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FAA Records Add ‘Black Cube’ Sighting to Wright-Patterson AFB Drone Mystery

Newly released Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents obtained by The Black Vault under FOIA case 2025-04622 add significant new information to the still-developing story about a series of unauthorized drone incursions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in December 2024. These records, drawn primarily from the FAA’s SKYWATCH system, supplement the earlier Air Force FOIA release (2025-01757-F) previously covered by The Black Vault, and they introduce a striking new element: the report of a “black cube”-shaped “UAS” observed at around 16,000 feet.

SKYWATCH is an FAA operations security platform used to collect and disseminate reports of suspicious or unauthorized aerial activity, often relayed through Air Traffic Control Towers, FAA regional offices, and the Domestic Events Network. It serves as a central alert system for potential security risks, with reports often shared with law enforcement and military security forces.

Here is a breakdown summary of the events just released as a result of this case, and drawing from the SKYWATCH system. The documents themselves (located at the bottom of this article) go into greater detail.

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Schoolchildren as young as 11 are being asked in poll part-funded by taxpayers and Andy Burnham’s office: Are you pansexual?

Children as young as 11 are being asked if they are transgender, non-binary or pansexual in a study part-funded by taxpayers and Andy Burnham’s office.

The #BeeWell survey is a Manchester University project to assess wellbeing in youngsters, covering topics such as mental health, eating habits and engagement with school.

However, the questionnaire distributed to secondary school pupils also asks them about their ‘gender identity’ and sexuality.

The gender options offered are ‘girl (including trans girl); boy (including trans boy); non-binary; not sure; or I describe myself in another way’.

The ‘sexual orientation’ options include bisexual, pansexual, lesbian or heterosexual. Pansexuals feel romantic, emotional or sexual attraction to people of all genders.

In a ‘gender modality’ section, pupils are told: ‘Some young people are transgender. Do you consider yourself to be transgender?’ It explains that this means ‘someone’s gender is different to the one they were assigned at birth’.

The questions were added to the annual survey ‘following feedback from young people’, organisers said. 

It is funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), which represents Greater Manchester mayor Mr Burnham plus ten local councils, Manchester University and a number of charities.

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How a Fight Over Voter Data Could Reshape American Elections

America’s electoral system has always been subject to—by design—a shifting balance of local control, state authority, and federal oversight. That balance is once again under strain, this time in the form of a pair of federal lawsuits that could redefine who ultimately controls access to voters’ personal data. Last week, the Justice Department filed twin lawsuits against Maine and Oregon, arguing that the states violated federal election laws and the Civil Rights Act by refusing to give the agency full access to the states’ voter data.

Since May, the Justice Department has sent letters to at least 32 states requesting access to their voter registration databases, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In early August, the agency followed up with a more specific demand for full electronic copies of those files—including names, addresses, dates of birth, and sensitive identifiers such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers—along with documentation of how states identify and remove ineligible voters.

While the Justice Department has requested information from states about election administration in the past—including during the first Trump administration—the scope of the request is unprecedented, per the Brennan Center. Most states have not complied, and those that have appear to have provided only the publicly available portions of their voter files, which vary by state but may include information such as voter names, addresses, party affiliation, and voting history.

The Justice Department’s requests have raised privacy concerns from state officials, including Washington Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, who “fears the information would be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to fuel the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown,” reports the Washington State Standard. The Brennan Center notes that the Justice Department’s demands could conflict with the Privacy Act, which restricts how federal agencies collect and share personally identifiable information, especially when such data are not explicitly authorized for disclosure.

Despite the broad lack of participation from the states, only Maine and Oregon have been sued so far. “States simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure that all American citizens have equal access to the ballot in federal elections,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, in a press release.

Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has called the Justice Department’s actions “absurd” and a “federal abuse of power,” according to CNN. Oregon Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read criticized President Donald Trump in a statement, saying, “If the President wants to use the [Justice Department] to go after his political opponents and undermine our elections, I look forward to seeing them in court.” Read also maintains that the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to pursue legal action on these grounds, according to the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

In the U.S., elections—and the voter data that underpin them—are managed primarily by state and local governments, not federal agencies. However, since being reelected, Trump has sought to increase the federal government’s role in national elections. In March, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies to enforce stricter eligibility verification, tighten mail‑in voting rules, and enhance data sharing between federal and state authorities regarding voter registration and citizenship status.

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Oklahoma Overrun With Chinese-Operated Marijuana Farms

Chinese gangs are taking advantage of loose marijuana rules in Oklahoma to grow and transport marijuana to other states for sale on the black market, authorities say.

Oklahoma narcotics officials told Congress $153 billion worth of marijuana is unaccounted for and likely leaving the state for the black market in other states.

As many as 85 percent of licensed grow sites have connections with Chinese owners or operators, according to Mark Woodward, information officer with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

Since 2022, the state has shut down more than 6,000 illegal growing operations. Most U.S. states have made marijuana legally available, but taxes and regulations have pushed up its price, leaving an opening for black market sales.

