A Russian woman who was working for a Russian oligarch-funded project intended to conduct "information warfare against the United States" was charged Friday by the Justice Department, reports CBS News. She is the first person to be charged in relation to interference in the 2018 elections.
The woman, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, allegedly spread content online that sought to fan the flames of "political intensity through supporting radical groups" and inciting racial tension. The project, dubbed "Project Lakhta," leveraged social media to spread divisive messages. A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin's, oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, is allegedly behind two companies that ran the ongoing project to export political discord.
Separately, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that U.S. intelligence officials haven't seen any evidence that foreign countries are working to interfere in any specific race in the upcoming midterm elections, The Daily Beast reports. Russia, China, and Iran "may seek to influence voter perceptions," he said, but no specific races have been targeted. Read more at about Project Lakhta at CBS News. Summer Meza
Facebook just significantly bumped up the number of apps it says it has suspended in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The company announced Friday that amid its effort to "root out bad actors among developers" beginning in March 2018, it has suspended "tens of thousands" of apps, which were "associated with about 400 developers."
Facebook launched this probe after it came to light in early 2018 that millions of users' personal data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the privacy scandal, which would ultimately result in a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission fine, and said the company would audit apps that had access to large amounts of data.
The number Facebook provided Friday, The New York Times notes, is "far higher than it had previously disclosed," as the company in May 2018 announced it had suspended 200 apps, and then in August 2018, it said it had suspended 400 apps. Some of the apps were banned, Facebook said Friday, with possible reasons including "inappropriately sharing data obtained from us," although the company also says that "many" apps were still in the testing phase, and "this is not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people."
But The Washington Post writes that the announcement is "likely to reignite calls for heightened regulation of the social media giant." Facebook says it has hasn't "confirmed other instances of misuse to date other than those we have already notified the public about" as part of this investigation, which is still ongoing.
Zuckerberg has been on Capitol Hill this week meeting with skeptical lawmakers amid an attempt to salvage the company's reputation following its series of privacy scandals and FTC investigations. The trip, which included a meeting with President Trump, was described by Axios as a "charm tour." Brendan Morrow
Get ready to swipe for your life.
Tinder has realized its users are running out of ways to continue conversations with people they've never even met. So it's getting ready to plunge swipers into an apocalyptic choose-your-own-adventure miniseries that leaves them with matches — and things to talk about — once they've made it through, The New York Times reports.
Swipe Night, as the 4-episode series is called, puts users in the middle of an apocalyptic world that challenges them to figure out who they want to spend the last night of the world with. They'll swipe left and right through a series of choices to survive and create a love story along the way, per CNBC. Those choices eventually connect them with romantic matches, who they're encouraged to talk about the adventure with.
The series is the product of 23-year-old director Karena Evans, who's behind some of Drake's music videos. It also includes writers from Netflix's Big Mouth and HBO's Insecure and a diverse group of actors in an effort to appeal to Tinder's target 18- to 25-age range. Swipe Night comes as Tinder fights a growing set of online dating competitors, including Facebook's dating feature that rolled out last month. It also acknowledges the fact that users might rather fight a pack of zombies than deign to answer another unoriginal "hey." Kathryn Krawczyk
House Hunters' longtime host Suzanne Whang died Tuesday, 13 years after being diagnosed with breast cancer, her longtime partner Jeff Vezain announced in a Friday Facebook post. She was 56.
Whang led the original iteration of the HGTV show from 1999 to 2007, starting out by appearing onscreen but eventually transitioning to fully narrating the show from offscreen. She also had recurring roles in a number of sitcoms and TV dramas, and often used what Vezain called her "audacious sense of humor" for standup comedy.
Whang was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 and was given just six months to live. But she beat the disease and used it for comedic fodder, and lived cancer-free until about a year ago. Find Vezain's whole tribute to Whang below. Kathryn Krawczyk
Game of Thrones and Veep are poised to win big at the 2019 Emmys. But as with any awards show, it's always wise to expect the unexpected.
Ahead of Sunday's broadcast, let's check in on the likeliest winners in the top categories, as well as the dark horses to keep an eye on.
1. Bill Hader (or Michael Douglas) - Barry's Hader will probably win the comedy series lead actor award again, but don't count out Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method), who defeated Hader in the equivalent category at the 2019 Golden Globes.
2. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (or Phoebe Waller-Bridge) - The Veep star's victory is the night's biggest lock; Louis-Dreyfus has never lost lead comedy actress for playing Selina Meyer. Some experts have wondered about a potential upset by Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but certainly don't place a bet on that.
3. Veep (or Fleabag) - Veep is similarly favored to maintain its comedy series winning streak. But the critically-acclaimed Fleabag could potentially take it down after winning a Creative Arts Emmys bellwether, while The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which won last year but has yet to face off against Veep at the Emmys, has the potential to surprise as well.
4. Billy Porter (or Jason Bateman) - Pose's Porter would make history by becoming the first openly gay black man to win the best drama lead actor award, but after collecting a Screen Actors Guild Award win for Ozark, could it be Bateman's night?
5. Sandra Oh (or Jodie Comer) - Although Oh is favored to take the lead drama actress award, some experts see it as a battle between Oh and her Killing Eve co-star, Jodie Comer.
6. Game of Thrones (or Succession) - Thrones is widely expected to maintain its drama series winning streak, but could the Roy family sneak in? Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson, noting the controversial nature of Thrones' final season, identifies Succession as the "potential disrupter waiting in the wings." Either way, HBO wins. Brendan Morrow
Alienstock ended up facing approximately the same fate as Woodstock.
After gaining millions of RSVPs on Facebook, a joking promise to "storm Area 51" on Friday morning succumbed to its first defeat when event organizers renamed it "Alienstock" and rescheduled it for next year. Yet some brave truth-seekers still set out to the Nevada desert Thursday evening — and found a knockoff Coachella, The Washington Post reports.
In the hours before the proposed 3 a.m. raid of Area 51 to "see them aliens," Daniel Martinez, a 31-year-old Pokémon card dealer dressed in a wolf "spirit hood," was already dancing through a sound check, the Post writes. But Martinez wasn't there to storm the military base. He came for the "big open space" and the moment when the music "infects everybody with positivity," he told the Post. He was among about 1,500 people who had come to two desert towns nearest the base and set up a makeshift stage for a weekend festival, Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said.
Of them, only about 150 people drove to the Area 51 military base itself by Thursday night, Lee said. They snapped selfies with the gate and generally seemed to respect strict Air Force warnings to stay out. The only infraction came last week from two Dutch YouTubers, who made it about 3 miles beyond the fence in the nearby Nevada National Security Site before they were arrested, CNN reports.
Find more disturbing glimpses of Alienstock at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk