[60 Minutes, if you can stand it] The Secret Service warns of a sharp rise in threat levels in recent years both from within the U.S. and from outside the country. The agency is also developing its ability to defend against drones.
"60 Minutes" is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen's Top 10.
[FoxNews] US Marshals Service identified Jerrell Jackson, 41, after he was shot by Guard members who returned fire in southeast DC
A repeat offender accused of shooting a National Guard member in Washington, D.C., as troops tried to break up a street fight had previously been convicted of assaulting police officers and illegally carrying a gun, federal officials said.
The U.S. Marshals Service on Monday identified Jerrell Jackson, 41, as the suspect in the shooting, which happened at about 11:15 p.m. Sunday in the 400 block of 8th Street SE.
Jackson was previously convicted of two counts of assault of a police officer and one count of carrying a pistol without a license and had three parole violations, the agency said.
Court records reviewed by Fox News Digital show Jackson has faced at least 13 prior criminal cases or arrests in the District dating back to 2004, involving allegations ranging from gun and drug offenses to assault, threats and unlawful entry. Some cases resulted in convictions, while others were dismissed or resolved through diversion.
"We are praying this National Guard member has a quick and speedy recovery," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "The suspect in the shooting has a lengthy rap sheet including two counts of assault of a police officer, illegally carrying a pistol, and multiple parole violations."
The National Guard member was shot in the leg and has since been released from the hospital.
A fight broke out between at least two men outside a local business before National Guard members stepped in. At least one of the men then opened fire.
National Guard members returned fire, hitting Jackson in the abdomen, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Jackson was taken to another hospital for treatment.
Investigators recovered a gun in an alley next to the shooting scene, along with at least 14 shell casings. No other suspects were at large, and no other National Guard members or civilians were injured.
The shooting comes as the Trump administration touts the work of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, which brings together more than 20 federal and local agencies along with the National Guard.
The task force has made more than 18,000 arrests, seized nearly 2,200 illegal guns and returned 28 missing children home, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Bis credited the task force with driving down violent crime in the nation's capital.
[Breitbart] Transgender actor, Hunter Schafer, star of Amazon MGM Studios’s upcoming sci-fi series Blade Runner 2099, is celebrating his “bottom” genital surgery and proclaiming he “loves it so much.”
The 27-year-old actor, who’s promoting his $160 million mini series, began his male-to-female transition in his teens and had so-called “gender affirming” surgery on his genitals, Shafer said in an interview with Elle.
“I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much,” the Euphoria star said.
Hunter went on to say how “badass” the surgery has been, and added, “Like I said, for a long time I’ve embraced the gender-expansive part of myself, and I really wanted to try to make that previous body work, because I thought there was something really cool and badass about it.”
After the invasive surgery, Hunter noted that the way to recovery and healing was to slow down, explaining that “I think my limit was 150 steps per day, which is nothing.”
Hunter waded into politics last year when his new U.S. passport listed him as a male and not a female thanks to President Donald Trump changing Joe Biden’s gender marker rules.
The actor noted that he never changed his birth certificate, so the passport officials must have cross checked his passport info against his birth records sparking the change from “female” to “male” on the new document. The change shocked him and made him fear for other trans people in the U.S. who would be similarly affected. "I knew I needed attention and adulation!"
“It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness, however it does make life a little harder,” Hunter said at the time. He added that the incident had him “thinking about other trans women who this might also be happening to, or other trans people, the list only gets longer as far as the intricacies that come along with the difficulty that this brings into real life shit.”
“And fuck this administration,” the actor spat out.
Schafer also rejects being called a “transsexual actress.” The Euphoria star only wants to be called an “actress” without any other appellation attached.
“I worked so hard to get to where I am, past these really hard points in my transition, and now I just want to be a girl and finally move
Posted by: Skidmark ||
10/20/2026 01:09 ||
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#1
What I thought, go take up for trannies tomorrow!
Posted by chris 2026-10-19 23:22|| 2026-10-19 23:22|
#8
Didn't know it existed and now that I know about the 'star', no longer care. I hope it crashes and burns so hard that the star gets rug burn on his face.
[CA Post] War Wh0re to exit
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, 68, is leaving the cable network after more than four decades as one of its most recognizable faces, she said Monday.
The announcement, which sent shockwaves through the chattering classes, came weeks after Paramount Skydance finalized its purchase of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, sparking anxiety in the newsroom.
Amanpour, known for interviewing heads of state and reporting from conflict zones, made no mention of the drama in a departure note, in which she said she’d stick around until next June.
On the other hand, the new owner is a Zionist, which she can’t possibly like, so perhaps it will be sooner.
