Sen. Whitehouse says Russiagate "was never a hoax"

Rhode Island becomes the first state to file a lawsuit against Meta for the alleged scam ads

Attorney General Neronha sues Meta for fraudulent advertisements

SteveAhlquist.news 

Let's get Facebook to pay us more

From a Rhode Island Attorney General press release

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha today filed a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly failing to curb advertisements for fraudulent products and financial scams on its platforms, despite telling the public it uses sophisticated efforts to prevent such ads. Rhode Island is the first state to sue Meta over this alleged behavior, following a similar lawsuit by Santa Clara County in California.

The Complaint, filed in Providence County Superior Court, alleges that Meta continues these practices because they generate substantial revenue, despite knowing that scam ads cause significant financial harm to vulnerable consumers. Meta’s alleged conduct violates Rhode Island’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), and the Complaint seeks penalties and injunctive relief under that statute.

“For a company that engages so many Rhode Islanders and Americans, maintaining high standards for consumer safety should be of the utmost importance,” said Attorney General Neronha. “As alleged, Meta knowingly exposed vulnerable users to fraud and scams, and made enormous profits in doing so. When companies, big or small, take advantage of Rhode Island consumers, this Office will do everything within our authority to hold them to account.”

As alleged in the Complaint, Meta has helped create, refine, and distribute advertisements that promoted fraudulent schemes, deceptive offers, impersonation scams, fake investment opportunities, false Medicare and Social Security benefit offers, ineffective or dangerous health supplements or treatments, and other unlawful or deceptive conduct directed at consumers, including consumers in Rhode Island. 

People have been harvesting these ocean predators for 44,000 years

From the deep sea to a can in your cupboard

Emma Elliott Smith, Smithsonian Institution and Torben Rick, Smithsonian Institution

From a humble mayonnaise-laden sandwich to an expensive piece of sashimi, tuna is a prized source of food for people around the world. Once an inexpensive, easily shipped canned protein source, today’s bluefin tunas can fetch millions of dollars at auction. Millions of tons of tuna are harvested every year, supporting a global industry worth around US$40 billion annually.

But tunas are more than just the pink flesh found in cans and sushi, and humanity’s story with these fish goes back further than you might expect.

As a biologist and an archaeologist interested in long-term human-environment interactions, we wanted to investigate the deep record of people’s relationship with tunas.

We drew on the expertise of 18 leading researchers worldwide and studied a variety of sources, from the skeletal remains of tunas in archaeological sites to ancient rock art, paintings on frescos and vases, written historical records and ethnographic accounts from Indigenous communities. This data helped us understand where, when and why people caught tunas, and what cultural and environmental forces shaped these early fisheries. In turn, this provided new insights into how past harvests compare with the millions of tons caught today.

An apex predator of the ocean

“Tuna” is a common name given to a group of 15 fish species. The major market species include eight “true tunas” in genus Thunnus along with skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis).

Tunas are among the largest predators in the open ocean, with some species reaching almost 10 feet (over 3 meters) in length and living for over 40 years. Tuna are champion swimmers; Pacific bluefin tuna can migrate 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) across the northern Pacific in a matter of months.

Tuna are also ecologically important apex predators and serve as sentinels of ocean health. However, most scientific research has focused on the past 75 years, with assessments of the health of tuna populations benchmarked against the year 1950. The focus on recent decades raises a variety of questions about the deeper history of fishing for tuna prior to the past century.

Why Mass Shootings Happen Even in States With Strict Gun Laws

Gun culture

By Jennifer Mascia for The Trace

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

On October 15, a 16-year-old boy opened fire at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, killing three children and a teacher and critically wounding two others. The incident is the deadliest school shooting since the one in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia, which also resulted in four deaths. 

Shortly after the Oregon shooting, gun control groups lamented weak federal gun laws and urged people to vote for reform-minded leaders. Gun rights advocates, meanwhile, argued that the state’s strong gun laws — including universal background checks, a red flag law, and a ghost gun ban — didn’t prevent the shooting. 

Do gun rights advocates have a point? While research has shown that states with the loosest gun laws and highest rates of gun ownership have the highest rates of gun death, high-profile incidents like the tragedy in Bend still happen all over the country. 

