[Breitbart] A 55-year-old Frenchman suspected of commissioning online pedophile crimes in Colombia has been arrested and charged in France, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
The suspect was charged this week with complicity in human trafficking involving minors under the age of 15 who had been raped, rape and sexual assault of minors including incestuous acts, as well as acquisition, possession and consultation of pornographic images of minors. He was remanded in custody.
The prosecutor’s office said it worked with Colombian authorities and that the operation led to the simultaneous arrests of the suspect, local perpetrators and middlemen, the so-called money runners. Several victims were also identified and sheltered.
Investigations revealed that the suspect had transferred more than 30,000 euros ($35,000) to several people in Colombia in exchange for images of young children being sexually abused, the prosecutor’s office said. Weapons were also found at the individual´s home.
Online pedophile crime, also known as livestreaming, involves commissioning sexual assaults and rapes of minors in other countries from one´s own country, generally in return for payment from the relatives of the victims, who are directly involved. The perpetrators then watch these videos live.
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Posted by: Skidmark ||
06/22/2025 00:00 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Eight people died as a result of a hot air balloon crash in southern Brazil. This was reported by the publication Correio Braziliense.
The tragedy occurred on the morning of June 21 in the state of Santa Catarina, in an area where hot air ballooning is popular. The balloon was flying over the city of Praia Grande and caught fire before crashing.
Footage posted online shows the basket engulfed in flames, after which the multi-colored shell burst and the remains of the balloon fell down.
There were 21 people on board, including the pilot. Rescue teams that arrived at the scene took 13 survivors to nearby hospitals. The causes of the incident are being determined.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, earlier in June in Turkey two pleasure balloons with tourists fell due to strong winds. One of the pilots died after falling out of the basket, more than 30 people were injured.
In early April, a hot air balloon crashed in the UAE with 12 tourists on board, including some from Russia. The balloon was supposed to fly for an hour at an altitude of 1,200 meters, but after 40 minutes of flight it suddenly tilted and fell down.
As a result, three people, including two Russians, were hospitalized. The organizers explained the incident by a sharp change in wind direction. As one of the injured Russians, who was traveling with her mother, said, many of the seat belts could not withstand the pressure during the hard landing and burst.
[Task & Purpose via American Liberty] The Army is swearing in top tech executives from Meta, OpenAI and Palantir as senior officers to be part-time advisors.
By Patty Nieberg Task & Purpose
Four senior executives of tech giants like Meta and Palantir are being sworn into the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers at the unusually high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a new program to recruit private-sector experts to speed up tech adoption.
The Army calls the program to recruit Silicon Valley executives Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps. One of the executives, Andrew Bosworth of Meta (formerly Facebook) posted on X that the "201" monicker was a nod to an HTTP coding command, in which a "201" response indicates the creation of a new programming resource.
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[BBC] A Chinese naval drill near Japan has sparked concern from Tokyo, which in recent days lodged a protest with Beijing and made the rare decision to publicly disclose Chinese military movements.
In the last few weeks China's two aircraft carriers, the Shandong and the Liaoning, have been conducting simultaneous drills in the Pacific, in an unprecedented move.
Chinese fighter jets have done hundreds of landings and take-offs from the carriers. A few came close to Japanese surveillance planes, prompting Tokyo to convey its "serious concerns" to Beijing.
China has said its activities are consistent with international law and accused Japan of conducting "dangerous moves".
On Tuesday, the Japanese defence ministry released a map tracing the Chinese aircraft carriers' daily positions since 25 May. Japan does not usually disclose details of foreign militaries' movements.
It shows both carriers coming close to Japanese islands, and at times sailing through Japan's exclusive economic zone.
The exclusive economic zone is an area beyond a country's territorial waters where that country has exclusive rights to explore and exploit marine resources, but other countries are allowed freedom of navigation through it.
The map also shows the Liaoning sailing past the "second island chain", a line of defence outlined in US foreign policy doctrine that connects Japan to Guam. This makes it the first Chinese aircraft carrier to do so , according to Japanese news outlets.
Japan's defence ministry also said they had observed more than 500 landings and take-offs of Chinese fighter jets and helicopters during the drills.
On 7 June, a Chinese fighter jet took off from the Shandong and followed a Japanese surveillance aircraft for about 40 minutes, according to Tokyo. The next day, a Chinese fighter jet flew close to a Japanese plane for twice that duration, and crossed in front of it.
Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said last week that they relayed to Beijing their concern about these "abnormal approaches" which could have caused accidental collisions.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that their "activities in relevant waters and air space are consistent with international law and international practices", and that the two countries were communicating through existing channels.
"Let me point out that it is the close-in reconnaissance of Japan's vessels and airplanes on China's normal military activities that has caused maritime and air security risks. China urges Japan to stop those dangerous moves," he said.
As its two carriers continue to sail through the Pacific, China's military gave an update on Tuesday on its newest carrier, the Fujian. It said sea trials were on track and the carrier is expected to enter service later this year.
The Fujian will be their first carrier that will employ electromagnetic catapults to launch their planes - a technology that currently only American aircraft carriers possess.
The technology allows a carrier to launch a wider range of aircraft, and launch fighter jets much faster.
China's fighter jets will also be able to take off with their full fuel and weapon loads from the Fujian, noted a Global Times report, and the carrier would enable a "significantly higher" number of sorties compared to its predecessors.
This month's drill follows February's much-scrutinised naval exercise in the Tasman Sea that prompted concern from Australia and New Zealand.
Canberra and Wellington had complained Beijing had given insufficient notice of the drill, and some commercial planes had to be diverted last minute.
Australia's defence minister Richard Marles later acknowledged that the naval exercise was in accordance with international law, while at the same time urging China to be more transparent about the reasons for what he called an "extraordinary military build-up".
China's latest moves come as the US promises to maintain its presence in the Indo-Pacific while balancing other commitments.
Last month US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasised the US's solidarity with the region, saying the US would not be pushed out of Asia nor allow its allies to be intimidated. China in response accused the US of being the "biggest troublemaker" in Asia.
But on Monday the US aircraft carrier USS Nimitz left the South China Sea. Multiple outlets have reported it is moving to the Middle East, as the war between Israel and Iran deepens and the US contemplates entering the conflict.
Kazuto Suzuki, a professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, said China's latest naval exercise was Beijing "testing the waters" of the US-Japan military alliance at a moment when the US is shifting its attention to the Middle East.
"With US assets concentrating in the Middle East, China sees this as an opportunity to escalate... so it's a sort of cunning way for China to raise the level of attention," he said.
This, he added, was "not an exponential, but step-by-step, gradual escalation" as it "seeks any holes in Japan's coastal and maritime defence... they are testing the patience of Japan."
[American Liberty] The expectation that Dan Bongino, in merely ninety days as Deputy Director of the FBI, should have single-handedly purged the bureaucratic deep state, emptied the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and frogmarched every rogue operative out of Quantico is a fantasy born not of experience, but of frustration. Such expectations ignore the reality of what it means to inherit a bureaucracy as culturally calcified as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is no minor irony that those demanding immediate revolutionary results tend to misunderstand the very enemy they rightly oppose: an entrenched, covert, self-perpetuating administrative class.
To those critics, I offer a simple analogy. If you inherited a crumbling ship rotted from hull to helm, with crew members secretly sabotaging your efforts, would you begin by blowing up the vessel? Or would you inspect the engine room, replace the worst offenders, begin repairs, and chart a new course? Bongino has chosen the latter, and wisely so. For the problem with our federal bureaucracy is not its absence of rules, but the abundance of bad habits, hidden networks, and quiet insubordination. Purging this culture requires method, not melodrama.
Let us consider what has, in fact, been accomplished. Operation Restoring Justice and Operation Soteria Shield together resulted in the apprehension of 449 child sex predators and the rescue of 224 children. If that number does not stagger the soul, I question whether one has one. In an agency demoralized and distracted by years of politicized investigations, this pivot to unambiguous justice speaks volumes. Children saved. Predators imprisoned. No leaks. No fanfare. Just results.
The FBI under Bongino has also arrested over 700 individuals involved in violent riots, many tied to organized extremist groups. While other officials wavered, prevaricated, or hid behind press releases, Bongino made clear that assaulting officers and destroying property are not expressions of political speech but crimes. The investigation into these actors continues, with warrants being served and suspects identified as I write. This is not leniency. It is law enforcement with its gloves off.
[American Liberty] Elon Musk is accusing White House personnel chief Sergio Gor of falsifying information on federal security clearance forms — an uncorroborated claim the tech mogul and former administration official describes as a "serious crime."
