Icetruck

Chuck Norris sues over MRI chemical he says poisoned wife

Action star Chuck Norris took on medical device manufacturers in a lawsuit filed in California on Wednesday alleging a chemical used in MRI imaging scans poisoned his wife.

Gadolinium that doctors injected into Gena Norris to improve the clarity of her MRIs have left her weak and tired and with debilitating bouts of pain and a burning sensation, the suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court says.

Gadolinium is a metal found in so-called contrast agents used in many MRIs. Studies have shown it is retained by organs such as the brain, bones and skin. The American College of Radiology said in a statement last year that gadolinium-based contrast agents have been used for diagnosis and treatment guidance in more than 300 million patients worldwide since the late 1980s and provide "crucial, life-saving medical information."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in May it found no evidence that retained gadolinium was harmful. A European Union agency reached the same conclusion in July but still recommended suspending some gadolinium contrast agents as a precaution.

The law firm representing the Norris', Cutter Law, has filed numerous lawsuits in recent weeks on behalf of people who it also says are suffering from gadolinium poisoning.

The Norris' lawsuit acknowledges no official, publicly stated link between gadolinium and symptoms reported by people who believe the metal has affected their health. But that's in part because blood and urine testing for gadolinium only became available recently and most doctors were not aware of any disease that was associated with gadolinium other than one that affects people with kidney problems, the lawsuit said.

"One of the problems is this is a very misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed condition," said Todd Walburg, an attorney for the Norris'.

The lawsuit accuses several manufacturers of gadolinium contrast agents of knowing about their risks, but failing to warn consumers. It seeks more than $10 million in damages, saying the Norris' have had to spend millions of dollars on treatment for Gena Norris.

Chuck Norris starred in the TV series, "Walker, Texas Ranger."

• Star

Colorado shooting: 'Nonchalant' gunman kills three

Three people have died after a shooting in a supermarket in suburban Colorado.

A gunman "nonchalantly" walked into a Walmart supermarket and opened fire, killing three, police say.

Two men died at the scene of the shooting and a wounded woman was taken to a hospital where she died.

Police say that the gunman "randomly" opened fire, before fleeing in a red four-door hatchback. He is still at large and police are trying to identify him with video footage.

The shooting occurred shortly after 18:00 local time on Wednesday (midnight GMT) in a suburban Walmart supermarket in Thornton, 10 miles (16km) north-east of the state capital of Denver.

Thornton Police Department spokesman Victor Aliva said there was no indication as to motive at this stage.

"We can't rule anything out," he said. "What we have determined is that it is random as of right now," Mr Aliva said, according to Reuters news agency.

Aaron Stephens, 44, of Thornton, said he was inside paying at a self-checkout till when he heard gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets.

He recounted that "the employees started screaming and the customers started screaming" as people began to flee the store. "I ran out, too, because I didn't want to get shot."

Source – bbc.com

By John-Paul Ford Rojas, Business Reporter

BT has reported a fall in second-quarter profits as it counted the cost of its investment in sports rights and ongoing problems in its troubled global services arm.

The telecoms giant said pre-tax profits for the three months to the end of September slipped by 1% to £666m, while underlying revenues fell 1.5%.

It said earnings took a hit from its investment in sports rights and customer experience, as well as higher pension costs and business rates. Shares fell 2.6%.

BT – which is a rival to Sky, the owner of Sky News – screens Champions League and some Premier League football matches.

The company, which completed the £12.5bn takeover of mobile operator EE last year, said it added 279,000 contract customers and lost 260,000 in pre-paid, the latter in line with industry trends.

It said its number of broadband customers had risen to 20.5 million.

BT's global services arm recorded a £34m loss for the period as it wrote down the value of "certain projects" and the division, which serves corporate customers, saw underlying revenues dip 11%.

The unit has been hit by the impact of an accounting scandal in its Italian operations, disclosed earlier this year, that resulted in a £530m write-down and a major share price fall.

BT spent another £6m investigating the episode in the first half.

The second quarter results left BT's profit for the first half 22% lower at £1.08bn following a 42% slump in the first quarter caused by the scandal.

