U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis from COVID-19 vaccines but downplayed the concern and delayed informing the public about the risks of taking the jab — that is according to a new Senate report released by Sen. Ron Johnson Wednesday.  

Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has been investigating the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. Earlier this year, he subpoenaed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for records relating to COVID-19 vaccine safety data and communications about the pandemic. 

SEN. RON JOHNSON: THE COVID COVER-UPS HAVE TO END

The interim report, spanning 55 pages, obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital, revealed that Biden administration officials "withheld crucial health information from the Subcommittee and the public." 

Since 2021, Johnson has sent more than 70 oversight letters, which he says were "either completely ignored or inadequately addressed." 

The report highlights the records Johnson has obtained pursuant to the subpoena from the new, Trump administration-led health agency. Specifically, the report focuses on HHS’ awareness of and response to cases of myocarditis—a type of heart inflammation—following COVID-19 vaccination.

SCIENTISTS FIND CLUES ON WHY COVID VACCINE CAUSES CHRONIC HEALTH PROBLEMS IN SOME

Johnson’s report says the 2,473 pages of records he obtained "contain evidence of the Biden administration’s efforts to downplay and delay warning the public about the risks of myocarditis associated with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines." 

The report points to records from May 2021, in which health officials at HHS discussed whether to issue a formal warning about myocarditis.

According to the report, the formal warning about myocarditis was initially going to be distributed nationwide as a Health Alert Network message, which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is CDC’s "primary method of sharing cleared information about urgent public health incidents with public information officers; federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local public health practitioners; clinicians; and public health laboratories." 

However, Johnson’s report said that health officials at CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "ultimately decided against issuing a formal HAN and, instead, posted ‘clinical considerations’ on CDC’s website about myocarditis." 

"Based on the subpoenaed records the Subcommittee has received to date, as well as public FOIA documents, this interim report will highlight records and present a timeline showing U.S. health officials knew about the risk of myocarditis; those officials downplayed the health concern; and U.S. health agencies delayed informing the public about the risk of the adverse event." 

FLASHBACK: GOP SENATORS INVOKE STATUTE TO FORCE HHS ANSWERS ON COVID ORIGINS: 'FULL-FLEDGED COVER-UP'

The report also highlights the Israeli Ministry of Health notifying officials at the CDC in February 2021 of "large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine." 

The report also highlights documents showing CDC officials discussing "safety signals" for myocarditis with mRNA vaccines in April 2021 based on Defense Department and Israeli data, but "still not taking immediate steps to warn the public." 

Documents obtained by Johnson also show CDC officials communicating with Moderna and Pfizer representatives about the risks. 

Johnson also obtained "draft meeting notes from late May 2021 exchanged between U.S. public health officials which included the question: ‘Is VAERS signaling for myopericarditis now?,’ and the answer: ‘For the age groups 16-17 years and 18-24 years, yes.’" 

"VAERS" is an acronym for the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. 

FLASHBACK: SEN. RON JOHNSON CONFRONTS HHS SECRETARY ABOUT REDACTED FAUCI EMAILS ON COVID-19 ORIGINS

"Rather than provide the public and health care providers with immediate and transparent information regarding the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration waited until late June 2021 to announce changes to the labels for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines based on the ‘suggested increased risks’ of myocarditis and pericarditis," the report states. "Even though CDC and FDA officials were well aware of the risk of myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration opted to withhold issuing a formal warning to the public for months about the safety concerns, jeopardizing the health of young Americans." 

The report added that the Biden administration’s decision "to downplay the COVID-19 vaccine health risks and delay warning the public about cardiac-related adverse events associated with the mRNA vaccines jeopardized the public’s health." 

According to the report, as of April 25, 2025, VAERS reported 38,607 deaths and more than 1.6 million "adverse events worldwide associated with the administration of COVID-19 injections." 

Of the more than 38,000 deaths, the report said 25% occurred on Day 0, 1, or 2 following injection, compared to "2,663 deaths reported to VAERS associated with the flu vaccine over a period of 35 years." 

