NPR: The skincare scheme that led to consumer complaints, lawsuits and a federal investigation... "Mazal translates to "luck" or "good fortune" in Hebrew. The Weingartens and Odeds are originally from Israel, as are the majority of corporate employees and licensees (store owners), according to former staff members."

Collage by Jackie Lay/NPR

 

NPR: The skincare scheme that led to consumer complaints, lawsuits and a federal investigation

October 14, 20265:00 AM ET

By 

Caley Fox Shannon

Monika Evstatieva 

It's a familiar experience for anyone who has walked through an American shopping mall: A friendly salesperson approaches with a free sample of skincare cream, offering the promise of younger-looking skin. As you pass, they launch into a stream of chatter — a compliment on your handbag or a question about what's in your shopping bag. It's the kind of encounter that shoppers often walk away from without a second thought.

But behind this familiar mall ritual, NPR uncovered something far more costly: customers hit with thousands of dollars in charges they never authorized and products they didn't want and can't return.

In Michigan, an elderly man with dementia was charged $42,000 for skincare products and devices. His family didn't realize the situation until his credit score dropped, his son told NPR.

In New Mexico, a spa employee sold a woman a $30,000 red-light therapy device. She alleged in a lawsuit that he also charged $78,000 for what he said was sales tax without her consent.

In Hawaii, a disabled woman was shown to the back room of a spa for a "free" facial. The salesperson took her walker, she wrote in a complaint to the state, and refused to let her leave for hours until she spent $2,600.

These stories share a common thread: The stores they visited have contracts to buy skincare products from Mazal Group, a California-based company managing dozens of brands sold in thousands of stores worldwide. And those brands are all owned by one family.

Over the past year, NPR spoke with more than 50 people impacted by this enterprise, including customers who say they were taken advantage of, their family members and former employees. This investigation draws from state and federal court lawsuits, hundreds of online reviews and nearly 500 consumer complaints that NPR obtained from agencies via Freedom of Information Act requests. NPR staff visited stores selling products from Mazal Group in Virginia, Maryland and California, as well as the company's Chatsworth, Calif., headquarters.

NPR's investigation finds that stores selling skincare products purchased from Mazal Group have routinely pressured shoppers, including older adults and people with disabilities, into buying expensive skincare products and services they did not want, could not afford or tried to refuse. The business model that a decade ago federal agents called a "credit card overcharge scheme" is active today in malls and shopping districts from Honolulu to Annapolis, Maryland.

Some store and kiosk operators... READ MORE  https://www.npr.org/2026/10/14/nx-s1-5550974/skincare-scheme-mazal-group-investigation  

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Fake US thinktank set up and funded by Israel sought to game AI for propaganda: In effort to prime chatbots to make pro-Israel arguments the site published 124 reports, over 560,000 words in nine days, Guardian analysis shows

A crow perches on an Israeli flag near an empty beach along the Tel Aviv coastline in April 2026. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Jason Wilson

 

Wed 26 Aug 2026 

A pro-Israel messaging website badged with the name of a thinktank that does not exist has published more than half a million words in nine days, built on a commercial platform that promises to optimize content so that AI chatbots will cite it.

The site gives Israel’s position on subjects including the torture of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli war crimes and whether Israel has deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza, all presented as neutral research.

The New York media production company Piro Inc filed the site with the US justice department this month under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara), a 1938 law that requires anyone working for a foreign government to formally disclose it, as material it distributes for the Israeli government.

The site publishes in the name of the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports. Its own terms of use are governed by the laws of “the state in which the Institute is established”, which they decline to name.

The existence of the site was first reported on 14 August. Since then the institute has added a page headed funding, which states: “An earlier version of this page said the Institute operated without external funding, and that was true when it was written.”

The site is one part of a broader effort, financed by tens of millions of dollars from the Israeli government and routed through third parties including the European advertising group Havas Media, to prime chatbots to make Israel’s arguments for it... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/26/fake-thinktank-israel-ai-propaganda

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Amid the systematic killing of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists, one organisation has been quietly bringing British media workers to Israel.

Journalist Amal Khalil reporting in Lebanon last month (Photo: Mohammed Zaatari/Alamy)

Lobby group taking journalists on propaganda tours of Israel

JOHN McEVOY
23 April 2026

On Wednesday, journalist Amal Khalil and photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting from southern Lebanon when an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit a car in front of them. 