They come a day after Sky News revealed that thousands of BT employees will be told later this month of proposed cuts to their pension benefits as it wrestles with a multibillion-pound pension deficit.

The group confirmed that it was to consult with employees shortly over changes to its pension scheme but that this was still under review.

Chief executive Gavin Patterson said: "Our first-half results are in line with our expectations as encouraging results in our consumer-facing lines of business, notably EE, helped offset ongoing challenges in our enterprise divisions, in particular global services.

"Given our underlying business performance, we are maintaining our outlook for the year."

More business news

• Previous article FCA launches probe into scandal-hit Telit
• Next article Facebook ad revenues hit $10bn for first time

Source – News.sky.com

'Lion King' cast announced, Beyonce to play Nala

WATCH Beyonce to star in 'Lion King' remake

The cast of Disney's forthcoming live-action musical remake of "The Lion King" was already packed with A-list stars, but it's just added arguably the biggest music star on the planet.

Beyoncé rounds out the all-star cast. The singer will voice Nala, Simba's childhood friend, who later becomes his wife.

Disney announced the news Wednesday night, as did Beyoncé herself, in a Facebook post.

'Jungle Book' director Jon Favreau set to helm another live-action re-imagining: 'The Lion King'

Beyoncé has been rumored to be in talks for the part since spring. Donald Glover will voice Simba, with James Earl Jones reprising his animated version role as the voice of Mufasa, and Chiwetel Ejiofor voicing Scar.

Alfre Woodard, Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric Andre and John Oliver are also cast in the film, which will be directed by Jon Favreau, who directed Disney's 2016 hit live-action remake of "The Jungle Book."

"The Lion King" is scheduled for release in July 2019 from Disney, parent company of ABC News.

#TheLionKing. 2019. ???? pic.twitter.com/UMJo18FwDt

— Disney (@Disney) November 1, 2017

• Star

Russia hackers had targets worldwide, beyond US election

The hackers who disrupted the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press.

The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe — from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow.

"It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence."

The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets.

Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of emails."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered "unfounded." But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that.

"This is the Kremlin and the general staff," said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data.

"I have no doubts."

———

THE NEW EVIDENCE

Secureworks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria.

In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark.

The list skewed toward workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and — especially — Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle.

The AP also found a handful of Republican targets.

Podesta, Powell, Breedlove and more than a dozen Democratic targets besides Podesta would soon find their private correspondence dumped to the web. The AP has determined that all had been targeted by Fancy Bear, most of them three to seven months before the leaks.

"They got two years of email," Powell recently told AP. He said that while he couldn't know for sure who was responsible, "I always suspected some Russian connection."

In Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding war against Russia-backed separatists, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers.

The list includes Serhiy Leshchenko, an opposition parliamentarian who helped uncover the off-the-books payments allegedly made to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — whose indictment was unsealed Monday in Washington.

In Russia, Fancy Bear focused on government opponents and dozens of journalists. Among the targets were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in exile, and Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants.

"Everything on this list fits," said Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst who was himself among the targets. He said Russian authorities would have been particularly interested in Navalny, one of the few opposition leaders with a national following.

Many of the targets have little in common except that they would have been crossing the Kremlin's radar: an environmental activist in the remote Russian port city of Murmansk; a small political magazine in Armenia; the Vatican's representative in Kiev; an adult education organization in Kazakhstan.

"It's simply hard to see how any other country would be particularly interested in their activities," said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. He was also on the list.

"If you're not Russia," he said, "hacking these people is a colossal waste of time."

———

WORKING 9 TO 6 MOSCOW TIME

Allegations that Fancy Bear works for Russia aren't new. But raw data has been hard to come by.

Researchers have been documenting the group's activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russia's intelligence services. The "Fancy Bear" nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russia's national symbol.

In the wake of the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly endorsed the consensus view, saying what American spooks had long alleged privately: Fancy Bear is a creature of the Kremlin.

But the U.S. intelligence community provided little proof, and even media-friendly cybersecurity companies typically publish only summaries of their data.

That makes the Secureworks' database a key piece of public evidence — all the more remarkable because it's the result of a careless mistake.

Secureworks effectively stumbled across it when a researcher began working backward from a server tied to one of Fancy Bear's signature pieces of malicious software.

