Latest news with #MichaelMeyer
WIRED
08-07-2025
- WIRED
Conspiracy Theories About the Texas Floods Lead to Death Threats
Jul 8, 2025 6:01 PM Disinformation around a 'weather weapon' and cloud seeding is being widely promoted by everyone from anti-government extremists to GOP influencers—and leading to real-world consequences. KERRVILLE, TEXAS - Heavy rainfall caused flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas, leading to over 100 reported deaths. Photograph:On Sunday afternoon, Michael Meyer, the founder of anti-government extremist group Veterans on Patrol, posted a warning on his Telegram channel. 'Due to the recent weather weapon deployed against Texas, which resulted in a high number of child murders, efforts to eliminate this military treason are being escalated,' Meyer, who is commonly known as Lewis Arthur, wrote. Hours later, a man broke into an enclosure containing the NextGen Live Radar system operated by News 9 in Oklahoma City, damaging its power supply and briefly knocking it offline. The man also damaged CCTV cameras monitoring the site, but footage shared by News 9 shows the cameras captured a clear image of his face before they were destroyed. Captain Valerie Littlejohn of the Oklahoma City Police Department tells WIRED that no arrests have been made but that the department is 'aware of the Veterans on Patrol group.' Meyer, who declined to tell WIRED if he knew the identity of the perpetrator, says the attack was part of what he calls Operation Lone Wolf, adding that he's in discussion online with over a dozen people who are willing to carry out similar attacks. 'Anyone that's going out to eliminate a Nexrad, if they haven't harmed life, and they're doing it according to the videos that we're providing, they are part of our group,' Meyer tells WIRED. 'We're going to have to take out every single media's capabilities of lying to the American people. Mainstream media is the biggest threat right now.' Nexrads refer to Next Generation Weather Radar systems used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to detect precipitation, wind, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. Meyer says that his group wants to disable these as well as satellite systems used by media outlets to broadcast weather updates. The attack on the News 9 weather radar system comes amid a sustained disinformation campaign on social media platforms including everyone from extremist figures like Meyer to elected GOP lawmakers. What united these disparate figures is that they were all promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that the devastating flooding in Texas last weekend was caused not by a month's worth of rain falling in the space of just a few hours—the intensity of which, meteorologists say, was difficult to predict ahead of time—but by a targeted attack on American citizens using directed energy weapons or cloud seeding technology to manipulate the weather. The result has not only been possible damage to a radar system, but death threats against those who are being wrongly blamed for causing the floods. 'I think that we've probably received in excess of 100 explicit death threats on either email or X, [with] probably about one order of magnitude more calls for my incarceration,' Augustus Doricko, the founder of cloud seeding company Rainmaker, tells WIRED. 'NOAA is aware of recent threats against NEXRAD weather radar sites and is working with local and other authorities in monitoring the situation closely,' NOAA spokesperson Erica Grow Cei tells WIRED. Over 100 people have now been confirmed to have lost their lives in the flash flooding that hit homes and camps along the edge of the Guadalupe River in the early hours of Friday morning. Meteorologists who spoke to WIRED dismissed claims that the National Weather Service failed to accurately predict the risk of flooding in within hours of the tragedy happening, conspiracy theorists, right-wing influencers and lawmakers were pushing wild claims on social media that the floods were somehow geo-engineered. 'Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake,' Kandiss Taylor, who intends to run as a GOP candidate to represent Georgia's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives, wrote in a post viewed 2.4 million times. 'That doesn't even seem natural,' Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of Women for America First, wrote on X, in a post that has been viewed nine million times. As the emergency response to the floods was still taking place on Saturday, US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, tweeted that she would be introducing a bill to 'end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.' Greene, who once blamed California wildfires on laser beams or light beams connected to an electric company with purported ties to an organization affiliated with a powerful Jewish family, said that the bill will be similar to Florida's Senate Bill 56, which governor Ron DeSantis signed into law in June. That bill makes weather modification a third-degree felony, punishable by up to $100,000. (Greene's office did not respond to a request for comment on whether or not her announcement was specifically tied to the floods in Texas.) On Instagram, right-wing influencer Gabrielle Yoder jumped on one of the biggest conspiracy theories, claiming that cloud seeding was responsible for causing the floods and calling out Doricko specifically. Docicko's company was also named by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn on X. He wrote that 'anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves.' Doricko told WIRED that Rainmaker was working on a brief cloud seeding operation just days before the storms near the town of Runge, Texas, about 120 miles away from Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding was concentrated. But Doricko says his staff meteorologists noted some high moisture content in the region. The company, he says, called off its operations, per state regulations. Cloud seeding—the practice of increasing precipitation in a cloud by introducing materials like silver iodide or dry ice—has been in use for decades. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation maintains a page on current weather modification efforts from irrigation districts, counties and other groups in the state. Doricko's company, Rainmaker, is a buzzy startup that aims to '[synthesize] advanced technology with environmental stewardship.' Multiple meteorologists told WIRED that there is no way that cloud seeding was responsible for the devastating storms that racked Texas last week. 