[FoxNews] The new details are based on interviews with federal, state and local government entities, as well as private companies
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc, released his official 13-page preliminary findings of his office's investigation into the assassination attempt of former President Trump.
Trump survived the assassination attempt on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where alleged gunman Thomas Mathew Crooks, 20, opened fire, killing one spectator and injuring several others, including Trump, who suffered injuries to his ear.
Shortly following the incident, Johnson's office began contacting federal, state and local government entities, as well as private companies, to solicit information about the security failures at the rally, the senator's office said. The preliminary findings are based on the initial information Johnson's office obtained after the shooting.
The senator's office said he is sharing this information with the public to be transparent.
The preliminary findings determined that the Secret Service did not attend a security briefing given to local SWAT and sniper teams on the morning of July 13, that local law enforcement said communications were siloed and they were not in frequent radio contact directly with the Secret Service, that local law enforcement notified command about Crooks before the shooting and received confirmation that the Secret Service was aware of the notification and that the Secret Service was seen on the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building with local law enforcement following the shooting.
The investigation also found that photos of the shooter were sent to the ATF for facial recognition and that local law enforcement said the Secret Service was initially not planning on sending snipers to the rally.
Johnson's office also provided a timeline of the events on July 13:
9 a.m. — Butler County Emergency Services held a briefing for the local SWAT and Sniper units from Butler County, Beaver County, and Washington County providing security for Trump's rally. The briefing outlined the security perimeter for the event and areas of responsibility for each local unit as well as staging locations, including sniper locations, for each local unit and the Secret Service.
Attendees of the briefing said no Secret Service or other federal law enforcement were present for the briefing and that the Secret Service initially did not plan to provide sniper units before changing plans for unclear reasons. It is unknown why the Secret Service did not attend the briefing.
9:27 a.m. — Crooks enters a Home Depot in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Video footage of the store reportedly shows him entering alone.
9:41 a.m. — Crooks purchases a 5.5 FT Aluminum Dual Platform ladder.
9:42 a.m. — Crooks exits the Home Depot. Video footage of the parking lot reportedly shows him leaving in a vehicle, although the footage could not identify the make and model of the vehicle.
10:30 a.m. — Two local law enforcement snipers are in position on the second floor inside the AGR building.
5:10 p.m. — Crooks is first seen by one sniper (AGR sniper 1) at the AGR building.
5:14 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 takes pictures of Crooks.
5:28 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 takes a picture of a bicycle and what appears to be two bags near the AGR building, although it is unclear what happened to the bicycle and bags after the day of the shooting.
5:32 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 observes Crooks looking at his phone and using a rangefinder.
5:38 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 messages the "Sniper Group" about Crooks.
5:40 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 is instructed to "call into command" about Crooks.
5:41 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 calls into command and offers a description of Crooks and the rangefinder, and says Crooks was "lurking around [the] AGR building."
5:49 p.m. — Photos of Crooks were sent to Butler County Emergency Services Command.
5:55 p.m. — Butler County Emergency Services confirms the photos were received.
5:59 p.m. — Butler County Emergency Services asks which direction Crooks is moving. AGR sniper 1 is initially unsure which direction Crooks is moving.
6:05 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 later says Crooks has a backpack and is moving northeast "in the direction of Sheetz."
6:06 p.m. to 6:12 p.m. — AGR sniper 1 moves to the ground floor of the building to meet local law enforcement patrol to notify them of Crooks' presence.
Roughly 6:11 p.m. — Crooks start to open fire, and the Secret Service then returns fire and kills Crooks.
6:23 p.m. — Beaver County SWAT operators step onto the roof where Crooks was stationed and confirm he is dead. Local law enforcement from another county and at least one Secret Service agent also walked onto the roof.
6:46 p.m. — Crooks is patted down when law enforcement finds a transmitter device, Crooks' phone and the rangefinder in his pockets.
7:45p.m. to 7:46 p.m. — As requested by the Allegheny Bomb Squad, local law enforcement sent pictures of Crooks and the items to an ATF agent. The ATF is reportedly using the pictures of Crooks to run facial recognition.
