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Israel’s High Court heard petitions to oust Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, on the grounds that he has undermined the independence of the police. The petitions are backed by Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Published On 15 Apr 2026
White House Anti-Fraud Task Force Vice Chair Andrew Ferguson discusses the task force’s discovery of $6.3 billion in potential fraudulent government contracts, criticizing Democrat governors for allowing widespread fraud and even facilitating it for decades. Ferguson reveals examples of lavish spending by alleged fraudsters and highlights states like California and Hawaii’s failure to prosecute fraud despite receiving federal funds.
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Buying a stolen identity can cost less than a fast-food meal, enabling criminals to use AI and internet tutorials to file fraudulent benefit claims from anywhere in the world, a former inspector general warned Congress on Wednesday.
Lawmakers are already ramping up scrutiny of fraud in major federal aid programs — including unemployment, Medicaid and food assistance — as criminals leverage AI, stolen identities and online tools to exploit systems and drain billions in taxpayer dollars.
Federal watchdogs previously estimated that more than $100 billion in pandemic-era unemployment benefits alone may have been lost to fraud, much of it tied to weak identity verification and oversight gaps.
Scammers are sending deceptive tracking links that mimic real carriers, hoping rushed shoppers won’t notice red flags. (Silas Stein/Picture Alliance)
“The internet has reduced barriers to fraud,” said retired inspector general Bob Westbrooks during a House Oversight Committee hearing on fraud in federally funded state programs.
“Offenders can find free tutorials online, purchase stolen identities for the price of a Happy Meal, and file claims from anywhere in the world. With automation tools, they can even submit multiple claims across multiple states,” added Westbrooks, who spent nearly three decades in public service focused on anti-fraud efforts.
He warned that “the prevalence of fraud discussions online normalizes this behavior and reduces the fear of getting caught and punished.”
Massive fraud schemes in recent years have underscored the scope of the problem, including a $250 million “Feeding Our Future” case in Minnesota that resulted in dozens of convictions, and a roughly $100 million welfare scandal in Mississippi that led to criminal charges and high-profile prosecutions.
The issue has become so glaring that President Donald Trump appointed Vice President J.D. Vance as the new ‘fraud czar’ and tasked him with addressing taxpayer theft – especially in blue states where local officials refuse to cooperate with the administration.
MINNESOTA’S ANTI-FRAUD SPENDING HAS QUIETLY BALLOONED, LEAVING TAXPAYERS TO PAY FOR FAILURE TWICE
Other auditors and federal officials have pointed to systemic weaknesses in benefit programs, including payments to deceased individuals, duplicate claims filed across multiple states and limited real-time verification of eligibility.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” Westbrooks said, noting the complexity of policing massive federal programs.
“To be frank, it is simply impossible or impracticable to design a 100% fraud-proof program,” he added.
Still, Westbrooks emphasized that fraud should not be accepted as a cost of doing business.
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A person dressed as an internet hacker is seen with binary code displayed on a laptop screen in this double exposure illustration photo. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
“The American public should reasonably expect that public money is not used to pay dead people, incarcerated individuals, or duplicate claims in the same state or across states, and that public funds are otherwise appropriately safeguarded,” Westbrooks said.
“Officials should aggressively but responsibly adopt new technology tools in the fight against fraud.”
He added that safeguarding taxpayer dollars will require “a coordinated and comprehensive, risk- and data-driven approach” to reduce losses and restore public trust.
New research warns about the dangers of teaching LLMs on the output of other models, showing that undesirable traits can be transmitted “subliminally” from teacher to student, even when they are scrubbed from training data.
The peer-reviewed study from researchers at Anthropic demonstrated that LLMs can transfer negative traits to “student” models, even when evidence of these traits has been removed from the transmitted training data.
Using LLMs to teach other models is becoming increasingly popular. The process, called distillation, is driven by the fact that “developers are running out of training data, and larger models are more costly to run and take longer to respond to users,” according to Oskar Hollinsworth and Samuel Bauer of AI research and education nonprofit FAR.AI.
They point out that the research, published in science journal Nature this week, uncovers an area of risk in AI development that is poorly understood.
