Tag: united kingdom

New British laser weapon in successful high power firing

During a trial at the MOD’s Hebrides Range, the DragonFire laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) system achieved the UK’s first high-power firing of a laser weapon against aerial targets.

The range of DragonFire is classified, but it is a line-of-sight weapon and can engage with any visible target.

  • First high-power firing of a laser weapon against aerial targets
  • Laser boasts pinpoint accuracy and low long-term costs

“DragonFire exploits UK technology to be able to deliver a high power laser over long ranges. The precision required is equivalent to hitting a £1 coin from a kilometre away. Laser-directed energy weapons can engage targets at the speed of light, and use an intense beam of light to cut through the target, leading to structural failure or more impactful results if the warhead is targeted.

Firing it for 10 seconds is the cost equivalent of using a regular heater for just an hour. Therefore, it has the potential to be a long-term low-cost alternative to certain tasks missiles currently carry out. The cost of operating the laser is typically less than £10 per shot.”

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‘HOME DESK’: THE FOREIGN OFFICE’S COVERT PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN INSIDE BRITAIN

The UK Foreign Office conducted covert propaganda operations inside the UK during the Cold War, recently declassified files show. 

It sought to challenge and discredit leading journalists at television’s World In Action programme, intellectuals such as Eric Hobsbawm and the leaders of some of Britain’s largest trade unions. 

The government body responsible was a highly secretive unit called the Home Desk, a part of Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), which was housed within the Foreign Office.

The Home Desk’s modus operandi was to collect information on “subversive” individuals and organisations from open and secret sources, ranging from newspaper clippings and books to MI5 moles and classified material.

It would then pass this information to trusted contacts in the British press, parliament, think tanks, universities, and other private networks in an effort to discredit the activities of “subversive” leftists in Britain.

The Home Desk was kept entirely hidden from the public, and its funding was not subject to parliamentary oversight. Outside of a small clique of high-ranking British ministers, diplomats, and intelligence agents, the Home Desk simply did not exist.

Its ultimate target was the British public. The recently declassified record allows us to peel back a layer of these secret operations.

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Campaigners Slam Pride Over Trans Striptease, Simulated Oral Sex In Front Of Kids

A video showing a Pride performer stripping almost naked and simulating oral sex just meters away from onlooking children has sparked fury online.

The footage, which dates from June 2023, emerged online this week showing a  ‘Pride beauty pageant’ contestant in Margate in the United Kingdom taking his clothes off (it’s a man) on a bandstand surrounded by children.

The person then dances suggestively in just a bra and underwear to the song Pony by Ginuwine, which has the lyrics, “If you’re horny let’s do it. Ride it, my pony. My saddle’s waiting. Come and jump on it”.

The person then simulates oral sex on a stick as the children watch.

The video had many asking, where the hell are the parents?

The Telegraph reports that “The competition’s rule book states that obscenity, indecent exposure or sexual acts by participants in public are prohibited,” and that local police were not the incident had occurred.

Kellie-Jay Keen, the founder of Standing for Women, commented “When it comes to the protection and safeguarding of children and the vulnerable, we should have learned by now that groups such as Pride, Stonewall, Mermaids, Educate and Celebrate, No Outsiders, any organisation set up around the sexuality and made up identities of individuals, cannot be trusted.”

She continued, “At this point we have to ask, where were the parents? And what sort of parents sit their children in front of a sexually explicit adult entertainer?”

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Most police forces now allow trans officers to strip-search women as campaigners warn the move will lead to ‘state-sanctioned sexual assault’

The majority of police forces allow trans-identifying biologically male officers to strip-search women, research has found.

Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, at least 34 have either implemented the policy or intend to, a report from the Women’s Rights Network revealed.

The feminist group’s founder, Heather Binning, said the guidelines would lead to ‘state-sanctioned sexual assault’, and police leaders had failed the public by pandering to vocal lobbyists.

‘Self-identification is not UK law and women should not be paying the price for policing beyond the law,’ she said.

‘Police chiefs have failed us again. This is not reasonable or lawful and we do not consent. It is state-sanctioned sexual assault, and it must not be tolerated.’

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UK urged to ‘follow US’ and take UFO sightings seriously after drop in reports

The UK has been urged to follow the US and take UFO reports more seriously.

There has been a significant fall in the number of sightings reported to police in Northern Ireland in the last year.

Nick Pope, who used to investigate reports of UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), described the figures as “staggeringly low” and suggested there may be an under-reporting due to mistrust of the authorities.

The US is treating the phenomenon as a potential defence, national security and flight safety concern, and it’s time the UK did the same thing

Former investigator Nick Pope

The MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009, while in the US there is a government taskforce on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

Mr Pope told the PA news agency that the US is treating the phenomenon as a “potential defence, national security and flight safety concern”, adding “it’s time the UK did the same thing”.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) received eight alleged sightings in the region during 2021, an increase from six in 2020 and four in 2019.