The two journalists, working for the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, were then targeted as they sought shelter in a nearby home. Khalil was killed and Faraj was seriously injured.

Khalil is one of over 259 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists to be killed by Israel since 2023, with the IDF responsible for two-thirds of all journalist killings globally in 2025.

While systematically killing Palestinian journalists, the Israeli government blocked entry of foreign media workers to Gaza, in an effort to create a blackout of its genocidal campaign.

At the same time, an influential lobby group named ELNET has been quietly taking UK journalists on propaganda tours of Israel, Declassified can reveal.

ELNET was created in 2007 to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”, and is increasingly seen as the AIPAC of Europe.

The journalists who participated in ELNET delegations to Israel have written for some of Britain’s largest news organisations including the Telegraph, Spectator, and Mail on Sunday.

ELNET has also taken former British military officers to Israel, with many of them returning to Britain and putting a positive spin on the IDF’s operations in Gaza.

Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, told Declassified: “Journalists can try to claim that these are fact-finding visits but, in reality, they are junkets specifically deigned to generate pro-Israel coverage.

“Embedded journalism like this is dodgy in peacetime but utterly scandalous during a genocide when the rest of the world’s media have been locked out of Gaza. 

“At the very least, just as the UK competition regulator insists that paid-for content must be ‘clearly labelled’, the same should apply to news stories that are made possible by well-funded supporters of the Israeli regime”.

ELNET...    

READ MORE   https://www.declassifieduk.org/lobby-group-taking-journalists-on-propaganda-tours-of-israel/

"The headline is incredibly misleading. It completely reverses the point I was making. Rather than highlighting my explicit distinction between Zionist organizations and Jewish partners in justice, it collapses that distinction and leaves readers with the false impression that I accused British Jews collectively of complicity in Israel’s crimes. This is precisely the kind of framing that has made speaking about Palestine so difficult for so many years. It is not only manipulative; it fuels the false narrative that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews." Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac - Jul 23, 2026

 When Headlines Distort the Truth

What The Telegraph Got Wrong About My Response

Munther Isaac

Jul 23, 2026

“Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is Director of the Bethlehem of Institute for Peace and Justice and co-author of Kairos Palestine II.

I was recently approached by The Telegraph, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, to comment on the Church of England’s recent decision to receive and engage with Kairos Palestine II, among other Palestinian Christian documents. I was also asked to respond to the criticism directed at the Church by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. 

 

READ THE LETTER 

Now notice something important. I clearly distinguished between those promoting Zionism and the many Jewish voices working for justice. In fact, I explicitly called on churches to listen to and amplify those Jewish voices. That distinction was not incidental—it was central to my response.

So what did The Telegraph do with it? It published the following headline: “British Jews complicit in Israel crimes, say Palestinian Christians.”

That is simply not what I said. It is not what Kairos Palestine II says. It is not what Palestinian Christians are saying.

The headline is incredibly misleading. It completely reverses the point I was making. Rather than highlighting my explicit distinction between Zionist organizations and Jewish partners in justice, it collapses that distinction and leaves readers with the false impression that I accused British Jews collectively of complicity in Israel’s crimes.

This is precisely the kind of framing that has made speaking about Palestine so difficult for so many years. It is not only manipulative; it fuels the false narrative that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews.

Our position has been clear and consistent. The problem is not Jews. The problem is not Judaism. The problem is support for oppression, occupation, apartheid, and now genocide—whether that support comes from Jews, Christians, Muslims, or anyone else.

Likewise, those standing for justice include Jews, Christians, Muslims, and people of no faith. As I said in my response, and as Kairos Palestine II explicitly affirms, we welcome and encourage partnership with Jewish voices committed to truth and justice.

Perhaps most troubling of all, this kind of reporting distracts attention from the real issue. Instead of engaging with the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, or with the overwhelming evidence presented by international legal, human rights, and medical bodies, the conversation is redirected toward a manufactured controversy... READ MORE https://bipj.substack.com/p/when-headlines-distort-the-truth?r=62vmcy&triedRedirect=true

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From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high:

 

These aren’t AI firms, they’re defense contractors. We can’t let them hide behind their models

Avner Gvaryahu 

Sun 15 Mar 2026 

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

Israel’s recent war in Gaza has been described as the first major “AI war” – the first war in which AI systems have played a central role in generating Israel’s list of purported Hamas and Islamic jihad militants to target. Systems that processed billions of data points to rank the probability that any given person in the territory was a combatant.