Donnie Anderson, director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, said at a press conference in March 2025 that his department was conducting raids on illegal marijuana operations every day.

Here’s what we know about the ongoing crisis.

Black Market Operations Flourish

Oklahoma approved medical marijuana in 2018, licensing its cultivation and sale within the state. The state then reported an explosive growth of growers as the law established no cap on the number of farms that could be licensed to grow marijuana and no limit on how many marijuana plants each farm could cultivate.

The majority of these sites are run by Chinese nationals, according to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

By the end of 2022, Oklahoma had 8,400 farms licensed for growing marijuana. The state stopped issuing new licenses in 2022. As of mid-2025, there are under 2,000 licensed farms, which is still more than enough to meet the needs of the 325,000 patients licensed to use marijuana for medical purposes.

As the state has increased the reporting required of the licensed growers, it has come to light that an enormous amount of marijuana is not accounted for.

Between March 2024 and March 2025, medical marijuana dispensaries sold 1.7 million pounds of marijuana in Oklahoma, according to Anderson, director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. But farms licensed to grow marijuana reported growing 87 million plants of marijuana, with a typical yield of one pound per plant.

Anderson told Congress on Sept. 18, 2025, that the marijuana produced by 85 million plants is unaccounted for. That amount is worth around $153 billion, according to state estimates. It is unknown where all the unaccounted product went.

Locals Recruited as Straw Owners

The Oklahoma law, passed in 2018, prohibits marijuana grown in the state from being transported to other states.

Enforcing that law is a challenge. Oklahoma is at the intersection of North-South and East-West interstate highways. In addition, to obtain a license, growers must have two years of residency in the state. Anderson told Congress that some out-of-state operators paid local “straw owners” to fraudulently obtain an Oklahoma license.

These operations are growing marijuana in Oklahoma and transporting the drug to other states for sale. And in one case, one Oklahoma man was registered as owning 300 farms, said Anderson.

The vast majority of these grow sites have a Chinese connection. According to Woodward, currently there are 1,995 active farms in the state, and 85 percent are Chinese-operated or owned.

Several recent convictions of Chinese operators in Oklahoma show the connection between Oklahoma marijuana cultivation and East Coast Chinese criminal organizations.

One case from December 2024 involved Jeff Weng and Tong Lin, who were convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Weng operated out of Brooklyn, New York, while Tong Lin oversaw the grow operation in Wetumka, Oklahoma. According to witness testimony, they transported more than 56,000 pounds of marijuana out of Oklahoma over seven months.

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Netanyahu Meets With ‘Pro-Israel Influencers’ in New York, Describes Social Media as a ‘Weapon’ for Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with “pro-Israel influencers” after his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, his office said in a statement on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s office said that he spoke with the influencers “about the challenges in the new era, and the public diplomacy efforts and the influence of the social networks on the discourse for and against Israel.”

During the meeting, Netanyahu was asked what should be done about Israel potentially losing support from Evangelical Christians in the US, and he pointed to social media, which he called a “tool of battle,” and cited a plan for TikTok to be put under the control of US companies.

“What we have to do is secure that part of the base of our support in the United States, that is being challenged systematically … How do we fight back? Our influencers, I think you should also talk to them if you have the chance,” Netanyahu said. “And secondly, we’re going to have to use the tools of battle. The weapons change over time … we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield on which we’re engaged, and the most important ones are on social media.”

The Israeli leader described the TikTok plan as the “most important purchase that is going on.” Under the plan approved by President Trump, one of the companies that will have a major stake in TikTok and control the algorithm is Oracle, which is owned by Larry Ellison, an extremely pro-Israel billionaire and major private donor to the Israeli military.

“TikTok, TikTok, and I hope it goes through because it could be extremely consequential,” Netanyahu said, adding that the other major social media platform he is concerned about is X, formerly Twitter. The Israeli leader described X CEO Elon Musk as a “friend.”

“We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. You should talk to him. Now, if we can get those two things, we can get a lot, and I can go on about other things, but that’s not the point right now. We have to fight the fight. Give direction to the Jewish people, and give direction to our non-Jewish friends, or those who could be our friends,” Netanyahu added.

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‘Near Daily’ Israeli Assaults on Lebanon Have Become Non-News for Western Media

The Israeli military unleashed a large wave of air strikes on densely populated towns in South Lebanon on Thursday, September 18—although you’d never know it from the Western corporate media, who have increasingly lost interest in reporting on Israel’s unceasing war on its northern neighbor. This proceeds unabated in spite of a ceasefire, brokered by the United States and France, that ostensibly took hold last November. Prior to Thursday’s strikes, area residents were given an hour to evacuate.

The BBC (9/18/25) was one of the few corporate outlets that managed to find a bit of space for these events, under the headline, “Israeli Air Strikes Hit Southern Lebanon.” The outlet noted that

an Israeli military spokesman said the targets were infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah and in response to the group’s attempts to re-establish activities in the area. He provided no evidence.

