British authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating after a report that an employee had tried to obtain the personal medical records of Catherine, Princess of Wales, at the London hospital where she was treated. undergo abdominal surgery in January.

The hospital, the London Clinic, a private institution with an elite clientele, has opened an investigation into the alleged breach, according to The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, which first reported the matter on Tuesday evening.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees data protection issues in Britain, said on Wednesday: “We can confirm that we have received a breach report and are assessing the information provided.”

The Mirror said the hospital reported the incident to Kensington Palace, where Catherine and her husband, Prince William, have their offices. “This is a matter for the London Clinic,” a palace spokesman said.

It is unclear whether the employee was able to access the files or share them with anyone outside the hospital. But the allegations added another layer of intrigue to Catherine’s sudden hospitalization and lengthy recovery, which have already become the source of feverish rumors And conspiracy theories.

Despite all the speculation, there has been no informed reporting on the condition that prompted Catherine’s surgery. The palace has released virtually no details, saying in its initial statement that it was Catherine’s “wish that her personal medical information remain private.”

As Catherine has remained out of the public eye in recent weeks, social media users have come up with increasingly wild theories about her prognosis, her whereabouts and even her relationship with her husband.

Catherine, 42, added to the maelstrom by admitting last week that she had digitally modified a Mother’s Day photo of her with her three children. The palace released the photo, which was reportedly taken by William a few days earlier, in a misguided attempt to dampen public speculation.

On Monday, the Getty Images news agency added an advisory to a second, earlier photo, taken by Catherine of Queen Elizabeth II, surrounded by the monarch’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The agency said the photo showed signs of being “digitally enhanced.”

On Monday, two London tabloids published images and a video showing Catherine and William walking out of a grocery store near their home in Windsor, west of London, last weekend. If verified, these would be the first images of Catherine to reach the public since she entered the hospital in January.

Kensington Palace declined to comment on the video, sticking to its policy that it would provide no information about Catherine’s recovery other than to say she would resume her official duties sometime after the Easter holidays.

The accusation that a staff member may have tried to compromise Catherine’s personal medical records is an embarrassment for the London Clinic, which has treated other members of the royal family, as well as celebrities such as actress Elizabeth Taylor and foreign leaders including the Chilean dictator. General Augusto Pinochet. John F. Kennedy was diagnosed by doctors with Addison’s disease while hospitalized in 1947.

Catherine spent almost two weeks in hospital, where she was visited by King Charles III, who himself presented himself at around the same time treatment of an enlarged prostate. After he was released, Buckingham Palace announced that doctors had discovered an undisclosed form of cancer during his procedure.

The palace zealously protected Catherine’s privacy during her stay. There were no photos of her children going to visit her at the hospital, which is in the Marylebone area of ​​London, and only a single photo of William behind the wheel of a car outside, presumably after a visit.

On the day she was released, the palace said: “The Prince and Princess would like to extend a huge thank you to the entire team at the London Clinic, especially the dedicated nursing staff, for the care they provided.”

In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated UFO sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new types of satellites, and wandering weather balloons have led to a renaissance of unusual sightings.

But according to a new report, none of these sightings involved alien spacecraft.

A new Congressionally mandated Pentagon report found no evidence that the government covered up knowledge of alien technology and said there was no evidence that any UFO sighting represented an alien visit to Earth.

The document is the most sweeping rebuttal the Pentagon has issued in recent years to refute claims that it has information about alien visits or technology. But amid widespread distrust of the government, the report is unlikely to calm a growing obsession with aliens.

While many reports of what the government is now calling Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena remain unsolved, the new document clearly states that there is nothing to see. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office concluded that if better quality data were available, “most of these cases could also be identified and resolved as common objects or phenomena.”

Because of that missing data, Pentagon officials in the past have often been reluctant to speak clearly about various incidents, saying they lack information to draw a conclusion. But in the absence of conclusions, conspiracy theories have flourished, even as scientists and independent researchers claimed that optical illusions, weather phenomena, scientific balloons or drones were reasonable causes of almost all unexplained incidents.

The report also disputes accounts from whistleblowers and former government officials who have said the United States is hiding evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial material from the public.

The Pentagon has tried to undermine such claims over time. Officials have told Congress that the government has no extraterrestrial material — let alone a spaceship — in its possession. The Pentagon and NASA have used basic trigonometry to show why published military videos don’t show anything extraordinary or alien.

Progress in debunking UFO misinformation has slowed due to several changes in the task force investigating the matter. Congress has charged the Pentagon’s current group, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, with a historical review of the evidence.

The agency did not find “any empirical evidence” that reported sightings represent “off-world technology” or any secret program not reported to Congress, the report concludes.

