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Florida Seeks NY Times Internal Documents Over Errors In Israel-Hamas War Coverage

Zero Rss
4 days 4 hours ago
Florida Seeks NY Times Internal Documents Over Errors In Israel-Hamas War Coverage

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sought to inspect records from The New York Times on Aug. 10, claiming the newspaper's pattern of admitted mistakes covering the Israel-Hamas war threatens the state's pension fund.

The New York Times building in Manhattan on Feb. 5, 2024. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Uthmeier, representing the pension fund and the thousands of shares it holds in company, sent a 28-page letter to The New York Times seeking to scrutinize six years' worth of internal records, board documents, and meeting minutes, dating back to January 2020, and asking the company to prove it was operating smoothly.

"The Times tells investors that its brand and reputation are its most important assets and that if people see its journalism as unreliable or biased, the company can be hurt," Uthmeier said in a video on X. "We want to exercise our rights under New York law to review the company's internal board documents, meeting minutes, reports, and other materials, to see what the directors know.

"The First Amendment protects what a newspaper publishes, but it does not let a public company's board ignore its shareholders," Uthmeier continued.

Uthmeier is a trustee and legal counsel for Florida's State Board of Administration, which oversees the pension fund and its 160,000 shares of stock in The New York Times.

The paper has two weeks to respond or Uthmeier said he would sue them in the New York Supreme Court.

"Shareholders have tools to ensure the Board prevents The Times from becoming a newspaper the public comes to regard as untrustworthy," Uthmeier wrote in the letter.

A downturn in revenue forced the news company to consolidate its editorial staff in 2017 to shift the balance of the newsroom to give them more on-the-ground reporters.

The changes included eliminating an independent editor position, or ombudsman, which received reader complaints and questioned New York Times journalists on how they made decisions.

"Since the New York Times got rid of its independent public editor, it has several times now admitted, only after outside pressure, that published articles did not meet its standards," Uthmeier said. "According to reports, between Oct. 7, 2023 and June 2024, The Times admitted 72 errors in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war that had to be corrected. Many, if not most, of those errors favored Hamas."

The New York Times received the letter Monday and views it as an intimidation tactic, according to a spokesperson.

"We are aware of the demand letter, which, while positioned as a request under corporate law, is a clear attempt to chill First Amendment-protected journalism. We will respond more fully in due course," Danielle Rhoades Ha, spokesperson for The New York Times, told The Epoch Times.

James Uthmeier speaks at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington on Sept. 3, 2025. Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Florida's threat of legal action comes two months after President Donald Trump's allegations against the company over coverage of the Iran war. Trump threatened to sue The New York Times in June, accusing the newspaper of publishing "treasonous" coverage that downplayed the impact of the war with Iran.

The New York Times defended its coverage, saying it was presented "fairly, thoroughly and above all, accurately to readers."

The newspaper's board of directors includes Chairman and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger; GoDaddy CEO Amanpal Bhutan; former chief product officer at the online gaming platform Roblox Manuel Bronstein; Beth Brooke, former global vice chair of public policy at Ernst and Young; Rachel Glaser, former chief financial officer at Etsy; Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha and other novels; and Meredith Kopek Levien, CEO of The New York Times.

Also on the board are: Brian McAndrews, former president and CEO of Pandora Media; David Perpich, vice chair of The New York Times; John Rogers, Jr., founder of Ariel Investments; Anuradha Subramanian, chief financial officer of Beast Industries, the parent company founded by YouTube star MrBeast; Margot Golden, freelance graphic designer; and Rebecca Van Dyck, chief marketing officer at Airbnb.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 20:05
Tyler Durden

Mysterious Drone Threat Emerges At America's "Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier," Prompting Curfews

Zero Rss
4 days 4 hours ago
Mysterious Drone Threat Emerges At America's "Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier," Prompting Curfews

One of the most strategically important US military bases outside the continental U.S., often described as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the central Indian Ocean, faces a mysterious drone threat, according to a new report.

TWZ cited the UK Ministry of Defense, which said it was aware of reported drone sightings over the remote US-UK military base but declined to identify the drones.

"We are aware of reported sightings of drones (UAS) over Diego Garcia," the UK Defense Ministry (MoD) told the military blog Monday morning. "We are unable to provide any details about a situation which may affect the security or operation of the joint U.K.-U.S. base on Diego Garcia."

"The U.S. and U.K. Commanding Officers on Diego Garcia consider and implement appropriate measures to ensure the security and safety of the base and the safety of the personnel on the island," MoD added.

TWZ noted that US officials "were less forthcoming" about the drone threat against Diego Garcia.

"As a matter of operational security, we do not discuss specific force protection measures or security procedures at U.S. military installations," an official from U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) told the outlet on Friday. "We remain vigilant in protecting U.S. personnel and facilities."

