Researchers at a Canadian firm announced Tuesday that they have found evidence of a global disinformation campaign targeting U.S., Saudi, and Israeli interests online backed by Iran.
The University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab said Tuesday in a report that it had uncovered a “network of inauthentic personas and social media accounts,” dubbed “Endless Mayfly,” operated out of Iran targeting the U.S. and other regional rivals of Iran.
The newly-uncovered organization “spreads falsehoods and amplifies narratives critical of Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel,” according to the report.

Hackers interrupted the Eurovision Song Contest broadcast on the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (Kan) website Tuesday, streaming a fake Israel Defense Forces’ video message warning all viewers near the contest venue to immediately seek shelter.
The two-minute video was only played in Israel. It appeared as an IDF message telling anyone within 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) of the contest venue in northern Tel Aviv to seek immediate shelter due to the threat of rocket attack.
Kan issued a statement saying that it believes the video’s reach was limited, and that “the [European Broadcast Union] and Kan view cybersecurity as being of the utmost importance, and the matter is being investigated.”

John T. Earnest, the 19-year-old man charged with killing 60 year-old Lori Kaye and wounding three people in the Chabad of Poway synagogue on April 27, pleaded not guilty to federal hate crimes on Tuesday.
Earnest only spoke twice during the hearing—once to acknowledge his name and once to agree with his court-appointed attorney’s decision not to seek bail.
Prosecutor Peter Ko said the government had not made a final decision regarding whether or not to seek the death penalty. He reaffirmed plans to try the case separately but simultaneously with state charges of murder and attempted murder, which could also expose Earnest to the death penalty.

Danish police have arrested a man believed to have been involved in the Tuesday stabbing of Jewish woman in her 60s in the city of Helsingborg in southern Sweden, according to Swedish media reports.
The suspect was arrested after crossing the border into Denmark. His identity has yet to be made public by police.
The victim, who is in serious condition, is believed to be the wife of a senior member of the local Jewish community.
According to local reports, the attacker stabbed her nine times while she was on her way to work on Tuesday. The woman reportedly collapsed and cried for help, and was taken to a nearby hospital by first responders.
A manhunt was launched after the attacker fled the scene.

A Greek billionaire and heir to the Coca-Cola fortune was arrested on the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts after a search of his private jet uncovered more than $1.3 million worth of cannabis on board, according to multiple reports.
Alkiviades “Alki” David, 50, was arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Unit at the Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport after customs officials found approximately 5,000 cannabis plants in addition to seeds and a variety of other cannabis products, according to the Vancouver Sun.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner struggled to answer questions about his plan to overhaul the immigration system in a closed-door meeting with Republican senators Tuesday, according to GOP officials, winning little support for the proposal.
Publicly, senators emerged from their weekly Capitol Hill luncheon, applauding the White House senior adviser’s pitch to move U.S. immigration toward a merit-based system that prioritizes highly skilled workers, a task he undertook at Trump’s behest.

Former Vice President Joe Biden lashed out at President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday over his threat to to travel to Ukraine in order to pressure authorities in that country to investigate he and his son, Hunter Biden.
Giuliani said he planned to travel to Ukraine to ask officials to investigate whether Joe Biden had once pressured the government there to dismiss a top prosecutor who was investigating a gas company at a time when Hunter Biden sat on the company’s board of directors.

President Donald Trump escalated his long-running attacks on the FBI Tuesday, calling recent remarks by Director Christopher Wray “ridiculous,” as officials said a senior prosecutor would examine the roles of the bureau and the CIA in the early stages of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with members of the Trump campaign.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said Wray gave a “ridiculous answer” during congressional testimony last week when he declined to characterize an FBI investigation of Trump campaign advisers in 2016 as “spying.”

In March 2007, agents from Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, broke into the Vienna suite of the director of Syria’s atomic energy agency and secretly downloaded the contents of his computer. They discovered that Syria was building a nuclear reactor with the assistance of the North Korean regime, in a region known as Deir al-Zour near the Euphrates River. Additional intelligence showed that the reactor was just months away from being activated, posing an urgent, existential threat to Israel – one found not in a more remote country like Iran or Iraq, but in Israel’s backyard, just over the border with Syria.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday sent a letter to leaders of Yahadut HaTorah following their request to prevent chillul Shabbos during the Eurovision Song Contest this coming weekend to reassure them that the contest is not government run and the government does not sanction chillul Shabbos.
“I would like to make it clear that the Eurovision Song Contest is a singular international event set in advance by international standards that are not under government control and are managed exclusively by the public broadcasting corporation and not by the government,” Netanyahu wrote.