Far-right influencers claim singer is ‘Pentagon asset’ conspiring to ‘manipulate’ voters after ‘rigged’ Super Bowl favors Chiefs. Plus, documents show fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954

Taylor Swift is a “Pentagon asset”, an “election interference psyop” who, with unnamed left-leaning forces, has conspired to “rig” the Super Bowl and then endorse Joe Biden in the presidential election.

That’s according to a raft of influential rightwing figures, who have begun to spread a conspiracy theory that the singer is part of a nefarious plot ahead of November’s election.

Swift has found herself at the center of the rightwing commentariat’s attention in recent weeks after intense media focus on her relationship with Travis Kelce, a star tight-end for the Kansas City Chiefs football team.

She has been seen in the crowd as the Chiefs have progressed through the NFL playoffs: on Sunday, the team won the AFC Championship game, and will play in the Super Bowl on 11 February. The attention their romance has received has led to a number conspiracy theories.

Why else is Swift in the news? A bipartisan group of US senators introduced a bill yesterday that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence. The measure comes in direct response to the proliferation of pornographic AI-made images of Taylor Swift posted on X, formerly Twitter, in recent days.
Will social media platforms now start taking AI-generated porn seriously? Women who have been victims of the creation and sharing of nonconsensual deepfake pornography hope that this week’s spotlight on the issue will force social media companies and legislators into action.
Hamas reportedly studying new ceasefire proposal

An Israeli military, vehicle overlooks crowds of displaced Palestinians as they flee from Khan Younis.

A senior Hamas official has told the Reuters news agency that the group is studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, presented by mediators after talks with Israel.

The ceasefire proposal followed talks in Paris involving intelligence chiefs from Israel, the US and Egypt, with the prime minister of Qatar. In a mark of the seriousness of the negotiations, the Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said he was going to Cairo to discuss it, his first public trip there for more than a month.

The proposal reportedly involved a three-stage truce, during which the group would first release remaining civilians among the hostages it captured on 7 October, then soldiers, and finally the bodies of hostages that were killed. The proposal appears to be the most serious peace initiative since a brief truce in late November.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under pressure from the Biden White House to chart a path towards ending the war, and domestically from relatives of hostages who worry that negotiations are the only way to bring them home. But far-right parties in his ruling coalition say they will quit rather than endorse a deal to free hostages that left Hamas intact.

What has Netanyahu said? On Tuesday, he repeated his vow not to pull troops out of Gaza until “total victory”, a reminder of the huge gap in the public stances of the warring sides over what it would take to halt combat even temporarily.
Imran Khan, Pakistan former PM, sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption
Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan (right) and Bushra Bibi, his wife.