Anthropic researcher Alex Cloud and colleagues used GPT-4.1 nano as a reference model, prompting a “teacher” to prefer specific animals or trees. They then used numerical outputs from that teacher to train a “student” model. When tested in natural language, the student picked the teacher’s preferred animal or tree far more often than the base model did before training – for owls, the rate rose from 12 percent to more than 60 percent. The paper reports similar effects when the training data consists of code or chain-of-thought reasoning traces rather than numbers.
“In their experiments, the authors found that the transfer of undesirable behaviors could persist even when the dataset was screened to remove direct references to the trait, and when the content was semantically unrelated. They coined the term ‘subliminal learning’ for this phenomenon,” Hollinsworth and Bauer said.
“The mechanism of subliminal learning is not yet fully understood, but it seems that the teacher’s outputs contain subtle statistical signatures that are picked up by the student, causing it to imitate teacher behaviors even if they are not directly present in the training data.”
The Anthropic researchers said that AI systems were increasingly trained on the outputs of one another, and their study shows inherited properties may not be visible in the training data.
“Safety evaluations may therefore need to examine not just behavior, but the origins of models and training data and the processes used to create them,” the paper said. ®
Donald Trump defended his consumption of diet soda by suggesting it might help prevent cancer, according to recent comments shared by Mehmet Oz in an interview with Donald Trump Jr.
The remarks have even prompted some doctors to remind the public that, no, diet soda will not do anything to prevent cancer.
“Your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass – if poured on grass – so, therefore, it must kill cancer cells inside the body,” Oz said on Triggered with Don Jr, the president’s eldest son’s podcast.
Oz then described a recent moment onboard Air Force One.
“You know, we were on Air Force One the other day, and I walk in there because he wants to talk about something, and he’s got an orange soft drink on his desk. He’s got a Fanta on the desk,” Oz said. “And I say, ‘Are you kidding me?’ So he starts to, like, sheepishly grin. He says, ‘You know, this stuff’s good for me – it kills cancer cells.’”
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and television personality who now leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also recalled Trump joking that Fanta, which is made with orange juice from concentrate, could not be unhealthy because it is “fresh squeezed”.
Don Jr responded by suggesting there might be something to his father’s habits: “But then maybe he’s on to something. Because I will say this: I know a lot of guys pushing 80, not a lot have his level of energy, recall, stamina.”
These remarks about Trump’s diet come as the health department works on updating US nutrition guidelines, including revising the food pyramid to emphasize “real food”.
Trump has long defended his preference for sweet drinks and fast food as part of his approach to staying healthy. “He doesn’t want to get sick, so he eats junk food, but it’s food made in large, reputable chains because they have quality control,” Oz said on the podcast.
Most diet sodas are sweetened with aspartame, a low-calorie artificial sweetener that is about 200 times sweeter than sugar. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has categorized aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (group 2B). This classification is based on limited evidence suggesting a potential link to cancer, particularly liver cancer, in humans, as well as limited findings from animal studies.
IARC classifications reflect the strength of evidence about whether something could cause cancer, not the likelihood that it actually will. Group 2B is the third of four levels, and typically indicates either limited evidence in humans or sufficient evidence in animals, but not both. In other words, evidence of a link exists, but it’s weak.
In 2022, a large cohort study in France involving more than 100,000 participants examined the relationship between artificial sweeteners and cancer risk. The findings indicated that aspartame was linked to a 15% higher risk of cancer. However, the study did not establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship, and the results could be influenced by other factors such as participant behavior, confounding variables, or chance.
Research has indicated that aspartame may affect the gut microbiome, with potential consequences for metabolic health. Investigators at Cedars-Sinai reported that artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, are associated with various changes in different parts of the intestine. Compared to control groups, researchers observed meaningful differences in stool samples and intestinal microbial diversity.
Havovi Chichger, an associate professor at Anglia Ruskin University, previously told the Guardian: “There is now growing awareness of the health impacts of sweeteners such as saccharin, sucralose and aspartame, with our own previous work demonstrating the problems they can cause to the wall of the intestine and the damage to the ‘good bacteria’ which form in our gut.”
