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SpaceX Starlink satellite photobombs orbital view of secret Chinese air base

One of SpaceX’s broadband-beaming Starlink satellites has been captured overflying a top-secret airbase in China that was photographed by a private American Earth-observation satellite.

The unexpected satellite alignment above Dingxin Airbase in the Gobi Desert of western China took place on Aug. 21 and created a range of unusual effects in the high-resolution image. Dingxin Airbase, which provided a backdrop for the orbital encounter, is one of the most secretive military locations in China, known for conducting complex fighter jet drills and bomber exercises, and supporting development of new military drones.

The visible-light photo, taken by one of Maxar Technologies’ WorldView Legion satellites orbiting at an altitude of 312 miles (518 kilometers), shows what appears to be a fleet of fighter jets resting on the ramp adjacent to the runway surrounded by brown, arid soil. In the upper-left corner of the image, a ghostly oblong shadow appears in the picture with a silver-colored middle section and two darker-colored arms stretching to the sides.

The photobomber is a satellite — specifically, one of SpaceX‘s Starlink internet satellites, which Maxar identified as spacecraft number 33828. The mirror effect comes from a trio of rainbow-colored reflections of the satellite, which enliven the drab desert surface below.

Susanne Hake, Maxar’s general manager for U.S. government, who posted the image on LinkedIn, described the colorful reflections as a “pan-sharpening spectral artifact,” caused by the extremely high speeds — around 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second — at which the two satellites passed each other.

“Essentially, our imaging system was merging high-resolution black & white data with color data while the Starlink zipped past at orbital velocity,” Hake wrote in the post. “Physics turned a technical imaging challenge into accidental art.”

Hake added that, although the orbital encounter underscores how crowded near-Earth space has become, the incident was more of a spectacular rarity than a concern for safety or image quality.

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The Roots Of Trump’s Continued Wars On Terror Trace Back To 9/11

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an “invasion” at the border.

Unfortunately, more than two decades of widely-accepted, bipartisan laws and norms first laid the groundwork for this to occur.

After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list, and Congress expanded the pre-existing Foreign Terrorist Organization list. These lists allow the executive branch, at its sole discretion, to add and remove individuals and groups to standing lists of “terrorists,” a term that is defined broadly.

The Trump administration has exercised this authority to formally designate transnational cartels as “terrorists” due in part to their role in the flow of people and drugs across the southern border into the United States. They have leveraged this designation to justify a range of actions, including deploying troops to Los Angeles and deporting immigrants to a brutal Salvadorean prison without due process.

Another post-9/11 legal invention that paved the way to what the Trump administration is doing today was the USA PATRIOT Act’s updates to immigration law that allowed deportation of not just those involved in actual violent acts of terrorism, but also those loosely associated with designated “terrorist groups,” even if those associations were peaceful and law-abiding or involuntary and a result of duress. People who have previously been excluded from the United States by these provisions include Iraqi interpreters for U.S. troops, victims of forced labor by violent armed groups in El Salvador, and even Nelson Mandela. These provisions mean that not just alleged members of cartels, but also cartel victims could be denied entry into the United States or deported if already here.

These same post-9/11 immigration law amendments also allow for revoking or denying immigration benefits to foreign nationals who “endorse or espouse” “terrorist activity,” defined broadly. The Trump administration has already revoked the visas of several immigrant students and scholars solely for their nonviolent activities criticizing the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza, as part of what they call a “zero-tolerance” policy for terrorism. The administration has primarily leaned on an older and more obscure provision of immigration law to carry out these attacks on immigrants’ free speech rights. But if current efforts are blocked by courts, or they wish to go further, post-9/11 immigration law may give them the tools to justify doing so.

The original decision to treat the 9/11 attacks not as crime but as warfare, and to launch a literal “war on terror” in response, remains the primary post-9/11 legal innovation on which so many abuses are made possible. Under this global war paradigm, the Obama administration carried out ruthless drone killings, including one that targeted a U.S. citizen, and justified the strikes with a mish-mash of legal standards that applied rules of war outside of actual war zones, and expansively interpreted what constitutes an “imminent threat” and resulting “self-defense” powers.

Every post-9/11 president has claimed wide authority to use military force so long as it serves a vague “national interest.” We can see echoes of this in the Trump administration’s insistence that the small Venezuelan boat blown up by the U.S. military posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” that the strike complied with the laws of war, and was “in defense of vital U.S. national interests.”

Commentators are entirely correct to denounce these assertions of legal authority. But policymakers have spent more than two decades accepting a war paradigm against whomever presidents determine to be “terrorist,” making it politically and legally all the more difficult to push back against what the Trump administration is doing now.

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New York Post Publishes Photo of Rifle Allegedly Used in Kirk Assassination

On Thursday, the New York Post posted a photo allegedly showing the rifle that law enforcement believes was used to assassinate Charlie Kirk.