'It is not physically possible or possible within the laws of atmospheric chemistry to cloud seed at a scale that would cause an event like [the Texas flooding] to occur,' says Matt Lanza, a digital meteorologist based in Houston. Lanza compares cloud seeding to adding 'icing to a cake': It's able to juice up precipitation from clouds in drier areas, not create storms wholesale out of thin air. The National Weather Service was already warning as early as last Tuesday about potential nighttime downpours in parts of Texas, thanks to moisture coming northward from Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall last weekend in Mexico. 'The meteorological ingredients [for the storm] were already there, and cloud seeding could not have played a role,' Lanza says. Doricko is no stranger to anti-weather modification factions. He spent much of the early half of this year testifying against a swathe of state-level anti-geoengineering bills, including the one that eventually passed in Florida. Doricko's personal profile—he was once photographed with Bill Clinton, and was chosen as a Thiel fellow—seems to have made the attacks on his company easier for those looking for a conspiracy on which to pin the devastating storms in Texas. 'I am trying to be as transparent as possible, because this is an incredibly controversial subject but isn't actually as regulated and discussed transparently as it ought to be by the federal government,' Doricko says. 'Just for the record, I'm not a deep state plant from either Bill Gates or Palantir, Peter Thiel or Bill Clinton.'
IOL News
06-07-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Meyer treats elite athletes like the superstars they are
And so it is that the majority of the elites who participate in the RUN YOUR CITY SERIES do so per invitation. With the funding for the race – thanks to sponsors Absa and other partners, Meyer provides transport and accommodation for the athletes at all the five events – Gqeberha, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg – as well as paying them appearance fees. It is how it must be. These, after all, are the men and women who make the races what they are – the broadcasters and the sponsors partner with the races because of them. They are the draw cards, and Meyer understands the importance of taking care of them. Unlike those renowned ultra races, which expect the elites to pay for entry fees and find their way to the events and accommodate themselves, Meyer takes care of the athletes in ways that leave them needing only to worry about their performances on race day. Michael Meyer – a former runner and the Managing Director of Stillwater Sports – is quietly revolutionising running in the country through the 10km Absa RUN YOUR CITY Series which he founded. But in the much shorter distance, a man with a passion for running is giving elites the kind of treatment they are worthy of. Elite runners who compete in the renowned Comrades, Two Oceans as well as the Om Die Dam, Loskop and Mangosuthu ultra marathons are treated no differently from the social runners – save for the seeding perhaps. It is the same in most of the renowned standard marathons. In a country where ultra running is supposedly king, isn't it ironic that it is in the much shorter distances where the elite athletes are treated with respect and receive the recognition they duly deserve? Athletes that are well taken care of can only want to perform at their optimum best. And there too, there are huge incentives that help ensure they run fantastic times. The RUN YOUR CITY SERIES boasts an unprecedented 'SA Athlete Prize Incentive Programme', which offers bonuses for exceptional performances. In the men's category, bonuses will start for times faster than 28 minutes, with a substantial R200,000 bonus offered to an athlete breaking the 27-minute barrier. For the women, bonuses begin for times faster than 32:08 minutes, with an impressive R200,000 incentive for breaking the 30:23 mark. To further raise the stakes, a bonus of R50 000.00 will be awarded to the South African athlete who breaks the SA 10km record (at the time of the race). Glenrose Xaba explained just why the incentives are strong motivators. 'The incentives are very important to me because they're directly linked to performance times, because the better my time, the better my chances of competing internationally. said Xaba. "These incentives motivate me to stay at the top because the rewards are tangible. Breaking my own record would be a dream come true — I'd be the happiest woman alive." Here's what Meyer says about the programme. 'While our focus will always be on ensuring every runner — from first to last — enjoys the same high-quality experience, we also recognise the importance of attracting the world's best athletes and nurturing local talent. To achieve that, we've built a comprehensive and meaningful Elite Athlete Programme," said Meyer. "Although the total prize money for the 2025 Absa RUN YOUR CITY SERIES is just over R1.6 million, we're investing over R4.5 million annually into the overall elite programme. That includes supporting top-tier athletes from around the world — who have many racing options — by offering them a world-class racing experience here in South Africa. "It also means ensuring a larger group of South African elites can participate, flying them in, accommodating them, and in the case of top performers, offering appearance fees. Very few events in South Africa offer a true 'Elite Athlete Programme' like this, and it's a key area where we allocate significant resources. 'When a record is broken at one of our races, it doesn't just make local headlines — it attracts global attention. That's what we're aiming for: to marry the excellence of African athletes with the excellence of our cities. That remains our long-term vision, while continuing to invest in development and the broader running community.' The next race in the Absa RUN YOUR CITY SERIES is the Durban10km which takes place next Sunday. And with the legendary Stephen Mokoka out to break the world Masters record for runners aged between 40 and 49, Stillwater Sports have moved to spur the multiple Olympian on. 'When Stephen Mokoka shared his goal of breaking the record with us, we knew we wanted to support him in a meaningful way,' Meyer said. 'Stephen has been a strong supporter of the Absa RUN YOUR CITY SERIES since its inaugural event in 2015. The R100,000 incentive is our way of showing appreciation, while recognising both his ambition and his remarkable contribution to South African road running. "It would be an honour to celebrate such a monumental achievement with Stephen right here in Durban at the Absa RUN YOUR CITY DURBAN 10K.' Meyer has invited Comrades Marathon champion Tete Dijana to the race and has taken care of his basic needs better than the world famous ultra ever would.
