[Just The News] Pieces of the tail of the Learjet that crashed in Florida have been found miles away from the crash site, which suggests that part of the aircraft broke off before it hit the ground, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Federal investigators found three pieces of the jet's left elevator between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the impact site in Palm Beach County, Florida, NTSB member Thomas Champman said Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The plane's elevator controls the aircraft's pitch up or down, and without it, an aircraft cannot recover from a nose dive.
Chapman said that the discovery of the pieces suggests that these key parts separated from the aircraft prior to impact.
"What that means exactly in terms of what caused the aircraft to lose control, or whether the loss of this piece was a result of the forces on the aircraft, we don't know yet," he said.
The Learjet 60 departed from Austin, Texas, and was heading for Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas when it crashed Sunday, killing all nine people on board.
[MAIL] Two helicopters collided Tuesday while trying to land just below Mount Everest's base camp, killing at least one person and injuring two others.
The aircraft were ferrying trekkers who had been hiking up to Everest base camp during Nepal's popular trekking season.
Heavy snow had covered the route before the weather improved on Sunday and thousands of trekkers were able to move around.
The aircraft were ferrying trekkers who had been hiking up to Everest base camp during Nepal's popular trekking season.
Heavy snow had covered the route before the weather improved on Sunday and thousands of trekkers were able to move around.
#1
Two separate blade strikes - they were so lucky that the casualties weren't higher - especially amongst the lookie-lou's standing too close to the LZ.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The former director of a Chinese government-backed Confucius Institute has landed a new role at a cultural center at another major American university – despite years of the Trump administration's efforts to stamp out Beijing's influence on college campuses, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Huajing Maske previously served as the executive director of the University of Kentucky's Confucius Institute, a controversial China-funded educational program that spread across college campuses during the Obama years.
Maske is now the inaugural director of the Sands Institute for Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after being appointed to the role last fall.
Her appointment comes amid renewed scrutiny of Chinese influence in American higher education, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently warning that dozens of alleged Chinese propaganda outlets had resurfaced at universities under different names.
Hegseth last week claimed in a Department of War video that '80 new propaganda cells' had emerged across 30 universities using 'different names and different charters,' but with the same mission: 'to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students.'
While UNLV has never operated a Confucius Institute, Maske's past ties to Beijing and her history at the helm of the University of Kentucky's program – where she received multiple awards at conferences attended by senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials – raise fresh questions about the links between such China-related educational organizations and US college campuses.
When pressed for comment about Friday's announcement, a UNLV spokesperson told the Daily Mail that the 'US Department of War has not contacted UNLV's Sands Institute for Chinese Language and Culture.'
'The Sands Institute was created through a $15 million gift by the Nevada based Las Vegas Sands Corporation,' the spokesperson added. 'The Institute has not received funding from China.'
[Jpost] Binance on Tuesday said that as a result of the hack, it is increasing investment in AI-enabled detection and is working on establishing a security research fund.
Hackers used a bogus job interview and software hidden in an advertisement to compromise the computers of two Binance software engineers before using a third's computer to drain $6.3 billion worth of crypto in last week's record heist, the exchange said on Tuesday.
In its initial report on how hackers pulled off what could be the largest-ever financial theft, Binance detailed a multi-stage hacking endeavour that began in June and set off a series of security breaches culminating in the theft on Thursday.
Even as Binance scrambled to lock down its system and freeze withdrawals after detecting the attack late on Thursday, the hackers were still making off with crypto from the exchange nearly four hours after the first theft, Binance said.
The FBI has blamed a North Korea ...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche... n hacking group, a claim North Korea has rejected. Binance has said it is repaying all customers whose funds were stolen.
The attack has raised questions about how hackers breached the world's largest crypto exchange after years of North Korea-linked attacks, which have grown in ambition and frequency, and renewed questions about the vulnerability of digital assets to cybercrime.
Cybersecurity experts and government officials have for years warned about North Korean and other hackers using phony job interviews to target employees at companies of interest, said Michael Barnhart, a researcher with cybersecurity firm DTEX. Fake job interviews are a well-known hacking technique.
Binance said it had detected and prevented 57 suspected North Korea-linked cyberthreats in 2026. That shows Binance is "just getting barraged," Barnhart said.
"This should not have happened, and we apologise for the concern, disruption and uncertainty it caused our users, partners and the wider industry," Binance said in its report.
BINANCE WAS LEFT EXPOSED
Binance said the attack began in June when an employee on its wallet developer team downloaded a tool from the internet that hackers had tampered with. The exchange said it detected this afterwards, replaced the device and changed credentials, but the employee's role and those of others on the wallet team were exposed.
A person familiar with the incident said the tool's malicious version had been placed in an advertisement, which meant it appeared higher in a search engine than the real version.
Then in September, a second software engineer seeking a new job downloaded a "malicious code repository" onto the person's computer after interviewing for what they thought was a legitimate role, including meeting virtually with the CEO of a fictitious company, Binance's report said.
On October 20, the attacker used the compromised computer plus an internal AI tool to gain control of the wallet developer's system and that of a second wallet developer.
