquirer is experiencing the largest disruption to its operations in 27 years due to what the daily newspaper called a cyberattack that was first detected Saturday morning.

The attack has prompted Pennsylvania’s largest news organization to close its office through at least Tuesday, meaning Inquirer reporters will be unable to use their newsroom on Tuesday night to cover the city’s Democratic primary for the city’s 100th mayoral election.

This incident has caused the greatest publication disruption to the paper since a massive blizzard in January 1996, the paper reported.

The newspaper is working to restore print operations after the apparent cyberattack prevented it from printing its Sunday edition.

The Inquirer’s website was still operational on Sunday, but the paper reported that updates were slower than normal. Online publication has not been interrupted.

The attack was first detected when employees on Saturday morning found the newspaper’s content management system was not working.

The Inquirer “discovered anomalous activity on select computer systems and immediately took those systems off-line,” the paper’s publisher, Lisa Hughes, said in a statement on Saturday.

She said the outlet was “first alerted to the anomalous activity on Thursday, May 11, by Cynet, a vendor that manages our network security.”

This is far from the first time a news outlet has faced a cyberattack. Last December, The Guardian suffered a ransomware attack that forced the British daily newspaper to take certain IT systems offline for weeks.

Hughes said Sunday, “We are currently unable to provide an exact time line” for full restoration of the paper’s systems.

“We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as we work to fully restore systems and complete this investigation as soon as possible,” Hughes said in an email responding to questions from the paper’s newsroom.

Hughes said the operational disruption will not affect coverage of the upcoming election and that the company was looking into co-working arrangements for Tuesday.

The newspaper has hired the risk advisory firm Kroll to restore systems and investigate the incident.

The company has also contacted the FBI about the incident.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s Philadelphia office told the Inquirer it was aware of the incident and declined to comment as a matter of standard practice. She said that “when the FBI learns about potential cyberattacks, it’s customary that we offer our assistance in these matters.”
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Computer engineers and tech-inclined political scientists have warned for years that cheap, powerful artificial intelligence tools would soon allow anyone to create fake images, video and audio that was realistic enough to fool voters and perhaps sway an election. 

The synthetic images that emerged were often crude, unconvincing and costly to produce, especially when other kinds of misinformation were so inexpensive and easy to spread on social media. The threat posed by AI and so-called deepfakes always seemed a year or two away. 

No more. 

Sophisticated generative AI tools can now create cloned human voices and hyper-realistic images, videos and audio in seconds, at minimal cost. When strapped to powerful social media algorithms, this fake and digitally created content can spread far and fast and target highly specific audiences, potentially taking campaign dirty tricks to a new low. 

The implications for the 2024 campaigns and elections are as large as they are troubling: Generative AI can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos, it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen. 

“We’re not prepared for this,” warned A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox. “To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.” 

AI experts can quickly rattle off a number of alarming scenarios in which generative AI is used to create synthetic media for the purposes of confusing voters, slandering a candidate or even inciting violence. 

Here are a few: Automated robocall messages, in a candidate’s voice, instructing voters to cast ballots on the wrong date; audio recordings of a candidate supposedly confessing to a crime or expressing racist views; video footage showing someone giving a speech or interview they never gave. Fake images designed to look like local news reports, falsely claiming a candidate dropped out of the race. 

“What if Elon Musk personally calls you and tells you to vote for a certain candidate?” said Oren Etzioni, the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, who stepped down last year to start the nonprofit AI2. “A lot of people would listen. But it’s not him.” 

Former President Donald Trump, who is running in 2024, has shared AI-generated content with his followers on social media. A manipulated video of CNN host Anderson Cooper that Trump shared on his Truth Social platform on Friday, which distorted Cooper’s reaction to the CNN town hall this past week with Trump, was created using an AI voice-cloning tool. 

A dystopian campaign ad released last month by the Republican National Committee offers another glimpse of this digitally manipulated future. The online ad, which came after President Joe Biden announced his reelection campaign, and starts with a strange, slightly warped image of Biden and the text “What if the weakest president we’ve ever had was re-elected?” 

A series of AI-generated images follows: Taiwan under attack; boarded up storefronts in the United States as the economy crumbles; soldiers and armored military vehicles patrolling local streets as tattooed criminals and waves of immigrants create panic. 

“An AI-generated look into the country’s possible future if Joe Biden is re-elected in 2024,” reads the ad’s description from the RNC. 