Amanpour drew heavy backlash over her coverage of the release of surviving Israeli hostages when she said on air in October that the victims were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan, because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had.”
Then there’s the fact that she draws a multimillion dollar salary, is dealing with a third round of ovarian cancer, and the network’s audience is increasingly selective — lots of reasons that leaving instead of being thrown out is preferable.
[NYP] A 9-year-old boy burned more than 70% of his body by joining a dangerous viral social media trend known as the “fire challenge,” according to officials.
The unidentified boy is in “unbearable pain” and “lucky to be alive,” New Orleans Fire Department Chief Roman Nelson said in a video address warning families about the challenge where social-media users set themselves ablaze just to see how quickly they can put out the flames.
“It’s very dangerous. It is not fun, and it is not funny,” said New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, who joined Nelson in the video.
Nelson wants parents to have a conversation with their children about how dangerous the challenge and other “extreme behaviors” are on social media.
“Kids, don’t fall for this gimmick and don’t feel peer pressure to take part in it. Your life is not worth it,” she added.
The fire challenge is when a participant “douses his or herself in a household accelerant such as isopropyl alcohol or acetone, sets him or herself ablaze, and attempts to extinguish the flames before serious burns are incurred,” according to The National Library of Medicine.
[Reuters] Cuban law enforcement officials on Monday alleged that the US was allowing terrorists to operate with impunity on American soil, citing details of an investigation into a February speedboat incursion that led to a gun battle at sea, deaths and injuries on both sides.
On February 25, 10 Cuban exiles attempted to infiltrate the island nation by boat from the Florida Keys, armed with nearly 13,000 rounds of ammunition, 11 rifles, 15 handguns, Molotov cocktails, a VHF radio and Starlink satellite communication equipment, according to the Cuban investigation that was described by state-run media on Monday. Five were killed; the rest, including some who were wounded, are in custody and face terrorism charges, authorities said.
Cuba said on Monday that its investigation, which included confessions from those detained by its authorities, found that some of those involved in training insurgents remain at large in the US.
"It is also important to highlight ... the crimes still being committed today by individuals and organizations that, from within the United States, provided the property used to carry out these acts, arranged and secured land and maritime transport, and facilitated the purchase and stockpiling of weaponry," said Cuban prosecutor Edward Roberts.
Cuban authorities accused Maritza Lugo Fernandez, a Cuban national residing in Florida, of helping to organize the alleged plot. Some of those detained confessed they had trained on a farm property in Florida owned by Lugo Fernandez, who leads the Florida-based "Partido Democrático 30 de Noviembre," or the Democratic Party of November 30.
Lugo Fernandez denies the allegations.
"For more than 40 years, that regime has accused me of being a terrorist - of everything they can possibly come up with ... ," she said in a clip included in the state-run media report. "Personally, I live with peace of mind; I’m not concerned about what they say because I am very clear - fully aware - that it is all a lie."
Neither the US Embassy in Cuba nor the US Department of Justice responded to a Reuters request for comment on the Cuban government's allegations.
Cuba and the FBI previously said they were cooperating on the investigation.
According to Cuban authorities, several of those detained in February said they planned simultaneous attacks on police and border guard units in Matanzas, a province just east of Havana, with the goal of inciting an armed uprising and triggering a US military intervention.
The accusations come as the US has piled pressure on Cuba's government, including a nine-month de facto fuel blockade and reinforced sanctions that have led to an unprecedented economic crisis on the island.
The US has called the Cuban government corrupt and says it is seeking a change in leadership there.
[Reuters] Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) said on Tuesday its cloud services in the UK were back up after an hours-long outage that disrupted several financial firms and public-sector websites.
The outage put the spotlight on concerns among UK and EU regulators about the financial sector's growing dependence on a small number of external technology providers, particularly cloud firms that support critical banking services.
British digital bank Revolut said the outage disrupted multiple services, with its status page showing card payments and ATM withdrawals as affected, although the firm said its customers' money and data remained safe.
CLOUD RELIANCE CONCERNS
On Tuesday, Google said engineering teams had restored full service availability following a disruption caused by a "power event" in its europe-west2 cloud region, a London-based network of multiple data centers and availability zones that serves customers across Europe.
In July, the UK brought Google Cloud, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Oracle under direct regulatory oversight as critical third-party suppliers to the financial sector, citing the risk that an outage at a major provider could disrupt multiple firms at once.
Google Cloud was also among 19 technology companies designated by EU regulators last year as critical third-party computing providers on which the bloc's finance industry depends.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Canada's most conservative province has rejected independence - but voted in favor of major changes to the way the country is run.