The darkness in the watchtower was a condition of the terrain. The darkness inside the algorithm is a condition of the design. In both cases, the blindness was chosen. It was chosen because blindness is useful: it creates deniability, it makes the violence feel inevitable, it moves the question of who decided from a person to a procedure. The fog did not lift. It was given a probability score and called intelligence.

It may have been chosen blindness that led, at the start of the US-Israeli Iran war, to the strike at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed, most of them children, girls aged seven to 12.

The weapons were precise. Munitions experts described the targeting as “incredibly accurate”, each building individually struck, nothing missed. The problem was not the execution. The problem was intelligence.... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/15/ai-defense-warfare-companies

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Dear America- You can't win a modern war. You can destroy homes & families, you can usurp land & resources from the rightful owners, and you can undermine & destroy a free press and the fourth estate- but people worldwide have memories, as well as a sense of right and wrong that cannot be bombed into oblivion.

Forget-me-not flowers- A symbol of PEACE 

& Remembrance 

Dear America,

When my children were little I taught them to admit when they were wrong and to apologize.  It takes strength of character to do so.  Strength of character shapes a good person, and a good person helps makes the world a better place.

Lead by example: Greed and corruption are wrong.  Bully tactics are wrong. Insults are wrong. Lies are wrong... AND WAR IS VERY VERY WRONG.

We live in a world filled to the brim with stockpiles of both simple and sophisticated weaponry- all of it is polluting our shared planet earth. From the manufacturing to the deployment of lethal weaponry- bullets- bombs- bulldozers-missiles- jets- drones- molotov cocktails- war pollutes the land & air and war mongering pollutes minds as power hungry tyrants on all sides use bully tactics & bombs as if one can win a modern war.

You can't win a modern war. You can destroy homes & families, you can usurp land & resources from the rightful owners, and you can undermine & destroy a free press and the fourth estate- but people worldwide have memories, as well as a sense of right and wrong that cannot be bombed into oblivion.  

We live in the information age.  When our mainstream news failed to provide fair coverage of the full story for decades, our comics stepped up to say it in jokes, and the internet thrived as people reached out far and wide for more honest perspectives.  Now tech billionaires want to capture it all in massive hyper-scale DATA Centers that they control and can easily infiltrate, manipulate, and fill with AI artificial information/misinformation to empower their favored projects and politicians.

STOP and THINK...

Golden Rule thinking is enlightening: Respect for real freedom and democracy. Respect for UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS and the rule of fair and just laws to shape the best way forward, for everyone. Respect for real history and heritage, respect for differences and diversity, respect for human dignity- and ALL our children.

We are in the wrong to arm Israel as it steals land, rights, and peace from the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. 

And we are in the wrong to bomb Iran.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

"The Israeli military’s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities, along with other practices, involved gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, which in many cases may have amounted to war crimes and other atrocity crimes..." UN Human Rights Palestine

"For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines" Nesrine Malik

NPR: Israel seizes medieval castle as it expands major offensive in southern Lebanon... "Israel must know that its scorched earth policy, collective punishment and expropriation of villages and towns will not achieve security and stability but will instead deepen the divide with the Lebanese people"

“I have never in my career witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my medical colleagues as I have in Gaza,” Adam Hamawy, The doctor who came back from Gaza and is leading a New Jersey congressional race

"Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope’s concerns, describing AI as an “unregulated” industry increasingly being used to the “detriment of too many people”, while also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm."

"... Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom." Pope Leo XIV on AI Artificial Intelligence

"I was just a boy when I learned that my family would soon be leaving my beloved homeland of Palestine to begin a new life in America. To the adults, it was a practical decision—one made in search of opportunity and a better future, away from the suffocating Israeli occupation & oppression. But to me, it felt as though my entire world was being torn away. How could I explain what Palestine meant to a child? It was not merely a place on a map. It was the hills that encircled our small village of Beit Hanina and served as my endless playground. It was the olive and fruit orchards where I wandered freely beneath the sun. It was the caves hidden among the rocky slopes, the handmade kites dancing in the wind, and the familiar scent of earth after the rain. It was home." Mike Odetalla

"The chaotic, unique, beautiful Lebanon I knew has been reduced to rubble. When will it end? Suspected war crimes happen almost daily as Israel continues its bombardment, which Unicef estimates is killing nearly 14 children a day. We cannot write this off as just another war in a war-torn region"

"The first time I heard a song by Saint Levant, only three years ago, was in a world that does not exist any more. Gaza’s buildings were intact, as were its schools and roads and markets and mosques. My home city of Khartoum in Sudan was standing, as it had for centuries. Back then, I could scroll for fun, not in dread. I could stumble, say, in late 2022, upon an arresting clip on TikTok of a song by an Arab artist with a pun for a name..." Nesrine Malik

A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge- Online academic journals falsely attributed articles, likely written by AI, to several professors, who say the fiasco is a warning about the future of scientific knowledge.

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe. Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.

Ongoing Nakba in Gaza, Palestine: People inspect the remains of a residential building hit by an Israeli airstrike... Listen to the stories of Gaza’s women to fully grasp the horrors Israel is inflicting

"At a moment when Islam is framed as a source of division, it is worth recalling that on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X encountered Muslims of all races, worshipping as equals together, an experience that transformed his understanding of race and human dignity. It revealed an Islam grounded not in fear, but universality, exposing the poverty of racial hierarchies and the distortions that sustain them." Kenneth Mohammed in The Guardian

TIME: The Solemn History Behind Nakba Day ... From 1947 to 1949, 531 towns were destroyed by Israeli militias- Of the 1.4 million-strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced; the massacres of families and towns left enduring scars on the survivors.

"Reducing inequality was “not only about fairness, but essential for the resilience of economies, the stability of democracies, and the viability of our planet”" .......Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds- Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

Dear Governor Shapiro- The word 'antisemitism' excludes Arabs and Muslims, and has come to mean criticizing Zionism which is a political movement that is shaping horrifically cruel policies and actions here and in Israel and Palestine. So maybe find a better word or phrase to use- like 'bigotry' or 'racist hate' or 'mental illness' to describe hate mongering violations and violence.

 DEAR AMERICA

STOP THE BOMBS and the bigotry, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop accepting bribes & propaganda & bad advice from a very foreign country that seeks to destroy support for UNIVERSAL human rights and the rule of fair and just laws.

Along the way we learned that slavery is wrong. We learned that domestic violence is wrong. We learned that racist hate is wrong. SO WHY are we funding Israel and why are we bombing Iran for Israel!!!

Violence is a problem- not the answer

In 1945, 50 nations came together in San Francisco to create a new organization for peace, prosperity & human rights- the United Nations

"The United Nations is the only place on Earth where all the world's nations come together to discuss common problems and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity. This intergovernmental organization born out of the ashes of the Second World War remains indispensable to the pursuit of world peace, justice, equality and sustainable development" https://www.un.org/en/

The right of refugees to return to homes and lands they were expelled from is an individual right and cannot be unilaterally abrogated by third parties.  https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-palestinian-refugees-the-right-of-return-under-international-law/441

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Joe Kent, Trump's counterterrorism chief, resigns, blaming members of the media, as well as high-ranking Israeli officials and lobbyists, for prompting Trump to abandon his America First agenda.

Joe Kent

 

@joekent16jan19

 

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. 

 

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. 

 

It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC. 

 

 May God bless America.

 https://x.com/joekent16jan19/status/2033897242986209689/photo/1

"Nothing says “trust us” like a massive propaganda budget." Assal Rad

Assal Rad

@AssalRad

 

Nothing says “trust us” like a massive propaganda budget.

 

https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1997192358933549082/photo/1 

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Assal Rad

@AssalRad

 

If you’re not writing the truth about crimes against humanity, you’re culpable in them. 

 

... “Evictions” makes it sound like they didn’t pay their rent. An indigenous population is being forced out of their homes, off their land, brutalized by security forces & threatened with violence. Call it what it is. #Palestine

 

https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1390843028072402944/photo/1 

 

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@AssalRad

 

“Tested in Gaza” 

 

Genocide as a weapons experiment.

 

https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1996991382444298675 

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