Earlier Thursday morning, FBI Special Agent Robert Bohls indicated that they found a rifle in “a wooded area,” and they believed it was the gun used in the assassination.

He described it as a “high-power, bolt-action rifle.”

The New York Post published a photo, which they claim is the rifle recovered, describing it as a “30-06-caliber Mauser bolt-action rifle.”

A 30.06 bolt action is a popular big game hunting rifle and typically has an internal, fixed magazine, holding four or five rounds. The bolt must be manually lifted, pulled back, then pushed forward into battery, between shots, as each round must be manually loaded into the chamber.

Breitbart News noted that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) reacted to the assassination by pushing for more gun control.

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Suspect in Charlie Kirk Assassination Identified as 22-Year-Old Utah Resident Tyler Robinson

A suspect for Charlie Kirk’s assassination was turned in by his father, according to President Donald Trump, and according to reports, it was Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah.

Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA and a prominent ally of President Donald Trump, was fatally shot in the neck during a campus event on Wednesday, sparking nationwide outrage and a massive manhunt.

Robinson was reportedly turned in by his father who contacted authorities through a minister connected to law enforcement.

His name was released on Friday morning by The New York Post, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.

“I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning.

Trump added, “I hope he’s going to be found guilty and I hope he gets the death penalty. What he did — Charlie Kirk was the finest person and he didn’t deserve this.”

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The Motive for Nepal’s Revolution

The final straw for the revolution in Nepal was the government’s attempt to stifle free speech by banning social media platforms. These events did not take place because a few kids had their tablets taken away. Extreme government corruption ran rampant for years while the elite lived luxurious lifestyles in spite of the people they ruled over. The Nepalese government attempted to prevent the people from freely voicing their growing discontent, and then, when the people attempted to protest, the government murdered over 20 school-aged children in cold blood.

The media has poorly portrayed the cause of events by calling it the “Gen Z” revolution, sparked by a social media ban, which is entirely misleading, as the culprit was corruption and poverty. One in four citizens lives below the poverty line, with the average Nepali earning $1,400 USD annually. The poorest 20% spend around 67% of their income on food, and, much like most nations, in 2025, the majority is struggling to maintain the cost of living.

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Taking the Constitution Seriously

Last week, the President of the United States did not take the Constitution seriously. He ordered the murders of 11 people who were riding in a speedboat in the Caribbean Sea around 1,300 miles from the U.S.

Afterward he said he did so because he believed that they were members of a “narco-terrorist gang” and were delivering illegal drugs to America. He also did so, he said, as a “message” to other drug dealers who should fear a similar fate.

The boat had no ability to reach the U.S. According to the former head of drug interdiction for the Department of Justice, this so-called boat gang is not known for trafficking in illegal drugs. The crimes that the president said these folks committed did not occur in the U.S., and if they had, do not permit the imposition of the death penalty.

He offered no evidence to support his claims and didn’t even suggest that the riders in the boat posed a threat to the American military personnel who killed them. He couldn’t say if anyone in the boat was an American.

When he was asked for the legal authority for these killings, President Donald Trump replied that these folks were waging war on the U.S., and, because he is the president of the United States, he can do as he wishes to them.

These are constitutionally ignorant, morally repugnant, profoundly erroneous responses from a person who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

Here is the backstory.

When British monarchs wanted to dispose of inconvenient adversaries, they often accused them of vague crimes because they were able to define the crime however they saw fit. St. Thomas More, Henry VIII’s former Lord Chancellor, was executed for his silence. The monarch’s target was given a quick trial and then often a slow and excruciating public death – to send a message.

Mindful of the tyrannical impulses of monarchs and familiar with British history, even personally aware of folks in the colonies charged with crimes in London — where they had never been — and transported there for prosecution, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Founding Fathers most responsible for crystallizing the American ethos of natural rights and due process, crafted founding documents that articulated condemnations and prohibitions of tyranny and tyrannical behavior here.

Thus, Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence characterize human rights as the gift of the Creator, which cannot be taken away by executive decree or legislative enactment – ut only by a jury verdict.

And Madison’s words in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment declare that “no person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The use of the word “person” makes it obvious that due process applies to all human beings.

Due process requires a fair jury trial, with counsel and the opportunity for confrontation of witnesses and evidence produced by the government. It also requires proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty to a neutral jury, not to the accuser. And it requires conviction prior to the imposition of a legislatively prescribed penalty.

This was novel and radical in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, but it is neither novel nor radical today. Today, due process is the foundation of American law. It is what lawyers call black-letter law: Those in government are expected to know it and understand it and abide by it.

Until now.