Yet it is unlikely that the public will be convinced. Many people reject the government’s claims that there is nothing interesting going on in Pentagon videos that appear to show strange objects, citing accounts from Navy pilots that they have observed objects whose movements cannot be easily explained.

The new report notes that there was interest in UFOs in the past, especially in the 1950s, but that attention to unexplained sightings is greater today than ever before.

The Pentagon concludes cautiously and with precise language, writing that declining public trust in the government and the speed at which disinformation now spreads have made it more difficult to refute claims of alien visits.

Quote a 2021 Gallup poll, the Pentagon said exposure to the topic through “traditional and social media has increased the number of Americans who believe UFO sightings are of extraterrestrial origin.”

“Apart from hoaxes and forgeries, misinformation and misinformation are now more common and easier to spread than ever before, especially with today’s sophisticated photo, video and computer-generated imagery,” the report said. “Internet search algorithms and content recommendation algorithms serve to amplify individuals’ biases and prejudices as much as they serve to educate and inform.”

The report notes that in the 1950s, many UFO reports arose from public sightings or secret government programs. The report lists government programs, including the Manhattan Project and the secret development of the Air Force’s stealth drone, the RQ-170, that may have contributed to an increase in reports of unidentified objects or phenomena.

As part of the investigation, the Pentagon interviewed people who claimed to Congress that they had direct knowledge of a government cover-up and others who allegedly had supporting information.

A review of their accounts makes it clear that most reports on alien technology are second-hand at best. And none of the firsthand reports were corroborated by other witnesses.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon has investigated the claims and so far found nothing to support them. In contrast, it collected on-the-record rebuttals from other witnesses. The report states that the agency will continue to investigate further claims and report in a second part.

The Pentagon has also been looking into secret and sensitive government programs that whistleblowers have suggested were involved in investigating captured alien spacecraft.

The Pentagon concluded that while “many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive national security programs,” none of them were involved in capturing or reverse-engineering alien technology.

In “Space: the longest goodbye,” Scientists investigating the problems of long-term space exploration are going further than films have gone before. Send astronauts into hibernation to save scarce resources? Link them to an artificially intelligent entity that can act as a friend and sounding board? Screenwriters have tried these things, and the results are probably best preserved in fiction.

But such gambits could provide real solutions to getting humans to Mars. And it’s gambles that this whimsically intriguing, sometimes wide-eyed documentary, directed by Ido Mizrahy, takes seriously.

“Soft, gentle people are completely inscrutable to engineers,” says Jack Stuster, an anthropologist who asked residents of the International Space Station to keep diaries. One of the key interviewees is Al Holland, a psychologist who has created a unit at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to provide support to astronauts. He discusses his 2010 experience advising on the Chilean mining disaster, which had striking parallels to the isolation of life in space.

We hear about it too Kayla Barron, a submarine warfare officer who decided to go into space, and her husband, who stayed behind; as a military couple they were used to living apart, but this presented another challenge. And we see snippets of personal video chats that astronaut Cady Coleman had with her husband and son on Earth, through a system that sometimes didn’t work. “It’s hard for me to really realize how hard it was for a little kid to have to be so patient,” she recalls in the documentary.

On Mars missions, distance will make comparable real-time communication impossible, meaning astronauts won’t even have such intermittent contact. “Space: The Longest Goodbye” leaves open the question of whether someone could make it to the red planet with their sanity intact.

Space: the longest goodbye
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy most major platforms.

Former President Donald J. Trump took another step closer to becoming the Republican nominee for president of 2024 on Tuesday, sweeping up delegates and prompting his last remaining rival, Nikki Haley, to suspend her campaign. The results all but guarantee a November rematch against President Biden.

But in his 20 minute victory commentsthat painted a grim picture of the United States under his successor, Mr. Trump resorted to a series of false and misleading claims — on immigration, the economy, energy and more — some of which were variations on well-known claims.

Here’s a fact check.

WHAT WAS SAID

“They flew 325,000 migrants, across borders, into our country. So that really tells you where they’re coming from, they want open borders.”

This is misleading. Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to reports of documents obtained by a group pushing to restrict immigration. The group reported that the documents show that approximately 320,000 migrants flew to the United States in 2023 after receiving permission through a application for mobile phone started by Customs and Border Protection.

But this is not a covert effort, contrary to Trump’s characterization, and the migrants came through programs that authorized their arrival and required them to arrange their travel on commercial flights.

The app in question, CBP One, was introduced last year to require migrants to make an appointment at a port of entry to submit an asylum claim. However, the app is also used to support the processing of migrants seeking to enter the United States through other programs, said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

One program is one initiative in which a certain number of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can apply for “humanitarian parole” if they have a sponsor within the United States. Another does family reunification conditionalfor nationals from different countries who have an approved family petition.

