KANNAPOLIS, N.C. (AP) — A man who fired a gun inside a restaurant in the nation’s capital after a fake online conspiracy theory called “Pizzagate” motivated him to do so nearly a decade ago was shot and killed by North Carolina police during a weekend traffic stop. 

Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. One of the officers recognized the car as the vehicle of someone he had arrested and who had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation — Welch, police said.

When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, police said the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers. After he was instructed to drop the weapon but didn’t, two officers shot Welch, authorities said. 

Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital and he died from his injuries two days later, according to the release. None of the officers, nor the driver and another passenger, were injured. 

In 2016, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington after believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory, dubbed “Pizzagate,” began circulating online during the 2016 presidential election. 

He entered the restaurant armed, and as customers fled the scene, Welch shot at a locked closet inside. After realizing there were no children held captive in the pizzeria, Welch peacefully surrendered. No one was injured.

At the time, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, James Alefantis, said the conspiracy theory and subsequent violence from it traumatized him and his staff. 

Welch later pled guilty to interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a dangerous weapon in 2017. His judge, now Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson, subsequently sentenced him to four years in prison. 

City of Kannapolis communications director Annette Privette Keller confirmed the man who died was the same one involved in the “Pizzagate” incident. 

The shooting death of Welch, a resident of Salisbury, is under review by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the officers who fired at him are on administrative leave, per the department’s protocol.

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. (AP) — A man who fired a gun inside a restaurant in the nation’s capital after a fake online conspiracy theory called “Pizzagate” motivated him to do so nearly a decade ago was shot and killed by North Carolina police during a weekend traffic stop. 

Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. One of the officers recognized the car as the vehicle of someone he had arrested and who had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation — Welch, police said.

When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, police said the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers. After he was instructed to drop the weapon but didn’t, two officers shot Welch, authorities said. 

Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital and he died from his injuries two days later, according to the release. None of the officers, nor the driver and another passenger, were injured. 

In 2016, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington after believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory, dubbed “Pizzagate,” began circulating online during the 2016 presidential election. 

He entered the restaurant armed, and as customers fled the scene, Welch shot at a locked closet inside. After realizing there were no children held captive in the pizzeria, Welch peacefully surrendered. No one was injured.

At the time, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, James Alefantis, said the conspiracy theory and subsequent violence from it traumatized him and his staff. 

Welch later pled guilty to interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a dangerous weapon in 2017. His judge, now Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson, subsequently sentenced him to four years in prison. 

City of Kannapolis communications director Annette Privette Keller confirmed the man who died was the same one involved in the “Pizzagate” incident. 

The shooting death of Welch, a resident of Salisbury, is under review by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the officers who fired at him are on administrative leave, per the department’s protocol.

Matthew Livelsberger, a Green Beret and the main suspect in the Cybertruck attack in Las Vegas, reportedly sent a manifesto-like email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate just days before a car bomb exploded in front of Trump International Hotel.

Shoemate revealed the email on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast, describing its contents as allegations of advanced drone technology, a cover-up of a 2019 airstrike in Afghanistan, and claims of being under U.S. government surveillance.

Newsweek reached out to The Shawn Ryan Show for comment on Friday via email.

Why It Matters

Firework mortars and camp fuel canisters were found inside the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday. The blast resulted in a single casualty, the suspect inside the vehicle, and sparked a thorough investigation into potential terrorism.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill described the body in the Cybertruck as "almost beyond recognition." On Thursday, authorities identified the victim as Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old U.S. Army veteran, who reportedly shot himself in the head moments before the explosion.

While investigators are still determining Livelsberger's motives for detonating the explosives outside the hotel, his alleged manifesto has provided some clues. In the document, Livelsberger raised questions about national security and U.S. military transparency, offering potential insight into his actions. Tesla Car Bomb Las Vegas Matthew Livelsberger, a Green Beret and the main suspect in the Cybertruck attack in Las Vegas, reportedly sent a manifesto-like email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate just days before a car bomb... Associated Press What To Know

Livelsberger allegedly sent an email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate, detailing concerns about advanced drones using "GDIC propulsion systems," which he described as anti-gravity technology.

