#9
Hello, belle of the ball. Do your "can'ts"
Include taking an adamant stance?
Push that baby back in!
Try again FTW.
Girl, quit grieving! You're missing a dance!
#Sudan 🇸🇩: Sudanese Forces (#SAF) killed and captured numerous Rapid Support Forces (#RSF) members following recent clashes.
Notably, SAF fighters also seized at least a couple of 9M133-1 “Kornet-E” / “Dehlavieh-AT” Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM). pic.twitter.com/p9I0PpymYM
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Yemeni Houthi rebels from the Ansar Allah movement attacked a Saudi Aramco oil refinery in southern Saudi Arabia. The SABA news agency reported this on August 13, citing a military source.
According to these data, the Yemeni armed forces carried out the strike on the facility located in the Jizan region using two drones.
The source stated that the attack was a response to Saudi Arabia's violation of Yemeni airspace and sovereignty in the Saada and Hajjah provinces. He added that the Houthis will continue to respond to any violations of Yemeni sovereignty and attacks on the country.
On August 7, the Saudi-led coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea announced that Yemeni Houthi rebels had attacked the city of Najran, located in southwestern Saudi Arabia. Eleven people were injured, according to the statement.
Earlier, the UK's Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that a cargo ship was struck by an unknown projectile off the coast of Oman. Crews of nearby vessels were advised to exercise caution while navigating and to report any suspicious activity in the area.
On July 20, the Houthis announced the beginning of a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. They warned that they reserved the right to a comprehensive escalation in response to Riyadh's actions. On July 23, the Houthis announced that they had struck two oil tankers in retaliation for violating Saudi Arabia's naval blockade. They specified that the attacks caused fires on both tankers, and about 10 vessels were forced to abandon their route and turn around.
[KhaamaPress] An Afghan asylum seeker has been sentenced to nine years and six months in prison after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl in Nottingham after posing as a teenage boy on Snapchat, according to British court reports.
Abdul Khan, 28, was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of two counts of rape, sexual communication with a child, meeting a child following grooming and perverting the course of justice.
The court heard that Khan presented himself as a 14-year-old boy on Snapchat before arranging to meet the girl in a wooded area in Clifton, Nottingham, in May 2025. DNA evidence recovered during the investigation linked him to the assault.
Khan had previously been convicted over sexual contact involving another child and had served a prison sentence, according to court reports.
Nottinghamshire Police described Khan as a dangerous offender and said his conduct demonstrated a serious risk to children and young people.
The court ordered Khan to remain on the sex-offender register for life. He is also subject to automatic deportation from the United Kingdom following his prison sentence, subject to the applicable legal process.
Khan arrived in Britannia from Afghanistan in 2015, according to British media reports.
[WashingtonPost] Covert CIA program said to be behind mysterious attacks on Galápagos boats. A surveillance plane flew from El Salvador toward the fishing boats before drones attacked, flight data shows.
The mysterious strikes targeting multiple Ecuadorian fishing boats near the Galápagos Islands this year were carried out as part of a covert CIA program, The Washington Post has learned.
While many details about the agency’s involvement were not clear, one person with knowledge of the matter said the strikes were part of a “covert action” program, a type of secret operation overseas that is approved by the president but where the role of the U.S. government is not publicly acknowledged. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
No agency or government has claimed responsibility for the incidents, including the disappearance in January of a fishing vessel and eight of its crew members.
The CIA’s involvement adds a new and secretive dimension to the Trump administration’s otherwise highly publicized campaign against alleged drug traffickers at sea. It was not clear whether other actors were involved, such as private contractors or authorities from other countries.
The CIA declined to comment for this report. Several members of congressional intelligence committees contacted by The Post declined to comment.
The strikes are separate from the Pentagon’s campaign against alleged drug boats that began last fall. Those strikes have been fiercely criticized by human rights groups and some Democratic lawmakers, who say they are extrajudicial murders. The administration has justified the strikes by equating “narco-terrorists” with militants assaulting the United States.
The eight missing Ecuadorian nationals were aboard a 52-foot longline fishing boat called the Fiorella. The men on two boats that were struck in March, the Negra Francisca Duarte II and the Don Maca, all survived.
In interviews with The Post, survivors said that small quadcopter drones either dropped munitions on the vessels or detonated by crashing into them. The men said they were then taken aboard a nearby ship, hooded and cuffed by armed men, and transported to El Salvador — only to be returned later without explanation to Ecuador.
In each of the incidents, a high-end business jet equipped with specialized surveillance technology flew from El Salvador in the direction of the fishing vessels on the days of the strikes and in the days prior, according to flight- and ship-tracking data. Details about the plane, and the pattern of its flights before the incidents, suggest that it may be linked to the secret CIA program.
#2
And yet WAPO can't seem to provide a reason why the evil CIA is attacking the innocent Ecuadorian fishermen based on a story by a person who probably who either has an agenda or doesn't exist.