Alberta, the nation's oil heartland, has long been at odds with liberal government leaders over the country's environmental and immigration policies.
Separatist leaders capitalized on outrage over restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and support for the movement grew, leading to a referendum vote on Monday.
Despite separatists' hopes, the province voted overwhelmingly to stay in Canada, with 76 per cent of voters in favor.
The decision comes as President Donald Trump continues to call for Canada to become the '51st state,' a notion Canadian officals have frequently shot down.
The vote was one of nine questions on Monday's referendum. A majority of the questions regarded immigration.
Albertans voted to enhance immigration laws, limit provincial-funded programs to citizens, and implement a 12-month residency requirement before non-permanent residents can receive social benefits.
They also voted 'yes' to providing proof of citizenship in provincial elections, fees for health care and education for non-permanent residents, abolishing the Senate and prioritizing local provincial laws over federal laws.
The vote represents a shift in the already conservative province. The fringe separatist movement has gained support since the pandemic, and even though a majority of Albertans want a unified Canada, there is still a growing divide between the federal government and the province.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said in the early hours of Tuesday that Albertans 'chose unity to build together and to take care of each other.'
He continued that Canada was securing new trade partners and working to become 'a global energy superpower with Alberta at its core.'
'Canada is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Now it is our opportunity to take all that we have been given as Canadians - and we have been given the greatest country in the world - and make our country better for all of us.'
If the vote went differently, Alberta would begin the legal process of a referendum to separate from Canada. Monday's vote was just the first step in the process.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith welcomed Monday's results, writing on X: 'I’m very pleased to see the initial results from Elections Alberta show widespread support for remaining in Canada. Albertans have voted for a stronger Alberta in a united Canada.'
With help from separatists, Smith became leader of the United Conservative Party. She added the question to Monday's referendum after a Canadian court rejected a petition calling for a vote on separation.
Despite that decision, Smith has said she supports Alberta remaining a province in Canada.
Multiple separatist groups have emerged since the Covid-19 pandemic. Jeff Rath, a leader of the independence movement, told the Associated Press that federal vaccine regulations motivated him to advocate for an independent Alberta.
'Covid was really the straw that broke the camel's back,' he said.
Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said the separatist movement grew out of anger over globalization, vaccines and pandemic restrictions, exacerbated by social media.
Even though opposition to energy policies had previously existed in Alberta, separatist policies failed to see any significant support before the pandemic.
Separatists have competing visions of what an independent Alberta would look like. Some groups have aligned with a Christian vision, while others have alluded to stricter immigration laws.
[NYP] One of the accused in the Department of Justice’s massive California voter fraud bust revealed Monday how shockingly lax the state’s voting system was.
Kamlesh Shah, a 67-year-old green card holder in Sacramento, was one of 28 noncitizens who allegedly voted illegally despite not being US citizens.
Shah, an Indian national, allegedly registered to vote on the day of the November 2024 general election and did vote that day.
“All 28 foreign nationals charged are lawful permanent residents (LPRs), or ‘green card’ holders. Although LPRs have legal immigration status in the United States, they are not US citizens and are not permitted to vote in US elections,” the Justice Department said.
Shah told KCRA he had gone to the community center on Election Day. He was asked if he was ever told that he was not eligible to vote.
“No, nobody told me,” he said. “See, that’s very confusing because when I went there, the office there — the election officer over there — didn’t say anything about it.”
“He just asked for my ID and my number,” he said. The California Post reached out to the Sacramento County’s election division for comment.
California Democrats on the state level have responded to the voter fraud bust with dismissal, calling it a “drop in the bucket.”
State Attorney General Rob Bonta said “voter fraud is illegal, voter fraud is wrong” and claimed the number of people arrested proves that fraud is rare at a press conference in San Francisco.
“Every count, recount, hand count, case audit shows that,” the attorney general said.
“It’s .0001% of all of the registered voters and it makes the point there is no widespread voter fraud and that there is, at times, isolated one-off examples of voter fraud,” Bonta added, referring to the 28 people facing charges related to the federal operation, dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote.”
Federal prosecutors made the arrests in a coordinated statewide action, also announcing in a press release that 28 noncitizens are facing charges for allegedly making false statements on naturalization paperwork or illegally registering to vote.
Those arrested in the voter raids included José Probitsado Amaro, 51, a citizen of the Philippines living in San Diego County’s National City, whom federal authorities said registered to vote by falsely claiming to be a US citizen.
City of Commerce resident Alexander Muñoz, 72, was also snared in a 6 a.m arrest witnessed by The California Post.