The RNC acknowledged its use of AI, but others, including nefarious political campaigns and foreign adversaries, will not, said Petko Stoyanov, global chief technology officer at Forcepoint, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas. Stoyanov predicted that groups looking to meddle with U.S. democracy will employ AI and synthetic media as a way to erode trust. 

“What happens if an international entity — a cybercriminal or a nation state — impersonates someone. What is the impact? Do we have any recourse?” Stoyanov said. “We’re going to see a lot more misinformation from international sources.” 

AI-generated political disinformation already has gone viral online ahead of the 2024 election, from a doctored video of Biden appearing to give a speech attacking transgender people to AI-generated images of children supposedly learning satanism in libraries. 

AI images appearing to show Trump’s mug shot also fooled some social media users even though the former president didn’t take one when he was booked and arraigned in a Manhattan criminal court for falsifying business records. Other AI-generated images showed Trump resisting arrest, though their creator was quick to acknowledge their origin. 

Legislation that would require candidates to label campaign advertisements created with AI has been introduced in the House by Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who has also sponsored legislation that would require anyone creating synthetic images to add a watermark indicating the fact. 

Some states have offered their own proposals for addressing concerns about deepfakes. 

Clarke said her greatest fear is that generative AI could be used before the 2024 election to create a video or audio that incites violence and turns Americans against each other. 

“It’s important that we keep up with the technology,” Clarke told The Associated Press. “We’ve got to set up some guardrails. People can be deceived, and it only takes a split second. People are busy with their lives and they don’t have the time to check every piece of information. AI being weaponized, in a political season, it could be extremely disruptive.” 

Earlier this month, a trade association for political consultants in Washington condemned the use of deepfakes in political advertising, calling them “a deception” with “no place in legitimate, ethical campaigns.” 

Other forms of artificial intelligence have for years been a feature of political campaigning, using data and algorithms to automate tasks such as targeting voters on social media or tracking down donors. Campaign strategists and tech entrepreneurs hope the most recent innovations will offer some positives in 2024, too. 

Mike Nellis, CEO of the progressive digital agency Authentic, said he uses ChatGPT “every single day” and encourages his staff to use it, too, as long as any content drafted with the tool is reviewed by human eyes afterward. 

Nellis’ newest project, in partnership with Higher Ground Labs, is an AI tool called Quiller. It will write, send and evaluate the effectiveness of fundraising emails — all typically tedious tasks on campaigns. 

“The idea is every Democratic strategist, every Democratic candidate will have a copilot in their pocket,” he said. 
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A bell chimed 13 times after people paused for a moment of silence Sunday to remember the 10 people killed and three wounded in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket one year ago.

Mayor Byron Brown read the names of the victims outside the Tops Friendly Market, where a gunman opened fire on May 14, 2022. Top New York politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, attended the remembrance on Mother’s Day.

“It’s a beautiful day. It’s Mother’s Day,” Hochul said. “And the cruel irony behind the fact is a day we celebrate a life that comes into this world, making someone a mother, is also a day we’re here to think about those who are no longer with us. It’s hard. It’s been a really hard year.”

Earlier in the week, panelists discussed ways to combat racism and social media radicalization and residents were invited to reflect at an outdoor community gathering.

In the year since the shooting, relatives of the victims have spoken before Congress about white supremacy and gun reform and organized events to address food insecurity that worsened when the market, the neighborhood’s only grocery store, was inaccessible for two months.

President Joe Biden honored the lives of those killed in Buffalo in an op-ed published Sunday in USA Today. He called on Congress and state legislative leaders to act by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring background checks for all gun sales, and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. His administration passed a landmark gun measure in June following a series of mass shootings.

New York state law already bans the possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Gun control organizations and advocates including Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action held nearly 200 events across the country over the weekend, calling on Congress to reinstate a bipartisan assault weapons ban.

In Buffalo, Wayne Jones, whose mother Celestine Chaney, 65, died in the attack, urged the city and its institutions to keep on investing in the area and its residents even after the anniversary events are over.

That’s why he is willing, he said, “to keep opening up this wound that I have” and talk about it.

The son of 63-year-old shooting victim Geraldine Talley on Sunday released a book that he said describes what he went through after losing his mother. He titled it: “5/14 : The Day the Devil Came to Buffalo.”