"No other reports of adverse events associated with any other drug or vaccine even come close to these statistics," the report states. "And yet, those who oversaw the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines continue to insist it is safe and effective, without providing the data to prove their claims." 

Johnson’s report demands that the "full extent" of the Biden administration’s "failure to immediately warn the public about all COVID-19 vaccine adverse events must be completely exposed." 

"The American people fund the federal health departments and agencies with their hardearned tax dollars," the report states. "The information developed by these departments and agencies belong to the American people, and should be made fully and transparently available." 

The report states that as "the roadblocks are removed and more documents that have been hidden and withheld for years become available, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will provide transparency and let the American public see what is their right to see." 

Kids say they are using pictures of Trump, YouTuber Markiplier, and the G-Man from Half-Life to bypass newly integrated age restriction software in the VR game Gorilla Tag.

Gorilla Tag is a popular game with a global reach and a young audience, which means it has to comply with complicated and contradictory laws aimed at protecting kids online. In Gorilla Tag, players control a legless ape avatar and use their arms to navigate the world and play games like, well, tag. Developer Another Axiom has had to contend with new and developing laws aimed at keeping kids safe online. The laws vary from state to state and country to country.

Gorilla Tag’s new age verification system sometimes requires a user scanning their face so the system can estimate their age. To get around the face scan, some enterprising youths say they are using what the community has dubbed the “Markiplier method.” The UK is one of the country’s that requires a selfie but not a credit card, so some players are using a VPN to set their location to Britain and then pulling up a specific video of the YouTuber Markiplier to trick the system, according to a screenshot of the guide sent to 404 Media.

In the Gorilla Tag Discord server, 404 Media found several users discussing bypassing the facial scan. “If you need to make a parent account just point your camera at a video of markiplier speaking and it will verify you lol,” one user said.

“I hope they don’t patch the markiplier method,” said another. 

The age verification system is from k-ID, an Andreseen Horowitz backed tech company that bills itself as a one-stop shop for helping game’s studios comply with all this child safety legislation. A game with k-ID uses the IP address of the device that’s accessing the game to determine where the user is located and tailors the age verification experience accordingly.

“Our top priorities are keeping the game fun and following regulatory requirements around the world. We've also heard feedback from players and their parents or guardians who share similar concerns, so we're taking steps to improve the experience for everyone,” Another Axiom said in an FAQ about the launch of k-ID on its website.

Gorilla Tag started rolling out k-ID a few days ago and it’s caused chaos and controversy in the game’s community. Users hit by k-ID are prompted to enter their birthday and then jump through various hoops depending on their age and the country they’re in. 

Another screenshot sent to 404 Media appears to show a user passing the facial scan with 3D Blender models of the G-Man from Half Life (now of Skibidi toilet fame) and President Donald Trump.

Another Axiom did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

k-ID told 404 Media that it was currently assessing some of these claims. “As a company that exists to keep children safer online, we regularly encounter attempts at bypassing these systems,” it said in an email. “When such activity is detected or reported, we are able to quickly test and learn from these behaviors. We continually update and improve our technologies and tools which helps us battle spoofing attempts and keep children safer.”

“This company has existed for barely over a year, and can be bypassed via facial scan using donald trump, markiplier, you name it,” a user in the Gorilla Tag Discord said on Tuesday.

Joseph Cox contributed reporting.

Mud crabs are favored for their large claws and sweet, meaty flesh. As demand for these crabs skyrockets across Asia, and especially in Singapore, where chili crab is an iconic dish, overfishing and habitat loss are also putting them at risk. At Kampoeng Kepiting (Crab Village) in Bali, local fishermen are blending old-school techniques like hand-catching and using bamboo traps with innovative methods like "crab apartments" to cultivate and protect both the crabs and the disappearing mangroves they rely on to survive.

• Google is expanding ads in AI Overviews from mobile to desktop and testing ads in AI Mode.
• It's also adding other AI-powered ad tools, designed to help automate ad creation and buying.
• Ad experts said Google's AI strategy needs to balance monetization with a clean user experience.

Google's multibillion-dollar investments in artificial intelligence need to pay off eventually. Ads may be the answer.

