[FoxNews] Prosecutors said more than 60,000 suspect parts entered the global aviation supply chain as a result of the scheme. Many of the parts were linked to CFM56 engines, widely used in Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
The head of a London airline parts firm was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison Monday after selling more than 60,000 fake aircraft engine parts, a fraud that triggered worldwide safety concerns and briefly grounded planes.
Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala, 38, pleaded guilty in December to fraudulent trading, admitting he falsified paperwork about the source and condition of engine parts sold by his company, AOG Technics, between 2019 and 2023.
The discovery of the fraudulent components in 2023 led to planes being temporarily grounded and prompted calls for tighter industry oversight.
Prosecutors said CFM International’s co-owners, GE Aerospace and Safran, lost about $4 million (£3 million) and $780,000 (£580,000) respectively, and suffered reputational damage.
**Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala**, a 38-year-old former techno DJ from Venezuela, was sentenced to **four years and eight months in prison** on February 23, 2026, for orchestrating a major aircraft parts fraud. As the director of UK-based **AOG Technics Ltd.**, he admitted to fraudulent trading, having falsified documents between 2019 and 2023 to sell over **60,000 aircraft engine parts** with forged **Authorised Release Certificates (ARCs)**.
**The fraud** involved parts primarily for the **CFM56 engine**, used in Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 aircraft. Zamora operated from his home in **Virginia Water, Surrey**, creating fake employee identities and altering documentation to make AOG Technics appear legitimate. The company generated over **£7.7 million in revenue**, with **90% derived from fraud**.
**Discovery and impact**: The scheme unraveled in August 2023 when **TAP Air Portugal** flagged a faulty part, leading to safety alerts from UK, US, and EU aviation authorities. Airlines including **American Airlines**, **Ethiopian Airlines**, **Ryanair**, and **EasyJet** were affected, with planes grounded and engines inspected. Total losses were estimated at **£39.3 million**.
**Legal consequences**: Zamora pleaded guilty in December 2025. In addition to his prison sentence, he was **disqualified from acting as a company director for eight years** and will face **proceeds of crime proceedings**. The case has prompted calls for tighter oversight in the aviation supply chain, including digital tracking of parts.
#5
The crap in a wrapper you're firing
Might strike someone else as inspiring.
[Your versatile chap
In his fake Nike cap
Curses. "Former is also aspiring!]"
[PJMedia] A North Carolina woman who authorities originally reported missing more than two decades ago was thankfully found alive and well, bringing a 24-year investigation to an end. However, unresolved mysteries still surround her disappearance, as investigators found her living a brand-new life and she did not wish to reunite with her family. It’s a strange tale indeed.
According to information the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office released, authorities located Michelle Hundely Smith, who went missing in December 2001, on February 20, 2026, in North Carolina. Detectives found Smith after they received new information concerning the case. Smith was 38 years old when her husband reported her missing.
Smith’s husband said his wife left their home on December 9, 2001, to do some Christmas shopping in Martinsville, Virginia. She never returned home. Her vehicle also disappeared. Imagine being this poor man. His wife—someone he loved and cared for—vanished into thin air without a trace for two decades. He likely assumed someone murdered her and that he would never know what truly happened. Learning that she essentially ran away and started a new life must be heartbreaking.
Multiple agencies across North Carolina and Virginia conducted an extensive investigation, including the State Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even after years and years of searching, detectives could not crack the case.
Last week, Sgt. A. Disher and Detective C. Worley contacted Smith at an "undisclosed location within North Carolina alive and well" after receiving a tip. However, Smith asked officials to keep her location secret. Detectives told the family that they had found Smith but informed them of her wishes. Detectives also said they still do not know what motivated her disappearance.
At the very least, she should contact her family and explain why she decided to leave them behind. Her disappearance likely caused immense trauma for her loved ones, and without some explanation, achieving closure and moving on will prove difficult. While we should reserve judgment and avoid jumping to conclusions about why she left, abandoning your family to start a new life without them certainly doesn’t look good. Maybe her old family was a bunch of assholes? Either way a nice break from politics
#1
Doing a little math it appears she is 62 years old; I wonder if she filed for SSA and authorities wondered if she was the same person or someone filing fraudulently.