“I definitely know that she wouldn’t want me to be consumed by sadness and anger,” Talley said of his mother, speaking outside of the store as the anniversary approached, “so I will definitely try to find strength in her memory and use it to fight injustice and racism for the rest of my life in her name.”

Inside the remodeled store, fountains flank a poem dedicated to the victims. A commission is at work designing a permanent memorial for outside. In the meantime, a hand-painted mural overlooking the parking lot promotes unity, with a Black hand and white hand meeting together in prayer.

The store was closed Sunday in remembrance of the shooting.

An 18-year-old white supremacist carried out the attack after driving more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from his home in rural Conklin, New York.

Besides Chaney and Talley, the dead included Andre Mackneil, who was buying a cake for his son’s third birthday; church deacon Heyward Patterson; community advocate Katherine Massey; Ruth Whitfield, whose son was a Buffalo fire commissioner; Roberta Drury, who had moved back to Buffalo to help a brother diagnosed with cancer; church missionary Pearl Young; Margus Morrison, who was buying dinner for a family movie night; and Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard.

The gunman pleaded guilty to murder and other charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in February. A federal case against him is pending.
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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas denied the U.S. has imposed a ban on asylum-seekers, but he also emphasized that there is a lawful and orderly way to reach the U.S. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details.
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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that the number of migrants trying to cross into the United States from Mexico since border entry rules were changed late last week has dropped nearly in half but that it was “too early” to know whether the surge in migration has peaked.

U.S. immigration officials had been expecting a huge surge in the number of migrants walking across the border when it ended a three-year policy late Thursday that called for the automatic expulsion back to Mexico based on fears of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch related video by Veronica Balderas Iglesias:

Now the U.S. has adopted a system requiring migrants to seek U.S. asylum before arriving at the border, either through an internet connection that has proved less than fully reliable or at migration centers in other countries they have passed through to get to the U.S.

Mayorkas told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that about 10,000 migrants a day had been crossing the border before the rule change, and in many cases were quickly expelled. But he said border agents only encountered 6,300 on Friday and 4,200 on Saturday.

Still, immigration officials say thousands more are encamped in northern Mexico and could try to enter the U.S. in the coming days or weeks.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” show, “I do think there are caravans [of migrants] going up. I think they still want to get in.”

McCaul said that in the last two and a half years, “We’ve had 5 million people enter this country illegally, 5.1 [million] get-a-ways. It’s unsustainable.”

Mayorkas credited the smaller numbers of migrants trying to enter the U.S. so far to warnings that the U.S. border was not open and that there was a lawful, if time-consuming, way to enter the U.S., by filing papers for asylum in the U.S., even though relatively few migrants could eventually win approval.

“We have communicated very clearly, a vitally important message to the individuals who are thinking of arriving at our southern border,” he said. “There is a lawful, safe and orderly way to arrive in the United States that is through the [asylum] pathways that President [Joe] Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way.”

“And then there’s a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways,” he said. “And that consequence is removal from the United States, a deportation and encountering a five-year ban on reentry and possible criminal prosecution.”

Mayorkas contended that by setting clear asylum rules, the U.S. will “cut out” migration smugglers charging migrants thousands of dollars to try to reach the U.S. He called it “not only a security imperative, but a humanitarian responsibility.”

With the end to immediate expulsions related to the concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, the Biden administration has drawn attacks from Republicans that the new response is too weak and from some Democrats that it is too cumbersome and inhumane in that too few asylum requests are likely to be granted.

Republicans in the House of Representatives, with no Democratic support, last week approved immigration legislation calling for completion of a U.S.-Mexico border wall that was started by former President Donald Trump but abandoned by Biden. The Democratic-controlled Senate, however, is unlikely to even consider the measure.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell in Florida last week blocked the Biden administration from releasing migrants it has detained into the general U.S. population if detention facilities at the border are overcrowded. Mayorkas said the ruling is being appealed.
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Footage of a plump snapping turtle relaxing along a Chicago waterway has gone viral after the man who filmed the well-fed reptile marveled at its size and nicknamed it “Chonkosaurus.”

Joey Santore was kayaking with a friend along the Chicago River last weekend when they spotted the large snapping turtle sitting atop a large chain draped over what appear to be rotting logs.

He posted a jumpy video of the turtle on Twitter, labeling it the “Chicago River Snapper aka Chonkosaurus.”