He found a hyperactive Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to sneak thousands of malicious links past Google's spam filter. Because Fancy Bear forgot to set the account to private, Secureworks spent the next few months hovering over the group's shoulder, quietly copying down the details of the thousands of emails it was targeting.

The AP obtained the data recently, boiling it down to 4,700 individual email addresses, and then connecting roughly half to account holders. The AP validated the list by running it against a sample of phishing emails obtained from people targeted and comparing it to similar rosters gathered independently by other cybersecurity companies, such as Tokyo-based Trend Micro and the Slovakian firm ESET .

The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours — between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday.

The AP's findings also track with a report that first brought Fancy Bear to the attention of American voters. In 2016, a cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike said the Democratic National Committee had been compromised by Russian hackers, including Fancy Bear.

Secureworks' roster shows Fancy Bear making aggressive attempts to hack into DNC technical staffers' emails in early April 2016 — exactly when CrowdStrike says the hackers broke in.

And the raw data enabled the AP to speak directly to the people who were targeted, many of whom pointed the finger at the Kremlin.

"We have no doubts about who is behind these attacks," said Artem Torchinskiy, a project coordinator with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund who was targeted three times in 2015. "I am sure these are hackers controlled by Russian secret services."

———

THE MYTH OF THE 400-POUND MAN

Even if only a small fraction of the 4,700 Gmail accounts targeted by Fancy Bear were hacked successfully, the data drawn from them could run into terabytes — easily rivaling the biggest known leaks in journalistic history.

For the hackers to have made sense of that mountain of messages — in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Arabic and many other languages — they would have needed a substantial team of analysts and translators. Merely identifying and sorting the targets took six AP reporters eight weeks of work.

The AP's effort offers "a little feel for how much labor went into this," said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

He said the investigation should put to rest any theories like the one then-candidate Donald Trump floated last year that the hacks could be the work of "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

"The notion that it's just a lone hacker somewhere is utterly absurd," Rid said.

———

Donn reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Myers reported from Chicago. Chad Day, Desmond Butler and Ted Bridis in Washington, Frank Bajak in Houston, Lori Hinnant in Paris, Maggie Michael in Cairo and Erika Kinetz in Shanghai contributed to this report. Novaya Gazeta reporters Nikolay Voroshilov, Yana Surinskaya and Roman Anin in Moscow also contributed.

————

Satter, Donn and Myers can be reached at:

http://raphaelsatter.com , https://twitter.com/jadonn7 and https://twitter.com/myersjustinc

———

Editor's Note: Satter's father, David Satter, is an author and Russia specialist who has been critical of the Kremlin. His emails were published last year by hackers and his account is on Secureworks' list of Fancy Bear targets.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

The Latest: Thousands rally in support of Catalan officials

The Latest on the Spain-Catalonia political crisis (all times local):

1:20 p.m.

Thousands of people are rallying outside the Catalan presidential palace in Barcelona in a show of support for ousted Catalan officials appearing in court in Madrid.

The ex-officials are being questioned as part of an investigation into possible rebellion charges for having declared the region's independence from Spain.

The crowd in Barcelona clapped, chanted slogans in favor of independence, and carried Catalan flags.

Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Carles Puigdemont, have been summoned to court after the chief prosecutor demanded they be charged with rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the Catalan parliament's declaration of secession Oct. 27.

Puigdemont and four of his former ministers didn't appear, after arriving in Belgium earlier this week.

———

12:30 p.m.

Spanish prosecutors have asked the National Court to jail nine ex-members of the sacked Catalan government but have requested the possibility of bail for one of them.

The prosecutor's request came after the nine ex-ministers were quizzed at the National Court on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement.

The case stems from the Catalan parliament's declaration of the region's independence from Spain on Oct. 27.

The court said the prosecutor proposed eight should be jailed immediately and that a ninth be allowed stay free if he pays bail of 50,000 euros.

The eight include former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras.

The judge has yet to decide on the request.

Sacked Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear Thursday.

–A previous version of this item has been corrected to show that prosecutors are asking for jail for all nine but bail possibility for one.

———

10:50 a.m.