[AP] Willie Colón, the Grammy-nominated architect of urban salsa music and social activist, died Saturday. He was 75.
Over his decades-long career, the trombonist, composer, arranger and singer produced more than 40 albums that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. He collaborated with a wide range of artists, including the Fania All Stars, David Byrne and Celia Cruz.
His celebrated collaboration with Rubén Blades, "Siembra," became one of the bestselling salsa albums of all time, and the pair were known for addressing social issues through the genre.
Colón’s family and manager confirmed his death through social media posts.
[Just The News] House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly denied a request Friday for Civil Rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson to lie in honor at the United States Capitol, days after the leader died in Chicago at the age of 84. "No! We just had it fumigated!"
Jackson died Tuesday after years of significant health challenges, including a rare neurological disorder that affected his ability to move and speak.
Johnson has not commented on the decision so far, but a source told The Hill that the request came from Jackson's family and that the Republican considered past precedent in making his decision. Requests for Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and former Vice President Dick Cheney to lie in honor in the Capitol have also been denied recently.
The honor is usually bestowed on former presidents and government officials, but Rev. Billy Graham's death was honored in the Capitol rotunda in 2018 and civil rights leader Rosa Parks lay in honor in 2005. The most recent person to lie in state at the Capitol was former President Jimmy Carter, who died last year.
Jackson was a staunch advocate for civil rights and led crusades in the U.S. and internationally, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on voting rights, job opportunities, education, and healthcare.
Jackson's family said their loved one is still expected to be honored and remembered in Chicago next week, per CNN.
#1
Good for Mike! Perhaps they could remember him at Obama's library in Chicago!
Posted by: Oregon Dave ||
02/24/2026 1:33 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Old political cartoon:
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton: Genie, we wish to an end to all racial strife.
*poof *poof*
both disappear in a puff of smoke.
[LegalInsurrection] In 2015, Edmonds became the first American serviceman to be recognized with Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews, “Righteous Among Nations.”
Back in 2015, Professor Jacobson reported that Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds became the first American serviceman to be recognized with Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews, “Righteous Among Nations.” The title bestowed upon non-Jewish persons who risked their lives in order to save Jews.
The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate.
But Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds would have none of that. As the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer held in the German POW camp, he ordered more than 1,000 Americans captives to step forward with him and brazenly pronounced: “We are all Jews here.”
He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, and his captors eventually backed down.
Edmonds’ moral stand in a Nazi prison camp is finally being marked with the United States’ highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, more than eight decades after he calmly faced down a German officer’s pistol.
Tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And if you’ve never heard of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, it’s time you did.
Captured during WWII. Thrown into a Nazi POW camp with over 1,200 fellow Americans, 200 of them Jewish.
Edmonds gave a different order:
“Everyone fall out.”
All 1,200 stood shoulder to shoulder.
The Nazi commandant lost it.
Stormed over. Pulled a pistol. Pressed it to Edmonds’ forehead.
“Identify the Jews or I’ll shoot you.”
Edmonds didn’t blink.
“We are all Jews here.
If you shoot me, you’ll have to shoot us all.
And when we win this war, you’ll be tried for war crimes.”
The Nazi backed down.
Two hundred Jewish-American lives were saved.
Edmonds never told a soul.
Not for credit. Not for medals. Not even to his own son.
He didn’t want to be a hero.
He just wanted to do what was right.
Let the world never forget his courage.
Let his words echo forever.
We are all Jews here.
His Medal of Honor is not just a decoration for valor in war; it is a national acknowledgment that in humanity’s darkest hours, one ordinary American sergeant chose conscience over survival and, in doing so, saved nearly 200 lives. Edmond’s son discovered the incident while seeking more information about his father.
The path led to the discovery of another incident of bravery in 1945, as the German defeat was imminent.
In March 1945, as the last gasps of the bloody war were drawing to a close, the Nazis of Stalag IX-A ordered the forced march of the entire camp.
Weakened by months of captivity, Roddie Edmonds knew the march would be a death sentence for many.
While the British, French and Russians began to evacuate the camp, the Americans stayed put.
