Parents Sent To Prison After Isolating Kids For FOUR YEARS Over Covid Fears

A court in northern Spain has sentenced a couple to prison after they kept their three children confined indoors for nearly four years due to intense fears of Covid.

The isolation, which began in December 2021 and continued until the children were rescued in April 2025, left the youngsters with significant mental and physical conditions, including difficulties walking, bowel and bladder control issues, and delayed development.

The case, underscores the profound and lasting effects that pandemic-related anxiety had, and continues to have, on some individuals.

Christian Steffen, 53, a German freelance tech recruiter, and his wife Melissa Ann Steffen, 48, an American-born naturalised German, lived in a rented home in Oviedo, Spain. 

Prosecutors stated that the parents “locked the minors up inside their home and isolated them completely from the rest of the world, denying them contact with other people both physically and through other forms of communication.”

They added that “The children didn’t even know their relatives or any other people that weren’t their parents. They never went outside, not even to the garden of their home, for almost four years because of the unfounded fear the accused had, and they had instilled in their children, that they might be infected with something.”

The children — a boy aged ten and eight-year-old twins — were not enrolled in school. They received homeschooling from their parents, had not seen a doctor since 2019, and lived in conditions described as squalid, with soiled nappies, rubbish, and inadequate sleeping arrangements including broken cots for the twins. 

Physical examinations revealed bowed legs, hunched posture, irritated skin, and other issues stemming from prolonged confinement and lack of medical care. After rescue, one child was reported to have knelt on the grass outside and touched it with amazement.

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Scientists INTENTIONALLY Trigger 8,000 Earthquakes Deep Beneath Swiss Alps

Scientists at ETH Zurich university in Switzerland have deliberately induced around 8,000 seismic events deep underground in the Swiss Alps as part of an experiment called Fault Activation and Earthquake Rupture (FEAR-2).

The team injected 750,000 litres of water into the ground via two boreholes over approximately 50 hours at the BedrettoLab facility. The quakes were too small to be felt at the surface or cause damage, with magnitudes ranging from -5 to -0.14.

The researcher explained “While some seismic events occurred on the target fault zone, a large number of events took place on neighbouring geological structures activated by the fluid injection.”

Professor Domenico Giardini, one of the lead researchers, stated: “If we master how to produce quakes of a certain size, then we know how not to produce them.”

He also noted the advantages of the site: “It is perfect, because we have a kilometer and a half of mountain on top of us… and we can look very close at the faults, how they move, when they move, and we can make them move ourselves.”

He doesn’t seem all that worried about the mountains crumbling on top of him.

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Greenland Leader Admits US Military Presence on Island Is Part of Negotiations ‌With Washington

PM Nielsen faces the US interest on his island head-on.                                                               

Danish caretaker Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has lost the chance of negotiating a new coalition, after she led her Social Democrat party to the worst election result in its history.

Her ally, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, is now left to negotiate with the United States on the thorny issue of the designs by President Donald J. Trump over the Arctic island that is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

Today (12), Nielsen said that increasing the US military presence in the Arctic territory is part of ongoing secret negotiations ‌with Washington.

Reuters reported:

“From the beginning, one of the issues has been that ​they don’t think we do enough in terms of national security and surveillance in our region, so security and more ​military presence in Greenland is part of the discussions,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters in Copenhagen.

Seeking to calm tensions, Greenland, Denmark and the US earlier this year agreed to hold high-level diplomatic negotiations to resolve the crisis, ​although the outcome of those ongoing talks has yet to be presented.”

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As Hegseth Spars With Congress Over Iran War, Trump Decries Criticism As ‘Virtual Treason’

There was a bit of a narrative shift on display in Congress as back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill with top defense and Trump admin officials played out Tuesday, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth repeatedly on the defensive as he and the administration face intensified scrutiny over the Iran war.

And the growing frustration vented in Congress is not just being sounded by Democrats. As Washington Post’s Tuesday headline aptly describedHegseth, Caine encounter intense bipartisan frustration with Iran war. It seems President Trump has been made keenly aware of potential growing rebellion among GOP ranks, and biting criticisms over how the conflict and Strait of Hormuz standoff is going, given he decided to level the word “treason” in an afternoon Truth Social Post. It seemed also aimed at a series of apparent recent sensitive or classified info leaks within the administration and Pentagon to the media, related to the conflict…

Trump stated while en route to China: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON” – and he went on to charge that “they are aiding and abetting the enemy!”

