,1,WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force tested Lockheed Martin’s Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept in March, but kept it secret to avoid increasing tensions with Russia.
A DARPA press release said the missile was initially accelerated up to high speeds by a booster stage.
It then engaged its air-breathing scramjet engine, which propelled it to a speed faster than Mach 5.
The hypersonic missile maintained that speed for an extended period of time, flying higher than 65,000 feet, and traveling more than 300 nautical miles.
Launched from a B-52H bomber, the missile can conduct short or no-notice strikes against time-sensitive and other critical targets.
As with other hypersonic missiles, it can maneuver within the atmosphere, meaning it can fly more unpredictably than ballistic missiles.
The initial secrecy around the launch comes in contrast to Russian claims of using hypersonic missiles against targets in Ukraine, but both gestures point toward a wider hypersonic arms race already ongoing.
On Tuesday, it was announced that the U.S. would work with Britain and Australia in developing nuclear-capable hypersonic weapons, according to The Guardian, and this is seen as a response to developments in the area by Russia and China.
,1,KYIV — Roman Abramovich poisoned: explainer.
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and two Ukrainian negotiators were allegedly poisoned after eating chocolates and drinking water during informal peace talks last month.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Abramovich, Ukrainian lawmaker Rustem Umerov and another negotiator developed symptoms after a March 3 meeting in Kyiv. These included peeling skin on their faces and hands, red eyes and constant, painful watering.
According to a source cited by The Guardian, Abramovich also lost his sight for several hours after the incident.
The poison may have consisted of organophosphates, the base chemical in nerve agents, according to one former chemical weapons colonel cited by Marca, though investigative outlet Bellingcat said the poisoning occurred through an “undefined” chemical weapon, adding that initial symptoms abated the next morning.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is also known to have met with Abramovich, but was not affected, according to Bellingcat, and all of those involved have since recovered.
As to the motivation behind the attack, allies of the poisoned men blamed ‘hardliners’ in Moscow, who allegedly ‘wanted to sabotage talks to end the war,’ according to The Guardian.
,1,VIENNA, AUSTRIA — Humans are consuming about five grams of plastic, the equivalent to a credit card’s worth, every week, according to a new review in the Health and Exposure journal.
Gut News explains that both microplastics, between 0.001 and 5 millimeters in size, and nanoplastics, less than 0.001 millimeters, enter our food chain after starting out as waste packaging.
These particles can enter the body through seafood, with fish known to mistake them for food or accidentally consume them alongside other food, but they can also enter the body when we drink from plastic bottles, with people who drink 1.5 to 2 liters of water a day from these bottles taking in 90,000 plastic particles per year, while tap water drinkers take in around 40,000.
The particles can trigger local inflammation and immune response, and nanoplastics in particular have been found to trigger chemical pathways involved in the formation of cancer.
The presence of both types of particles in the gastrointestinal tract has also been found to change the gut microbiome composition, linking it to metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and chronic liver disease.
,1,TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Russia’s surprising struggles in Ukraine present various lessons for the world in dealing with a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, according to the War on the Rocks site.
Firstly, Russia’s military buildup outside Ukraine demonstrates that any Chinese attack would likely be preceded by an equivalent buildup, and thus surveillance can prevent surprises.
The second lesson is that a strong national identity could play a factor in creating stronger resistance than anticipated, with asymmetric guerilla tactics harnessed in a similar way.
The third lesson is that while of course warfare plays out militarily, it’s also conducted economically.
The fourth lesson is that refugees may well become a major consideration in any future conflict.
And then, finally, the last lesson offered by War on the Rocks is that wars come with unintended consequences.
,1,CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE — Russian soldiers who drove their vehicles through Chernobyl’s toxic ‘red forest’ kicked up clouds of radioactive dust on their way to capturing the nuclear site in the opening days of Russia’s invasion, according to plant workers cited by Reuters, with a sensor near waste storage facilities recording the absorbed dose of radiation as seven times higher than normal, according to the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management.
Without radiation protection, this was ‘suicidal’ for the soldiers, according to one Chernobyl worker, as the radioactive dust is likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies.
However, it is not the main nuclear threat to Ukraine right now, according to nuclear expert Vadim Chumak, cited by MIT Technology Review.
Rather, the main threat comes through spent fuel. There are about 20,000 spent fuel assemblies stored at the Chernobyl site, and they contain a huge amount of fission products, such as cesium and strontium, which are very radioactive. If Russia was ‘crazy enough’ to demolish these storage sites, Chumak said, it would “pose a problem.”
The scale of that problem at Chernobyl is mitigated by the fact that the material has already decayed over time. However, elsewhere, at Zaporizhzhia, the second Ukrainian nuclear plant the Russians have captured, any damage to the spent fuel assemblies could “result in an enormous radiological emergency, comparable to what happened [originally] in Chernobyl,” according to Chumak.
This possibility is of particular concern because while reactor buildings are extremely difficult to destroy, spent fuel assembly storage was never designed to be attacked by tanks or missiles, and “definitely could not resist a strike by modern weapons.”