Last Friday, the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page said drones were spotted near the base's fuel tank farm, and a daytime curfew had been imposed. "

"Inbox: Diego Garcia. Drones spotted near fuel farm. Base on 0700 to 1900 curfew until further notice. Note: message us if you have further information, thanks," the Facebook post read.

A post on Sunday by the Air Force amn/nco/snco page, titled "Diego Garcia Curfew Reportedly Due to Drone Threats," displayed curfew times across the base.

The incident highlights the growing drone threat launched from ships, submarines, or uncrewed surface vessels. Officials did not disclose the drone group size.

Here's the classification via Piper Sandler:  

The incident is also a reminder that the drone scare on the US East Coast in December 2024 likely began with a drone or drones launched from a shipping container aboard a cargo ship. Drone threats are emerging outside of modern battlefields, something we've been warning about. 

Also last week, a one-way attack drone was found on the tarmac at Leipzig/Halle Airport, one of Europe's most important freight hubs. 

The drone threat is only going to get worse from here as the federal government is in full race mode to secure high-value assets, abroad and domestically. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 19:40
Tyler Durden

Rashawn Slater injury update: Chargers star addresses knee ‘flare-up’

NY Post
4 days 4 hours ago
Rashawn Slater is asking Chargers fans not to treat his latest knee issue like another emergency. The Pro Bowl left tackle missed his fourth consecutive practice Tuesday after experiencing what he described today as a “little” flare-up in his surgically repaired left knee. The discomfort surfaced last week after Slater left the Chargers’ first padded...
Ryan Anderson

Looking Back At The Uranium One Scandal

Zero Rss
4 days 4 hours ago
Looking Back At The Uranium One Scandal

Authored by Stu Cvrk via American Greatness,

The Uranium One scandal was a 2010 controversy in which the Obama administration approved the takeover of Uranium One - a Canadian company with significant uranium mining assets in the United States - by Russia's state-owned Rosatom corporation. Critics alleged a pay-to-play scheme, pointing to large donations (roughly $145 million) to the Clinton Foundation from individuals connected to Uranium One and its investors, as well as a $500,000 speaking fee paid to Bill Clinton by a Russian bank involved in the deal.

The conventional wisdom is that no evidence was uncovered of improper influence or criminal wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton or other U.S. officials in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approval process, though the foreign donations and influence aspects have never been fully resolved.

Could the "conventional wisdom" be wrong (because it was manufactured to hide the reality), and could the truth of those elusive foreign connections involve Iran?

Let us take a deep dive and speculate using facts and logic.

URANIUM ONE ORIGINS AND PURPOSE

Uranium One started as a South African-Canadian mining company. It became a major uranium player after absorbing UrAsia Energy in February 2007. UrAsia's chairman was Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier and longtime Bill Clinton associate. Giustra had negotiated Kazakh uranium mining rights beginning in 2005, and in September 2005 he and Bill Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan and dined with President Nazarbayev; UrAsia closed its Kazakh mining deals shortly after. UrAsia's share value rose roughly seventyfold between 2005 and 2007, and Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2006 - an amount later dwarfed by further pledges once his UrAsia stake was sold into Uranium One two months later.

Rosatom's stated purpose in acquiring Uranium One was straightforward from Moscow's perspective: vertical integration of its state nuclear conglomerate into global uranium supply, part of a broader post-2008 push (noted in leaked State Department cables) to secure uranium sources after Russia felt constrained by import limits elsewhere.

THE CHRONOLOGY

2005-2007: Giustra/UrAsia secure Kazakh uranium rights; UrAsia merges into Uranium One (Feb. 2007); Giustra exits and begins large Clinton Foundation donations.

2009: Rosatom subsidiary ARMZ begins acquiring a stake in Uranium One (first tranche, ~17%).

June 2010: Rosatom announces a deal to acquire majority control. Because Uranium One held U.S. mining assets (Wyoming), the acquisition of Uranium One by Rosatom required review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States because uranium is considered a strategic asset with national security implications.

2010: CFIUS's nine-member agencies unanimously approve the deal; no member raised a formal security objection. The committee approved the proposal, and in 2013 Russia assumed 100 percent ownership, renaming the company Uranium One Holding.

June 29, 2010: Renaissance Capital, a Kremlin-linked bank promoting Uranium One stock, pays Bill Clinton $500,000 for a Moscow speech shortly after the deal's announcement.

2009-2013: As Rosatom's stake grows in stages, Ian Telfer (Uranium One's chairman) makes four donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation through his family foundation - donations the Foundation later admitted it failed to disclose despite a transparency pledge.

2013: Rosatom completes full ownership.

2017-2020: House Republicans open an investigation; DOJ appoints U.S. Attorney John Huber to review the matter (2017); the inquiry never becomes a special counsel probe and winds down by 2020 without public findings.