The Belizean national is accused of fraudulently registering to vote in September 2019, then voting in US elections in 2020, 2022 and 2024.
Prosecutors say there may be more voter fraud ongoing.
“No, this isn’t the total number of noncitizen voters in California. Police can’t catch every speeder, but that doesn’t mean speeding isn’t widespread. 28 is what we could charge in a week,” First Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said on X Monday.
Last week, the Justice Department officials ordered California officials to review a list of 20,000 “likely” noncitizens they claimed were California’s voter rolls, provided on a thumb drive — giving the state 48 hours to comply.
The California Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, defiantly refused to comply.
The DOJ is “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide,” Weber wrote in the letter.
[FOX] Trump and Vice President JD Vance will unveil a $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program (WHIP) during a Tuesday afternoon announcement with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in the Oval Office, a White House official told Fox News Digital.
WHIP will offer eligible tipsters up to $30,000 if their information leads to a successful fraud conviction or a significant federal enforcement action, the official said.
Trump also plans to present independent journalist Nick Shirley with a $10,000 check for his work exposing suspected fraud in Minnesota, according to the official.
"Every day, President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is zeroing in on the rampant abuse of taxpayer dollars and giving Americans the accountability they deserve. This administration has zero tolerance for individuals who steal from Americans," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital.
[FoxBusiness] Trump made the announcement while rallying for Sen Roger Marshall, who he said 'fought' to make the program a reality.
President Donald Trump announced an $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief payment to farmers this harvest season to offset rising diesel costs and other increased input expenses amid disruptions to the global energy supply caused by attacks from Iran and its terrorist proxies in the Middle East.
#1
It's not supply of crude. It's refining capacity that has cratered. Since CA has shut down two, maybe he should consider banning diesel deliveries to CA from the other 49 states.
#2
Diesel in California is upwards of $8 per gallon this week. I saw it myself yesterday as I drove past a gas station. Regular gas is over $6 per gallon, headed for $7 if you use premium.
All the Democrat candidates, no matter which office they are seeking, blame Trump but it's their policies in Sacramento that have led to California having the highest fuel prices in the nation. We're even higher than Hawaii.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/20/2026 12:46 Comments ||
Top||
All very well, but can it be executed all the way in still-Communist Cuba?
[Regnum] A Florida court has issued an arrest warrant for 95-year-old former Cuban leader Raúl Castro. NBC News reported this on October 19.
The warrant was signed by Miami Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan. Castro is suspected of involvement in the downing of two civilian airliners in 1996, which killed four people, three of whom were U.S. citizens. The warrant stems from investigations that suggest the former Cuban leader may have been involved in a conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Investigators believe Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated the Miami-based organization Brothers to the Rescue and transmitted information about its aircraft routes to Havana. This information, according to the prosecution, could have been used in preparation for a military operation.
On May 16, The New York Times reported that US authorities were considering conducting a similar operation against Castro as was carried out against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Journalists indicated that, to implement this initiative, the US side intended to initiate criminal proceedings against the former Cuban president.
On May 20, the United States filed charges against Castro, accusing him of involvement in the deaths of American citizens in 1996. The charges relate to the events of February, when Cuban fighter jets shot down planes belonging to the Brothers for the Rescue opposition group after they violated Cuban airspace. At the time, Raúl Castro served as the country's defense minister, and the United States believes he ordered the strikes. The Kremlin stated that Russia does not approve of the violent pressure the United States is using against Cuba.
On June 4, the United States announced sanctions against Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and members of his family, as well as the son and grandson of former Cuban leader Alejandro Castro Espina and Alejandro Castro Calis .
[BB] Self-proclaimed “Christian” pastor Paul Mackenzie and 28 others were convicted for their role in running a cult that ordered its followers to starve themselves so they could “meet Jesus” because, according to Mackenzie, the “end of the world was imminent.” Mackenzie established the Good News International Church in 2003, which was allegedly shutdown in 2019.
The BBC reports that the judgement was delivered through an eight hour-long court session by Kenyan judge Diana Mochache, who detailed that the cult’s followers believed Mackenzie was “Jesus’s mouthpiece.” A sentencing hearing will take place on November 6.
The gruesome case has been commonly referred to as the “Shakahola Forest Massacre” ever since hundreds of bodies began to be discovered at the cult’s base near the town of Malindi in March 2023, with over 420 bodies reportedly exhumed from the area. Given the advance state of decomposition in which they were found, many of the bodies remain unidentified.
Mackenzie was arrested in April 2023, and was formally charged in 2024. Additional charges against Mackenzie presented in January, with the possibility for additional charges in the future.