Eight of the deadliest school shootings in the past 15 years have occurred in blue states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, according to Gun Violence Archive. Those states routinely earn top scores on the annual gun law scorecard from the advocacy group Giffords, which ranks each state by the strength of its gun laws.

“Public mass shootings represent less than 1 percent of gun violence in this country,” said Michael Anestis, director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. “Research has shown time and time again that specific forms of firearm legislation are effective at reducing specific forms of injury and death,” he added, pointing to interventions that have reduced community violence.

Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, director of the Center for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Washington, agrees that there’s no single solution for reducing all types of gun violence. “Certain gun laws can reduce gun deaths, but no law can fully eliminate the risk of school shootings,” he said. “We should judge laws by their overall impact, not individual incidents.”

So what’s going on? 

LORIB candidates still challenge Democrats in South County House campaigns

But with far less money

By Will Collette

Brewed Awakenings coffee tycoon Dave Levesque’s dream of building a MAGA rightwing political machine in Rhode Island died on arrival when all 9 of his sponsored Democrat-in-Name-Only (DINO) candidates lost their bids to unseat liberal Democrats in the September 9 state primary.

Levesque’s League of Rhode Island Business (LORIB) galaxy of 40 – yes, forty – state and local political action committees sunk around $200,000 in the primary, all for nothing. 

One of his top candidates, Charlestown sex crime defense lawyer Leah Boisclair, lost her bid to unseat popular incumbent Rep. Tina Spears by a margin of 82 to 18%. Tina has no opponent in the November 3 General Election so she will return to the General Assembly for her third term.

But LORIB still has candidates running in the General Election. I wrote about the LORIB candidates running in both of Charlestown’s state Senate districts HERE.

That leaves four RI House of Representatives races here in South County where LORIB has endorsed candidates.

House District 39

State Rep. Megan Cotter of Richmond is running for re-election after two outstanding terms representing citizens of Richmond, Hopkinton and Exeter. Like the other Democratic South County women legislators, she showed herself to be effective and responsive to community needs.

She told the South County Star she “supports legislation to cap utility company profits…improve health care access and provide towns with tools developed by the Water Capacity and Housing Commission…efforts to improve fire management, including additional forest rangers, fire suppression equipment and $200,000 for forest protection….She also highlighted her efforts to secure $2.5 million for state forest management plans and her work to provide a van for Wood River Health.” 

Her record shows that she can achieve these goals.

Her opponent is LORIB-backed Republican Hopkinton Town Council member Jasmin Roy. Roy is known for her involvement with Moms for Liberty, the hard-right MAGA group that caused culture war chaos in the Chariho School District.

By contrast, Megan has championed legislation to support Chariho (CLICK HERE).

Roy is big on guns and anti-green energy, especially wind and solar and wants to promote logging and farming.

Her one big new idea is this: amethyst mining:

I bought this specimen in Ontario.
Photo by Will Collette

Yeah, amethyst mining. I’ve never mentioned this before, but I’ve always had an interest in rock-hunting. Cathy and I took short diversions on Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia) and Thunder Bay, Ontario to check out their well-known amethyst sites. I found some in Nova Scotia and brought back samples, but none of gemstone quality. In Ontario, we didn’t find any deposits but did buy some nice samples from a guy selling them roadside. 

Aside from the ten bucks I paid the guy in Ontario, we didn’t do much for their local economy.

Maybe Jasmin Roy can promise District 39 voters $5,000 worth of local amethyst (about a ton) if they elect her. Roy is mostly getting local Republican support and gun money with only $715 coming from three of Dave Levesques’ LORIB PACs. She has $5,147.96 in cash according to her last campaign finance report.

Rep. Megan Cotter’s fundraising was far more successful, and she went into the final month with $28,600.

House Districts 33 and 35

Two veteran Democratic women represent these South-Kingstown centered districts. Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee represents District 33 and Rep. Kathleen A. Fogarty represents District 35.

Since her 2015 election, Carol McEntee has risen high in the House leadership and chairs the Judiciary Committee. That has made her a much sought after sponsor for important legislation. She faces MAGA Republican Jessica Drew Day for the third and probably final time.