#3
It's WAPO so we can't really tell what's going on here...something about drones and fishing boats with an obscure reference to drugs. I guess we'll never know.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/14/2026 11:49 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Lots more at the link, gentlemen. For instance:
No evidence has publicly emerged that the crew members were involved in drug trafficking, and survivors have told The Post they were merely fishing. But the Galápagos Islands have increasingly become a hub for drug traffickers, where local fishermen are known to pick up jobs delivering gas to smugglers heading to the United States.
[Rudaw] The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt on Wednesday initiated trial proceedings against a female defendant accused of membership in the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS), with the German court scheduling five main court sessions to examine the evidence and issue a verdict.
With her second name redacted under German law, Sabina T. appeared at her first hearing, with Thomas Betten, the public prosecutor of Frankfurt, pressing terrorism charges.
"The defendant is accused of traveling to Syria in late 2014, where she contacted and joined ISIS, received accommodation, and obtained her daily living necessities from them," Betten told Rudaw’s Zinar Shino.
The public prosecutor added that, "She married an ISIS fighter, had a child with him, fled ISIS in 2017, and was ultimately deported from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member, but not the most reliable... to Germany in 2022."
Sabina T. was born in 1990 in the Herzegovina region of Bosnia and Herzegovina but grew up in Germany. She was 24 when she joined ISIS and married Abu Isa al-Andalusi, a Portuguese ISIS member, according to the indictment.
When she fled Raqqa, the Death Eater group’s self-proclaimed capital, she was arrested by Kurdish forces in northeast Syria (Rojava) and detained at the Ain Issa camp north of the province, according to the document.
Sabina, along with approximately 5,000 European-born individuals, joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq when it declared jihad in 2014, according to a 2019 article by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which added that around 40,000 individuals had joined the terror group worldwide at the time.
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, there was another explosion... a 2018 study by the Egmont Institute and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism on foreign returnees found that nearly 1,500 had either returned or been repatriated and prosecuted under European countries’ laws.
The others have remained in Syrian camps or were transferred to detention facilities in Iraq by a US-led mission earlier this year.
In February, the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council confirmed receiving 5,704 transferred ISIS suspects representing 61 different nationalities, including 983 suspects who held European, Australian, or American citizenship.
Previously, in 2019, the Iraqi judiciary announced that it had issued 514 verdicts for foreign ISIS suspects "while another 202 accused are still being interrogated and 44 are still being tried."
More than 20,000 ISIS-related cases had been processed by Iraqi courts, Human Rights Watch said in a 2020 report.
The suspects have been prosecuted, and are being prosecuted, under the Iraqi anti-terrorism law, with 3,000 of them sentenced to death, according to a separate 2018 report by the international watchdog.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/14/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[156 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[Rudaw] Iraq’s Federal Intelligence and counter terrorism forces seized more than 20 locally made drones and arrested four people, the Interior Ministry said late Wednesday.
Preemptive operations carried out by the Intelligence Agency and Counter-Terrorism Directorate “in two separate operations resulted in the seizure of more than (20) locally manufactured drones and the arrest of four individuals in possession,” announced the Iraqi ministry of interior.
“These individuals were trading the drones in violation of the regulations and controls established by the relevant authorities. During interrogation, they confessed to possessing these materials for trafficking purposes,” the statement read.
The seizure comes as Iraqi authorities are taking increased measures to tighten Iraq’s security control amid Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi’s push for disarmament of militias operating outside of the state security apparatus.
Prime Minister Zaidi, who also serves as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, visited the Air Defense Command late Wednesday night to review Iraq’s air defense capabilities and operational readiness, his media office said early Thursday.
During the visit, Zaidi framed air defense as the 'shield of Iraq’s skies' and the first line of defense for the country’s sovereignty. He also stressed that Iraq must strengthen its armed forces and air defense systems to independently protect its airspace, according to his media office.
Posted by: badanov ||
08/14/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[180 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
[IsraelTimes] Police say officers found a stash of weapons and ammunition in a Rahat residential compound that houses a kindergarten.
A video distributed by police shows an officer unpacking an assault rifle from a bag he pulled out of a hole in the ground in what appears to be a playground.
Police and National Guard officers raided the compound after receiving a report that a vehicle was shot at in the southern Bedouin city, police say in a statement.
A suspect in his 30s has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting, as well as on suspicion of possession of firearms and ammunition, the statement says.
It does not specify when the arrest, raid or shooting took place. Nor does it directly link the suspect to the arms cache.
[IsraelTimes] Three wanted Palestinians who were allegedly planning an imminent terror attack were captured by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin overnight, according to Israeli security authorities.
Troops of the police’s elite Yamam unit raided a building in Jenin and apprehended the trio, following information provided by the Shin Bet on their whereabouts.