[Red State] As if the mess on our nation's borders wasn't bad enough already, we learn now that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against a federal contractor, Southwest Key Programs, alleging pervasive sexual abuse on the part of the contractor's employees against illegal immigrants - including children.
Migrant children held in the United States after crossing the border illegally were subject to “pervasive” sexual abuse at the hands of federal contractors, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
The department filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, which operates homes for underage illegal immigrants awaiting placement with “sponsors” in the United States. Federal law bars minors who cross the border illegally from being returned to their home country. Southwest Key holds more than 6,000 children in 29 shelters staffed by “youth care workers.”
The lawsuit says Southwest Key records show staff members repeatedly covered for each other as they preyed on children.
The details that have been released are nothing short of shocking.
Skipping down:
From 2015 through at least the end of 2023, multiple employees at Southwest Key Programs, the country’s largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied children, subjected unaccompanied children in their care to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct,” the lawsuit said.
That's only about ten years. These things at DOJ take time.
48 Hour Rule in effect, responding to this story from yesterday.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Billionaire Bill Ackman has tweeted a wild claim on X about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, which he then deleted less than 10 minutes later.
The investor shared a video arguing the narrative of Thomas Matthew Crooks being a 'lone gunman' is '100 percent provably false.'
The clip was created by Dr Chris Martenson,
…PhD and research in neurotoxicology, then an MBA in finance, followed by a decade in corporate finance and strategic consulting before reorienting his life to resilience living off the land. His claim to fame is his video seminar, “The Crash Course”…
an economist who suggests the shooting was an inside job by the so-called 'Deep State'.
Martenson analyzed audio from the rally to suggest that a second shooter was operating alongside Crooks to assassinate Trump. The second shooter, he claims, was around 100ft away from Crooks' rooftop location.
He presented audio clips which he claims show that in addition to the shots fired by Crooks and that fired by the sniper who killed Crooks, there were other shots with a distinct audio signature, indicating a third shooter.
Ackman retweeted the clip, saying it 'makes a highly credible case that there were at least two shooters/assassins who attempted to kill' Donald Trump.
The billionaire hedged his wild theory with the comment: 'I have no expertise in this field. None. I welcome further analysis and rebuttal.'
He removed the post and moments later, he quickly shared another that included 'an extremely impressive rebuttal to the multiple shooter theory.'
Martenson, who created the video which Ackman reposted, holds a PhD and defended his theory of a second shooter on X by saying: 'I am a gun nerd.
'I reload, have spent many hours at the range, gotten lots of gun training, and shot well over 250,000 rounds from pistols and many different caliber rifles over the course of the past 40 years. And I have common sense, which is the key.'
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement have not made any mention of a second shooter since the assassination attempt on Saturday, July 13.
But a CNN article published on July 15 reported there were as many as three weapons fired at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
My opinion after watching it is that I probably should watch it again, if I found the time.
Martenson points out that it's only a preliminary analysis, especially when it comes to the second group of five or six shots, which he suspects involved two separate weapons - he says those would need expert analysis.
Much of his work involves examining the precise delays between the supersonic shocks and the shot reports.
One thing that I would like to know is how many shots the USSS fired. I think Mortenson is saying "one", at the end.
If that's in fact the case, then it does appear there's a possibility there were two shooters involved.
[Remix] In a strategy seen in many Western countries, Ireland’s government is looking to move more and more migrants into the countryside, with one of the latest schemes focusing on shifting 280 asylum seekers to Dundrum, a village in Tipperary County with a population of only 165.
The move has sparked outrage from the local community, which is embroiled in controversy over the new refugee center. If all migrants are relocated as planned, their population would be 70 percent higher than the local population.
The government plans to convert the Dundrum House hotel into an accommodation complex that will house 280 migrants, with similar plans sparking widespread protests and riots in the Dublin suburb of Coolock just yesterday, with locals there setting fire to construction equipment and battling with police.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Shocking surveillance footage shows the moment a 17-year-old boy is killed after being run over by a bus while attempting to steal an elderly man's cellphone.
The teenager is seen walking up to the 71-year-old man while he was talking on the phone on a street corner in the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo last Friday.
