World News News - Page 4

The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently appeared in front of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense to testify on next year's defense budget.

Republican Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky asked Austin about a hypothetical scenario where Russia launched an attack against a NATO country, Poland, or any other surrounding country. Austin replied clearly that Russia committing an attack against any country that is a member of NATO would be a "game changer," but not something that he believes Putin and his calculus wants to carry out.

The Secretary of Defense explained that together NATO forces amass 1.9 million and include the most advanced aircrafts, ships, weapons, and more. Furthermore, Austin said that if Putin engaged with a NATO member, tensions in the overall situation would increase drastically and likely convert into "another type of competition that no one wants to see."

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to announce that Russia is attempting to bring down Starlink satellites providing internet connection over Ukraine.

The news of Russia launching a cyberwar against Starlink satellites comes with little surprise as it follows Musk revealing a letter written by Russia's space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin that said Musk would be "held accountable like an adult" for his role in "supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment". Musk revealed that letter and shortly after posted another tweet that stated, "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya."

Reports indicate that Russia was behind a large-scale cyberattack that was carried out in later February following the nation's invasion of Ukraine. Russian hackers targeted Viasat's network and caused tens of thousands of modems across the US, UK, Canada, Estonia, and the European Union to be switched offline. Notably, many of the affected modems had to be sent back to the factory to be replaced.

A flight has been grounded right before taking off following several passengers receiving disturbing images sent to them via Apple's AirDrop.

A photo from a passenger observing security checks.

The flight that was grounded on Tuesday was a plane scheduled to take off from Tel Aviv to Instanbul, and as the plane was preparing for take off several passengers received AirDrop requests. Some passengers accepted the requests and were shocked at the images they received as they were of airline disasters such as the 2009 Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam and the 2013 disaster of the Asiana Airlines flight in San Francisco.

Switzerland has been accused of hiding Russian assets by an influential United States government commission.

The Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe states on its website that its mission is to promote human rights, military security, and economic cooperation in 57 countries it operates in across Europe, Eurasia, and North America. The Commission stated that "After looting Russia, Putin and his oligarchs use Swiss secrecy laws to hide and protect the proceeds of their crimes" and that Switzerland has been a very popular and well-known place to "stash plunder".

Mark Pieth, a Swiss anti-corruption expert, testified in front of the Commission on Thursday last week and said that Swiss lawyers use legal loopholes to hide assets. Furthermore, Pieth said Swiss lawyers are creating money laundering structures that aren't covered by anti-money laundering legislation, which, in turn, has impeded banks and authorities from seizing assets. Pieth argues that these legal loopholes are a "real danger for the success of the sanctions regime against Russia".

Elon Musk has picked up quite a bit of heat lately following his purchase of Twitter and leaked text messages between him and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Despite the controversy and contentious arguments that can be made with the purchase of Twitter, Musk has picked up an even bigger unreasonable problem. Posting to his personal Twitter account, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO revealed a message that was sent to Russian media outlets from Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin that condemns Musk for sending Starlink satellites over Ukraine.

The short message states that based on Russian information, the delivery of Starlink satellites was carried out by the Pentagon. As a result, Elon Musk is "involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment. And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult - no matter how much you'll play the fool." Musk wrote in the caption, "The word "Nazi" doesn't mean what he seems to think it does."

Russia has claimed that Ukraine's military is using black magic to stop president Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Russian state media outlets have reported that Ukraine's Armed Forces throughout the eastern Donbas region are practicing black magic. Reports from the media outlets feature photographs by the Russian military of "signs" of black magic used inside Ukrainian military headquarters. The outlets described one of the signs as a "satanic seal" that was found on the walls.

Cult researcher Ekaterina Dyce, who was quoted by Russian state media, said, "What it means is difficult to say for sure, in it you can see both the inverted sign of anarchy and part of the sign "CC", rune zig, it is clearly visible in the far left sector of the circle, and the Hebrew letter "zayin" written in German, meaning sword or weapon".

The tornado tore across Wichita, Kansas, destroying buildings in the city of Andover on April 29th, 2022.

Meteorologist Reed Timmer captured footage of the tornado with his drone as it tore through Andover. The tornado was given a preliminary EF-3 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF Scale), which rates tornadoes from 0 to 5, with a rating of 3 corresponding to a gust of wind with a speed of 136-165 mph (218-265 kph) measured over 3 seconds.

Chad Russell, the city's fire chief said during a news conference that over 950 buildings were in the tornadoes path. Over 20,000 homes and businesses were left without power in the immediate aftermath. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Storm Prediction Center recorded 15 tornadoes that day, of which 14 were in Kansas or Nebraska.

The heated words come from Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who warned that nuclear war is a possibility that all should take very seriously.

In a recent interview with Russian state TV, Lavrov claimed that NATO is going to war with Russia via proxy and is arming that proxy, referencing the multi-billion-dollar weapons shipments being sent to Ukraine from various countries. The top diplomat also went on to explain that Russia doesn't want to turn to nuclear war and that he doesn't want the risk of it to be "artificially inflated". However, Lavrov did warn that it was "serious," "real," and "cannot be underestimated."

In response to these remarks by Lavrov, his Ukrainian counterpart claimed that Russia is losing its last hopes in scaring off the world from supporting Ukraine. Notably, Lavrov went on to say that the tensions between the US and Russia are currently worse than the tensions during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. As Russia is seemingly losing at its invasion of Ukraine, many officials have turned a wary eye towards Putin, who may not think he has many other options than nuclear war in the face of defeat.

The US Naval Institute (USNI) learned that Russia was using dolphins to protect its navy in the Black Sea. The reports were confirmed by satellite images.

New satellite images from Maxar Technologies reveal what is being reported as dolphin pens located at the entrance of a key port in the Black Sea. According to the USNI website, there are two dolphin pens that were moved to the harbor in February and contain trained dolphins that are most likely there to prevent any Ukrainian divers from entering the harbor to destroy any ships.

The images were analyzed by H I Sutton, who specialized in marine mammal pens and wrote for the USNI. Sutton said that dolphins were "the most obvious type of mammal" that Russia would be using to protect its navy fleet. Sutton went on to say that Russia has previously used dolphins in war and recounted that the Kremlin deployed them in Syria in 2018 to counter enemy divers, gather objects from the seabed, and conduct military intelligence operations.

One of the most legendary stories to come out of the Ukraine and Russia conflict is the notorious tale of the "Ghost of Kyiv".

The tale began circling the internet in the early weeks of Russia's attempt at invading Ukraine's capital of Kyiv and involved a Ukrainian fighter pilot nicknamed the "Ghost of Kyiv" as his identity was hidden. This fighter pilot was rumored to have taken out as many as 40 Russian aircraft and was later shot down on March 13, according to the Times of London. Last week many publications reported the fighter pilot's name was 29-year-old Major Stepan Tarabalka.

Now, Ukraine's Air Force Command has said while Tarabalka is a real war hero that was killed in battle, he wasn't the "Ghost of Kyiv" as the story was made-up. Taking to Facebook and Twitter, Ukraine's Air Force Command states that the "Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!" and "embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots of the Tactical Aviation Brigade who are successfully defending #Kyiv and the region."