Spain's Supreme Court has suspended until next week the questioning of six Catalan lawmakers who are under investigation for rebellion following the region's declaration of independence.

The six, including regional parliament speaker and prominent pro-independence activist Carme Forcadell, and 14 ousted Catalan government ministers, including fired Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, had been summoned by two Madrid courts Thursday and face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement.

The Supreme Court said the hearing of the six regional parliament board members was postponed until Nov. 9 following a request by their lawyers.

The hearing of nine of Puigdemont's ousted Cabinet members continued at the nearby National Court.

Puigdemont and four ex-ministers are in Brussels and have ignored the summonses.

———

9:40 a.m.

Ousted Catalan parliament speaker and prominent pro-independence activist Carme Forcadell has arrived at Spain's Supreme Court for questioning in a rebellion investigation.

Forcadell is one of 20 former Catalan lawmakers that have been summoned by two courts following the regional parliament's declaration of independence Oct. 27.

Forcadell is a former leader of the National Catalan Assembly, which has long been the driving civic group force behind the region's independence drive.

Five of the 20, including sacked regional President Carles Puigdemont, traveled to Brussels following the declaration and are refusing to appear. This will likely trigger warrants for their arrest and petitions for their extradition.

———

8:30 a.m.

Ousted Catalan government members and lawmakers are beginning to appear before Spanish courts in Madrid to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence.

Twenty regional politicians, including sacked regional government president Carles Puigdemont, were called to appear Thursday after the chief prosecutor demanded charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement be pressed.

Puigdemont, who is in Belgium with four of his ex-Cabinet members, said he will ignore the summons, which could trigger a warrant for his arrest and an extradition petition.

The group summoned includes his 13-member former Cabinet and six parliamentary board members.

Puigdemont's No. 2, Oriol Junqueras, was the first to arrive at the National Court.

The crimes being probed are punishable with up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

New York truck attack suspect 'wanted to kill as many as possible'

The main suspect in the New York truck attack that left eight people dead says he intended to kill as many people as possible during Halloween celebrations.

Sayfullo Saipov, 29, told investigators he "felt good" about the attack, which he had been planning for a year.

The Uzbek immigrant, who faces federal terrorism charges, says he was inspired by so-called Islamic State. He was shot and injured by police at the scene.

US President Donald Trump tweeted that he should receive the death penalty.

The charges filed against Mr Saipov are federal, which means the government can override New York state's ban on capital punishment.

Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump

NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017

Report

End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump

What did the suspect say?

Mr Saipov appeared in court in a wheelchair 24 hours after mowing down cyclists and pedestrians on a bike lane in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday.

Six people died at the scene and two more in hospital. Twelve people were injured, four of whom remain in critical condition.

• What we know and don't know

Prosecutors say Mr Saipov spoke freely to them, waiving his right to avoid self-incrimination while in custody.

According to federal court papers, he said:

• The attack was planned two months ago, and he carried out a trial run with a rental truck last month
• He intentionally chose Halloween because he believed there would be more people in the streets
• He originally planned to target the Brooklyn Bridge as well
• He wanted to display Islamic State (IS) flags on the truck, but decided not to draw attention to himself
• He was inspired by 90 graphic and violent propaganda videos found on his phone – in particular, one in which IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asks what Muslims are doing to avenge deaths in Iraq.

Mr Saipov is accused of providing material support and resources to IS.

• Read more on the suspect
• Why Uzbek migrants are radicalised

New York Police's Deputy Commissioner John Miller said the suspect appeared "to have followed almost exactly to a 'T'" IS instructions on how to carry out such an attack.

The FBI says they have located a second Uzbek man, 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who was wanted for questioning in connection with the attack.

Who is the suspect?

Sayfullo Saipov had reportedly lived in Tampa, Florida, before moving to Paterson, New Jersey.

He arrived in America from Uzbekistan in 2010 and is a legal resident of the country. Uber confirmed he had been working as a driver for them.

CBS News quotes an intelligence source as saying he was known to US authorities after his name was associated with the subjects of FBI counter-terrorism investigations in 2015.

The source says he had some contact with individuals who were considered radicalised extremists, at least one of whom was Uzbek. It is unclear whether those being investigated were in the US or overseas.