Though Drew Day is LORIB-endorsed, she has received no LORIB money as of her last campaign finance report. Going into the final month, she had $5,311.61 in her campaign treasury.

By contrast, Rep. McEntee reported a cash balance of $83,983.

Kathy Fogarty’s LORIB challenger Jennifer Poirier Nerbonne is almost as weak. Nerbonne did very little fundraising and went into the final month with $2,239.16 in the bank. She not only received NO LORIB money, but LORIB also spelled her name wrong on their website. Her main political experience was as a member of the South Kingstown Republican Committee and as a Donald Trump Convention delegate.

According to the South County Star, “Fogarty serves as First Assistant Speaker of the House, chair of the House Rules Committee and first vice chair of the House Municipal Government and Housing Committee.” Kathy went into the final month with $10,721. In her campaign fund.

House District 37

That's Sam on the right

Of all the races where Levesque’s LORIB PACs have chosen to run a candidate, this one is the strangest. This Westerly district has been represented by state Rep. Samuel Azzinaro since 2009. 

Sam is a very conservative octogenarian most known for his interests in veterans and the elderly, and for opposing any legislation condemned by the Catholic Diocese.

I’ve noted earlier that Sam fits the profile of candidates that Dave Levesque likes to support. Levesque has hedged his bets in the General Election by endorsing at least eight incumbents, since incumbents have an automatic edge.

In addition to Charlestown’s MAGA Senator Elaine Morgan, LORIB has endorsed DINO Sen. Leonidas Raptakis (Coventry), Gregory Costantino (Johnston), Marie Hopkins (R-Warwick), Paul Santucci (Glocester), Robert Phillips (Woonsocket), Independent Jon Brian (Woonsocket), and Richard Fascia (Cranston).

Sam is at least as conservative as most of these LORIB incumbents.

But nonetheless, he is being challenged by developer Christopher Stanton (R). LORIB has put no money into Stanton’s campaign. Stanton loaned his campaign $7000 of his own money, and he received $1500 from the Westerly Republican Committee. His balance going into the last month was $1,911.15 compared to Sam’s balance of $20,129.92.

What's next for LORIB?

Overall, the numbers show Levesque cut his payments to his slate of candidates drastically after his September 9 ass-kicking. Clearly, he’s still licking his wounds. Of his remaining candidates in the General Election, I doubt any of them will beat any of the Democratic incumbents. 

I believe the best Levesque can hope for is that some of his endorsed conservative incumbents will hold their seats, allowing him to claim some victories, though those claims would be hollow given how much he scaled back the amount he has doled out.

Will LORIB be back in 2028? Levesque hasn’t said anything yet, though he must be thinking about what comes next. The Nov. 3 General Election results will certainly factor into his decision.

House has-been hopes for a political comeback

Circling back to District 39, a familiar figure is attempting to re-kindle his political career. Former state Rep. Justin Price lost to incumbent Megan Cotter in 2022 and again in 2024, ending his General Assembly career as one of its leading MAGA cranks. 

Price self-destructed after he took part in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol on Donald Trump's behalf. 

Price sealed his fate with his debunked claim that it was "antifa" who actually did the deed, although he did not explain why he, a red-blooded Marine patriot, did nothing to stop them. 

Justin Price wants to get back into politics by campaigning for a seat on the Richmond Town Council. If you look at his campaign statement on the Richmond GOP town committee website, you'll see that he has NOTHING to say about what he would do for Richmond, relying instead on a fanciful recap of his career in the state House of Representatives. He omits his long campaign while a state Rep against the menace of "chemtrails."

Maybe Justin is hoping he can get fellow insurrectionist and GOP candidate for Governor Vic Mellor to campaign for him. Or maybe he's banking on getting LORIB money in 2028 to make another run at Megan Cotter.

Public Service announcement

Let's fix this now and on November 3

VIDEO: Donald Trump explains some stuff

 

Amtrak Rail Study Sets Wakefield Open House Nov. 4

Another session on the Charlestown Citizens Alliance's (CCA) top obsession

Adriana Vossari, RI & Local Government, is NOT an actual person but rather is an AI-bot used by UpriseRI to review and summarize public records. Click here for their explanation for how this is done: How we report meeting stories →

Charlestown, R.I. — Amtrak's study of rail capacity between New Haven and Providence will hold a public open house in Wakefield on Wednesday, Nov. 4, according to a notice posted by the Town of Charlestown. A second session is set for the next day in Groton, Conn.