Information about the programs is publicly available and migrants are vetted before entering the country.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We built 571 miles of wall.”

False. The Trump administration built 458 miles of border barriers – most of which reinforced or replaced existing structures. Civil servants to hang new primary barriers along just 75 kilometers where no barriers previously existed.

The southern border with Mexico is more than 3,000 kilometers long. During Trump’s 2016 campaign, he promised to build a wall across the border and make Mexico pay for it — which didn’t happen.

WHAT WAS SAID

“Our cities are overrun with migrant crime, and that is Biden’s migrant crime. But it is a new category of crime and it is violent.”

Evidence is lacking here. While there are undoubtedly examples of illegal immigrants in the country committing crimes, the available data does not support the idea that immigrants are causing an increase in crime.

In New York City, the overall crime rate has remained flat despite the arrival of more than 170,000 migrants since April 2022, a recent Times analysis found, and some key crime categories have declined.

Federal data also shows that violent crime declined in 2022 January report from the nonprofit Council on Criminal Justice found that several cities saw a decline in homicides and other violent crimes in 2023 compared to the previous year.

Moreover, multiple Analyzes in recent years do not show that immigrants, even those here illegally, are statistically linked to an increase in crimes.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We had no inflation.”

This is an exaggeration. While the inflation rate under Mr. Trump was indeed low, it was not completely non-existent Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

Under Mr. Trump, the inflation rate, as measured by the general consumer price index, has largely hovered around 2 percent — with the inflation rate slightly lower and higher in some months. That fell at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and inflation reached a low of 0.1 percent in May 2020 before trending upward.

Inflation reaches a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022; it has since fallen and stood at 3.1 percent in January. Drivers of inflation included a surge in consumer spending as the country recovered from the pandemic — with the help of government stimulus payments — and supply shortages.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We brought in a lot more revenue after we cut taxes.”

False. The 2017 corporate tax cuts signed by Trump did not increase government revenues, despite some attempts to suggest so. In fact, they have had the opposite effect.

a recent, rigorous study of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shows that the policy adds more than $100 billion to the national debt annually. The research shows that while the tax cuts have boosted investment in the economy, they have delivered only modest — albeit less than predicted — wage growth for workers, as The Times has reported.

“There is no evidence that the tax cuts have paid for themselves or have even been completed,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We got the biggest tax cuts in history.”

False. Mr. Trump has used this refrain since his first year in the White House — and in his final speech as president. The fact is that the 2017 tax cuts ranked below several others, including the 1981 Reagan tax cut, which was the largest as a percentage of the economy.

WHAT WAS SAID

“Three years ago we were at a level: we were energy independent, we would very soon be energy dominant and today we are getting oil from Venezuela.”

This is misleading. The United States became a net exporter of petroleum in 2020, the first time in at least seventy years, and that remained the case in 2022 under Mr. Biden. The country also remains one net exporter of natural gas.

Under Mr. Biden, energy production — including oil and gas — has soared, despite Mr. Trump’s descriptions.

Yet the country continues to move on import millions of barrels of crude oil and other petroleum products per day – as under Mr. Trump – which the term “energy independence” does not convey.

WHAT WAS SAID

Covid “started in the laboratories of Wuhan, just as I said.”

This needs context. The origins of the coronavirus remain a subject of fierce scientific and political debate, although some federal agencies believe the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Other experts and authorities have concluded that the virus most likely originated through natural transmission.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We haven’t lost anyone in Afghanistan for 18 months.”

This is misleading. Trump has not been the only one to oversee an 18-month casualty-free period in Afghanistan. Instead, the period in question relates specifically to combating victims and occurred under both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.

In early February 2020, there were under Mr. Trump two combat deaths recorded — and no one reported again until late August 2021, when an attack killed 13 U.S. troops during Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

During Mr. Trump’s presidency, 45 combat deaths among U.S. service members were reported in Afghanistan, as well as 18 “non-hostile” deaths. Defense casualty analysis system.

WHAT WAS SAID

“We left behind $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful equipment” in Afghanistan.

False. As Mr Trump again refers to the total amount spent on security in Afghanistan over two decades – and not the value of the equipment left behind when the United States withdrew in 2021.

The United States provided $88.6 billion for security in Afghanistan from October 2001 to July 2021 and disbursed approximately $75 billion. Pentagon figures. That figure includes the amount spent on training, anti-drug trafficking efforts and infrastructure, as well as $18 billion in equipment.

CNN has done that before reported that approximately $7 billion worth of military equipment was transferred from the United States to the Afghan government during the withdrawal, citing a Defense Department report submitted to Congress.

Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.