Google on Wednesday said it's expanding ads within the search and shopping AI Overviews that appear at the top of results, going from mobile to desktop in the US. AI Overview ads are beginning to roll out in other locations, too.

It's also testing ads within its AI Mode, a relatively new product built into its search page, where users can conduct deeper research using its Gemini AI chatbot, Google said.

Dan Taylor, VP of global ads at Google, told Business Insider that queries within AI Mode tend to be twice as long as traditional searches and more exploratory in nature. This "opens up these new opportunities to discover brands where advertisers might not necessarily have been in the conversation before," Taylor said.

The ad news follows the opening of Google's big summer developer conference, in which the search giant offered a look at updates it's been cooking up for its AI models. CEO Sundar Pichai described a "total reimagining" of Search as AI Mode is brought to all users in the US this week.

With Google committing to invest more than $75 billion in AI infrastructure and to expand its cloud capacity this year, Wall Street is watching closely for hints about how the company intends to profit from the new technology.

Advertising is set to be an important portion of that pie; the majority of Google's revenue is derived from traditional search ads. While Google is embracing its new AI future, it will also be looking to protect its cash cow. Last year, Google recorded about $265 billion in ad revenue.

Google introduced ads to AI Overviews on mobile last year. This week, Google said that the launch of AI Overviews has grown the number of "commercial queries," where users are searching for information about a particular product or service they may later go on to buy. It didn't state by how much.

For now, advertisers can't directly opt for their ad placements to appear within AI Overviews or AI Mode. Instead, Google will pull from existing search campaigns, where marketers target users on variables like their location, demographics, and by keywords and topics.

Google's introduction of AI-generated answers to its search results got off to a fairly bizarre start last year. It infamously recommended users add glue to their pizza and suggested they eat rocks. Taylor said Google had strict brand suitability guidelines and extensive controls in place across search, display, and YouTube to prevent ads from appearing in unfortunate places that marketers would rather avoid.

Advertisers and website owners are grappling with the impact of AI-generated search. Overviews often offer a definitive answer rather than a series of links that encourage users to visit their websites. According to an April analysis of 150,000 popular keywords from the search marketing company Ahrefs, the average click-through rates on top-ranking search results have dropped since Google's AI overviews were introduced.

Google will need to strike a careful balance between monetizing its AI offerings and providing a clean user experience, especially since some generative-AI rivals, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, have yet to roll out ads. (OpenAI has hinted that ads aren't out of the question, though.)

"If people are changing the way they search and using AI search more for commercial queries, there's no doubt we'll see a shift in ads moving to that space," said Matt Steiner, director of biddable media at the marketing agency Croud.

Google is exploring ways to automate the entire advertising process through AI

Google also offered a glimpse on Wednesday at how it's using AI to automate creating and buying ads across search, its display ad network, and YouTube.

It's letting advertisers use its AI text-to-video and text-to-image generators, Veo and Imagen, to create the visual elements of their ad campaigns based on their product catalogs. On search, a new feature called Smart Bidding Exploration will automatically detect new types of queries advertisers can bid on based on more complex user searches that go beyond typical keywords like "best credit card." And Google is offering an AI agent within Google Ads and Google Analytics, which can make recommendations on campaigns or suggest new trends in their data that might be of interest.

"More traditional marketing tactics are not really able to keep up with the change in consumer behavior, and so AI is coming to the rescue, if you will, to help marketers adapt," Google's Taylor told BI.

Big Tech giants are increasingly looking for ways to automate advertising, with the potential to disrupt the entire industry of advertising agencies and vendors. In a recent interview, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is working toward a future where advertisers simply state their objective, connect their bank accounts, and Meta would do the rest — from creating the ads, selecting the targeting, and then providing the results. Google is moving in a similar direction with its AI-powered Performance Max product.

Scott Sadeghian-Tehrani, media strategy director at the marketing agency 26PMX, said some clients are wary of these types of automated tools. That's particularly true of retailers who often dice their budgets between different product categories and want to be able to make adjustments in the event of holding excess stock, or if it's unseasonably sunny and they want to ramp up advertising their swimwear, for example.