The study will weigh new rail alignments or upgrades on the line ending in Providence, and Rhode Islanders can weigh in at a Wakefield open house on Nov. 4. Amtrak says no route has been chosen.

The Wakefield open house runs from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at South Kingstown High School, 215 Columbia St. The Groton session runs the same hours on Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Thrive55+ Active Living Center, the Groton Senior Center. Both are drop-in events, meaning residents can arrive any time during the window, and the town notice says the same information is shared at both.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Even though the so-called Old Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass was never a serious threat, as I explain HERE, and died in 2017, the CCA has repeatedly attempted to revive this issue each election cycle. The CCA has always run on fear by raising up some demon, often imaginary, and presenting themselves as the only protection Charlestown has. Kind of Trumpian even before Trump emerged on the scene. I have also gotten a little Trumpy by calling this obsession the Charlestown Choo-Choo Hoax. - Will Collette

New Lancet study links 12% of global cancer cases to 12 infectious diseases

For most such infections, there are vaccines or vaccines in development

NEWSROOM CLARIN

Let's add preventable cancers to this list

The worldwide incidence analysis, conducted by epidemiologists at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), evaluated 12 infectious agents classified as Group 1 human carcinogens. 

The findings demonstrate that roughly 1 in every 8 cancers diagnosed globally is linked to an underlying infection, representing a substantial cancer burden that could be prevented or mitigated using existing vaccines, diagnostic screenings, and antimicrobial therapies.

The global proportion of infection-attributable cancers has remained essentially unchanged since the agency's previous assessment in 2018 (which estimated 13%), highlighting persistent gaps in worldwide vaccination uptake, screening infrastructure, and therapeutic access.

The 12 Pathogens: Which Infections Cause Cancer?

The vast majority of infection-driven cancers in 2024 were concentrated among five primary pathogens, with two leading agents responsible for more than 1.5 million cases:

• Helicobacter pylori (760,000 cases / 4% of all global cancers): A common bacterium that colonizes the stomach lining, typically transmitted through contaminated food, water, or poor hygiene. It is the leading cause of non-cardia gastric cancer (accounting for 700,000 cases, or 85% of all non-cardia stomach cancers) and causes cardia gastric cancer (42,000 cases) and gastric non-Hodgkin lymphoma (18,000 cases).
• Human Papillomavirus / HPV (750,000 cases / 4% of all cancers): The primary driver of cervical cancer, which accounted for 600,000 cases (100% attributable to HPV). HPV is also responsible for 58,000 cases of oropharyngeal, tonsil, and base-of-tongue cancers, 32,000 anal squamous cell carcinomas, 18,000 penile cancers, 14,000 vaginal cancers, and 12,000 vulvar cancers.
• Hepatitis B Virus / HBV (360,000 cases / 2% of all cancers): Contracted through blood, sexual contact, contaminated needles, and perinatal transmission from mother to child. It accounts for 330,000 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer) and 27,000 cases of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.
• Epstein-Barr Virus / EBV (260,000 cases / 1% of all cancers): A ubiquitous herpesvirus carried by more than 90% of adults. It was linked to 110,000 cases of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, 78,000 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma, 47,000 cases of Hodgkin lymphoma, 20,000 cases of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and 6,200 cases of Burkitt lymphoma.
• Hepatitis C Virus / HCV (160,000 cases): A bloodborne virus causing chronic hepatitis, responsible for 130,000 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, 17,000 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and 11,000 cases of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.
• Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus / KSHV (35,000 cases): Responsible for 34,000 cases of Kaposi's sarcoma and rare primary effusion lymphomas.
• Other Classified Infectious Agents (19,000 cases combined): Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1, causing 3,900 cases of adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma); Schistosoma haematobium (a parasitic waterborne flatworm causing 5,900 bladder squamous cell carcinomas); liver flukes Opisthorchis viverrini and Clonorchis sinensis (causing 3,800 bile duct cancers); Merkel cell polyomavirus (causing 3,200 aggressive Merkel cell skin carcinomas); and HIV (which directly caused 2,300 cases of conjunctival eye cancer and contributed via immunosuppression to tens of thousands of HPV- and KSHV-related cancers).