The victim appeared as he was about to cross to the opposite sidewalk when the teen suddenly grabbed his cell phone and took off running.
A few seconds elapsed when the bus crossed the intersection and plowed into the unsuspecting perp before it immediately came to a full stop.
The teenager, whose name was not released, was rushed to Brasilândia Hospital, where he later died from the injuries he sustained.
[Daily Mail, where America gets it news] Chinese migrants seeking to illegally enter the U.S. are already establishing new routes into the country after a key transit hub was shut down. Messages between migrants suggest those fleeing Beijing are now flying to Bolivia before embarking on the arduous journey through South and Central America to the U.S. southern border. It comes after Ecuador withdrew visa waivers for Chinese nationals after it became flooded with travelers seeking passageway to the U.S.
The news that migrants are simply shifting their starting point is a blow to the Biden administration as it seeks to get a grip on unprecedented border crossings. I'm sure they're SOOOOOO disappointed
Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at think tank the Niskanen Center, told DailyMail.com that he didn't think the closing of the Ecuador loophole would bring down numbers in the 'long-term.'
A staggering 31,309 Chinese nationals have been intercepted at the U.S. southern border in the 2024 fiscal year to date. That is already almost 30 percent more than the 24,314 who crossed the border in 2023, with four months of the 2024 count still remaining. It marks an explosion in numbers since 2022, when only 2,176 Chinese nationals were apprehended.
The unprecedented wave of illegal migration has sparked national security fears. Officials have linked some arrivals to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Ecuador had turned into the destination of choice for flights from Beijing as it offered visa-free entry for Chinese nationals. More than 48,000 travelers entered Ecuador from China in 2023, but only half left the country legally, according to official data by the Ecuadorian government. The discrepancy was the highest among any nationalities, according to the Niskanen Center, suggesting a significant proportion were using the country as a transit hub for illegal migration.
In June, however, Ecuador temporarily suspended its visa waiver. The announcement was welcomed by the Department for Homeland Security, although it is unclear whether the move was the result of pressure from Washington.
It left Suriname as the only other mainland country in the Americas that offered visa-free entry to Chinese nationals. This led some commentators to suggest that the former Dutch colony would become the next hotspot for Chinese migrants, citing growing economic ties between the countries.
But messages on Telegram, an app where many Chinese migrants share their stories, indicate that some instead plan to start their journey from Bolivia, which offers Chinese citizens a tourist visa upon arrival, Al Jazeera reported.
The latest figures available from the Suriname government are only from 2021, when 944 Chinese nationals arrived in the country.
Guerra said he thought it unlikely the latter would become a new migrant hub as it was difficult to access and the route north would involve passing through volatile parts of Venezuela or northern Brazil. He did, however, predict a temporary dip in the number of Chinese migrants arriving in the U.S., as new networks took time to establish themselves.
Guerra also pointed to the deportation of 116 Chinese migrants from the U.S. earlier this month, the first action of its kind in five years, as a potential deterrence. But he said the political and economic factors behind the migrations would remain the same and numbers would likely push up again after alternative routes were set up.
[GEO.TV] A Milan court has ordered journalist Giulia Cortese to pay Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni damages of €5,000 (approximately $5,400) for mocking her height in a social media post. Things that matter
Seriously? I need to tell Mr. Wife and the trailing daughters about this — I could make bank.
The incident, which occurred in October 2021, was classified as "body shaming" by the court. In addition to the damages, Cortese received a suspended fine of €1,200 ($1,300) for her jibe on Twitter, now named X.
Cortese responded to the verdict on X, writing, "Italia’s government has a serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent." The legal battle between Meloni and Cortese began three years ago when the two women clashed on social media.
At that time, Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italia party was in opposition. Meloni initiated legal action after Cortese published a mocked-up photo of her with an image of the late fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... leader Benito Mussolini ...former dictator of Italia. He perfected the idea of the corporate state and was all the vogue in intellectual circles until he lined up with Adolf in the Second World War. He wanted Italians to be figli de la lupa, and like the sons of wolves they turned on him when they finally got the chance. He ended his days dangling by his heels in a public square next to his mistress... in the background.
Cortese escalated the situation with further tweets, including one stating, "you don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall. I can’t even see you."
