GoKawiil
Tech News
After the CIA stopped updating the World Factbook in February 2026, developer Yegor Tkachenko built worldfacts.app, a site aggregating country data from sources like the World Bank, WHO, IMF, FAO, UNODC, and governance and press-freedom indices. The project, built with assistance from Claude, offers a public API for querying country statistics by category and field.
Researchers at Washington's National Security Archive say declassified CIA records show the agency ran at least five projects over two decades to influence student politics in Mexico, including funding right-wing groups like MURO and the IISE and working through ties to Mexican security officials Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios and Miguel Nazar Haro. The findings, drawn from a partially declassified 539-page internal CIA history, were reported by La Jornada reporters Jim Cason and David Brooks, who note the agency still withholds key documents about its role around the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.
David J. Rush, a former CIA officer, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for fabricating a fake top-secret 'special access program' to siphon government funds. Investigators recovered over $46 million in gold bars, luxury cars, watches and more than $2 million in cash from his home. Prosecutors say Rush lied about his education and military background to gain his CIA position and later exploited his authority over intelligence spending to run the scheme for more than a year.
The CIA, under Director John Ratcliffe, has publicly released 71 President's Daily Brief intelligence products covering the period before and immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The release, timed to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, totals more than 100 pages and marks the agency's largest disclosure of PDB material on the attacks to date, showing how analysts tracked al-Qa'ida and Usama Bin Ladin despite limited intelligence.
Special Master Jose Linares has denied the Justice Department's motion to reconsider his earlier ruling allowing Apple to obtain documents from 14 federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA and Department of Defense. The DOJ had argued Linares used the wrong legal standard and that Apple's requests were overly burdensome and only marginally relevant, but Apple countered that these objections failed on every point, and Linares agreed.
During and after World War II, the Museum of Modern Art worked closely with U.S. government agencies to spread American modern art abroad, framing it as proof of Western creative freedom against fascism and communism. Nelson Rockefeller, who led MoMA while also serving in Roosevelt's administration, helped direct dozens of government-funded exhibitions across Latin America, and later CIA officer Thomas Braden oversaw covert cultural funding that supported showcasing artists like Jackson Pollock internationally.