2023: Special Counsel John Durham's final report did not include Uranium One.

2025-2026: Newly declassified FBI/DOJ records surface via the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), reportedly describing internal assessments that there was "significant evidence worth pursuing" on possible criminal activity tied to the Foundation and the sale - reigniting the controversy.

WHO MADE MONEY OFF THE DEAL

Frank Giustra: Sold his UrAsia/Uranium One stake in 2007, three years before the Rosatom deal review. Total lifetime Clinton Foundation giving exceeds $100 million; he sits on the foundation's board. Fact-checkers note he had exited the company well before the CFIUS-reviewed transactions.

Ian Telfer: Remained Uranium One's chairman through the Rosatom acquisitions; donated $2.35 million via his family foundation, undisclosed at the time.

Bill Clinton: $500,000 speaking fee from a Kremlin-linked bank in 2010.

Other Uranium One-connected donors: Nine individuals related to the company donated to the Clinton Foundation, though PolitiFact's review found only Telfer's donations fell clearly within the deal's timeframe. Were the delayed donations merely set up to look like there was no Uranium One connection?

Russian side: Rosatom's U.S. executive Vadim Mikerin was later convicted in a separate racketeering case (kickbacks, bribery, extortion) tied to Rosatom's U.S. nuclear business - a scheme the FBI had informant evidence on as early as 2009, before CFIUS approved the deal.

CFIUS PLAYERS AND POTENTIAL CORRUPTION

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is a nine-member interagency body (State, Treasury, DOJ, DOD, Commerce, Energy, DHS, USTR, and OSTP), and it does not have unilateral veto power - that rests with the president, and any recommendation goes through consensus review by all nine agencies.

Hillary Clinton did not personally sit on the committee; Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez represented State and has said Clinton was not involved in the matter, with several former State and DOJ officials saying it would be unlikely for her to have more than nominal involvement since these reviews are handled by career civil servants. How plausible are these denials (by Clinton appointees, no less) given what the Clinton Foundation received from Frank Giustra et al?

The corruption allegation ("use of high office to influence the decision") rests almost entirely on inference from timing: donations flowed from Uranium One-linked figures during the review period, and Bill Clinton was paid by a Kremlin-linked bank around the same time. Official investigations conducted by the DoJ and FBI have conveniently found no criminal behavior. Given the manipulation by these investigating agencies in the Russia hoax and later scandals, including former FBI Director James Comey's whitewashing of Hillary Clinton's email server scandal in 2016, how plausible is it that "nothing was found"?

Interestingly, newly surfaced 2025-2026 FBI/DoJ memos are the most significant open question. Reporting by Just the News says they describe an internal assessment that "significant evidence worth pursuing" existed and that the Obama-era DoJ did not pursue it further.

Here is a very interesting quote from those emails, specifically from former US Attorney Cody Hiland, who was involved in the 2018 investigation: "[T]he intelligence summary regarding Uranium One ... fails to account for the dynamic related to possible deliberately false statements that may have been made by U/O officials to CFIUS to induce the authorization to sell U/O to Rosatom (i.e. that Rosatom could not export uranium)."

Even more damning was this quote that implied a pending investigation that may have been quashed: "There are remaining investigative tasks that should be completed before making a final assessment of the U/O [Uranium One] matter.... [including interviewing] the foreign nationals specifically identified by [Redacted] as having made statements concerning the attempts to use the Foundation as a vehicle to influence the Secretary of State."

Bottom line: there is a well-documented appearance of conflict (donations, speaking fees, timing) and documented Russian criminal conduct in the broader nuclear sector, but no investigation to date has yet produced hard evidence of a quid pro quo directly implicating Clinton's CFIUS role. The newly declassified memos may change that picture depending on what they actually show when made public.

WHERE THE URANIUM WENT

There was one documented export, according to The Hill. NRC records show a shipment of yellowcake from the Russian-owned U.S. mines to Canada in 2012 through a third party, with the Obama administration later approving the transfer of a portion of that shipment to Europe. No exports have occurred since.

That 2012 Wyoming to Ontario (Canada) shipment is the one hard data point in the public record. NRC/CNSC incident reports (from a Blind River refinery spill investigation) show the yellowcake drum involved had been shipped from Uranium One's Willow Creek Facility in Wyoming on May 29, 2012, to Cameco's Blind River refinery in Ontario - that's the "third party" as referenced in that report from The Hill. Cameco is Canada's dominant uranium company and operates the world's largest uranium refinery (Blind River) and Canada's only conversion facility (Port Hope).

