Elon Musk said that an alleged scammer who reportedly ripped off 400,000 Americans by selling their Social Security numbers is facing imminent arrest.
"I believe someone is going to be arrested tomorrow, because there's someone who actually stole 400,000 Social Security numbers and personal information from the Social Security database," Musk said during a tele-town hall with Wisconsin voters Monday evening. Wisconsin is holding a high-stakes state Supreme Court election Tuesday that will determine if the state's highest court will hold a liberal or conservative majority by filing a retiring justice's seat.
The person was "selling Social Security numbers and all the identification information in order for people to basically steal money from Social Security," he continued.
Musk was responding to a phone call from a Wisconsin voter who asked if Attorney General Pam Bondi had plans to investigate and prosecute fraud surrounding Social Security. Musk is helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is working to uncover government overspending and fraud, and reported in March that "there's a massive amount of fraud" related to alleged scammers submitting phony Social Security numbers in an attempt to receive federal benefits.
Elon Musk said that an alleged scammer who reportedly ripped off 400,000 Americans by selling their Social Security numbers is facing imminent arrest.
"I believe someone is going to be arrested tomorrow, because there's someone who actually stole 400,000 Social Security numbers and personal information from the Social Security database," Musk said during a tele-town hall with Wisconsin voters Monday evening. Wisconsin is holding a high-stakes state Supreme Court election Tuesday that will determine if the state's highest court will hold a liberal or conservative majority by filing a retiring justice's seat.
The person was "selling Social Security numbers and all the identification information in order for people to basically steal money from Social Security," he continued.
Musk was responding to a phone call from a Wisconsin voter who asked if Attorney General Pam Bondi had plans to investigate and prosecute fraud surrounding Social Security. Musk is helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is working to uncover government overspending and fraud, and reported in March that "there's a massive amount of fraud" related to alleged scammers submitting phony Social Security numbers in an attempt to receive federal benefits.
Musk and members of his DOGE team joined Fox News at the end of March to discuss their operation and what they have uncovered since they began investigating federal agencies in the search of fraud and mismanagement. Musk identified Social Security as reportedly chronically vulnerable to fraud.
"They steal people's Social Security, is what happens," Musk said in a Thursday exclusive interview on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier." "They call in, they claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money is flowing. It actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day, every day. And then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security, it's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system."
DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi added in the interview, "At Social Security, one of the first things that we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information."
"So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the calls that they get are from fraudsters."
Amid DOGE's investigation into the Social Security Administration, President Donald Trump has vowed not to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits for Americans.
[FoxNews] M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle pulled out of swamp near Pabradė, Lithuania
The fourth and final missing U.S. soldier whose armored vehicle sank in a swamp in Lithuania last week was found deceased Tuesday.
Three American soldiers were declared dead Monday after crews retrieved the M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle from a peat bog near Pabradė, Lithuania. The vehicle disappeared on March 25 "while conducting a mission to repair and tow an immobilized tactical vehicle," according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa.
"The fourth U.S. Army Soldier assigned to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division was found deceased near Pabradė, Lithuania the afternoon of April 1," it announced Tuesday. "The soldier’s identity is being withheld pending confirmation of notification of next of kin."
"First and foremost, we offer condolences to the loved ones of our soldiers," Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, added in a statement. "I can't say enough about the support our Lithuanian Allies have provided us. We have leaned on them, and they, alongside our Polish and Estonian Allies -- and our own Sailors, Airmen and experts from the Corps of Engineers -- have enabled us to find and bring home our soldiers. This is a tragic event, but it reinforces what it means to have Allies and friends."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the incident is "another stark reminder of the selfless sacrifice of our brave military men and women who risk their lives around the world every day to keep us safe."
"The president, the Secretary of Defense and the entire White House are praying for the victims, friends and family during this unimaginable time," she added.
"I want to personally extend my deepest condolences to the families of all four fallen soldiers," Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement. "Our hearts are heavy across the Department of Defense. We are deeply grateful to our brave servicemembers who enabled this difficult recovery and to our Lithuanian hosts who labored alongside them. The recovery was conducted with urgency, resolve and deep respect for the fallen. We will never forget these soldiers – and our prayers are with their families."
U.S. Army Europe and Africa said earlier today that "Police working dogs from the Lithuanian Armed Forces began work yesterday afternoon and NATO ally Estonia joined the recovery efforts early this morning."
"Two Estonian recovery dogs, Tilt and Maik, and their handlers flew from Tallinn, Estonia. They arrived on scene at 2:00 a.m. and began searching at 7:00 a.m. this morning. Handlers have positioned the dogs in a U.S. Navy Rigid Inflatable Boat to locate any trace scents below the surface," it added.