Throughout the trial proceedings, prosecutors determined that Mackenzie “initiated and directed” the starvation orders that led to the victims’ deaths at his 800-acre compound. Per AFP, prosecutors claimed that the cult maintained a “structured hierarchy of death,” with children dying first, followed by teenagers, women, and then men. Evidence of asphyxia, manual neck compression, and traumatic head injury were observed in some of the victims.
“I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult,” judge Mochache said, per AFP.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
10/20/2026 09:41 ||
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[Breitbart] The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to launch a spacecraft on Tuesday that will journey to Phobos and back in about five years, collecting the first-ever rock and soil samples from a moon of Mars.
According to Kawakatsu Yasuhiro, project manager for the Martian Moons Exploration Mission (MMX), the Phobos mission will provide valuable information about the formation of the solar system, offer a glimpse into the origins of life, and possibly pave the way for using Phobos as a base for a manned mission to the surface of Mars.
“Despite their potential importance, Martian moons have never been fully investigated. They are known as the most important unclimbed mountains in the solar system,” he said.
Phobos is the larger of the Martian moons, the other being named Deimos. Both of these moons are tiny compared to Earth’s Moon, and they orbit the planet more closely and at higher speeds. Phobos is only 17 miles across at its widest point, and it completes its orbit around Mars three times a day. Almost half of its surface is covered by a single immense crater, known as Stickney Crater, created long ago by a meteoric impact that nearly shattered the moon.
These qualities make landing on Phobos a formidable task. The Russians made four attempts to send probes to Phobos between 1988 and 2011. Only one of them, Phobos-2, made it to Martian orbit, suffering a catastrophic computer failure when it was heartbreakingly close to touching down on the moon in March 1989.
The MMX mission is an international endeavor led by the Japanese space agency, with support from NASA, which will supply an instrument called the Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma Ray and Neutrons (MEGANE) detector. This device, developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, could help to answer the vexing question of where Phobos and Deimos came from.
Ever since the moons of Mars were first observed in 1877, astronomers have wondered if they were birthed from the mass of Mars itself, or if they were wandering asteroids captured by the gravitational pull of the planet.
“What are these little space potatoes? We can’t explain Phobos or Deimos right now. They shouldn’t exist, but they do. They’re super weird, they’re super small and they’re super puzzling,” Dr. Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) told CNN on Monday.
Fraeman noted that the spacecraft and rovers mankind has sent to Mars have collected quite a bit of information about Phobos and Deimos, but none of that data fits any hypothesis for the origin of the two moons perfectly.
The MEGANE system could help to finally solve the mystery by measuring neutron and gamma ray energy from the surface of Phobos, creating an elemental analysis that might conclusively determine if the moons are made of the same material as Mars itself — almost like performing a DNA test to determine the ancestry of a human being.
“If you had a giant impact, what happens is the materials get very hot, and you will cook off these volatile elements. In contrast, a lot of asteroids that we see have higher abundances of these volatile elements,” explained planetary scientist David Lawrence of APL.
The MMX spacecraft will first deposit a tiny rover called Idefix on the surface of Phobos. Idefix was developed by the German Aerospace Center and the National Center for Space Studies in France.
The toy-sized Idefix rover will help to determine an optimum landing point for the larger, but still very small, lander carried by the MMX spacecraft. The gravity of Phobos is so weak that the mission plans to drop the lander from less than 350 feet up and let it bounce gently off the surface.
The lander is about the size of a case of beer, while the Idefix rover looks like a toy. The plan is to make two drops on the opposite sides of Phobos, because its dark side appears to have a very different composition from the light side. The lander contains an American-made system that collects surface dust using pressurized gas, plus a Japanese system that can dig about an inch into the surface of the moon to harvest samples.
Collecting samples from multiple locations on Phobos could help to answer some lingering questions about the origins of life in the solar system, and the ever-intriguing question of whether there was ever any sort of life on the surface of Mars. If Phobos is a chunk of Mars blown into orbit by some ancient cataclysm, it could contain a chemical snapshot of what Mars looked like millions of years ago. If the little moon is a captive asteroid, it might contain chemicals from the far reaches of the solar system.
MMX will take a year to reach Mars, orbit Phobos for about three years, make a close flyby of Deimos, and then take another year to bring its historic rock samples home, with a splashdown of the heat-shielded sample capsule planned off the coast of Australia in 2031. The total amount of material the lander aims to bring back from Phobos will weigh less than half an ounce.
The MMX mission aims to reach Phobos and return before China’s Tianwen-3 sampling mission reaches the surface of Mars and returns to Earth, sometime later in 2031.
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.
[CA Post] 