In the email, read on "The Shawn Ryan Podcast," Livelsberger claimed that the U.S. and China developed and deployed the drones. He alleged that China launched them from submarines along the U.S. East Coast, calling them "the most dangerous threat to national security" because of their stealth, ability to evade detection and unlimited payload capacity.

Livelsberger also referenced his involvement in a 2019 U.S. airstrike in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan. He claimed the operation, which targeted drug facilities, caused civilian casualties, including women and children, and was covered up by U.S. authorities. The allegations align with a 2019 U.N. report criticizing the strikes as unlawful. Livelsberger said the incident pushed him to speak out.

Additionally, he accused the FBI and Homeland Security of monitoring and tracking him, describing efforts to avoid being detained.

The only person who died as a result of the incident was the suspect, from a self-inflicted gunshot, according to police. Is Manifesto Real?

After the alleged manifesto began circulating on social media following the podcast, reporters asked Las Vegas police and the FBI at a press conference if the suspect had written it. Authorities said they believe the letter shared by Shawn Ryan was authored by the bombing suspect. What Does Manifesto Say?

Shoemate said Friday that he received an email from Livelsberger on Tuesday. According to Shoemate, the email said:

"In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then.

"First off I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mustang V6 for verification.

"What we have been seeing with "drones" is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the east coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we and China have this capability. Our OPEN location for this activity in the box is below.

"China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it similar to how they used the balloon for sigint and isr, which are also part of the integrated coms system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time.

"The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It's checkmate.

"USG needs to give the history of this, how we are employing it and weaponizing it, how China is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the east coast

"I've been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won't because they know I am armed and I have a massive VBIED. I've been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me.

"I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA. I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day. USFORA continued strikes after spotting civilians on initial ISR, it was supposed to take 6 minutes and scramble all aircraft in CENTCOM. The UN basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear. I was part of that cover-up with USFORA and Agent [Redacted] of the DEA. So I don't know if my abduction attempt is related to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB-S Commander at the time. [Redacted] can validate this.

"You need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation.

"For vetting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty 18Z out of 1-10 my profile is public. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access."

… Law enforcement sources told CBS News that the Cybertruck was rented to Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an active duty U.S. Army servicemember who was serving in Germany but was on leave in Colorado at the time of the incident. CBS News spoke to two relatives of Livelsberger who were unaware of any involvement in the incident, but who confirmed he had rented a Cybertruck. One relative told CBS News that Livelsberger's wife had not heard from him in several days.

McMahill said gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters and large firework mortars were found in the back of the vehicle after the explosion, which occurred about 15 seconds after the vehicle pulled in front of the building. It's still unclear how the explosives were ignited, he said.

Google has made an eyebrow-raising claim, saying that its new quantum chip may be tapping into parallel universes to achieve its results.

The search giant recently unveiled a new quantum computer chip, dubbed Willow, which — on a specific benchmark, at least — the company says can outperform any supercomputer in the world.

"Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing," Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in a blog post announcing the chip. "It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10²⁵ or 10 septillion years."

"This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe," he argued. "It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."

Deutsch is a physicist who laid out his multiverse hypothesis in a 1997 book called "The Fabric of Reality," in which he suggested that quantum computers' calculations take place across multiple universes at the same time.

Put another way, Google is suggesting that its chip is so fast that its computations may have taken place across parallel universes — a bombastic statement that unsurprisingly drew plenty of skepticism online.

For one, the calculation Willow was tasked to solve wasn't really anything useful to anybody.

"The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution," German physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder tweeted in response to Google's announcement. "The result of this calculation has no practical use."

"They use this particular problem because it has been formally proven (with some technical caveats) that the calculation is difficult to do on a conventional computer (because it uses a lot of entanglement)," she added. "That also allows them to say things like 'this would have taken a septillion years on a conventional computer' etc."

Willow is a 100-qubit, or quantum-bit, chip. Unlike conventional computers, which use zeroes and ones for a binary system, quantum computers rely on qubits, which can be on, off, or — counterintuitively — both thanks to quantum entanglement, the mysterious phenomenon that allows particles to influence each other's states even when separated by distance.