Gor, who leads personnel decisions for President Donald Trump’s administration, is now at the center of an escalating public feud with Musk — sparked by disputes over vetting practices tied to high-level federal appointments. Musk now claims that Gor misrepresented his birthplace on official vetting documents, a move he says violates federal law.
BACKGROUND ON THE FALLOUT
Musk previously accused Gor of undermining his recommendation of billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, blaming him for blocking what he called a qualified nomination.
That nomination battle appears to have been a catalyst for Musk’s public — and very messy — split with Trump earlier this month. According to Politico, the incident was a key flashpoint in the breakdown of their once-close relationship.
[TWZ] A recent U.S. military urban training exercise involved helicopters of the types used by a shadowy U.S. aviation unit.
Residents of the Tucson, Arizona area were startled earlier this week by a group of helicopters, including at least one Russian-made Mi-17 Hip, making very low nighttime flights as part of what turned out to be a U.S. military exercise. This kind of domestic urban training is not uncommon, especially for U.S. special operations forces, and often comes at least as a surprise to bystanders. However, this instance is notably out of the ordinary in that the helicopters look to belong to a particularly shadowy unit.
Imagery of the helicopters flying over Tucson first began to emerge on social media on the night of June 17-18. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department subsequently confirmed to local media that the helicopters, one of which was an Mi-17 with an overall gray paint scheme, were affiliated with the U.S. military. The grounds of an abandoned school were used as part of the training exercise.
“The only thing I knew was that there was a lot of noise, flash bangs, helicopters, personnel, lights, sirens, that type of stuff,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who was apparently unaware that this week’s exercise was set to occur, told KOLD News 13, a local CBS-affiliated television station yesterday. “From my understanding, we didn’t even train. We were just there to assist the DoD in their training efforts.”
Nanos apologized for the lack of communication with the public and pledged not to let a similar incident happen in the future.
“When he looked into it, he found out his SWAT team facilitated the location with the Department of Defense to use solely for their training weeks ago,” KOLD‘s report added. “I will not blame DoD. I will not blame South Tucson. This was on us. We could easily have said, use our location (elsewhere) at 10 p.m., I don’t understand what the thinking was there.”
Nanos apologized for the lack of communication with the public and pledged not to let a similar incident happen in the future.
TWZ has reached out to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. military for more information.
As it turns out, an additional video, seen below, was posted on Instagram on June 17 showing what looks to be the same gray Mi-17 flying together with a trio of Bell 407 helicopters just outside Tucson. There was also a sighting of an identical-looking Hip at Pinal Airpark northwest of Tucson earlier this month.
Whether or not it may have been a factor in the lack of advance notice to the public or to the sheriff about the exercise, the gray Mi-17 seen during the exercise is a dead ringer for Hips tied to a highly secretive U.S. Army element known as the Aviation Technology Office (ATO). Previously known as the Flight Concepts Division (FCD), ATO is headquartered at Felker Army Airfield, which is part of Fort Eustis in Virginia.
In addition to gray-painted examples, ATO-linked Mi-17s have also been seen painted tan and wearing a tan-and-brown camouflage scheme. These helicopters have a distinctive configuration that includes a nose-mounted weather radar, a sensor ball turret under the right side of the cockpit, supplemental armor panels around the front, a large particle separator in front of their engine intakes, and various antennas on the fuselage and tail boom.
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#4
Marana Arizona - Pinal Air Park. Formerly owned by Air America and sold to Evergreen International Airlines during the Carter Administration. Previously a solid "company" base where Tibetan guerillas were trained. That place has seen "many" exercises of various types across the years.
#5
@#3 - the outside looks the same. The inside - not so much. Ask me how I know!
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
06/22/2025 6:21 Comments ||
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#6
^Ok, how do you know?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/22/2025 7:22 Comments ||
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#7
I flew in a few of them in the early days (2001-2003). We used them to move the Ambassador around on occasion mostly between Kabul n Bagram. The avionics were state of the art for the time. Plus the birds I saw had an internal refueling capability. A crew chief told me it was the easiest engine to work on. Engine design was based on a farm tractor. Soviets wanted a simple design that that even a farmer could service/repair.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
06/22/2025 16:11 Comments ||
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#8
Seems to be quite a few flying out of the former NAS Green Cove Springs from what is now known as the Reynolds Airpark
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
