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The Onion has a new plan to take over Infowars

(NYT) — When Infowars, the website founded by right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.

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That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has reemerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.

On Monday, Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Guerra Gamble approves it, and Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”

Jones had no immediate comment.

The battle over Infowars has been a long and fraught saga, and Jones — a notorious peddler of lies and invective — has used his bully pulpit for more than a year to crusade against The Onion’s efforts to take over the platform. The site is in limbo because of a series of defamation lawsuits against Jones filed by families of victims of the mass shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which Jones falsely claimed was a hoax.

People who believed his lies that the shooting was staged subjected the families to years of online abuse, harassment and death threats.

The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially planned to parody Jones’ “whole modus operandi.”

Scientist charged with trying to poison lab colleague

(NYT) — A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had simmered for years with such resentment and jealousy over a colleague that he poisoned the man’s water with chemicals this month, local authorities said.

The victim quickly discovered the plot when he took a sip from his contaminated Trader Joe’s water bottle and spat out the foul-tasting water, according to a state criminal complaint charging the defendant, Makoto Kuroda. Two days later, the victim, who was identified in the complaint only by the initials T.M., smelled a suspicious odor coming from the laboratory shoes he kept in his office and reported the incident.

Kuroda, 41, a staff scientist at the Influenza Research Institute in the School of Veterinary Medicine, faces two felony charges of recklessly endangering safety and tampering with a household product with the intent to kill, injure or endanger someone’s health. Testing indicated that the victim’s water contained a high level of chloroform, a common and toxic chemical that is accessible in the lab where both men worked.

According to the complaint, Kuroda confronted the victim in the lab several days after the incident, saying, “I did it.” He also wrote another colleague, admitting to the poisoning. “I did it,” he wrote, according to the complaint. “I have also informed the person himself. I am very sorry.”

A public defender representing Kuroda, who was being held in the local jail, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

John Lucas, a spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement that Kuroda was currently on administrative leave and that the university was conducting an investigation. Kuroda’s research privileges have been revoked, Lucas added.

Police officers interviewed Kuroda, and they said he told them that he had worked with the victim for about five years.

During that time, Kuroda gradually developed grievances against his co-worker, the complaint said.

In interviews with police officers, Kuroda said that T.M. had been promoted repeatedly, while he had not, and that T.M. “felt he was better” than him, the complaint said.

T.M. violated small rules in the lab, failing to wear a coat unless supervisors were present, Kuroda told the officers. T.M. also crossed in front of Kuroda in the hallway in a manner that broke an unwritten rule of lab etiquette, he said.

Once, T.M. threw a piece of trash into a bin in front of Kuroda, making a loud noise.

“The defendant felt this action was intentionally disrespectful,” the complaint said. “The stress that T.M. was causing kept growing and growing, making the defendant ‘do this.’”

Kuroda told police that he had put at least one substance, called paraformaldehyde, into the victim’s water bottle, according to the complaint. He had used ChatGPT to calculate dosage, and brushed off warnings from the chatbot about his questions.

He had used a syringe to place chemicals into T.M.’s half-full water bottle on April 5, Kuroda said, according to the complaint, and also placed chemicals into each of T.M.’s shoes.