It is not known if Mr Saipov, who was not the main focus of the investigation, was interviewed at that time by the FBI.

What has been the reaction?

New York has increased the police presence at key transport hubs, and there will be additional uniformed and plain-clothes police on duty at Sunday's New York Marathon.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

President Trump said he was taking steps to end the diversity lottery programme – the immigration system under which the suspect entered the country.

He also attacked the US justice system, and said he would consider sending the suspect to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

• Trump backs Guantanamo for NY suspect
• What is the diversity green card lottery?
• How did Trump do in his terror response?

The administration says it has not ruled out adding Uzbekistan to a list of countries in the president's proposed travel ban.

The mayor of New York City and the governor of New York state have both praised the resilience of New Yorkers – and urged people not to "politicise" a tragedy that took eight lives.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio also suggested New York's strict gun control laws had ensured that high-powered weapons could not get into the hands of terrorists.

How did the attack unfold?

The attacker rented the truck from a New Jersey branch of retailer Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon before driving to New York City and entering the bike lane, police said.

Video cameras show the van driving at very high speed, appearing to target bike riders and pedestrians.

After the van collided with a school bus, the van driver emerged and brandished what appeared to be two weapons.

Mr Saipov was shot and wounded at the scene by an NYPD officer who was alerted to the attack by witnesses.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Knives, a paint gun and a pellet gun were recovered from the scene.

It was the deadliest terror attack in the city since the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.

Who were the victims?

A group of five Argentine friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their college graduation were among the dead.

The men – all aged 48 or 49 – were named as Hernán Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damián Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferrucci.

Belgian officials said Anne-Laure Decadt, a 31-year-old from Staden in Flanders, was also killed. Three Belgians were wounded.

Two other victims, both Americans, have not yet been named.

• Read more on the victims

Source – bbc.com

By John-Paul Ford Rojas, Business Reporter

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has followed UK-based rival BP in reporting better than expected third quarter profits days after the price of oil topped $60 for the first time since 2015.

Current cost of supplies earnings more than doubled to $3.7bn from $1.45bn in the same period last year, partly thanks to one-off costs recorded in 2016.

Stripping these out, profits for the company were still up by 47%, beating analyst estimates.

Shares closed the day 2.4% higher.

Shell said earnings benefited from higher oil and gas prices as well as stronger conditions in the refining and chemicals industries, plus higher production from new fields.

These factors offset the impact of production declines at other fields, and the sell-off of assets.

Chief executive Ben van Beurden said it was a "strong set of results".

The figures come days after the price of a barrel of Brent crude surpassed $60 to reach its highest level since July 2015.

It had slumped from more than $115 in 2014 towards $27 early in 2016.

Shell's profits in the third quarter cover a period in which oil was trading at an average $52.

The slump in recent years has pushed oil companies into major restructuring over the period, including thousands of job losses in the North Sea.

BP and Shell, stocks which are staples in the portfolios of many UK investors including pension funds, are among them.

Shell's full-year profits fell 8% in 2016 as it adjusted to the low price environment and absorbed oil and gas firm BG after a £36bn takeover.

BP signalled the latest stage in its recovery earlier this week when it announced a share buy-back to reward long-suffering investors.

More business news

• Previous article Trump nominates Powell as next Fed chair
• Next article Amazon might be preparing to accept Bitcoin

Source – News.sky.com

Tyrese says he's OK after crying in Facebook video

Tyrese says he's doing OK hours after posting an emotional video to Facebook amid a court battle with his ex-wife.

The actor-singer cried during a rambling Facebook video posted Wednesday and said, "don't take my baby … I'm not doing anything illegal." Tyrese said he last saw his 10-year-old daughter Shayla 60 days ago and that he's lost a lot of money due to legal fees. He added: "I'm at $13,000 a month. What more do you want from me?"

In an Instagram video posted Wednesday night Tyrese said he's "actually OK," despite what some may believe.

Tyrese also kept up his ongoing feud with Dwayne Johnson over the "Fast & Furious" franchise Wednesday night by intentionally cropping the star out of an Instagram photo.