The Citizen
02-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Citizen
Exciting prizes on offer at upcoming Durban 10km
Exciting prizes on offer at upcoming Durban 10km – register now One lucky runner will drive away in a brand-new car at this year's Absa Run Your City Durban 10K on Sunday, July 13. The stylish Chery Tiggo 4 Pro LiT, valued from R269 900 is up for grabs thanks to the event's official vehicle partner, Chery South Africa. Now in its 8th year, the Durban race is the third stop in the five-part Absa Run Your City series – one of South Africa's premier road running events. The 10km route showcases Durban's urban landscape and is known for its flat, fast course that caters to elite athletes and recreational runners alike. 'We're thrilled to bring this world-class experience back to Durban,' said Michael Meyer, managing director of Stillwater Sports and founder of the series. 'The Chery car giveaway has become a highlight in every host city, and we're grateful to Chery South Africa for continuing this exciting tradition.' Charged with high-energy atmosphere, the Absa Run Your City Durban 10K promises more than just a race – it's a full city experience. And for one lucky entrant, it could end with a brand-new ride. Register via the event website here. Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
IOL News
25-04-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Iconic Totalsports Women's Race to light up South Africa's streets in 2025
PinkDrive Charity The PinkDrive Charity have been overwhelmed by the support they receive from the event and the participants. Photo: Anthony Grote Image: Anthony Grote The iconic Totalsports Women's Race, South Africa's largest celebration of Women's Month, will feature three 2025 races in three major cities, over three consecutive weeks. The first race starts in Durban on Sunday, August 3, followed by Cape Town on Saturday, August 9, and ends in Johannesburg on Sunday, August 17, 2025. For the past 13 years, the event has attracted elite athletes and social runners. It offers athletes a unique opportunity to compete in a world-class, women-only race on South African soil. Michael Meyer, the managing director of Stillwater Sports, convenes the event, which attracts 30,000 women across the country. 'We are proud to convene the race, which is South Africa's largest Women's Month celebration. Each year, this iconic event unites over 30,000 women across three major cities – Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg – offering participants the opportunity to take on a scenic 5km or 10km route, whether they run or walk," said Meyer. "From elite athletes to social runners and walkers, the event aims to provide an inclusive and empowering experience, celebrating the strength and spirit of women in a vibrant and supportive environment.' Since its inception, the charity of the Totalsports Women's Race is PinkDrive. Athletes can support by entering 10km or 5km events. PinkDrive will again be flying the flag for the event as the camaraderie of thousands of women comes together to celebrate Women's Month. Nelius du Preez, PinkDrive Operations Manager, said the Totalsports Women's Race is a truly special event. 'It's beautiful to witness a 'sea of pink' as women come together, filling the streets of three major cities in support of one another - standing united and prioritising their health in an active, uplifting environment,' said Du Preez. 'Thanks to the platform provided by the Totalsports Women's Race, we can continue serving communities across South Africa. 'The funds help us achieve our core purpose: to make a meaningful contribution to preventing as many people as possible from succumbing to breast, cervical, prostate, and testicular cancer. 'The event gives us the perfect platform to spread the powerful message that early detection can save lives. 'Please continue supporting PinkDrive to keep our mobile units on the road and help the medically uninsured.'