“Only Losers, Ingrates, and Fools are able to make a case against America!” he also wrote.

This moment might remind the American public of another key turning point in US history when past president cast all criticisms of wars of choice in the Middle East: When President George W. Bush was gearing up to launch new forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he declared, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

This week also saw arch-neoconservative Robert Kagan break from Trump’s Iran War in the the pages of the generally pro-war Atlantic:

It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored.

Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.

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Trump Also Says That the Russia-Ukraine War Will End Very Soon

Is the war about to end?

The war between Russia and Ukraine entered its fifth year, and while the advances by Moscow troops is nowhere as fast as last year, the war is still ongoing, as brutal as ever.

People around the world were surprised, when on Sunday, after their ‘Victory Day’ parade, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he believed that the war in Ukraine was near the end.

Yesterday, this statement was reinforced by Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

So, today, US President Donald J. Trump came to public to say the very same thing: the war is almost over.

Reuters reported:

“President Donald Trump said ​on Tuesday that ‌the war in Ukraine is very ​close to ​ending and he believes ⁠there will be ​a settlement between ​Russia and Ukraine.

‘The end of the war ​in Ukraine I ​really think it’s getting ‌very ⁠close’, Trump told reporters as he left the White ​House ​for ⁠a trip to China. ​Trump’s comments echoed those ​made ⁠by Russian President Vladimir Putin ⁠on ​Saturday.”

Putin has admitted that Trump is the only foreign head of state that truly wants to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

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18 U.S. Intel Agencies Said Iran Wasn’t Building a Nuke; CIA Concluded Iran Could Hold Out for Months

All 18 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and would retaliate against U.S. bases across the Middle East if the U.S. attacked the country, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Joe Kent reported today.

The agencies also knew that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, Kent reported on X. 

The report from Kent — who quit his post due to the war on behalf of Israel — included a story from The Washington Post about a CIA analysis explaining that Iran could withstand American-Israeli attacks for months without suffering severe economic hardship.

Kent also challenged Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who thinks Trump should continue the war.

A former Green Beret and combat veteran, Kent has opposed the war from the beginning. He has said the U.S. must end aid to Israel and stop fighting its wars. One reason: The stated purpose of the war, that Iran would soon build a nuclear weapon, was bogus.

“One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community [IC], including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon & that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region & shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel & the U.S.,” Kent wrote:

The IC also properly assessed that targeting the Iranian leadership would strengthen the regime and embolden the hardliners. 

Despite the professionalism & accuracy of the IC, the narrative & agenda spun by a foreign government — Israel, won the argument & forced us into this war. 

We need to understand exactly how this happened to ensure we are never put in this position again.

Kent’s post affirms the report in The New York Times that Trump unwisely listened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that defeating Iran would be a cinch. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Netanyahu’s presentation to Trump in the White House Situation Room in February “bullsh*t” after CIA chief John Ratcliffe — citing an intelligence analysis of Netanyahu’s claims — called them “farcical” and “detached from reality.” 

Nonetheless, Trump went ahead.

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Active CIA Whistleblower Set to Blow Lid Off Deep State COVID-19 Cover-Up in Explosive Senate Testimony Tomorrow – Sen. Rand Paul Reveals Intel Community Knew Lab Leak Origins for Years While American Taxpayers Funded Wuhan Research

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has confirmed to Fox News’ Bill Melugin that an active CIA employee will testify publicly and in person before his Senate Homeland Security Committee tomorrow morning, and this brave whistleblower is ready to expose how the Deep State has been lying to the American people about the origins of COVID-19 for years.

This bombshell revelation comes just days after The Gateway Pundit reported on Sen. Paul’s announcement of the May 13 hearing, where he vowed “the truth is coming” about the COVID cover-up, even as the statute of limitations expires on potential charges against Anthony Fauci and despite Joe Biden’s desperate preemptive pardon of his favorite bureaucrat on his way out the door in January 2025.

According to Melugin’s exclusive report on X:

“Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tells me that the COVID-19 whistleblower who will testify publicly & in person before his committee tomorrow morning is an active CIA employee who will testify that the intelligence community has covered up the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic for years.

“I think this whistleblower will help to confirm that this was known, has been known for a long time, and that when the scientists at the CIA looked at this, they discovered or they concluded that the virus had come from the lab,” Sen. Paul tells me.