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Threat to ‘Kill All Charlie Kirks’ Spray-Painted on Seattle College Campus

A threat to “KILL ALL CHARLIE KIRKS” has been spray-painted on the sign of a Seattle, Washington college within a day of the Turning Point USA founder’s public assassination on a Utah college campus.

Seattle-based reporter Jonathan Choe shared a photo on social media showing the alarming message scrawled across the bricks in front of Seattle Central College.

“This is obviously a threat,” Choe wrote. “But what the far-left doesn’t realize is that this madness is actually catalyzing reasonable Americans to now say, ‘WE ARE ALL CHARLIE KIRK.’”

“Courage is contagious and the movement will continue,” he added.

Another disgusting message was spotted on a sign carried by a radical in downtown Seattle, reading “Charlie Kirk shot hell yes!!”

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U.S. places $11 million bounty on Ukrainian ransomware mastermind — Tymoshchuk allegedly stole $18 billion from large companies over 3 years

The United States has placed an $11 million bounty on Volodymyr Tymoshchuk, a Ukrainian man wanted for his involvement with a string of ransomware cybercrimes. Tymoshchuk faces severe federal charges for his part in reportedly masterminding the theft of a combined $18 billion over a three year period.

Tymoshchuk is accused of being the kingpin behind the MegaCortex, LockerGoga, and Nefilim attacks, a string of attacks that were active from Dec. 2018 to Oct. 2021. The MegaCortex attack, which we covered in 2019, changes the Windows passwords and encrypts the files of a host computer, threatening to make sensitive files public if the ransom went unpaid.

“Tymoshchuk is a serial ransomware criminal who targeted blue-chip American companies, health care institutions, and large foreign industrial firms,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. in a statement from the Justice Department. One of the highest-profile thefts linked to Tymoshchuk and LockerGoga was the attack on Norsk Hydro, a renewable energy company based in Norway. The attack on Norsk caused a reported $81 million in damages as all of its 170 sites were impacted at some level.

Nocella continued, “For a time, the defendant stayed ahead of law enforcement by deploying new strains of malicious software when his old ones were decrypted. Today’s charges reflect international coordination to unmask and charge a dangerous and pervasive ransomware actor who can no longer remain anonymous.”

Tymoshchuk is alleged to have run the LockerGoga and MegaCortex offensives from July 2019 and June 2020, at which point the two ransomware viruses went largely dark. From then on, Tymoshchuk is accused of having helped to engineer and administrate the Nefilim ransomware strain, selling access to it to attackers in exchange for 20% of the ransomed funds received from each successful attack.

An unsealed indictment, archived by The Register, lists a number of unnamed victim companies from across the United States and Europe. Tymoshchuk is on the hook for seven total charges relating to intentional damage to a private computer and threatening to disclose private information. If found guilty Tymoshchuk faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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Nepal Army Takes Over Capital As Politicians Flee By Helicopter, Mayhem Worsens

The collapse of the Nepal government situation has gone from bad to worse overnight and into Wednesday. Parliament has gone up in flames, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned, there have been dozens of deaths and injuries – including among some government officials or their families. 

Government ministers have been seen fleeing the capital, chased by enraged mobs of mostly youth, sick of government corruption and following the latest attempt to outright ban a large number of popular social media sites, including Facebook, X, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube.

But apparently the social media ban days ago was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. “The unrest started in early September, when a group of young Nepalis, fed up with seeing politicians’ children posting about their designer handbags and luxury travel while most people struggle to make ends meet, organized a peaceful protest,” CNN reviews.

“Anger had been brewing for years about the country’s worsening youth unemployment crisis and lack of economic opportunities, exacerbated by what many viewed as a growing disparity between the country’s elite and regular people,” the report adds.

Residents of top politicians in Kathmandu have been reported attacked and in some cases damaged or set on fire, including the home of the now former prime minister of the country.

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AOC Pushes Gun Control After Charlie Kirk Assassinated with Bolt Action Rifle

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) described the assassination of Charlie Kirk as “horrific,” then pushed for more gun control, according to The Hill. 

Speaking to reporters, Ocasio-Cortez said, “This is horrific. This is awful.”

She then said, “Are we going to do something, or are we going to argue over rhetoric? That is my question about this. We have to pass gun safety legislation and stop this.”

Ocasio-Cortez did not say what type of gun control she would like to see passed nor what new law she thinks we need against bolt action rifles. 

During a Thursday morning press conference, FBI Special Agent Robert Bohls announced they had found the rifle they believed was used to assassinate Kirk. Bohls said it was a bolt action and they found it in “a wooded area.”

A bolt action rifle is popular for hunting and typically has an internal, fixed magazine, holding 4 or 5 rounds. The bolt must be manually lifted, pulled back, then pushed forward into battery, between shots, as each round must be manually loaded into the chamber. 

Like a revolver, a bolt action rifle is rudimentary. What gun control would impact such rifles?

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