This dropped to just one in 2022.

The only sighting reported to police was on October 20, 2022 when a caller in the Stewartstown area of Dungannon reported seeing a UFO flying from the Belfast direction to Dungannon every evening.

A police spokesman said: “No further police action was required on this occasion”

Police said there were no reported UFO sightings from January 1 to November 1, 2023.

There were two reported sightings of aliens and one reported sighting of “strange lights”.

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UK police say no probe into Prince Andrew over Epstein claims

UK police said Friday that no investigation has been launched into Prince Andrew after an anti-monarchy group filed a complaint based on recently released US court documents detailing people linked to accused sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A New York judge on Wednesday began to unseal the identities of those linked in the documents to disgraced US financier Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial.

In them, Andrew, who is formally known as the Duke of York, is accused of groping a woman, which he denies.

Republic, which wants an elected British head of state, said in a statement on Thursday that “we’ve just reported Andrew to the police.”

Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer — a former chief state prosecutor — also said Friday police should “look at” the new claims.

But the Metropolitan Police said Friday that “no investigation has been launched”.

“We are aware of the release of court documents in relation to Jeffrey Epstein,” it said in a statement.

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XL Bully campaigners win temporary injunction to stop 240 dogs in rescue homes being put down after strict laws came into force on December 31

XL Bully campaigners have won a temporary injunction that will stop 240 dogs in rescue homes from being put down after strict new laws came into force on New Year’s Eve. 

Under the Government’s guidelines, XL Bully dogs that arrived in rescue homes since October 31, which had not been rehomed, would have to be killed because they don’t qualify for an exemption to stay there.

It was thought an estimated 240 dogs would be destroyed as a result until one rescue centre took an injunction to review the rules.

Carla Lane Animals in Need, a 40-year-old care home in Liverpool, said rescue centres do not have to destroy the dogs from today as many had planned. 

A High Court Judge ordered: ‘No XL Bully dog may be seized from a Rehoming Organisation… and/or destroyed for want of or ineligibility for a certification of exemption on grounds that the dog was taken into the RO’s care after 31 October 2023 until the further Order of the Court.’

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Cerne Abbas Giant: Has the mystery of the chalk hill figure been solved?

A centuries-old mystery surrounding the origins of a chalk giant hill figure has been unravelled by academics from Oxford University.

New research indicates the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset was originally carved as an image of Hercules to mark a muster station for West Saxon armies.

Speculation has long surrounded the figure, with some believing it could date back to prehistoric times.

The academics said it was reinterpreted in the 11th Century by local monks.

In 2021, tests carried out for the National Trust, which owns the site, revealed the giant had been carved in the Anglo-Saxon period and was not prehistoric, or more recent, as previously thought.

Dr Helen Gittos and Dr Thomas Morcom have been building on the discovery to uncover why the giant was created in the first place.

They explained that Hercules was well known in the Middle Ages and there was a particular spike of interest in him during the 9th Century, at a time when the area was under attack by Vikings.

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Secrecy shrouds British military actions in Lebanon

On 8 October, veteran British reporter Robert Peston published a remarkable post on the social media platform X. Citing insider information from “government and intelligence sources,” Peston asserted that the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood would inevitably evolve into a full-blown regional war, one that will be “as destabilizing to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine.” The journalist forewarned:

“We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world.”

What makes this revelation even more astonishing is the speed at which British intelligence gained certainty about imminent upheaval in West Asia, just over 24 hours after the unprecedented strike by Palestinian freedom fighters on Israel. 

The urgency to prepare western audiences for the impending crisis hints at a deeper narrative — that London may have had a hand in igniting conflict across the region, a macabre plan that has been unfolding ever since.

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Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

An 18-year-old hacker who leaked clips of a forthcoming Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.

Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, who is autistic, was a key member of international gang Lapsus$.

The gang’s attacks on tech giants including Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games cost the firms nearly $10m.

The judge said Kurtaj’s skills and desire to commit cyber-crime meant he remained a high risk to the public.

He will remain at a secure hospital for life unless doctors deem him no longer a danger.

The court heard that Kurtaj had been violent while in custody with dozens of reports of injury or property damage.

Doctors deemed Kurtaj unfit to stand trial due to his severe autism so the jury was asked to determine whether or not he committed the alleged acts – not if he did so with criminal intent.

A mental health assessment used as part of the sentencing hearing said he “continued to express the intent to return to cyber-crime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated.”

The jury was told that while he was on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and in police protection at a Travelodge hotel, he continued hacking and carried out his most infamous hack.

Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone.

Kurtaj stole 90 clips of the unreleased and hugely anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6.

He broke into the company’s internal Slack messaging system to declare “if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram within 24 hours I will start releasing the source code”.

He then posted the clips and source code on a forum under the username TeaPotUberHacker.

He was rearrested and detained until his trial.

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