“What we’re going to find is that the cover up is a real thing, that there are members of the community, the intelligence community, that still don’t want the truth to come out. I’ve said the government was involved not only in funding this research, but then in trying to obscure the truth. And the truth is the US government funded research in Wuhan, China, and that research led to a virus that escaped, escaped the lab, in all likelihood accidentally.”

I asked Senator Paul for any more details on who this CIA whistleblower is ahead of tomorrow’s hearing?

“This is a brave person who’s spent a career in the CIA,” Sen. Paul said. “I don’t know how much can be revealed, but is actually famous within the community for being someone who, behind the scenes, has really helped our country.””

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Covert NATO initiative turns film into anti-Russia battleground

A scandal has erupted over covert NATO conferences with the Western entertainment industry. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how NATO has sought to infiltrate film and TV for decades, with UK intel operatives taking the lead.

On May 3, The Guardian revealed that NATO has held a series of secret meetings with film directors, screenwriters and TV producers in cities from Paris to Los Angeles. The disclosure suggests NATO is seeking to employ the entertainment industry in its propaganda operations as a European war looms.

To date, NATO’s “conversations” with scriptwriters have reportedly “inspired, at least in part” three separate unstated projects, which are already in development. At a forthcoming London summit, NATO operatives are set to meet with screenwriters tied to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB). In email correspondence, the union told its members the event will focus on the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond.”

Organizers claim NATO was “built on the belief that cooperation and compromise, the nurturing of friendships and alliances, is the way forward.” The alliance is actively seeking to influence film and TV projects extolling this mantra, stating, “even if something so simple as that message finds its way into a future story,” as a result of the meeting, “that will be enough.” 

But collusion between NATO and the entertainment industry has a well-established history. Over recent decades, NATO has covertly sought to employ film and television creatives as psychological operations specialists, while influencing popular culture. A core driver of this push has been Chris Donnelly, a veteran British Ministry of Defence and military intelligence operative, who led alliance expansion into Central and Eastern Europe during the 1990s.

Donnelly later developed the Integrity Initiative to cultivate support for conflict with Russia through covert networks of influential pro-war pundits and operatives. Hidden behind a seemingly legitimate think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, the Integrity Initiative only became known to the public after independent outlets like The Grayzone reported on leaked emails from Donnelly revealing its existence.

In leaked documents discussing NATO expansion, Donnelly stated, “What I needed in the 1990s and did not have” was a major international public relations firm to “scale up successful activities to have real impact,” and achieve “essential behavioural change” in audiences. To address the problem, he proposed “advertising campaigns on TV promoting change, a TV soap opera looking at the problem of corruption” and other innocent-seeming cultural products aimed at enhancing NATO control.

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Tulsi Gabbard Launches Investigation on 120 US-Funded Biolabs – Dozens Located in Ukraine

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has launched an investigation of more than 120 biological laboratories overseas that have received U.S. tax dollars for decades.

Gabbard told the New York Post on Monday that her team is going to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard said. “Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”

In May of 2024, the National Institute of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress that tax dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, making viruses 10,000 times more infectious.

According to officials within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the laboratories under review are spread across more than 30 countries.

Many reportedly received support through a Pentagon program which was originally established after the Cold War to secure or dismantle weapons-related materials and prevent the spread of biological and chemical threats.

The report said that more than 40 of the facilities being reviewed are located in Ukraine. Intelligence officials cited concerns that laboratories in active conflict zones could face risks of compromise or disruption due to the war in the country.

Arguments have been made that lax oversight of research funding often flowing through federal agencies to grantees and subawardees creates a quagmire that prevents Americans from knowing whether potentially dangerous experiments are being conducted on their dime without their consent.

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EU chief turns up heat on social media’s ‘addictive’ design

The European Union is working on new rules to protect children from the addictive designs of social media platforms such as TikTok, Meta and X, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on May 12.

“Sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behaviour, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, suicide. Risks are multiplying fast,” she said in a speech in Copenhagen.

“These risks are the reality of the digital world. They are not accidental. They are the result of business models that treat our children’s attention as a commodity.”

Ms von der Leyen said the commission would specifically target “addictive and harmful design practices” in its Digital Fairness Act (DFA), due to be proposed towards the end of 2026.

The DFA would also set strict limits on the use of artificial intelligence in social media, she said, while advocating a minimum age for social media access.

Ms von der Leyen said the EU must consider setting a minimum age for access to social media, adding that the commission might make a proposal in the summer on the issue following recommendations from a panel of experts.

“The question is not whether young people should have access to social media, the question is whether social media should have access to young people,” she said.

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