What’s more, the vulnerability of these bundles of used fuel rods was demonstrated in Fukushima, according to Chumak. There, the developers ‘put countermeasures for a tsunami in place to protect the equipment. But the tsunami was one or two meters higher than predicted for the worst-case scenario,’ he said. In that instance, rising temperatures in spent fuel rods along with explosions and a fire contributed to the release of higher levels of radiation from the plant.
,1,HOSTOMEL, UKRAINE — After Russia attacked and took the airport at Hostomel — also known as Antonov Airport — on the first day of the invasion, the Ukrainians fought back.
That night a small force of Ukrainian paratroopers infiltrated the forest outside the airport’s high wall. They made the mistake of sending five men over the wall, where Russian special forces were waiting.
After taking withering fire from Russian machine guns and grenade launchers, the Ukrainians called in airstrikes on the Russian positions. Here’s how the battle ended:
The Wall Street Journal reports that, after calling in an artillery strike, the small Ukrainian paratrooper force set up missile firing positions to take out any Russian planes that might try to land at the airport.
Having taken several casualties, the main force then retreated toward the south.
Suddenly, they heard the roar of Russian tanks and BMPs coming in their direction. The Ukrainians scurried to set up an ambush in the dark.
When the Russian armor came within range, they fired an anti-tank missile, which destroyed the leading tank. They then fired rocket-propelled grenades at the remaining vehicles, which quickly turned around and sped away.
A short while later, the soldiers were met by civilians who used their cars to take the injured to hospital.
Over the next few days Ukrainian forces managed to halt Russian forces on a front line around Hostomel.
Since that first day of the invasion, heavy fighting has continued for weeks around the airport, and Russia has been unable to land its big transport planes at the airport — which lies just outside Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defenders had been able to inflict losses on the Russian war machine by mixing effective tactics with expensive Western missile systems.
,1,MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Philippine Coast Guard has accused a Chinese Coast Guard boat of steering within meters of one of its vessels in the South China Sea, according to Agence France Presse.
The incident occured March 2, near the contested Scarborough Shoal, one of the region's richest fishing areas, and the Philippines’ statement accuses China of breaking international rules and risking a collision as its boat allegedly came within 19 meters of a Filipino patrol boat.
According to The Associated Press, the last 12 months has seen three similar incidents around the same area, with two coming in June during a Philippine maritime exercise and one coming a month before that when a Chinese Coast Guard ship moved close to a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries vessel.
Additionally, in November, a Chinese Coast Guard ship fired a water cannon at Filipino boats trying to re-supply Filipino forces occupying the Second Thomas Shoal.
The broader context for all such confrontations is that China makes sweeping and contested claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea, home to an estimated 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, plus rich fishing grounds and strategically important shipping lanes.
These claims rest on the so-called ‘nine-dash line’ border, first inscribed on a Chinese map in 1947, according to Time Magazine and, despite the fact that a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against its legal legitimacy, China has looked to enforce it both with efforts at intimidation of other countries’ vessels and by physically building in the region.”
The Council on Foreign Relations explains: “In recent years, satellite imagery has shown China’s increased efforts to reclaim land in the South China Sea by physically increasing the size of islands or creating new islands altogether.”
Practically this means that in addition to piling sand onto existing reefs, China has built ports, military installations, and airstrips — most notably in the Paracel and Spratly Islands, where it has 20 and seven outposts, respectively.
Additionally, and more recently, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, published satellite images that show China is also aggressively building electronic warfare installations in the area with the same broad aims in mind.
The CSIS suggests that these installations could be designed to turn the waterway into an electronic ‘dead zone,’ in which U.S. ships and planes would find it hard to function.
,1,HOSTOMEL, UKRAINE — In part two of this video series we looked at how — on the first day of the Russian invasion — Hostomel airport was hit by first a cruise missile, then by three hours of helicopter strafing, followed by Russian special forces being inserted by helicopters.
That night, Ukrainian forces tried to infiltrate the area around the airport to shoot down incoming Russian troop-carrier planes. A force of 48 Ukrainian paratroopers were approaching the airport under cover of darkness when they were spotted by a Russian microdrone. Here’s what happened next.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ukrainians, knowing they had been spotted, stormed the airport, but they ran into the airport’s tall concrete wall topped with barbed wire.
Lacking explosives to blast through, the team cut a hole in the wire and started scaling the wall.
Five made it over. Then a Russian machine gun opened up at them. Three of the Ukrainians were badly injured.
The incoming fire pinned the team down, and a grenade exploded close to them, setting the grass around them on fire. They realized that the enemy had used their time to build a strong line of defense, so they called in coordinates for Ukrainian artillery to hit the enemy from the south.
At that stage, another Ukrainian attack was launched by an armored unit that had approached the airport from the north, so the team managed to set up firing positions for anti-aircraft missiles.
Their commander was then told via radio that the Russian airlift operation was called off, because the Russians realized Ukrainian missile teams were active in the zone outside the airport perimeter.