But while the science is still not definitive on showing a link between the artificial sweeteners in diet soda and cancer, there is no science that suggests diet soda can cure or prevent cancer.
Zachary Rubin, a Chicago-based pediatrician specializing in immunology, responded to the podcast by saying: “If Fanta is able to kill grass, then it could kill cancer cells, which means it must not be bad for you. Therefore, by the same logic, that would mean that bleach is a superfood, which we all know doesn’t make any sense.”
He then referenced Trump’s words during the Covid pandemic, where the president suggested alternative treatment methods such as injecting disinfectants and using “powerful light” inside the body.
“Maybe that’s why the president posted an AI image of himself in robes with glowing hands trying to heal somebody, because he thought that’s actually what doctors do,” Rubin joked.
Owais Durrani, an emergency physician based in Texas who previously worked in the Obama administration, responded to the podcast by posting: “Friendly reminder from a doctor, diet soda or soda does not kill cancer cells.”
Republican Rep. Chip Roy discusses the alarming visa fraud scheme involving 10 Indian nationals who staged armed robberies to exploit immigration laws. Roy introduces the PAUSE Act to temporarily halt all immigration, citing the highest number of foreign-born residents in US history. He slams the Senate for stalling the Save America Act, advocating for immediate legislative action to reform the immigration system amidst rising concerns about foreign nationals.
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A man in Minnesota is facing felony charges after being accused of registering to vote and then voting in the 2024 election despite not being a citizen of the United States.
Mukeshkumar Somabhai Chaudhari, 39, was charged with perjury and a voting violation on Monday after authorities say they obtained records showing he submitted a ballot in the 2024 election after registering to vote in 2023, Fox 9 Minneapolis reported.
Authorities say that Chaudhari denied he voted at first when interviewed but later claimed he “made a mistake” and admitted to voting while also telling investigators he is not a U.S. citizen.
FLORIDA, MISSISSIPPI JOIN WAVE OF STATES TIGHTENING VOTER CITIZENSHIP RULES
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz testifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the U.S. Capitol Building on March 4, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Chaudhari, according to investigators, received a voter registration notice from the state of Minnesota in a move that was likely triggered in the system after he obtained his driver’s license. Chaudhari is said to have told authorities that he didn’t learn he should not have voted until his lawyer informed him during his green card process.
“Only U.S. Citizens are eligible to vote in Minnesota,” the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State told Fox News Digital, adding that ineligible voting is “extremely rare.”
“When an individual completes a voter registration application, they attest that they meet all eligibility requirements, including that they are a U.S. citizen,” the office said. “Before casting a ballot, one must again swear to their eligibility before they are allowed to vote. If a noncitizen attempts to vote in an election, they will be caught and held to account. Penalties for voting while ineligible may include deportation, a permanent bar on future citizenship, a fine of up to $10,000, and up to five years in prison.”
HOUSE OVERSIGHT PROBE PUTS MINNESOTA ELECTIONS UNDER SCRUTINY OVER NONCITIZEN VOTING CONCERNS
A sign is seen outside a polling place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on March 3, 2020. Minnesota resident Krystal Gabel recently learned that her name is on the presidential primary ballot for 2024, despite never having consented to run. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
News of the charges come as Republicans continue to push voter ID legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, against fierce pushback from Democrats who make the argument that voter fraud and non-citizens voting are rare.
Conservatives on social media were quick to point the finger at Democrats in response to Chaudhari’s charges.
“That thing that never ever happens happened again,” Center of the American Experiment policy fellow Bill Glahn sarcastically posted on X.
MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL SPARKS PUSH TO SCRUTINIZE BILLIONS IN BIDEN-ERA ENERGY GRANTS
People with signs supporting the SAVE act at Upper Senate Park. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Minnesota state Rep. Pam Altendorf, a Republican, called out Minnesota Democrats in a post on X for three specific actions that she said have weakened election safeguards and invited scrutiny: loosening election laws in 2023 and 2024, issuing driver’s licenses to non-citizens, and creating a 46-day voting season during which the state mass-mailed voter registration cards and absentee ballots.