U.S. Army Europe and Africa announced Monday that the armored vehicle was removed from the swamp "after a six-day-long effort that required tremendous resources from Lithuania, our steadfast ally, and hundreds of service members from the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Lithuanian Armed Forces and the Polish Armed Forces – along with other elements from the Lithuanian government and civilian agencies – to solve the engineering challenge of recovering the 63-ton-vehicle from an area surrounded by unstable ground conditions."
[NYPost] Val Kilmer fueled nostalgia in his final Instagram post just weeks before his death at 65.
Kilmer died after a battle with pneumonia on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes confirmed.
In a video shared on his social media account, Kilmer could be seen sitting next to a painting he made of Batman — which served as one of his most successful roles in his decades-long career.
In the clip, shared with his 645,000 followers on Instagram, the actor declares he is “ready” before grabbing a Batman mask and donning it for the last time.
Read the rest at the link
Val Kilmer is part of one of the greatest heist sequences in film history . Everything about Kilmer in this moment in Heat feels so real. Val Kilmer was just that dude: a vintage Hollywood bad-ass. pic.twitter.com/h9mY6tzMgP
#3
I remember when The Doors came out, all the old hippies by the bushels were saying what a great job he did as Morrison. That was before my time, but then us young punks turned up by the cases about his Doc Holiday performance.
And yeah, he wasn't acting in Top Gun: Maverick, as far as being sick was.
[NYPOST] A Jetstar flight heading to Melbourne, Australia, from Bali overnight was forced to turn around after a ''nightmare'' situation unfolded when a passenger tried to open the aircraft door.
Flight JQ-34 left Denpasar Ngurah Rai International Airport at about 5:40 a.m. (8:40 p.m. AST) with more than 200 passengers on board.
It was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when a woman tugged at the door, trying to open it about two hours into its journey to Melbourne.
''We had an aircraft return to Denpasar last night after a disruptive passenger attempted to open one of the aircraft doors and was abusive to our crew,'' a Jetstar spokesperson told news.com.au. Beat her ass
''The safety and welfare of our customers and crew is our top priority and we thank them for the way they responded to the situation.
Aussie reality star Brooke Jowett was also on the flight. In an Instagram Story, the “Survivor All Star” alum said she got back to a hotel at about 1 a.m. after “our lovely night, and our scare on the flight.”
“Turns out the reason behind the lady wanting to open the door is because she wanted to sit in a different row and have a chair that could recline,” Brooke explained.
“So she decided to try to open the doors, which apparently triggered something to do with the emergency slide and yeah, it was a big bloody big panic, it was very, very scary but we’re fine.”
Brooke said the woman was arguing with Jetstar staff about her seat, and the situation escalated.
“She was unhappy and wanted to get off. One of the guys who was sitting in front of us was down near the toilets, and he pulled her away from the door as she was trying to open it.
“He was an off-duty police officer, apparently, so he saved the day. Thank God for that.
Professor Doug Drury, head of aviation at Central Queensland University, previously told news.com.au the exit door on a plane could not be opened above an altitude of 10,000 feet as the cabin was pressurized to 8,000 feet — making the door impossible to open.
The difference between the internal cabin pressure and the outside air pressure effectively seals the doors, particularly on modern planes such as the Airbus A330.
It comes after another incident in which two men were involved in a heated argument on a flight from Melbourne to Bali, with other passengers forced to intervene.
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[Regnum] An earthquake of magnitude 5 was recorded on April 1, 16 km from the city of Mandalay in Myanmar. This follows from data from the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC).
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded near the city of Mandalay in Myanmar
The tremors began at approximately 14:02 Moscow time. Seismologists estimate them at 5 points on the Richter scale. The earthquake is located at a depth of 10 km.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, the Russian Emergencies Ministry staff worked at 18 points at the site of destruction in Mandalay. Rescuers also plan to conduct rescue operations after the earthquake outside the city. In addition, on April 1, the Russian Emergencies Ministry airmobile hospital began receiving the first victims in Mandalay. More than 20 doctors provide qualified medical care to those in need.
On March 28, a powerful earthquake occurred in Myanmar, the magnitude of which, according to various sources, was from 7.7 to 7.9. The epicenter of the tremors was located near the second largest city of Myanmar - Mandalay. The first earthquake was followed by a second one with a magnitude of 6.4.
As of April 1, the death toll exceeded 2,700 people, 4,500 were injured to varying degrees of severity. 441 people are listed as missing.
On the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, two Russian Emergencies Ministry planes with a combined team of 120 rescuers were sent to Myanmar. On the night of March 31, they rescued a woman from under the rubble, who had lain under the collapsed structures for two days.
Later, the Russian Emergencies Ministry sent two more special Il-76 aircraft with 95 rescuers on board to earthquake-hit Myanmar. The team included canine teams and medical workers. Specialists from the Russian Federation will work in the most affected areas.
