French police detained nine people this week in connection with an alleged fraud scheme at the Louvre, including two museum employees and several tour guides. The investigation began after the Louvre filed a complaint in December 2024 about two Chinese tour guides suspected of reusing entry tickets to bring groups into the museum. Authorities say surveillance and wiretaps revealed a system designed to slip past official checks. Some guides allegedly reused tickets, split large tour groups to avoid paying the required guide fees, and paid employees in cash to wave them through without scanning passes. Prosecutors estimate the scheme generated roughly $11.8 million and believe the network may have ushered as many as 20 tour groups a day into the museum over the past decade, with profits reportedly invested in property in France and Dubai.
True Spies
Atomic Spies
What would you risk to share the deadliest secret on Earth?
As World War II reshaped the global order, a quiet physicist named Klaus Fuchs found himself at the center of the atomic age. A German émigré and committed communist, Fuchs fled Nazi persecution and built a brilliant academic career in Britain, earning the trust of leading scientist Rudolf Peierls. By 1941, he was working on Tube Alloys, Britain’s top-secret atomic program, helping calculate how a few kilograms of uranium-235 could unleash destruction on an unprecedented scale.
But while contributing to the Allied bomb effort, Fuchs made a second choice. After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and with Winston Churchill publicly pledging support to Moscow, Fuchs began passing nuclear secrets to Soviet handlers. He met couriers in English villages, on New York side streets, and later near Los Alamos, where he joined the Manhattan Project. Through figures like Ursula Kuczynski and Harry Gold, he transmitted designs for uranium and plutonium bombs and later insights into the emerging hydrogen “super” bomb.
In 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic weapon, a device closely mirroring the Trinity test. Join Professor Frank Close in this week’s podcast selection, 'Atomic Spies', as he
traces how one scientist’s conviction reshaped the balance of power and unpacks the betrayal that helped Moscow build the bomb.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
Book your next team social.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
How do you steal millions from a bank without anyone noticing?
Over the weekend of 27–29 December 2025, thieves drilled a 40-centimeter-wide hole through a basement wall into the vault of a Sparkasse branch in Gelsenkirchen, looting more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes and escaping with millions of euros. Investigators believe the group entered through a neighboring multi-storey car park in the Buer district, possibly tampering with an emergency exit before moving past several security systems and breaching the strongroom from an adjacent archive room.
A fire alarm sounded shortly after 06:00 on 27 December, alerting firefighters and a private security firm. Whatever triggered it didn’t stop the operation. The break-in only came to light after a second alarm at 03:58 on 29 December, when responders returned to find a hole punched straight through the vault wall. Security footage shows masked men in the car park alongside two vehicles, a black Audi RS 6 and a white Mercedes Citan, both fitted with fake license plates.
Articles
Infiltrating Culture
What if your favorite movie, song, or painting doubled as a piece of statecraft?
For decades, intelligence agencies have shaped culture as quietly as they shape policy. The CIA secretly funded the 1954 animated version of Animal Farm, turning George Orwell’s allegory into Cold War messaging. Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko found their work promoted abroad through CIA-linked fronts such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, positioning avant-garde art as proof of Western freedom. In Hollywood, the Agency has offered access, advice, and even script input on productions ranging from Zero Dark Thirty to Argo, while the FBI has pushed for friendlier portrayals in films like Disconnect.
Britain played its part too. During World War I, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and more than 50 leading writers lent their pens to official propaganda efforts. During the Cold War, jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie toured as unofficial ambassadors, showcasing American culture across Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Even postage stamps and television pilots became battlegrounds for influence. Sometimes the propaganda worked. Sometimes it backfired. Discover more in this SPYSCAPE article.
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
Host your birthday at SPYSCAPE or SPYGAMES.
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
A study published Wednesday in Nature measured the proton’s radius at 0.84 femtometers, trillionths of a millimeter, the most precise measurement yet of the particle at the center of every atom.
For decades, physicists accepted a slightly larger figure: 0.88 femtometers and deduced it using two techniques. In one, they fired electrons at hydrogen atoms, which contain a single proton, and analyzed how the particles scattered. In the other, they measured the radiation required to shift those atoms between energy states.
Scientists later repeated the experiment using “muonic hydrogen,” replacing the electron with a muon, a particle about 200 times heavier. Because the muon orbits much closer to the nucleus, it allowed for a tighter probe and suggested the radius was about 4% smaller. This new study improves that measurement’s precision by a factor of 2.5 and confirms the smaller figure. The result also aligns with predictions from the Standard Model, the theory that describes all known particles and forces in the universe except gravity.
Try brain-teasing challenges at SPYSCAPE and pulse-racing fun in SPYGAMES.
.gif?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Newsletter_ads_17s_202511170654_ayxtp-ezgif.com-optimize%20(1).gif)