On the day of the evacuation, the master sergeant ordered his men break ranks and run back into the barracks. Back and forth they went. Ordered out. Running back in.
After several hours of this the Nazis miraculously relented, leaving the Americans as the sole inhabitants of Stalag IX-A.
The award will be presented during a ceremony on March 2, and three other servicemembers will also be honored.
Edmonds will be one of four service members to receive the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony on March 2, his son said.
Army Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis and retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams will also receive the nation’s highest award for courage under fire. Ollis died saving the life of a Polish counterpart in Afghanistan in 2013, and Williams was involved in a secretive dogfight with seven Soviet fighter planes more than 70 years ago.
The White House did not respond to questions about the ceremony and the fourth person to receive the Medal of Honor.
Edmonds joins about a dozen others honored for their courage in prisoner-of-war camps.
Edmonds joins roughly a dozen Medal of Honor recipients recognized for resistance in prison camps. In the Korean War, Army medic Tibor Rubin, a Holocaust survivor, kept at least 40 POWs alive while in captivity. In Vietnam, Army Captain Humbert “Rocky” Versace, Air Force Captain Lance Sijan and Navy Admiral James Stockdale all received the Medal for fierce resistance and escape attempts.
In honoring Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds with the Medal of Honor, America is finally placing its highest recognition where it has long belonged: on a man who, with true moral courage. His powerful words….“We are all Jews here”…spoke louder than any weapon, asserting the equal worth of every life in the face of a regime built on dehumanization.
As his story joins those of other American heroes who resisted even behind barbed wire, Edmonds reminds us that the measure of character is found not in the power we hold, but in the people we refuse to abandon.
[Bearing Arms] For nearly 40 years, the Hughes Amendment has prohibited the civilian transfer of any machine gun manufactured after 1986. There are only a few exceptions to the federal statute, but Gun Owners of America thinks it's found a way average citizens to legally get their hands on a full-auto firearm.
That theory could soon be put to the test, thanks to a bill introduced in the West Virginia Senate.
SB 1071 is meant, at least in part to "guarantee armament parity between the American citizen and government infantryman." The bill's authors maintain that "together, the Second Amendment and Article III, Section 22 [of the West Virginia Constitution] guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear the 'arms of modern warfare' for the defense of themselves and the State," including "the sorts of portable, bearable machineguns that currently are in common use by law enforcement in this State and military units nationwide."
SB 1071 would establish a statewide Office of Public Defense within the West Virginia State Police, with the superintendent of the State Police serving as the office's director.
[Breitbart] Australia has paid for the first British-built parts of nuclear reactors to power a future SSN-AUKUS stealth submarine, the government said Tuesday.
Australia plans to acquire a fleet of cutting-edge, nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS, a multi-decade defence pact with Britain and the United States.
As part of the deal, Australia will build some of the new class of SSN-AUKUS submarines for delivery in the early 2040s, though the reactors will still be built in Britain.
“We’ve just spent Aus$310 million ($220 million) acquiring the very first parts that will go into the reactors for the first two submarines that we will construct in Adelaide beginning later this decade,” Australian Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said after meetings in Britain.
“This project will create 20,000 high-skilled, secure jobs making the most advanced submarines in the world, equipping the Royal Australian Navy with the capabilities it needs to deter conflict in our region.”
Under AUKUS, the Australian navy aims to acquire at least three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines within 15 years as part of a strategy to counter China’s military in the Pacific.
Britain would then develop the new SSN-AUKUS for delivery in the late 2030s.
Australia would also construct the vessel to go into service in the early 2040s, but remain reliant on Britain for the delivery of complete, welded nuclear propulsion units.
The latest payment is in addition to Aus$2.4 billion Australia is paying over 10 years to expand the production capacity of Rolls-Royce Submarines, the government said.
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.
[PJMedia] A North Carolina woman who authorities originally reported missing more than two decades ago was thankfully found alive and well, bringing a 24-year investigation to an end. However, unresolved mysteries still surround her disappearance, as investigators found her living a brand-new life and she did not wish to reunite with her family. It’s a strange tale indeed.