The IDF, police, and Shin Bet say the three Palestinians are suspected of planning to carry out a terror attack in the “immediate timeframe.”
[IsraelTimes] Kushner and Mladenov to visit Israel next week to lean on Netanyahu to restore halt on strikes, adhere to humanitarian commitments, in bid to advance Hamas disarmament, source says
Surveillance soldiers on the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... border were reportedly sounding the alarm on Thursday about armed terrorist activity inside the Gaza Strip, in what they said feels like a repeat of their unheeded warnings before the October 7, 2023, onslaught.
Leading up to that Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... -led invasion and massacre, the surveillance soldiers sent alerts about bully boyz training for the attack, and were infamously ignored. Some of the surveillance soldiers, who are women, said sexism was a factor in their warnings being brushed aside.
Five female surveillance soldiers (tatzpitaniyot) from IDF Unit 414 were killed, and seven were taken captive when the Nahal Oz military base near the Gaza border was overrun. Noa Marciano was killed in captivity. Ori Megidish was rescued alive. The other five were eventually released during subsequent ceasefires.
On Thursday, Channel 12 quoted a number of unnamed soldiers who described a feeling of deja vu. They reported watching armed bully boyz operate and lay explosives along the Gaza Yellow Line that divides the territory between Israeli and Hamas control.
"We’re really seeing that they know we won’t fire on them. The Gazooks aren’t idiots. In the end, they’re constantly testing us and seeing if we react or not. It’s just like before October 7," one of the soldiers was quoted as having said.
Another soldier told the network she feels "helpless" in the face of the terrorist activity she sees over the border. A different soldier said she and her comrades "feel a little unnecessary. If I know that, in any case, they won’t do anything with my identification [of terror activity], what’s the point of sitting eight hours a day and monitoring the area super-super-closely?"
A surveillance soldier quoted by the network went on to complain that combat soldiers stationed in Gaza are being used as "human shields."
"In the end, the soldiers are stationed a few hundred meters from these terrorists," one of the surveillance soldiers said of the combat troops in Gaza. "We can’t just abandon them."
Amid efforts to advance a US-backed plan to disarm Hamas in the Strip, Israel quietly halted Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in Gaza for a week before resuming them on Wednesday.
The strikes then multiplied on Thursday, with Israel said to have killed a Hamas company commander in a strike on southern Gaza’s Khan Younis and a senior Hamas police officer in a Gaza City strike.
KUSHNER TO VISIT ISRAEL, LEAN ON PM TO ADVANCE HAMAS DISARMAMENT DEAL
Against that backdrop, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Thursday that US President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... ’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner was slated to travel to Israel next week to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aiming to lean on him to allow the advancement of the Board of Peace’s plan to disarm Hamas in Gaza.
Kushner will be joined by Board of Peace Gaza envoy Nikolay Mladenov, the source said, adding that the exact date of the visit has not yet been finalized.
Hamas accepted the Board of Peace’s disarmament plan two weeks ago, but its advancement has been clouded after Netanyahu came out against it.
Kushner and Mladenov are planning to lean on Israel to restore its halt on Gaza strikes in addition to adhering to a series of humanitarian-related commitments that it made as part of an October 2025 ceasefire deal with Hamas, the source says.
Once those commitments are upheld, the Board of Peace believes that it will be able to approach Hamas and ask the group to begin handing over its weapons, the source said.
However,
a woman is only as old as she admits... an Arab diplomat expressed speculation that such progress will be possible only if Netanyahu publicly walks back his opposition to the agreement — something that is unlikely to occur as the October elections approach.
Both Kushner and Mladenov are frustrated with Netanyahu’s public posturing against the Board of Peace’s disarmament plan, the diplomat said.
Kushner hasn’t visited Israel since last year when he brokered the October 2025 ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.
Asked for comment on the potential Kushner visit, a Board of Peace official told The Times of Israel, "We are in constant conversation and coordination with our Israeli partners and will be continuing our discussions at all levels to accelerate progress on the president’s comprehensive peace plan."
"Our conversations encompass the many areas of agreement and mutual concern that we are working through together. What is critical is that we both agree on the desired outcome and are finding ways to accelerate progress," the official said.
IDF APPEARS TO EASE RESTRICTIONS ON GAZA STRIKES
On Wednesday, Israel carried out its first strike on Gaza since August 3. The IDF said it killed a Hamas commander in the Strip’s north.
Also on Wednesday, troops of the Paratroopers Brigade rubbed out a Paleostinian who approached them "in a manner that posed an immediate threat," the IDF said.
The soldiers opened fire "to remove the threat," the army said.
Meanwhile,
...back at the argument, Livia had made her point with her knee to Jane's stomach... Paleostinian media reported an Israeli airstrike on a cycle of violence west of Khan Younis. The Hamas-affiliated Gaza civil defense agency said the strike killed one person, and the city’s Nasser Hospital confirmed the arrival of a body following the attack.