“Welcome to Tim Walz’s Minnesota,” Townhall columnist Dustin Grage posted on X.
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Glahn previously spoke to Fox News Digital about his concerns over the lack of safeguards in Minnesota’s voting system, including registered voters being able to “vouch” for up to eight other voters’ residency who want to sign up for same-day voter registration without an ID.
Fox News Digital reached out to Gov. Tim Walz’s office.
A 91-year-old peace activist has crossed Ireland on foot and arrived in Dublin to petition the government to bar US military flights.
Lelia Doolan completed a two-week, 220km (138 mile) trek on Wednesday, ending at the gates of parliament accompanied by throngs of supporters.
The film producer and activist made the journey to protest against the US military’s use of Shannon airport in County Clare. “US military planes are landing without anybody ever agreeing in government to search them or see what’s in them. Shannon is a civilian airport. It’s not a military airport.”
US personnel with sidearms pass through Shannon but the government says the airport is not used in US combat operations and that there is no evidence that weapons and supplies for US attacks enter Irish airspace.
Doolan, however, said the agreement to permit some US military flights violated Irish neutrality and that people had been “fooled” into thinking the practice had to continue. “It doesn’t have to continue.”
She started from the airport on 31 March and met supporters in Limerick, Nenagh, Roscrea, Portlaoise, Newbridge, Naas and other stops on her way to the capital, covering most but not all of the distance on foot.
Activists have for decades protested against the agreement that lets US military aircraft refuel at the airport, on the west coast.
The conflict in the Middle East has galvanised renewed action, including an incident last week when a man in his 40s was arrested after allegedly damaging a US air force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft that was parked on a remote taxiway.
Controversy over US military flights has spread throughout Europe, including Italy, which last month denied the use of an airbase in Sicily.
Doolan said she felt a duty to protest against the traffic of US military personnel through Ireland and to avow Irish neutrality. It did not take much for a woman to be considered “troublesome”, she said. “That’s why there is so many of us”. She exhorted those who wished to make a difference to act on the impulse. “It’s very simple. Just do it.”
Supporters joined Doolan, who turns 92 next month, for sections of the “walk with Lelia” campaign. The journey, which was also in memory of Doolan’s late friend and fellow campaigner Margaretta D’Arcy, included traditional music sessions.
Hugs, cheers, Palestinian flags and opposition politicians greeted Doolan when she reached Leinster House, which hosts the Dáil and Seanad chambers of parliament.
Doolan – who had celebrated her 90th birthday with a skydive – paid tribute to those she met during the walk. “If you only knew how wonderful the people of Ireland are. If only you knew how engaging they are, decent and intelligent they are.” She read a poem titled Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye, and joined supporters in a peace song.
In the Dáil, Ivana Bacik, the leader of the Labour party, praised Doolan and urged the government to stop allowing US military planes use Shannon.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, expressed his respect for Doolan and said he would try to meet her, but said the airport had no role in the Middle East conflict. “We need to be very careful that we don’t miscategorise Shannon airport. I think that will damage Shannon airport.”
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A Nebraska woman who was fatally shot by police earlier this week after stabbing a 3-year-old boy with a knife was previously arrested after she allegedly attacked her father with a knife and broke into a nearby Catholic church in a rampage.
Officers were called to a Walmart regarding reports of a woman armed with a “kitchen knife” with a young child just after 9 a.m. on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, according to the Omaha Police Department.
Deputies found 31-year-old Noemi Guzman in the store’s parking lot, standing next to a shopping cart with a 3-year-old boy inside while holding the weapon.
OMAHA POLICE SHOOT AND KILL WOMAN AFTER ALLEGED WALMART KIDNAPPING ATTEMPT
Noemi Guzman was fatally shot after allegedly attempting to kidnap a toddler and holding the child at knifepoint in a Walmart parking lot in Omaha, Neb., on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, according to the Omaha Police Department. (Omaha Police Department)
Officers made multiple verbal commands for Guzman to drop the knife, but she refused and subsequently cut the child across his face, police said.
