Typhoon "Noru" Hits Japan; The Anonymity of the Dark Web
LU STOUT: Coming to you live from Hong Kong. Welcome back. You're watching "News Stream." Now, a slow moving but powerful typhoon is hitting central Japan. Typhoon Noru made landfall near the city of Osaka earlier Monday. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines say that they have canceled more than 200 flights. Authorities are warning residents about possible landslides as well as heavy flooding. Let's get more now from Chad Myers at the World Weather Center. Chad, we know that this typhoon is weakening but it is still pounding parts of Japan with rain. What is the latest?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST AND SCIENCE REPORTER: Certainly. And still we had the 160 kilometer per hour wind gust. This wasn't just a rainmaker. This was a damage maker as well. Let's go back to some of that video because I think later in the real here, we actually see more in the way of damage where trees are down, large trees, because there was just so much water on the ground. The roots were basically soaked. The dirt turd to mud. And the winds toppled those trees. And this is what's happened here all across the southern part of Japan, the southern half really was lashed. The big story about this storm is how long it has been Noru, how long the storm has actually been alive, if you will. Right now it's 120-kilometer-per-hour storm, some gusts a little bit higher than that. But this storm has been in the ocean for a very, very long time, putting down almost 200 millimeters of rain is some spots and other spots that are higher in the mountains of Japan, obviously had more rain than that, but there is just no rain collection sites there. You put this rain up on the top of the mountain. It's going to come downhill. And eventually, we're going to see some of that flash flooding I think even along the coasts. The storm is dying now. We are still going to see a couple 100-millimeters of rainfall in some spots. But the wind is dying because the storm is no longer over waters, it's over land. When the storm gets over land, it loses its energy. The energy source is the water itself, is the ocean itself. When it gets over land, it gets torn up. Here is the story I was talking about. How long Noru has existed. Fourteen days, this storm has been a typhoon, even did a little loop over here in the West Bank for a while. Eighteen days since it was formed, 14 days as a typhoon. That is the second longest typhoon ever on record time now, the second longest typhoon ever in the water here across parts of the West Bank. That is a long time to be in the water and then finally hit something so devastatingly there. We're still a little but under where we should be this year for typhoons, but still a long season to go. Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: Well, as you put it, Noru is a damage maker with a very long lifespan.</s>MYERS: Yes.</s>LU STOUT: It has also been called a slow-moving typhoon which may not sounds threatening, but what does that mean in terms of the real danger it poses?</s>MYERS: That means still at this hour. Even though it's over land, it is not moving away from land and so we are still going to see the potential for the heavy rain to pile up, especially on these eastern slopes, from Tokyo and all the way up towards Sendai, where the disaster here was with the tsunami. Right here. All of that water. Do you remember the pictures when we were showing you in the tsunami area, to the west of where the tsunami hit, it was very mountainous. It goes up very, very quickly into probably a couple thousand meters. All of a sudden, that water has to come back down and it continues to rain. The slower it goes, the more rain can pile up. The quicker it gets out of here, the more the rain would obviously stop very quickly, but this is not moving very quick.</s>LU STOUT: All right. Chad Myers reporting. As always, thank you. Take care.</s>MYERS: You're welcome.</s>LU STOUT: Investigations are underway in Italy, Poland, and the U.K. after police say a British model was abducted in Milan amid nearly escaping auctioned off on the dark web by her kidnappers. Police say that the 20- year-old model was held in the bedroom of this cabin in the Italian alps for a week. A Polish man has been arrested. Let's get details on this case from CNN's contributor Barbie Nadeau. She joins us live from Rome. Barbie, this is just such a horrific crime. Italian police are investigating how this happened. What have you learned?</s>BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, right now the Italian investigators are really focused on whether or not the testimony or the interrogation with this suspect is true or not. He's claiming all sorts of things that he made 15 million Euro selling women just like this young model who was abducted on the dark web. He's made claims that this is how he makes his living, and what the prosecutors and the detectives working on the case right now want to know if that's the truth or if that was just something he made up. He did have accomplices, we know that, and they're searching for other people. There was more than one person who initially abducted this woman, who drugged her, who took her to the cabin. And they haven't so far been able to find those accomplices. But they are just trying to see if his story rings true or not because if it does, that means there could be other women in vulnerable positions either being held in captivity or who have been pinpointed for this sort of sex slave auction that is apparently going on in the deep web. Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: Yes. This is what this case is exposing, isn't it, that even though we have this young British woman who thankfully released, there could be many others, other young women being held in captivity or already sold.</s>NADEAU: That's absolutely right and that is the priority number one. Thankfully as you said this young woman has been released. She's home in the U.K. She is safe. But, are there others out there? And the fact that this market exists for sex slave, it is disturbing and that is not something being contended necessarily. A lot of the investigators know about this. It's just it's so difficult any of these sites that are in that</s>LU STOUT: Barbie Nadeau live in Rome for us. We thank you for that update. The dark web is essentially a part of the web that is not accessible to regular users using normal software. It's made of websites that hide where their servers are located. And to access these sites, you need special software like Tor. Tor hides web traffic by encrypting it and then bouncing around many different, randomly chosen computers that are also running Tor. This makes it impossible to track the origin or destination of any information sent over the dark web. That means that dark web users can also hide their identity as well as their physical location. That sense of anonymity is extremely attractive to privacy seekers, whistle blowers, and also criminals. While some sites on the dark web are password protected, many are not, so people can browse them if they have the right software and know where to look. Voters in the east African nation of Kenya will go to the polls on Tuesday to elect their next president, but this time, their choice may be tougher than in the past. They are being bombarded by fake news. New stories started to look like legitimate news reports. CNN's Farai Sevenzo shows us how the technique is being used in Kenya including fake reports made to look like CNN.</s>FARAI SEVENZO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Look at this slickly produced news bulletin. At first glance, it appears to be a CNN report, but it's not. It is fake. The bogus report cuts from legitimate CNN Philippines broadcast.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): News just in from Kenya.</s>SEVENZO (voice-over): To a fake voice server segment that falsely claims that one candidate is leading over the other in a recent poll.</s>SEVENZO: And as elections get closer, fake news is increasingly being used as a campaign tool, targeting news organizations and NGOs. It's a sinister and, frankly, desperate attempt to sway to voters.</s>SEVENZO (voice-over): The BBC's "Focus on Africa" program was also manipulated last week, edited to include the same false poll as the one in the CNN fake report. The problem is so bad, that Facebook has put out ads in national newspapers and on its site with tips on how to spot false news. Both CNN and the BBC called out the reports as fake, warning viewers to be careful. But it's a worrying trend.</s>ALPHONCE SHIUNDU, KENYA EDITOR, AFRICA CHECK: This is a video that has come to you on your mobile phone WhatsApp or on Telegram. So you have no option but to watch it. So you cannot go back to CNN to try and verify that video. So you will have to depend on fact-checkers or depend on CNN to put out a statement or the BBC to say, no, that's not us.</s>SEVENZO (voice-over): And it's not just news organizations being targeted. This doctored "Transparent International" report appeared on social media, accusing an opposition politician of corruption. The Duth ambassador to Kenya called them out as fake. And "Transparency Kenya" issues this statement, denouncing the use of their name and logo to, quote, spread propaganda for seemingly political mileage. It's sometimes not easy to spot fakes, especially when they're distributed on social media groups that aren't easily traceable. Alphonce tells us voters must be vigilant.</s>SHIUNDU: Always try to verify and look. If you see anything online, if you see anything as a text message on your Facebook account, even a leaflet or a picture, try to verify, is this thing real?</s>SEVENZO (voice-over): And if you're trying to spot bogus CNN news reports, remember, if it's not on our official channels, web site or social platforms, it may well be fake. Farai Sevenzo, CNN, Nairobi.</s>LU STOUT: Fake news of course also played last year's U.S. presidential campaign. Coming up, we'll take a look at the investigation to how it spread and who was behind it. Plus, President Donald Trump is marking a milestone. Now, he is spending 200th day in office.