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Iran has apparently lofted its first military satellite into orbit, ending a series of setbacks for the nation’s space program.

A two-stage Qassed rocket lifted off from the Markazi Desert in central Iran on Wednesday (April 22) and successfully delivered a military reconnaissance satellite called Nour to orbit, Al-Jazeera reported. The rocket could be seen successfully launching into soace in this video from Iran’s Tasnim News Agency and PressTV.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) praised Monday’s release of the videos, but said more action is needed.

“I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available,” he tweeted. “The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.”


The Pentagon on Monday officially released three videos of “unidentified” flying objects that have been previously leaked to the public.

The Department of Defense authorized the release of the three unclassified videos, including one recorded in November 2004 and two others captured in January 2015. The videos had been distributed in 2007 and 2017, the department noted in a statement.

Officials decided the official release of the videos would not reveal any “sensitive capabilities or systems” and would not impact investigations of unidentified flying objects.

:oooo.


New infrastructure upgrades were completed at Lhasa-Gonggar earlier this year, satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows. Workers at the civil-military airfield widened a road and built an additional parking apron near the base of the mountain.

Earlier this month, India’s Hindustan Times reported that China had built an underground facility to house fighter aircraft at the airport. Quoting three unnamed officials, the report said that an underground hangar was large enough to hold up to 36 aircraft.

That assertion however is inaccurate. Imagery shows the new parking apron with markings indicative of parking positions for up to thirty-six aircraft, but does not show activity to tunnel into the mountain to create a hardened hangar. To date aircraft have not relocated to the apron nor have any additional aircraft deployed to the airbase as a result.

In collaboration with the Autonomous Disinformation Research Network @DisinfoResearch

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019, leaked data from the defunct neo-Nazi forum, Iron March, emerged online, exposing the personal information of more than 1,200 members, including the locations of their IP addresses and, in some cases, their real names. Already, activists sifting through the database have uncovered several fascists around the country, including some in uniform. A thoroughly transnational network, Iron March stemmed from a site called International Third Position Forum, was launched by a Russian, produced a terror group in the U.S., and facilitated coordination among terror groupings in the U.K. and elsewhere, all through the power of the internet.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Iron March involved members whose goals of recruiting through the U.S. military underlied their fantasies of ultimately destroying liberal democracy through a fascist paramilitary insurgency. It went on to develop a small but lethal “accelerationist” terrorist group called Atomwaffen Division (Nuclear Weapons Division), responsible for murders, an assassination attempt, and failed bomb plots. It also recently became famous for adding journalists from a Quillette article to a hit-list called “Sunset the Media.” Though what they mostly seem to do is put up stickers in what they laughably call “the stickening.”

During World War II, an amazing amount of innovation, including radar, reliable torpedoes, and code-breaking, helped end the war faster. This will be the same with the pandemic. I break the innovation into five categories: treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing, and policies for opening up. Without some advances in each of these areas, we cannot return to the business as usual or stop the virus. Below, I go through each area in some detail.


The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19.

By Bill Gates

O,.,o.


Throughout Syria’s lengthy conflict, Bellingcat has worked to investigate a large number of chemical attacks, including the nature of the weapons deployed in those attacks, using open source evidence. From modified chlorine cylinders to locally made surface to surface rockets filled with Sarin, Bellingcat has revealed the nature, and origin, of these chemical weapons, confirming the Syrian government’s involvement in a range of chemical attacks.

Following a series of Sarin attacks in Al Lataminah and Khan Sheikhoun in March and April 2017, Bellingcat worked with open source evidence to slowly piece together the nature of the bomb used in the attacks. Bellingcat first published its conclusions in November 2017, and continued to build on the body of evidence it had uncovered. After the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) report was published this week, confirming the type of bomb used in the March 24 and March 30, 2017 Sarin attacks in Al Lataminah, we now have their confirmation of the type of bomb used, the Syrian M4000 chemical bomb.

In this article, we examine the evidence and processes used by Bellingcat to identify this same munition, and what it tells us about the use of Sarin as a chemical weapons in Syria, years after Syria was meant to have destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles in the aftermath of the August 21, 2013 Sarin attacks.

Appropriate references can help observers determine the size of North Korean rockets with modest confidence. Using this method, the author has previously identified the unique North Korean SCUD-ER ballistic missile by establishing its body diameter at almost exact 1 meter instead of the common SCUD’s 0.88m width[1].

Images from recent parades and test firing of North Korean rockets have offered more opportunities for relatively accurate estimation of the rockets’ dimensions. In this analysis, the author will present findings on the dimension of the missiles/ mock-ups exhibited in the April 15, 2017 parade in North Korea. The findings would in turn shed light on the technological sophistication of these weapon systems.

The “new HS-10” .