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Amid current concerns of originate air interference influencing the outcomes this year’s presidential election, the pinnacle of the country’s cybersecurity company says election infrastructure is extra real than ever.

Tell and native election officials across the country possess made good enhancements to crimson meat up both bodily and cyber security at polling and vote casting places to support election integrity, stated Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Company, in an interview with Weekend Model.

After Russia’s attempts to persuade the U.S. presidential election in 2016, CISA was created to work with tell and native officials to be sure vote casting machines aren’t liable to hacks.

“I’m in a position to claim with self belief per the overall work that now we possess performed collectively since 2016, that election infrastructure has never been extra real,” Easterly stated. “There are cyber threats, there are bodily threats to election officials, nonetheless we’re at some degree now with our election infrastructure real and the election neighborhood willing to meet the 2nd on the Fifth of November.”

Her self belief in election integrity comes as intelligence officials warn that international adversaries — primarily Russia, Iran and China — are stepping up efforts to undermine voter belief in the democratic course of, sway voters and anger partisan divisions.

Most American citizens are thinking voter fraud in this year’s standard election, fueled by election misinformation and distrust in free and handsome elections, per a glossy NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Republicans, who myth for many of the concerned voters, are main the pattern, impressed by frail President Donald Trump’s continued false claims that vote rigging is rampant and the reason he misplaced the 2020 election.

Frequent voter fraud is rare, and a slew of audits and investigations possess confirmed the outcomes of the election four years previously. Even so, election officials across the country possess been busy debunking voter fraud conspiracy theories.

Some election directors possess been enviornment to loss of life threats in the face of public erosion of belief of their work.

Pushing false election fraud theories is “essentially doing our adversaries’ job for them,” Easterly stated. “And or not it is doing a giant disservice to the heaps of of thousands of election officials across the nation due to this of or not it is main to threats of violence and rising precise distrust and stoking partisan discord. That’s exactly what our international adversaries need.”

The director stated the federal company has labored with local officials to put in security features at election sites equivalent to danger buttons and bulletproof glass.

Easterly stated it’s crucial for American citizens to be affected person whereas observing for the dependable outcome of the Nov. 5 election.

“We all know that this election is maybe going to be very shut and elections don’t discontinuance when the polls shut,” she stated. “It in actuality could presumably fair take days to weeks to essentially fully depend and audit and certify the vote.”

“In that zone of uncertainty,” she added, “that is the save our international adversaries are going to abolish their most efficient to persuade American citizens to undermine our perception in the legitimacy of the approach.”

Martin Persistence and Shannon Rhoades produced and edited this interview for broadcast.

Tobacco-funded research is still appearing in highly-cited medical journals—despite attempts by some to cut ties altogether, finds an investigation by The Investigative Desk and The BMJ today.

Although the tobacco industry has a long history of subverting science, most leading medical journals don’t have policies that ban research wholly or partly funded by the industry. And even when publishers, authors and universities are willing to restrict tobacco industry ties, they struggle to identify funding sources because tobacco companies have funded front groups and have diversified into pharmaceutical and health technology fields.

These investments include treatments for conditions caused or aggravated by smoking, such as lung cancer, heart disease, and asthma.

These ties complicate ongoing efforts of researchers, scientific organizations and journals to distance themselves from the industry and have led to calls for journals to not only institute bans on research by tobacco companies but also on their subsidiaries.

The Investigative Desk and The BMJ searched the PubMed database and found hundreds of relationships between Big Tobacco’s medical and pharmaceutical subsidiaries and medical research. They also checked the tobacco policies of 10 leading general medical journals and 10 journals in each of the three therapeutic areas especially affected by smoking.

Of those 40 journals, only 8 (20%) had policies prohibiting studies wholly or partly funded by the tobacco industry. Of the 10 journals in the field of respiratory medicine, six had a tobacco policy, but in oncology only one did, and in cardiology, none had one. Among the 10 general medicine journals, only The BMJ had such a policy.

But even among the journals that have a policy, enforcement can be difficult when it involves subsidiaries or organizations associated with the tobacco companies. Last year, one of BMJ Group’s titles, BMJ Open, retracted a paper after it became clear that the listed funder receives sponsorship from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a group supported and fully funded by tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI).

Dutch researcher Wytse van den Bosch had a research grant from pharmaceutical company Vectura when the company was bought by PMI in 2021. Nevertheless, his study was still published in a European Respiratory Society (ERS) journal, which said the research was not in breach of its policy as the grant from Vectura was initiated in 2018.

Ruth Malone, professor of social behavioral sciences at the University of California and former editor-in-chief of BMJ Group’s Tobacco Control journal, said that institutions, professionals and scientific journals should refuse involvement with the tobacco industry.

“Anyone who understands the history, extent and nature of the epidemic and the tobacco industry’s strategic efforts to divide the public health community knows that industry money should be rejected,” she says.

Nicholas Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, notes that given the industry’s “long-standing history of dishonesty,” it is “very straightforward” that researchers should cut ties to companies after they are acquired by big tobacco, as otherwise they would be “working with the tobacco industry” and contribute to their profits.

Today, BMJ also updates its 2013 tobacco policy. In addition to excluding research funded by the tobacco industry, BMJ journals will also exclude work where authors have personal financial ties to the tobacco industry.

“The updated policy is one action BMJ journals can take to reduce the publication of content which downplays the harms of smoking or hinders the creation of a world free from the harms of smoking,” explain the editors. “Creating a stronger firewall between the tobacco industry and BMJ content will provide space for editors to curate and publish content that is more independent and trusted, and contributes to a healthier world.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs is seen on October 26, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. (MEGA/GC Images)