[World Socialist Network] On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive article on US involvement in the Ukraine war entitled "The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine," which admits that "America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood."
"The United States" was "woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil," the Times report asserts.
The article is an admission that the United States waged, and is waging, an undeclared, unauthorized and illegal war against Russia. It makes clear that American officers, some deployed inside Ukraine, have been selecting targets for attack and authorizing individual strikes, making them, for all intents and purposes, combatants.
The article documents how, over the course of the war, the Biden administration systematically violated its own restriction on the conduct of war, up to the point of authorizing the attacks on Russian territory, using American weapons, ordered by American commanders.
The Times report explains that American officers decided what Russian troops and civilian targets would be attacked, transmitted their coordinates to the Ukrainian military, then authorized the attacks using weapons provided by the NATO powers themselves. It reports that American and British soldiers were deployed to Ukraine to personally direct combat operations.
The article presents a picture of the Ukraine war in which the American military planned everything from large-scale strategic troop movements to every individual long-range strike. As the article explains, "American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field."
The US command center in Wiesbaden, Germany "would oversee each HIMARS [long-range missile] strike" against Russian troops. US officers "would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes."
So tight was the US oversight that "The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS [missile] operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime."
As the Times account explains, "Each morning, U.S. and Ukrainian military officers set targeting priorities—Russian units, pieces of equipment or infrastructure. American and coalition intelligence officers searched satellite imagery, radio emissions and intercepted communications to find Russian positions. Task Force Dragon then gave the Ukrainians the coordinates so they could shoot at them."
As a result of this arrangement, the United States military was, in the words of one European intelligence official quoted in the article, "part of the kill chain," i.e., making decisions about which Russian troops and infrastructure would be attacked.
#1
Sounds like another f**k-up by the US military then.
The NY Slimes article is not really news at all, but the Slimes might be trying to put the Biden Admin. in a better light and shift blame away from the US military and on to the Ukrainians.
#4
Given the reporting is from both thr New York Times and the World Socialist Network, I’d like to know what more reputable sources have to say before deciding what I think about it.
On the other hand, like our more or less paired reports from Russia vs Ukraine, it’s useful to know what that lot think is happening — or what they want us to believe is happening.
#5
TW has a point; it's an odd own, the kind of thing dropped to have people believe and stop asking questions when what really was going on was much worse.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Thousands of government health workers were fired on Tuesday in the latest massive crackdown on red tape by Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE.
At the Department of Health and Human Services messages began hitting government inboxes with notices of dismissal.
The scene outside the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. was somber, with workers hugging and shedding tears as they lined up to pack away their desks.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed last week his plans to cut the workforce by 20,000 – half of those coming from early retirements and voluntary buyouts.
Meanwhile, the other 10,000 are now being let go.
Some 10,000 workers already took early retirement and voluntary separation offers at HHS. Another 10,000 are being fired in the latest round of DOGE-inspired cuts.
In a move inspired by President Trump and Musk's war on government waste, the size of HHS is being cut by nearly a quarter, bringing it from 82,000 down to a total of 62,000.
Most of the gutting will be at the Food and Drug Administration with 3,500 being fired. The FDA is responsible for inspecting, setting and regulating safety standards for food, medications and medical devices in the U.S.
And the second largest number of cuts are being made at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where 2,400 are facing the ax.
Meanwhile, another 1,200 jobs are being slashed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and 300 from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to a breakdown of the cuts published on Thursday.
HHS has vowed that no one receiving Medicare or Medicaid benefits will be impacted by the job cuts.
Federal employees at the bloated agency started receiving their dismissal notices to their inboxes on Tuesday just one day after President Trump moved to strip government workers of their collective bargaining rights.
RFK Jr. wants to consolidate divisions of his department that oversee billions in addiction services and community health centers in his newly established Administration for a Healthy America.
Some 10,000 workers already took early retirement and voluntary separation offers at HHS. Another 10,000 are being fired in the latest round of DOGE-inspired cuts.
In a six-minute video posted to X last week, Kennedy says he will reduce the number of HHS divisions to 15 from the current 28 and reduce the number of regional offices from 10 to five.
'We're going to do more with less,' he vowed. 'No American is going to be left behind.'
An HHS press release on the job cuts claims the measure will save the department $1.8 billion annually.
He plans to create a new division within HHS called the Administration for a Healthy America. It will serve key functions and focus on 'safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins,' according to the HHS release on the overhaul.
#2
Learn to code.
No such sympathy when our working class was being gutted by globalization.
Now they know how it feels to lose your job due to deliberate enemy action.
THis is justice.
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.
[World Socialist Network] On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive article on US involvement in the Ukraine war entitled "The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine," which admits that "America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood."