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
James Webb Space Telescope investigates the origins of 'failed stars' in the Flame Nebula
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has probed deep into the dusty shroud of a young nebula alight with star formation on the hunt for "failed star" brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are stellar objects that are born like stars but fail to gather enough matter to reach the masses needed to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores. These bodies with masses between 13 and 75 times the mass of Jupiter (or 1.3% to 7.5% the mass of the sun) are, therefore, much fainter than regular main sequence stars, despite the fact that some nuclear fusion does happen within them. Brown dwarfs are hotter and brighter in their youth, and that makes them easier to spot in a young nebula like the Flame Nebula, which is around 1 million years old (if that seems ancient, consider our own middle-aged solar system is 4.6 billion years old). The JWST was able to cut through the thick gas and dust obscuring the Flame Nebula to hunt its lowest mass limit of brown dwarfs. The search turned up free-floating objects roughly two to three times the mass of Jupiter. By "free-floating," astronomers mean objects that aren't orbiting a parent star. These could be stellar fragments that are on their way to becoming brown dwarfs. "The goal of this project was to explore the fundamental low-mass limit of the star and brown dwarf formation process," team leader Matthew De Furio of the University of Texas at Austin said in a statement."With the JWST, we're able to probe the faintest and lowest mass objects." The JWST hunted for free-floating planetary mass bodies that have masses of at least around half that of Jupiter. This was set by a process called "fragmentation" that sees large dense clouds of gas and dust, so-called "molecular clouds," break down and condense to form stars and brown dwarfs. Fragmentation is highly dependent on the balance between temperature, thermal pressure, and gravity, in addition to other slightly less critical factors. As molecular cloud fragments contract under their own gravity, their cores rise in temperature. A core with enough mass becomes a protostar that will begin the fusion of hydrogen. This results in outward energy balancing the inward push of gravity and halting the collapse. The stabilized object is now a main-sequence star fusing hydrogen to helium in its core. However, if a core isn't dense and hot enough to kickstart hydrogen fusion, there is nothing to balance gravity, and the collapse continues unabated. These failed fragments continue to radiate away heat, a "proto-brown dwarf" in essence. "The cooling of these clouds is important because if you have enough internal energy, it will fight that gravity," team member Michael Meyer of the University of Michigan said. "If the clouds cool efficiently, they collapse and break apart."Fragmentation ceases when the gas of a fragment is dense enough to become opaque. This means it can reabsorb its own radiation, which stops it from cooling and halts its collapse. The lower mass limit of these fragments has been theorized to be between 1 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter. These findings could reduce that mass range. "As found in many previous studies, as you go to lower masses, you actually get more objects up to about ten times the mass of Jupiter. In our study with the JWST, we are sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and we are finding significantly fewer and fewer things as you go below ten times the mass of Jupiter," De Furio said. "We find fewer five-Jupiter-mass objects than ten-Jupiter-mass objects, and we find way fewer three-Jupiter-mass objects than five-Jupiter-mass objects. "We don't really find any objects below two or three Jupiter masses, and we expect to see them if they are there, so we are hypothesizing that this could be the limit itself." Meyer added that with the JWST, astronomers have for the first time been able to probe up to and beyond the brown dwarf mass limit. "If that limit is real," Meyer continued, "there really shouldn't be any one-Jupiter-mass objects free-floating out in our Milky Way galaxy, unless they were formed as planets and then ejected out of a planetary system." The faintness of brown dwarfs makes them tough to spot, but this effort is worthwhile as these failed stars can deliver a wealth of information about star formation and the differences and similarities between stars and planets. This study by the JWST builds upon prior research by the Hubble Space Telescope, which wasn't sensitive enough to study brown dwarfs of such low-masses in the Flame Nebula but was able to identify prime targets for further investigation."It's really difficult to do this work, looking at brown dwarfs down to even ten Jupiter masses, from the ground, especially in regions like this,' said De Furio. "And having existing Hubble data over the last 30 years or so allowed us to know that this is a really useful star-forming region to target. We needed to have the JWST to be able to study this particular science topic." Astronomer Massimo Robberto of the Space Telescope Science Institute described the baton passing of Hubble to the JWST as a "quantum leap" in astronomers capability to understand the nature of brown dwarfs. Related Stories: — How the Rubin observatory could detect thousands of 'failed stars' — Hubble Space Telescope discovers 'failed stars' are bad at relationships too — Earth-size planet discovered around cool red dwarf star shares its name with a biscuit The team will now continue to study the Flame Nebula using the JWST, searching for objects lurking within its dense, dusty veil. "There's a big overlap between the things that could be planets and the things that are very, very low-mass brown dwarfs," Meyer concluded. "And that's our job in the next five years: to figure out which is which and why." The team's research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