"Clients aren't really ready to hand over those reins, so there's a bit of trepidation," said Sadeghian-Tehrani.

• Companies run hackathons to promote collaboration and speed up software development.
• Pinterest's version, Makeathon, has encouraged employees to come up with ideas for new AI tools.
• This article is part of "AI in Action," a series exploring how companies are implementing AI innovations.

As companies look to AI for increases in productivity, some employees are wary. They worry about lost jobs, diminished creativity, and ethical oversteps, leaving many repelled by daily AI use.

Pinterest, a social media company with about 4,700 employees, has sought to address such concerns by keeping employees closely involved in the development of internal AI tools so those tools are viewed as efficient and helpful, not just mandated from the top down. Key toward this mission has been Pinterest's annual Makeathon, which is in its 14th year. The employee-led competition used to be viewed mostly as a fun way to recommend fixes, said Anirudh Koul, Pinterest's generative AI tech lead. Now, in the age of AI, its usefulness has exploded.

"The overarching goal is ground-up innovation," Koul told Business Insider. "We realized that if we can give the employees the opportunity and freedom to tell us what must be done, and give them some space to showcase working proof of their concept, we might find new innovations at a much faster rate."

Inside Pinterest's companywide hackathon

Makeathon is Pinterest's version of a hackathon — an event at which people work together to create new software quickly. Hackathons are designed to spark new ideas and increase employee engagement, said Brandon Kessler of Devpost, a digital platform for running hackathons. Since 2022's AI boom, hackathon demand has exploded, Kessler told BI.

Discussing hackathons' appeal, Kessler said the events "get people excited because they get to build something they want, as opposed to, 'Hey, all, please use this tool.'"

"You get people learning these new tools," he continued, "building stuff that helps the business, and collaborating and having fun — all within a short period of time."

Pinterest employees witnessed this type of quick development in early 2023, just a few months after ChatGPT's release. Pinterest's senior director of engineering, Anthony Suarez, helped collect a handful of engineers to have a mini hackathon which led to the creation of an internal chatbot tool. By their official Makeathon in July, Pinterest's now-foundational plug-in AI system was ready for wider use.

At Pinterest, hackathon projects start at an internal company page where employees across departments can log pitches. In the week before Makeathon, Koul's team hosts classes about how generative AI works and how to write prompts. There's also a class on no-code tools for app building so that nontechnical employees can still employ AI solutions.

Then, teams from across departments form around an idea. Suarez collaborated with seven Makeathon teams last cycle, mostly composed of fellow employees he had never worked with before. They also have the support of Koul's "hack doctors," support staff who work across the company and specialize in areas such as engineering, design, and video editing. The hack doctors help refine ideas and prepare teams to take questions from executives. Last year, just under 94% of teams worked with a hack doctor.

"We usually find that a good chunk of participants are actually not from engineering," Koul said. "They pair up with engineers to bring their ideas to the next level. We've had teams where people from six different countries come together."

Each team produces a video pitch, which colleagues up to the executive level can watch and vote on. Makeathon is strategically scheduled for late summer so any resulting tools can be incorporated into Pinterest's companywide planning period in September and October, Suarez told BI. He estimated that more than half of these Makeathon projects get funded during this cycle and called the event an "innovation flywheel."

How a Makeathon idea becomes an AI-tool reality

During the 2023 Makeathon, one of Pinterest's sales employees had an idea: What if AI could collect and search through all the company's internal documents?

The sales employee recruited a 14-person team, including Charlie Gu, a senior engineering manager on Pinterest's data team. Gu said he envisioned the tool as a Slack-based chatbot employees could turn to instead of bugging their colleagues. The team knew, however, that some existing documentation wouldn't be up to date when the chatbot pulled it in.

"We came up with a system where you can report answers and create new documentation on the fly," Gu said. The team pitched, built, and eventually implemented the document finder across the company.

The tool now answers, on average, an estimated 4,000 questions a month, according to Pinterest. The tool was also designed to access thousands of internal documents from Google Docs, Slack threads, and slide decks, said Koul, who is quite passionate about Makeathon. (He called over shaky service at a Mount Everest base camp to rave about it.)