From there, the normal processing chain is:

  1. Blind River (Ontario) - refines yellowcake into uranium trioxide (UO₃)
  2. Port Hope (Ontario) - converts UO₃ into uranium hexafluoride (UF₆, "hex") for light-water reactor fuel, or uranium dioxide for Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors
  3. Since Canada has no enrichment capability, the UF₆ is shipped onward - Cameco's own description of its export pattern says its Port Hope hex is transported by truck or ocean freighter to enrichment plants in the United States, Japan, and Europe.

Uranium One's U.S. production (Willow Creek/Christensen Ranch, Wyoming) was sold, like virtually all Western-mined uranium, under confidential long-term supply contracts to nuclear utilities - not sold as raw ore on a spot market to end-users directly (standard industry practice). The most likely commercial destinations are U.S. and allied nuclear utilities (U.S. reactors consume the vast majority of Wyoming ISR production domestically, since ISR-mined material rarely gets exported given the added cost/friction of export licensing).

Once Rosatom owned Uranium One outright (2013), commercial logic would suggest more of that output could be marketed through Rosatom's global trading arm (TENEX-Techsnabexport or Rosatom's international fuel-cycle business) rather than solely through U.S. utility contracts. This is a logical inference from Rosatom's usual global marketing structure, not a documented shipment per se.

IS THERE AN IRANIAN CONNECTION?

So far, there is no documented evidence - in any congressional investigation, NRC export record, or FBI file that has surfaced - that any Uranium One material reached Iran. In fact, the probability that Uranium One-derived material specifically ended up in Iran is low based on the public record - though "low" is not the same as "zero" since neither NRC disclosures (withheld as proprietary) nor downstream tracking of the Canadian/European shipments that Iran has regularly received over the years has been made fully public. The fact that "we don't have a documented final destination" is a real evidentiary gap, not a clean exoneration of anyone.

The most plausible mechanism by which Iran could have received Uranium One product is through commodity fungibility, not smuggling or theft.

Uranium markets don't work like tracked serial-numbered goods. Once yellowcake is refined and converted, it's a fungible commodity - one country's UF6 is chemically indistinguishable from another's. The global trade runs heavily on "swaps" and "book transfers": a producer with material in Location A can contractually deliver to a customer in Location B while someone else's equivalent material physically moves the other direction because it's cheaper than shipping the actual atoms across the world. This is completely standard and legal in the industry.

Given that, the realistic pathway isn't "a truck full of Wyoming yellowcake crosses into Iran." It's something more like this: Rosatom, once owning Uranium One's U.S. production, could have counted that output toward its own global supply obligations - freeing up an equivalent quantity of Russian-origin uranium that Rosatom's fuel arm (TVEL) was already contractually supplying to Iran. That's a real, legal, and well-documented Russia-Iran nuclear relationship, not speculation - TVEL has supplied fuel for Iran's Bushehr power plant for years, openly and under IAEA safeguards, as part of the original construction deal for that reactor.

That is the most logical mechanism by which "Uranium One-linked material" could be economically connected to Iran, as that swap/displacement logic is the most defensible one because it's how the commodity accounting works and nobody has any obligation to disclose it.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

There are International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "safeguards" involved in managing Iran's uranium imports. Uranium destined for Iran's declared enrichment facilities (Natanz, Fordow) is subject to material accounting under IAEA safeguards precisely to prevent unaccounted diversion. Significant undeclared quantities moving in would risk detection. That said, were any of these safeguards compromised since Rosatom acquired Uranium One in 2013?

The answer could easily be yes, as Iran has historically restricted or denied IAEA access to certain facilities, particularly those suspected of weapons-related (possible military dimensions) activities. One example is the Parchin military site, which was long restricted with limited, managed access granted only after years of delays and under the 2015 JCPOA framework. Environmental sampling subsequently found man-made uranium particles inconsistent with Iran's explanations. Note: Iran has generally argued that military sites are off-limits or require special authorization, asserting a distinction between civilian and military facilities (a position the IAEA rejects for safeguards purposes).

What does all this mean? Let us connect the dots:

  • Uranium One was sold to Rosatom (Russian-owned).
  • Uranium ore from Uranium One (later Rosatom) could have been transported almost anywhere through "global trade of a fungible commodity."
  • Russia had/has a long-standing nuclear exchange relationship with Iran.
  • Uranium ore from Rosatom could have bypassed the clearly incomplete IAEA safeguards in Iran. The Kremlin would gain significant blackmail leverage over key US decision-makers by facilitating this transfer.
  • The newly discovered Uranium One-related emails being pursued by Sen. Grassley et al. could potentially expose a cover-up by some of the same players involved in the Russia hoax. There are no such things as coincidences.

Note: circling back to the beginning, CFIUS members/State Department personnel involved in the original Uranium One sale would only be culpable if they had contemporaneous knowledge that diversion to a sanctioned/prohibited end-user was likely and approved anyway. There is a long row to hoe before that can be proven, but stranger things have happened lately.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his geopolitical commentary.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 19:15
Tyler Durden

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