In the video, Santore can be heard sounding stunned by the size of the turtle, which was displaying folds of flesh extending well beyond its shell.

“Look at this guy. We got a picture of this most beautiful sight. Look at the size of that … thing,” he says, using an expletive. “Look at that beast. Hey, how ya doing guy? You look good. You’re healthy.”

Chris Anchor, the chief wildlife biologist with Forest Preserves of Cook County, said the snapping turtle Santore filmed is quite rare, considering its apparent size. He said it’s also unusual for the reptiles to be seen basking along rivers, but it probably recently emerged from hibernation.

“So my guess is that this animal had crawled out of the river to try and gather as much heat as it could in the sunshine,” Anchor told WMAQ-TV.

While it’s difficult to determine exactly how large the turtle is from the video alone, Anchor called it “a very large individual.” And he noted that snapping turtles are not picky eaters.

“Turtles this big will consume anything they can get their mouth around,” he said, adding that anyone encountering a snapping turtle should not disturb it or try to catch it.

“Enjoy it. Leave it alone,” Anchor said.
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Lupita, a 36-year-old Mexican woman from the state of Michoacan, has spent three months in a shelter, waiting to apply for asylum in the United States. She wears some of the evidence for her case: bullet wounds about her arms, shoulder and abdomen.

Since March 2020, when broad COVID-era restrictions went into effect at the southwest border, Mexicans like Lupita were largely barred from seeking U.S. refuge and instead were quickly expelled back to Mexico.

On Friday, that changed when the administration of President Joe Biden ended Title 42, a COVID-inspired provision that allowed the U.S. government to turn away asylum-seekers for public health reasons.

Immigration attorneys at the Tijuana shelter, across the border from San Diego, California, were advising migrants they should sign up for an appointment to approach a port of entry on a new government app known as CBP One if they wanted to have a chance at winning asylum.

At the same time Title 42 expired, the Biden administration implemented a new regulation that presumes most migrants will be ineligible for asylum if they failed to use legal pathways for U.S. entry like CBP One.

Lupita, now attempting to get an appointment through CBP One, said she fled her home after her husband was killed by cartel gunfire last year, during which she said she was wounded.

Pointing her elbows toward the ceiling, she revealed the suture scars where she was patched up. The outline of a colostomy bag — which she said was the result of a gut shot — is visible through her clothes.

Lupita, who asked not to publish her last name or be photographed for fear of reprisals, said prosecutors told her the attack was a case of mistaken identity, but she fears that being a witness to her husband’s murder endangers her and her children. Reuters was not able to independently confirm her account.

“This is mostly for my children,” Lupita said. “I can’t go back home.”

Mexicans have made up about a third of all the migrants caught by U.S. Border Patrol in recent years but in 2021 and 2022 they were expelled under Title 42 more than 90% of the time.

Place of safety

Also at the shelter, where children played on bicycles and scooters around tents pitched on the floor, were families from Honduras, Ecuador, El Salvador and Nicaragua in addition to Mexico. It was at capacity with nearly 60 people Friday.

Many migrant families are fleeing political violence or domestic abuse at home, trauma that is often made worse during the overland journey through Central America and Mexico, where they are preyed on by all manner of security forces and criminal groups, said Judith Cabrera de la Rocha, co-director of the Tijuana shelter.

“They arrive here malnourished, dehydrated, including pregnant women, and with severe consequences for their mental health. And that’s in addition to the reason why they left was traumatizing,” Cabrera said.

“I like to think of this as a place to get healthy,” she said of the shelter. “We provide a place that’s a little safer.”

The new regulation also bars most migrants from asylum if they passed through other countries without first seeking protection elsewhere, which would apply to most people who are not from Mexico but who traveled through there to get to the border.

Immigration advocates have filed a legal challenge against the new asylum bars, claiming they violate U.S. and international laws and that they resemble restrictions imposed by Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, that were blocked in court.

Tens of thousands of migrants rushed to the border last week trying to enter the country before the new asylum rules took effect. In the scramble to the border Mexico’s national migration agency said one 29-year-old Cuban migrant died trying to swim across the Rio Grande River into Texas early Friday.

The spike in recent arrivals strained U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities. The Justice Department asked a federal judge in Florida to temporarily halt an order he issued on Friday that prevents border agents from releasing migrants from custody without first giving them formal notices to appear in immigration court. The government says the practice is needed to prevent overcrowding in U.S. detention centers.
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