• Star

'London professor' in Trump case made many Russia trips

The little-known professor suspected of being a link between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign made repeated visits to Russia in recent years, including participating in conferences at a Russian think tank favored by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Joseph Mifsud, who has been identified as the unnamed London professor who offered to set up meetings with Russian officials who could provide "thousands of emails" with damaging information about Trump's rival, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is a vocal Putin backer with ties to several important institutions in Russia.

He has visited Russia at least once a year since 2014, most recently in September, online postings on Russian academic sites show, and has taken part in events at the Valdai Discussion Club favored by the Russian leader and lectured at Moscow State University.

In the U.S. court document laying out the case against former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Mifsud is not identified by name and is referred to only as a "London professor" who met repeatedly with Papadopoulos and offered to set up meetings with Russian officials who could provide dirt on Clinton. However, a comparison of court papers and Papadopoulos' email correspondence obtained by The Associated Press confirm Mifsud is the professor.

Mifsud, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, did not respond to phone calls and emails from the AP seeking comment. But he told The Telegraph newspaper that he is indeed the "London professor" in the case and says his conscience is clear.

Papadopoulos, 30, has pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI. He is not contesting the facts laid out in the court documents, calling them "true and accurate," and is now cooperating with the FBI — and has been doing so for several months, raising the prospect that he has agreed to surreptitiously record conversations with people involved with the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

While Mifsud appears to have extensive ties to several important institutions in Russia, the Maltese native's academic credentials in Britain are far hazier.

He holds a professorial teaching position in the politics department at the University of Stirling in Scotland, according to officials there who said he took up the post in May. However, he is not named on the university's list of experts and the university press office refused to say how often he is on campus, where a reporter on the student newspaper said he does not even maintain an office.

"There is no evidence Professor Mifsud has even been to the university since joining the staff in May," said Craig Munro, a reporter at the campus newspaper, Brignews. "He doesn't have an office here and is based in London. We haven't been able to find a single student who has met with Professor Mifsud or attended any lectures by him at Stirling."

Prominent British academics also say they have had little or no contact with Mifsud.

"I've never heard of him," said Robin Niblett, the veteran director of Chatham House, the prominent London think tank.

Nor has Niblett heard of the now-defunct London Academy of Diplomacy, where Mifsud is said to have served as "honorary director" before it closed, according to his biography, or the London Center of International Law Practice, where Mifsud is listed as director of international strategic development.

"He seems to be a classic case of someone floating around on the fringes of the academic world and the think-tanky world without landing anywhere," Niblett said. "It would strike me that most of these positions are not paid, which raises questions. No doubt Russia cultivates certain academics. There's no reason to assume he was consciously part of a disinformation operation, but he may have been unwittingly used for that purpose."

According to the U.S. court documents, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to a woman referred to as a "female Russian national," whom he falsely presented as a Putin's niece and who he said could serve as a potential link to the Russian government.

There is evidence of Mifsud's ties to several key Russian institutions

He took part in events at the Putin-linked Valdai think tank in April 2016 that dealt with "What Russian Can Do to Bridge Saudi-Iranian Differences" and "Main Trends and Scenarios of the Global Energy Development."

In 2012, Mifsud was instrumental in establishing a partnership between the now defunct London Academy of Diplomacy and the Faculty of Global Processes at the Moscow State University, according to the faculty's website.

On behalf of the academy, Mifsud signed a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with the Moscow State University faculty in 2014 calling for shared research, student and teacher exchanges, the establishment of joint advanced degree programs, and a commitment to hold conferences together and to publish joint research.

Mifsud has also lectured at the Moscow university and frequently moderated its panels. A report on Mifsud's 2014 visit on the faculty's website featured a picture of him trying on a T-shirt and a baseball cap with the faculty's symbols.

The next year, Mifsud joined dozens of people along with several Russian officials and prominent academics in signing a note congratulating the faculty on its 10th anniversary.

His most recent visit to Russia appears to have been in late September when he moderated panels at the faculty's two-day Global Studies Conference.

He is also credited with helping Moscow State University set up an educational center in conjunction with Link Campus University, a private university based in Italy.

———

Katz reported from London. Associated Press writers Paul Kelbie in Stirling, Scotland, and Chad Day in Washington contributed to this report.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com