The person killed was identified in Paleostinian media as a man named Hudhaifa Kawarea.
The IDF later confirmed carrying out the Khan Younis strike, saying Kawarea was a Hamas company commander who was planning attacks on Israeli troops in the Strip.
Later Thursday, Paleostinian media reported the IDF struck a vehicle in Gaza City’s Sheikh Aljin neighborhood. The civil defense agency said one person was killed and several others were maimed. Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital said it had received the body of Jamal Abu Kamil, head of police in the Gaza City governorate. Hamas’s Interior Ministry also said Abu Kamil "was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike targeting his vehicle on al-Rashid Street, southwest of Gaza City." The IDF later confirmed the airstrike, claiming Abu Kamil had also invaded Israel during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
While the Board of Peace has pushed Israel only to act against imminent threats following Hamas’s acceptance of its disarmament proposal, the IDF claimed Abu Kamil was advancing attacks against troops and was therefore targeted to "remove a threat."
EU WELCOMES ISRAELI RENEWAL OF BLOC’S RAFAH BORDER MISSION
Separately, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... ’s top diplomat on Thursday welcomed what she said was Israel’s extension of the mandate for the bloc’s border assistance mission at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israel shut down during the war but reopened on a limited basis in January.
The mandate of EUBAM was extended through the end of June 2027, according to Kaja Kallas.
Also extended was an EU program that provides training for Paleostinian police forces and advice on rebuilding Gaza’s judicial system, Kallas said.
Initially set up in 2005 to help monitor the key crossing, the civilian EUBAM mission was put on standby for nearly two decades after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.
EU monitors were stationed at the Rafah crossing again in February, and the EU announced last week that more than 10,000 people have since passed between Gaza and Egypt.
Kallas called the extensions "an important step after months of diplomatic negotiations."
"The missions have a clear purpose: to help make crossings safer and more effective, support Paleostinian police, and contribute to stability in the region," she wrote.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
The EUBAM monitoring mission aims to provide a neutral, third-party presence at the Rafah crossing and involves police from Italia, Spain and La Belle France.
Israel’s green light clears the way for EU states to formally extend the mandates, which the EU states had agreed in June to prolong until September this year.
Israel had been expected to renew the authorization for the mission’s deployment in late June, but did not do so, as disagreements with the EU over the war in Gaza have strained Israel’s relations with the bloc.
[IsraelTimes] Gaza cancer patients are dying at two to three times the pace they did before the start of the war sparked by the Hamas attack of October 7,2023, as Israel blocks many from traveling for treatment after destroying the only local specialized facility, Gaza doctors say.
Israel last year blew up Gaza’s specialized cancer hospital where, it said, troops had found a tunnel used by Hamas terrorists running underneath. That means that an estimated 17,000 Gazans with cancer have no local option for chemotherapy or other advanced therapy.
Few Palestinians can afford to travel for treatment, and those who can face Israeli restrictions. The military imposes strict caps on daily crossings to Egypt, despite a 2025 Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that requires free movement in and out.
Asked for comment, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that controls access to Gaza, says it coordinates medical evacuations with the World Health Organization. To depart, Gazans must have a valid request from a receiving country and pass “required security screening,” COGAT says.
The WHO does not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[IsraelTimes] Abu Dhabi National Oil Company ADNOC says two of its vessels were attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz this evening, the United Arab Emirates’ state news agency WAM reports.
ADNOC says there were no injuries and the situation has been brought under control.
[North Press] Syria’s National Missing Persons Authority said on Thursday it found human remains at two sites in Deir ez-Zor governorate.
The authority said its teams, in coordination with relevant authorities, responded to reports of human remains in the al-Rasafa neighborhood and the Kashma desert area east of the city.
Specialized teams documented, collected and recovered the remains while preserving evidence and protecting the dignity of the victims, according to the authority.
It urged residents not to approach or disturb sites suspected of containing mass graves, saying this could affect documentation and recovery efforts.
The authority also called on residents to immediately report any information about suspected sites through official channels.
[North Press] Syria’s anti-narcotics agency said on Thursday it seized large quantities of drugs and arrested two people accused of possessing them in Aleppo’s Suryan neighborhood.
On Aug. 10, the agency arrested two people accused of trafficking large quantities of drugs in Kafr Kermin town in the Atarib area west of Aleppo, it said.
According to the agency’s official channels, security forces set up an ambush that led to the arrest of two suspects identified as M.M. and A.K.
The operation resulted in the seizure of 61 kilograms of hashish, about 220,000 Captagon pills weighing a total of 37 kilograms, and 700 grams of H-Bose, the agency said.
The suspects were referred to the competent judiciary for legal proceedings, according to the agency.
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.
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