Nine days later, the attacker used the second wallet developer's computer, with stolen credentials from the first wallet developer, and triggered a malicious script to launch the attack.
A limited number of engineers at the company have direct access to wallets - which store or trade crypto - the person familiar with the hack said.
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF CRYPTO REMOVED IN MINUTES
The attack unfolded quickly on October 29, removing 233.46 million XRP - a cryptocurrency - from five Binance hot, or internet-connected, wallets to an attacker-controlled address in just four minutes, before attackers withdrew other cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, the exchange said in its report.
Binance said it received an internal alert about large transfers and began investigating. It moved to suspend withdrawals, freeze affected tokens and remove unauthorised permissions, resulting in about $2.85 billion of frozen assets, but suspending withdrawals alone could not stop all unauthorised asset movements.
Attackers used 50 signing transactions to manipulate the account, while Binance said it was forced to build new procedures to revoke authorisations, slowing its response.
The final unauthorised transfer was at 11:56 p.m. GMT, Binance said, nearly four hours after the attack began.
Binance said as a result of the hack, it was increasing investment in AI-enabled detection and working on establishing a security research fund and targeted initiatives with leading AI companies.
[FoxBusinessNews] REalloys Inc. and the Army executed a non-binding term sheet for a 200-acre processing site at Tooele Army Depot in Utah
The Army and a U.S.-based rare earth minerals and materials company on Tuesday took a step toward developing a heavy rare earth processing facility at a location in Utah as the U.S. looks to source the critical minerals outside of China.
REalloys Inc. and the Army executed a non-binding term sheet that outlines commercial terms for a potential lease to develop a rare earth processing facility at Tooele Army Depot in Utah. The move follows the selection of REalloys for the Army's Strategic Capital Initiative in June.
If the project moves forward under the provisions of the non-binding term sheet, it could see the development of the facility on about 200 acres at the base where it would process and refine target critical minerals, namely the heavy rare earth elements dysprosium and terbium. Those elements are used in things like high-temperature permanent magnets for precision-guided munitions, electric motors, sonar, radar and other defense systems.
REalloys CEO Lipi Sternheim told FOX Business that the project is about having "the goods that we need to keep the country running and to advance technology – almost all things technological today involve rare earth. Whether it's your cell phone or a jet fighter, it all involves rare earth."
Sternheim said that having the facility on a military base would help bring a key part of the rare earth supply chain under the military's purview to help ensure sufficient supplies of those elements for companies in the defense industrial base.
"It's not necessarily so much that Utah is the most strategic location of all places, it's just a military base that suits us, it's got the few hundred acres we need," he said.
"We're starting with pieces of the puzzle, but ultimately, if we should go down the road to finish from, I can't say mine because there's no mine on the base, but from oxides straight through to magnets, if we ever want to build that, there's the capability as well," he added.
Rare earths have become a point of geopolitical leverage between the U.S. and China in recent years, as the Chinese government began holding back rare earths from being exported to the U.S. or West.
"Once the cat's out of the bag, the U.S., the Western world out of China, has to – if they want to advance and live a good life – they have to come up with their own supply chains of these things so nobody can hold this leverage over them and decide when they're going to make their jets and when they're going to make their phones and when they aren't going to," Sternheim said.
The tension between the U.S. and China has caused businesses and the government to take steps to curb reliance on Chinese rare earths. While Sternheim cautioned that it would be "a misnomer to think that it will happen overnight," he sees a path to the Western world having its own supply chain for the critical minerals by 2029 or 2030.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A Canadian family was left devastated after a mother and daughter were killed in an apparent grizzly bear attack while on a 'casual walk' at a nearby trail.
Jennifer Balcarras, 48, was found dead in the Snooka West Trail of Bella Coola on Monday, with evidence suggesting she had been killed in a bear attack, the British Columbia Conservation Officer Services (BCCOS) said.
Her daughter Selah Reed, 20, was then found dead on Tuesday afternoon following an extensive search effort by conservation officers and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Vancouver Sun reports.
Their family had been in contact with Balcarras on Saturday, but became concerned when she did not log in for an online meet-up that night, her brother, Matthew, told the outlet.
When they then failed to get a response from Balcarras, the family asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to conduct a wellness check on Sunday morning and police officers soon located Balcarras' vehicle at a nearby trailhead.
'It's surreal. It doesn't seem real. It feels like a dream,' Josh Balcarras, the mother-of-four's other brother, told the CBC.
'The way it starts is a few hours of not hearing from them. That turns into a day and then a night, then a second night comes and it becomes a real thing.'
He noted that Balcarras and Reed were familiar with the Snooka West Trail, which is just a five-minute drive from their home and is 'not in a remote area.'
It was 'just a casual walk,' the grieving brother said.
Spoken like a true kind sweet liberal Gov. "If the bear is determined to be the bear responsible for the attack, it will be dispatched to ensure public safety, as per provincial human-wildlife conflict response guidelines,' Tyre said"
How about.....Just say ....
Kill it, skin it and will give the skin to the family.
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.
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