Media sources list Meloni’s height as between 1.58 meters (5 feet 2 inches) and 1.63 meters (5 feet 4 inches). Cortese has the option to appeal the sentence, and Meloni’s lawyer indicated that any damages awarded would be donated to charity.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2024 00:00 ||
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#1
This idiot court that would try us
For states of mind -- "hatred" or "bias --
Belongs in Karachi
Condemning Fallaci
For calling Khomeini too pious.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Gevorg Mirzayan
The list of necessary actions included the creation of a European Defense Union.
[REGNUM] To thunderous and prolonged applause, MEPs on July 18 approved the current head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for a new term. And with her, her action plan – a list of points that, in Ms. von der Leyen’s opinion, can make Europe great again. Continued on Page 49
[GEO.TV] The number of polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set. Currently the disease is only found in Pakistain and Afghanistain... virus cases in Pakistain has mounted to nine with the fresh one reported in Balochistan’s Zhob district.
The new poliovirus case was confirmed on Saturday in a one and a half years old child hailing from Zhob’s Union Council 2 in Hassanzai (urban) area.
Coordinator to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad said nine children had been affected of poliovirus in the country this year.
Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio Ayesha Raza Farooq advised people to get their children administered anti-polio doses. She said the most effective way to prevent the disease was to get multiple polio immunisation doses.
Meanwhile,
...back at the dirigible, Jack stuck the cigar in his mouth, stepped onto the gantry, and asked Got a light, Mac?
Von Schtinken stopped short, lowering the dagger and trying to control his features.
If you light that thing, Herr Armschtröng, he pointed out, his voice tense, we all die!... Coordinator for the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication Muhammad Anwar Ul Haq said the government had carried out six anti-poliovirus drives this year.
"Various strategies are being adopted to protect children from the disease," he said.
Pakistain is among a couple of remaining polio-endemic countries in the world.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by poliovirus, mainly affecting children under the age of five years, who are malnourished and have weak immunity because of being under-vaccinated or not vaccinated for polio and other childhood diseases.
The illness invades the nervous system and causes paralysis or even death. While there is no cure for polio, vaccination is the most effective way to protect children from this crippling disease.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2024 00:00 ||
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[11152 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Various strategies are being adopted
"By Allah, Mohammed, Malvolio
Hath strategems -- lots! -- against polio,
And each one a dictum --
Some pretty damned strict! --
From your al-Koran." [lovely first folio]
#1
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Sunday reported the infected workers were killing or removing selected birds to control the potential spread of the bird flu.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/22/2024 15:56 Comments ||
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#2
I suspect if the CDC tried to go door to door here in Texas to explain anything, half would get shot in the first hour.
[cgmf, from WaPo, hat tip Dallas Morning News] Southern California Edison, one of the country’s largest power companies, has just announced a deal to buy electricity from a seven-year-old start-up called Fervo Energy. Like other energy companies, Fervo will use hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to tap an energy source trapped deep underground.
But instead of oil and gas, Fervo is hunting heat, a more abundant resource that neither pollutes the air nor contributes to global warming. The heat will fuel a new type of power plant: an enhanced geothermal plant.
Coal power plants, for example, burn coal to boil water and pump steam through the turbine. They make reliable electricity, but they also emit pollution and greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
In contrast, conventional geothermal power plants capture steam from natural underground hot springs in places such as Iceland or the Geysers in Northern California. These require a rare combination of geologic conditions — heat, underground water and porous rock.
Enhanced geothermal plants use technology pioneered by oil and gas drillers to reproduce the conditions of a conventional geothermal well. This makes it possible to extract heat in many more places. Doesn't fracking cause earth tremors? Even in California?
When completed in 2028, the new enhanced geothermal plant will add 400 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to the power grid (Southern California Edison has agreed to buy 320 megawatts; the rest will go to smaller power providers.)That is less than one-fifth of the generating capacity of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which by itself provides nearly a tenth of California’s electricity.
Fracking for heat releases no greenhouse gases. But to meaningfully contribute to emissions cuts, enhanced geothermal will need to expand quickly. Developers say they are hamstrung by a needlessly long permitting process, which takes years to complete. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress have introduced bipartisan bills that would make it as easy to drill for heat as for oil and gas.