We’ll show you how the battle for Hostomel ended tomorrow. The battle happened on the first day of the invasion, and it resulted in a flood of video footage as Ukrainian civilians used their phone cameras to record images of the battle.
The footage shows hundreds of Russian helicopters flying low over Ukraine as they headed toward the strategic airport. Some also show Russian helicopters being shot down by missile teams while on their way.
,1,CORVALLIS, OREGON — A massive wall of ice may have stopped the first people entering the Americas doing so via the land bridge that connected it with Asia, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which instead suggested they likely arrived via boats along the Pacific coast.
Previous research has suggested an ice-free corridor between the ice sheets that covered North America at the time may have allowed for travel from Beringia, the landmass that connected Asia with North America, down to the Great Plains.
However, analysis of geological samples from six locations found that the ice-free corridor did not fully open until about 13,800 years ago, whereas, according to Live Science, previous studies have discovered stone artifacts in central Mexico that were at least 26,500 years old, which would mean these earliest immigrants’ path would’ve been blocked by ice sheets.
These sheets may have been between 1,500 and 3,000 feet, or 455 to 910 meters high, according to the new study, which makes them taller than any building on Earth.
,1,HOSTOMEL, UKRAINE — In part one of this video series we looked at how — on the first day of the Russian invasion — Hostomel airport near Kyiv was hit at 7 a.m. by a Russian cruise missile. A few hours later, dozens of Russian helicopter gunships started engaging the airport’s defenders for hours. Here’s what happened next.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, after nearly three hours of strafing Hostomel airport on the first day of the invasion, Russian helicopters started to disgorge elite Russian soldiers on the most remote parts of the airport’s open fields.
These troops could later be seen on helmet cam as they carefully engaged the remaining resistance and moved toward the airport’s built-up area. Here, they set up roadblocks and anti-tank missiles to stop Ukrainian counter attacks.
As the Russians dug in, Ukrainian intelligence realized that Moscow planned to send 18 transport aircraft into Ukraine from Belarus.
That night, a unit of 48 Ukrainian paratroopers jumped into three helicopters and sped toward Hostomel.
Their mission was to get close enough to the landing strip to destroy at least the first Russian transport aircraft, so no others would dare to land.
The small Ukrainian force dismounted in a field west of the airport and approached it on foot, under cover of darkness.
Suddenly, a Russian surveillance drone buzzed over them, and they realized that they had been spotted.
Tomorrow we’ll show you part three of the battle of Hostomel airport.
Interestingly, combat footage of the first day of the battle shows many parts of the battle unfolding. One video shows a Russian Kamov Ka-52 attack helicopter conducting many strafing runs before it is damaged by Ukrainian fire and has to make an emergency landing in one of the fields surrounding the airstrip.
In another video, Ukraine’s famous Antonov An-225 cargo plane can be seen burning to the ground in its open hangar. The An-225 was the world’s largest functional cargo plane, and only one was ever built. It is not certain if it was hit by Russian fire, or if the Ukrainians destroyed it to prevent the Russians from using it.
There are also quite a few videos showing hundreds of Russian attack and troop-carrying helicopters converging on Hostomel from all sides. Most of these videos were taken by Ukrainian civilians using their phone cameras to get footage of the attack from their homes and cars.
,1,Originally published on November 26, 2013
Authorities have released a summarized report of an official investigation into the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that took place on Dec. 14, 2012. The 48-page summary that was released to the public was shortened from a report that ran into thousands of pages. However, authorities say the motive of the shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, remains unknown.
According to the report, Lanza first killed his mother with .22-caliber rifle at close range as she lay in bed the morning of Dec. 14. He then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in a 2010 Honda Civic, parking next to a no parking zone outside of school. Officials later found a Izhmash Saiga-12, 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun in the vehicle.
Lanza was armed with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S, a Glock 10 mm handgun and a Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol when he arrived at the school at around 9:30 a.m. He was also carrying 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster. When he found the doors were locked, he shot through the glass window to the right of the front lobby doors.
In the north hallway, Lanza shot and killed school principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach. He also fired upon two other staff members in the hallway, who survived. The shooter then went into the main office, but apparently did not see the staff who were hiding inside, and returned to the hallway before entering first grade classrooms 8 and 10. It is unknown which order he entered the rooms. While there, Lanza opened fire on teachers and students, killing four teachers and 20 children.
Police received a 911 call at 9:35 a.m, and the first police officer arrived on the scene outside of school at about 9:39 a.m.
A minute later, Lanza took his own life with a single shot from a Glock 20, 10 mm pistol in classroom 10.
The entire event took place in under 11 minutes.
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,1,Veronica McFoy, 41, from West Virginia's Monongalia County, lost control of her vehicle last Monday and crashed down a 30-foot embankment. Heavy vegetation meant her car was not visible from the road. She broke her vertebrae, ribs and her chest bone and was trapped for three days. McFoy survived on sodas and rain water, eventually escaping through a window after breaking it with a wrench she found inside the car. She is expected to make a full recovery.
Sources: CBS, Metro News
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To subscribe to News Direct or for more info, please visit:
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