"It's exactly the same calculation that they did in 2019 on a circa 50 qubit chip," Hossenfelder wrote.

At the time, Google made a similarly bombastic claim, arguing that it had achieved "quantum supremacy," or "the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, regardless of whether those tasks are useful," as John Preskill, who first coined the term in 2012, wrote in a 2019 Quanta Magazine column.

That last part appears to be particularly relevant, given Google's latest claim.

"So while the announcement is super impressive from a scientific point of view and all, the consequences for everyday life are zero," Hossenfelder argued. "Estimates say that we will need about 1 million qubits for practically useful applications and we're still about 1 million qubits away from that."

The physicist also suggested that such wild claims may eventually "evaporate because some other group finds a clever way to do it on a conventional computer after all."

Google's claim of quantum supremacy drew immediate criticism in 2019, sparking a years-long feud between the company and quantum computing rival IBM. At the time, IBM researchers charged that Google had exaggerated its claims.

In a 2023 follow-up blog post, IBM researchers argued that the problem Google's quantum computer was instructed to solve in 2019 could be "performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity."

"This is in fact a conservative, worst-case estimate, and we expect that with additional refinements the classical cost of the simulation can be further reduced," the researchers wrote at the time.

In short, there's still a good reason to believe that Google's latest claim that Willow could be operating in the multiverse will be debunked. Apart from Deutsch's interpretation, researchers have also suggested that quantum particles are instead in a state of all positions before measurement, a theory known as the Copenhagen interpretation.

Where all of this leaves Google's breakthrough and its significance remains debatable.

But the company is already looking far ahead, promising to continue to scale up Willow to a point where it may actually become useful.

"This is the most convincing prototype for a scalable logical qubit built to date," Neven wrote in the announcement. "It’s a strong sign that useful, very large quantum computers can indeed be built."

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.

Even in blue Colorado, vaccine advocates worry about RFK Jr’s appeal and ‘medical freedom’ movement

Read more

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.

Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.

“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.

There have been internal concerns that Trump Media could be misleading investors, a source said. But with its largest shareholder about to be president, experts doubt the SEC is up to the job of investigating Truth Social’s parent company.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide…

The U.K. Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing a legal challenge focusing on the definition of “woman” in a long-running dispute between a women’s rights campaign group and the Scottish government.

Five judges at Britain’s highest court were considering the case, which seeks to clarify whether a transgender person with a gender recognition certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws.

While the case centers on Scottish laws, the campaign group bringing the challenge, For Women Scotland (FWS), has said its outcomes could have U.K.-wide consequences for sex-based rights as well as everyday single-sex services such as toilets and hospital wards.

Space weather experts say auroras could be visible from 10 p.m. EST Thursday to 1 a.m. Friday EST, though it’s difficult to pin down an exact window. Updated forecasts may be available as the event draws closer on NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center website or an aurora forecasting app.

The engine for a new flagship small Japanese rocket burst into flames Tuesday during a combustion test, causing no injury or damage to the outside but destroying the engine and extensively damaging its test facility, officials said.

The second failure in a row raises concern about the progress of the Epsilon S rocket, whose debut flight is expected by March.

The test was conducted inside of the restricted area at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is investigating, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

An Epsilon project manager, Takayuki Imoto, told an online press conference from Tanegashina that the explosion occurred 49 seconds into the planned two-minute test, causing fire and scattering broken parts of the engine and damaging the facility.

“We are very sorry to have failed to live up to expectations,” Imoto said. He said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation. Project staff are trying to recover broken pieces to analyze and determine the cause as soon as possible to minimize the delay of the program, Imoto said.

Six monkeys were still on the loose early Monday after dozens escaped earlier this month from a South Carolina compound that breeds the primates for medical research, according to authorities.

Two more Rhesus macaques were trapped Sunday outside the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee, bringing the total of recovered monkeys to 37 of the 43 that escaped, Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard said in a statement relayed by Yemassee Police in a social media post.