Enhanced geothermal’s biggest constraint is how much heat can be found underground. The hottest rock is out West, according to a recent government assessment, but cooler rock formations could fuel power plants in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and at least a dozen other states. Map showing nationwide possible sites included at link.
To extract enough heat in places with cooler rock, geothermal developers must drill 15,000 feet or deeper, which is more expensive. Faster drilling helped the oil and gas industry dig deeper to squeeze more profits out of shale rock, and analysts expect geothermal drilling speed to similarly improve.
Even in the West, where the rock is known to be hot, a government-funded demonstration project helped pave the way for Fervo’s wells. That project, known as FORGE, began in 2015 and did not generate power until 2022.
"I do not believe that any of the advances that have happened right now, with commercial liftoff of this technology, would have happened without federal dollars," said Lauren Boyd, the director of the Energy Department’s Geothermal Technologies Office, who managed the FORGE project.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/22/2024 10:18 ||
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[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[GEO.TV] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is all set to dismantle the International Space Station (ISS), replacing it with SpaceX's Axiom.
The Elon Musk-led company is playing a major part in bringing down the ISS as it will deliver the coup de grace with its US Deorbit Vehicle expectedly in 2030.
This will happen after the departure of the astronauts who will remain at the ISS till the station's orbit decays.
Following this, the space station will transition from its current orbit, approximately 250 miles above Earth, to a lower orbit of around 136 miles in its last 12 to 18 months.
SpaceX has received an $843 million contract from Nasa to look after the ISS’s controlled descent.
The space agency will use a special spacecraft based on their Dragon model and will ensure that the ISS's debris lands in the ocean rather than in populated areas.
On the contrary, Axiom Space is also an integral part of the plan to bring down the ISS.
It will start in 2026 and will launch four new parts to attach to the ISS. Prior to the end of the ISS, Axiom will be turned into a new private space station.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/22/2024 00:00 ||
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[11134 views]
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#1
Using the old Russian space station as a model... There has got to be a lot of awful molds growing in all sorts of uncleanable niches all over ISS. It likely will not be medically safe past 2030.
[FoxNews] The centers allegedly serve as fronts for a larger transnational scam operation
Authorities in the Philippines have uncovered secret hospitals that offer plastic surgery for fugitives and scammers seeking to evade arrest, according to reports.
"You can create an entirely new person out of those," said Winston John Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission.
Police raided one such hospital in the southern suburbs of Manila, leading to the discovery of a second hospital. Authorities will shut down both hospitals "in the coming weeks," the BBC reported.
An anonymous tip told the authorities that an unlicensed hospital was operating in Pasay, located just five miles south of the capital Manila. An intelligence officer confirmed to the commission that the hospital existed, though it was initially framed as a "stand-alone" operation.
Authorities arrested two Vietnamese doctors, one Chinese doctor, one Chinese pharmacist and a Vietnamese nurse, finding that none of them possessed a license to practice medicine in the country.
The hospitals expand the country’s increasingly distressing "Philippines offshore gaming operator" (POGO), which officials have alleged has ties to China. POGO presents itself as an online casino, but has actually served as a front for a "scam center" with hundreds of workers, including Chinese nationals.
The POGO centers have proven a high-profile concern for the Philippines, which worries worry about widespread criminal activity. The mayor of Bamban in May found herself in the middle of a scandal when the Bureau of Immigration opened an investigation into whether she had constructed her identity and personal history to run for office.
Officials alleged that Mayor Alice Guo could in fact be a Chinese national who helped facilitate the establishment of the POGO scam center in Bamban, which facilitated "love scams" where scam workers adopted fake identities to establish romantic relationships online and extort money from a victim.
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.
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
.jpg "polio")
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set. Currently the disease is only found in Pakistain and Afghanistain...
Enhanced geothermal plants use technology pioneered by oil and gas drillers to reproduce the conditions of a conventional geothermal well. This makes it possible to extract heat in many more places.
[GEO.TV] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is all set to dismantle the International Space Station (ISS), replacing it with SpaceX's Axiom. 