The piece also explained that Israel “has carried out air strikes on people and places it says are linked to Hezbollah almost every day, despite a deal that ended the war with the group in November.”

Reuters (9/18/25) managed an even shorter writeup—and took Israel’s word for it in the headline: “Israel Attacks Hezbollah Targets in South Lebanon.”

No casualties were reported in these particular attacks, but the fiery spectacle naturally sent a whole lot of people fleeing in terrorized panic. The fact that such terrorism by the state of Israel transpires “almost every day” is perhaps part of the reason the media have largely relegated it to the realm of non-news.

Another part of the reason might be that outlets are too busy serving as apologists (FAIR.org, 4/11/25, 4/25/25, 6/6/25) for the ongoing US-backed genocide in the nearby Gaza Strip, which Israel launched in October 2023, and which has thus far officially killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children—although this is likely a grave underestimate.

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UN Declares Genocide in Gaza While 250 US Lawmakers Are in Israel 

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report on September 16 that charged Israeli authorities and security forces with having committed, and continuing to commit, acts of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The 72-page report, replete with 495 footnotes, was compiled by senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Specifically, the report concludes that Israel is responsible for committing four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely:

  • (i) killing members of the group;
  • (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
  • (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

This report brings the UN into line with leading human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Oxfam, all of whom have explicitly labeled Israel’s crimes in Gaza genocidal. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) also recently passed a resolution stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.

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Digital ID UK: Starmer’s Expanding Surveillance State

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer came into office promising competence and calm after years of alleged political chaos.

What has followed is a government that treats civil liberties as disposable.

Under his watch, police have leaned on broad public order powers to detain people over “offensive” tweets.

Critics argue that what counts as “offensive” now changes depending on the political mood, which means ordinary citizens find themselves guessing at what might trigger a knock on the door.

This is happening while mass facial recognition cameras are being installed in public places.

The pattern is clear: expand surveillance, narrow dissent, and then assure the public it is all in the name of safety and order.

Against that backdrop, a digital ID system looks less like modernization and more like the missing piece in an expanding control grid.

Once every adult is forced to plug into a centralized identity wallet to work, rent, or access services, the state’s ability to monitor and sanction becomes unprecedented.

Starmer’s Labour government is dusting off one of its oldest obsessions: the dream of tagging every citizen like a parcel at the post office.

The latest revival comes in the form of a proposal to create mandatory digital ID cards, already nicknamed the “Brit Card,” for every working adult in the country.

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When Palestinians Die in Israeli Captivity, US Media Almost Never Take Note

The different treatment accorded to the plights of Palestinian and Israeli prisoners by US corporate media illustrates a persistent double standard that treats some people as more human than others.

Take 20-year-old Palestinian prisoner Ahmed Saeed Tazaz’a, who died in Israel’s Megiddo Prison after nearly three months of illegal detention, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs (CDA), an agency of the Palestinian Authority (8/3/25).

Tazaz’a, who was from Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, was imprisoned on May 6 of this year without a charge or a trial. He was held under Israel’s policy of “administrative detention,” which locks up Palestinians indefinitely “on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future,” according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Tazaz’a did not suffer from prior health problems before his arrest, according to his family (WAFA, 8/7/25).

There are currently some 3,613 Palestinians under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, according to the July 2025 CDA report, and more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody (not including those held in military camps) in total. Even Israel’s own military intelligence only identifies a quarter of its detainees from Gaza as “fighters,” while human rights groups and Israeli soldiers have reported even fewer—roughly 15%—as Hamas members (Guardian, 9/4/25).

The CDA reports that Tazaz’a was the 76th identified Palestinian to die in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023. 

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Child killer aristocrat Constance Marten and her lover are to get £1million legal aid… despite her £2.4million trust

Jailed aristocrat Constance Marten and her lover Mark Gordon are set to cost taxpayers more than £1million in legal aid bills, figures reveal.

The wealthy heiress, 38, who was jailed for 14 years for killing her baby, has been granted legal aid for her trial and family court battle for her older children – despite having a £2.4million trust fund.

In a case which raises questions about the legal aid system, Marten has boasted behind bars that she will soon be able to access her trust fund, spending cash on whatever she wants.

She will also benefit from another fund which will mature when she turns 40.

Yet taxpayers have had to foot the bill for the couple’s Old Bailey trial, retrial, family court proceedings and a forthcoming appeal.

Marten and Gordon, 51, went on the run with their newborn daughter Victoria in 2023 to prevent her from being taken into care, sparking a £1.2million manhunt across the country.

The couple’s four older children had already been removed by social services to protect them from harm before they fled with Victoria. They camped in freezing cold weather, causing their baby to die from hypothermia.

Earlier this month, a judge jailed the pair for 14 years as he blasted their arrogance and ‘lack of thought for anyone’. 

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