Makeathon also encouraged some employees to come up with useful AI prompts. In 2024, Koul's team posed a challenge: Who could come up with the best questions to get Pinterest's chatbot to produce the most accurate and precise answers? Gu said that they had about 200 participants.

In this case, the employees' prompt generation helped with Pinterest's overall goal of encouraging employee engagement with AI. The effort also led Pinterest to integrate AI agents into the process of writing more precise prompts.

According to internal company surveys, 96% of Suarez's team of more than 60 use generative AI every month, and 78% of the company's 1,800 engineers report time savings from using internal AI tools.

Suarez said he'd been "quite surprised by the positive feel" for the tools across the business, adding: "Part of that is, we didn't force adoption of these tools early on, and we still aren't saying, 'You have to do this.' We're trying to come at this more from creating value."

• I spent a month in Turkey with a group of friends. We had fun, but made a few mistakes.
• We didn't realize Istanbul had two international airports or that çay had so much caffeine.
• I wish I hadn't exchanged my currency in the airport or bought so many souvenirs at Grand Bazaar.

In November, I went on a monthlong girls' trip to Turkey.

Before we left, I spent many evenings researching must-see attractions, searching for cute lodging options, and maintaining my Diamond League status learning Turkish on Duolingo.

My preparations paid off, and we had a great trip — but my friends and I made a few mistakes that we'll be sure to avoid next time.

We didn't realize there was more than one major airport in Istanbul.

Istanbul is the biggest city I've ever visited — it's so large that it actually hosts two international airports.

Istanbul Airport (IST) is on the European side of the city and Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW) is on the Asian side. It can take about two hours to get from one airport to the other by bus.

My friends and I all flew into IST, but some of our group booked domestic flights out of SAW the following morning without realizing it was a different airport in Istanbul.

We all made our flights, but we had to split up into different hotels during our Istanbul layover, one near IST and one near SAW.

I shouldn't have exchanged my money at the airport.

Since I arrived in Istanbul was after business hours, I figured my best option was to exchange US dollars for liras at the airport despite the poor exchange rate.

After all, it seemed like a bad idea to enter a new city without any cash.

However, I regretted my decision as soon as I left the airport and found that many exchange counters in the city were open late — and had better rates. It was also easy to find ATMs throughout the trip.

After that first money mishap at the airport, I got all my liras from Halkbank ATMs, which didn't charge me fees.

It took me too long to realize one of the most popular local drinks is packed with caffeine.

Turkish tea, or "çay" (pronounced like "chai"), is a popular drink in Turkey, and sharing tea is an important part of Turkish culture.

For my first few days in Turkey, I accepted tea whenever it was offered. It was inexpensive and delicious, and I was eager to participate in local rituals.

I was offered the tea at restaurants, shops, and even at the dentist's office (I was there for a bit of medical tourism).

What I didn't realize at first, though, is that çay is pretty caffeinated.

Although it varies depending on the strength of the brew, an average cup can contain over 40 milligrams of caffeine — about half of the caffeine in a standard cup of coffee.

Once I registered how much caffeine I'd been drinking throughout the day, I understood why my jet lag was so much worse than usual.

I ended up overpaying for souvenirs at the famous Grand Bazaar.

I loved browsing the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, but I wish I hadn't bought souvenirs there.

The famed Turkish market and its mazes of different stalls felt overwhelming in a good way. I was captivated by the endless colors of Turkish textiles, the rich smells of spices and teas, and the banter of shopkeepers trying to entice us into their stores.

I bought a few things at the Grand Bazaar, but I wish I'd held out on shopping until the next day, when we took the ferry to Kadikoy, a neighborhood on the other side of the Bosphorus.

I found many of the same wares in Kadikoy that I'd seen at the Grand Bazaar, oftentimes for almost a tenth of the price.

It also would've been smart to check US customs regulations before buying souvenirs.

Turkey is famous for its cuisine, and eating my weight in baklava was a highlight of my monthlong trip. When it was time to return home, I wanted to bring back some of my favorite Turkish delicacies as Christmas gifts for my family.