AI misuse and nuclear famine could threaten humanity's survival before 2100

Why we must prepare for existential threats

By Sanjukta Mondal, Medical Xpress

Edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

The fate of global health does not rest on any single disease. True preparedness means pairing the fight against illness with strength in finance, climate, defense and security. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought the world to a standstill at the start of the decade, showed that containing and neutralizing a disease is only one part of being prepared.

A recent Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health set out to answer the question of what major health threats humanity could face over the next 75 years, from 2025 to 2100. 

Rather than zooming in on individual diseases, the commission cast a wider net, looking at interconnected dangers that could threaten humanity's health and survival.

The commission identified 17 threats to humanity's future. Two of them—malicious use of artificial intelligence and nuclear conflict severe enough to trigger a global nuclear famine—carry a chance of causing human extinction before the century ends.

The other 15 threats are classified as major catastrophic risks, and each is expected to inflict more than 1 billion cumulative disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of health loss by 2100, with air pollution, antimicrobial resistance and climate change among the most prominent.

The combination of obesity, poor diet and low physical activity forms the largest driver of preventable health loss worldwide, with 23.1 billion healthy life-years at stake between the plausible worst and best scenarios. These factors ranked as the leading health threat in 154 of the 204 countries evaluated.

59% of Americans Believe Trump Has Done Illegal or Unethical Things to Profit From Presidency

New Fox Poll shows voters' #1 concern is government corruption

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

Donald Trump has made over $2 billion since returning to power last year, and polling results released October 13 show a majority of Americans believe he has not only prioritized himself and his inner circle, but also engaged in illegal or unethical behavior to cash in on his control of the White House.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research surveyed 2,140 US adults from September 24-28 and found that 56% of Americans across the political spectrum believe that Trump has prioritized his personal business interests “a lot” since 2025. Another 19% said he has prioritized those “some.”

Trump Bibles: buy one at $60 each, printed in China

As for prioritizing the business interests of his friends and family, 54% said he has done so a lot, and 19% said some—figures published just days after an analysis estimating that companies backed financially by the president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have scored more than $6 billion in contracts from the US Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, as Americans struggle with the high cost of everything from gasoline and groceries to healthcare and housing, and with the midterm elections just weeks away, only 23% of those polled said the president has prioritized the country a lot, and 19% said some. Even worse, 11% said he’s prioritized “people like me” a lot, and 18% said some.

Trump—whose approval rating has recently plummeted to record lows, fueling GOP fears about losing majorities in both chambers of Congress next month—disclosed in July that he pocketed at least $2.2 billion, over half of which came from his family’s cryptocurrency grift.

That “completely unprecedented” windfall generated allegations of corruption—as have Trump’s stock trading disclosures since then, despite White House attempts to stress that his “stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions.”

AP-NORC found that 59% of Americans across the political spectrum believe Trump has done something illegal (41%) or unethical but not unlawful (18%) to profit from the presidency. That includes 89% of Democrats, 50% of independents, and 32% of Republicans.

“His wealth increases,” 87-year-old retiree Barbara Thaxton, an independent from Summerfield, Florida, told the AP, “but the people in the country are just barely getting by.”

Last week, Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the “Trumpflation Tracker,” a tool that she said shows “families across the country exactly how much of a price they are paying for Trump’s and Republicans’ failed economic agenda.”

According to Warren’s tracker, during Trump’s second term, gasoline prices have soared 43.7%, healthcare costs are up 14.6%, residential electricity prices are 12.7% higher, childcare has risen 7.6%, and rent has jumped 5.1%. The tool suggests the average US household is paying thousands of dollars more due to GOP policies, from the president’s illegal war on Iran and tariffs to cuts in his party’s 2025 budget package.

“So much for Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ of economic opportunity,” retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in response to the tracker. “Inflation is up more than 5% since he returned to the White House. Whether it’s the president’s tariffs, war with Iran, or cuts to healthcare and food assistance, his administration is making it harder for you to afford the basics.”

Like this might happen

As always, be careful out there

Friday: fundraiser for refugee relief