Two officers fired their weapons, fatally striking Guzman, according to authorities. The child was transported to a hospital and is expected to survive.
Authorities later revealed surveillance video showed Guzman shoplifting the weapon before approaching the child’s caretaker and forcing the pair outside at knifepoint.
Noemi Guzman was previously arrested after allegedly cutting her father with a knife and attempting to light his house on fire before barricading herself inside St. Frances Cabrini Church in Omaha, Nebraska in 2024, according to reports. (Omaha Police Department)
The incident is not Guzman’s first run-in with the law, according to reports.
In 2024, Guzman was arrested after she allegedly stabbed her father and attempted to start a fire inside his home, KETV reported.
Guzman reportedly doused her father in a flammable liquid and cut him with a knife before fleeing the home.
Noemi Guzman allegedly shoplifted a knife before attempting to kidnap a child at a Walmart in Omaha, Neb., on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, according to the Omaha Police Department. (Omaha Police Department)
She then broke into nearby St. Frances Cabrini Church and began destroying items inside the rectory while armed with a knife, according to KETV.
A priest at the church reportedly called 911 and subsequently barricaded himself inside a room as Guzman continued her attack.
“Whatever room he was in, she busted through that room just as they were extracting [him] on that ladder truck,” Lt. Jake Ritonya said at the time of the incident, KETV reported. “And then she was armed with a knife. So obviously it could have gone very bad.”
Guzman then proceeded to barricade herself inside the building and allegedly sprayed bear spray at authorities as they attempted to make contact, the outlet reported.
“There was bear spray in the rectory that she sprayed at my officers when we tried to make contact,” Ritonya said. “So we tried multiple avenues to contact her with drones and negotiators, and it just wasn’t — she was in a mental health crisis.”
She was subsequently taken into custody as she attempted to jump out of a window, but later released on her own recognizance while facing four felony charges, according to WOWT.
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Prior to her arrest two years ago, Guzman reportedly had been convicted in 2018 on a third-degree assault charge.
The Omaha Police Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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Microsoft has awarded $2.3 million to security researchers after receiving nearly 700 submissions during this year’s Zero Day Quest hacking contest.
Tom Gallagher, Vice President of Engineering at Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said that over 80 flaws found during the live event at Microsoft’s Redmond campus were high-impact cloud and AI security vulnerabilities.
“During the 2026 live hacking event, Microsoft partnered with the global security research community, representing more than 20 countries and a wide range of professional backgrounds, from high school students to college professors,” Gallagher said.
“Researchers conducted all testing within authorized environments in accordance with Microsoft’s Rules of Engagement, demonstrating potential impact without accessing customer data or other tenant systems. Within these constraints, researchers identified critical paths involving credential exposure, SSRF chains, and cross‑tenant access.”
Last August, Microsoft announced that it would increase the prize pool at this year’s Zero Day Quest hacking contest to $5 million in bounty awards, which the company described as the “largest hacking event in history.”
The 2025 Zero Day Quest also generated significant participation from the security community, following Microsoft’s offer of $4 million in rewards for vulnerabilities in cloud and AI products and platforms.
After the hacking competition concluded, Microsoft announced it had paid $1.6 million in rewards after receiving more than 600 vulnerability submissions.
The Zero Day Quest contest is part of Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI), a cybersecurity engineering effort launched in November 2023, following a scathing report from the Cyber Safety Review Board of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that found the company’s security culture “inadequate” and requiring “an overhaul.”
“As part of our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), we will transparently share critical vulnerabilities through the CVE program, even if no customer action is required,” Gallagher said in August. “Learnings from the Zero Day Quest will be shared across Microsoft to help improve Cloud and AI security in alignment with SFI’s core principles: securing by default, by design, and in operations.”
Earlier that month, Microsoft announced it had paid a record $17 million to 344 security researchers across 59 countries through its bug bounty program between July 2024 and June 2025.
In December, it also announced that security researchers would be paid for finding critical vulnerabilities in any of Microsoft’s online services, even if a third party wrote the vulnerable code.
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