Shops in Istanbul made it easy to bring home food, with some sellers even offering to vacuum-seal items like baklava and olives.

Most of my culinary delights made it home, but I was heartbroken and slightly embarrassed when my giant bag of dried persimmons was confiscated upon my return to the US.

As it turns out, most dried fruits and vegetables from other countries aren't allowed to be brought into the country. I should've checked the guidelines before shopping.

• Chungin "Roy" Lee, founder of Cluely, predicts cheating with AI in job interviews will soon be widely acceptable.
• Lee, who created an AI tool for cheating on technical interviews, was kicked out of Columbia earlier this year.
• "We say 'cheat on everything' because, ironically, we believe this is the only path towards a future that is truly fair," he told BI.

Creating a tool that allowed job candidates to cheat on their technical interviews kicked off a chain of events that would eventually see Chungin "Roy" Lee kicked out of Columbia University — but he believes that, soon enough, everyone will be using AI to get ahead.

Lee has since branched out from an AI tool for coding interviews alone, founding "Cluely," which he's previously called "a cheating tool for literally everything," including live conversation. A promotional video for the app, for instance, depicts Lee using the app to "cheat" his way through a date.

"There's a very, very scary and quickly growing gap between people who use AI and people who moralize against it," Lee told Business Insider in an email. "And that gap compounds: in productivity, education, opportunity, and wealth."

"We say 'cheat on everything' because, ironically, we believe this is the only path towards a future that is truly fair," he added.

Lee talked more about his views on how AI use will impact interviews in a recent interview with EO.

"When every single person is using AI to cheat on meetings, then it's not that you're cheating anymore," he said. "This is just how humans will operate and think in the future."

In the coming years, Lee expects interviews to be a lot more "holistic," and largely assess whether the candidate is a "culture fit," rather than focusing on a deep dive into their skills. That is, if the interview as a means of assessment endures at all, given that he expects AI to become powerful enough to build individual profiles for each candidate and feed that information back to the interviewer.

"I already know all the work you've done, or at least the AI already knows the work you've done," he told EO. "It knows how good it is. It knows what skills you're good at, and if there is a skill match, then I should just be able to match you directly to the job, assuming that we get along after like a 30-minute conversation."

It's a practice that's already commonplace at Cluely, Lee added, where he says interviews tend to be less formal.

"I really don't know that there is a need for interviews in today's age, but right now what we use is really just a conversation," he said. "We check if you're a culture fit, we talk about past work you've done, and that's pretty much it."

Lee expects AI to eventually alter more than just the job interview — he believes everyone will soon be using it as frequently and broadly as possible.

"The entire way we're going to think will be changed," Lee told EO. "Every single one of my thoughts is formulated by the information I have at this moment. But what happens when that information I have isn't just what's in my brain, but it's everything that humanity has ever collected and put online, ever?"

For instance, Lee posed — how different would an interaction between two people look if an AI could feed one a "condensed blurb" of information about the other, after it was finished scraping their entire digital footprint?

"What happens when AI literally helps me think in real time?" Lee said. "The entire way that humans will interact with each other, with the world, all of our thoughts will be changed."

With Cluely, Lee hopes to get people used to what he believes is an inevitable transformation.

"The rate of societal progression will just expand and exponentiate significantly once everyone gets along to the fact that we're all using AI now," he said. "And that's what Cluely hopes to achieve, is to get everybody used to, 'We're all using AI now.'"

For Lee, it's simple — either get on board or fall so far behind you can't ever catch up.

"Mass adoption of AI is the only way to prevent the universe of the pro-AI class completely dominating the anti-AI class in every measurable and immeasurable outcome there is," he told BI.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is getting a big redesign as we’ve heard previously, and now leaked renders are showing just how different it will be.

I think a lot of people would agree that the Android 16 QPR1 update is the “real” update that we’ve all been waiting for – but is it any good? Spoiler alert: it is, but here’s everything you need to know.

If the internet wasn’t already full of misinformation and general filler content, Veo 3 is going to take it to an entirely new level. Google’s newly announced Veo 3 video and audio generation engine is already being used to create terrifyingly realistic videos that would fool just about anyone.