Author: J.P. Knowles

Officials are still unsure on how a military submarine resulted in 53 casualties being sunk earlier this month. The investigation has pointed that the underwater vessel may have been hit by an invisible force during the training exercise in the treacherous waters off Bali.

IN PICTURES: Visual images taken by Singapore's MV Swift Rescue confirm Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala 402 has sunk and broken into at least 3 parts in the Bali Sea https://t.co/JYxImjo5W7

(Photos: Indonesian Navy) pic.twitter.com/HeXoKRBbxc

— CNA (@ChannelNewsAsia) April 25, 2021

Internal solitary waves are invisible but have the strength to drag a submarine down to dangerous depths. The report said Indonesian naval officials consulted satellite images from the region and determined that these kinds of massive waves were in the area at the time of the sinking. While there are many other theories surrounding this modern-day mystery, it appears that the evidence suggests that this type of wave caused the mass casualty event.

"Even though I'm not ready to be missing you, I'm not ready to live without you. I wish all the best for you"

Indonesian Navy releases video of the KRI Nanggala 402 submarine crew singing a farewell song.

All 53 on board have been confirmed dead.#KRINaggala402 #IndonesianNavy pic.twitter.com/UCGhuDtU8t

— Nishan Chilkuri (@nishanchilkuri) April 26, 2021

The commander of the Indonesian Navy Command, Rear Adm. Iwan Isnurwanto, informed that the wave may have “moved up from the bottom to the north, and there’s a trench between two mountains.”

“There was nothing that they could do, no time to do anything… if the sub was brought down by such a wave. It likely angled [downward], causing all the crew members to roll down,” Isnurwanto said. “We have to do further investigation, but that is most likely what happened.”

Images of the lost submarine were recovered by an underwater robotic drone. Those images found showed the vessel in multiple pieces strewn along the ocean floor at a depth of 2,750 feet.

These new findings contradict recent reports of the cause of the submarine sinking. The Indonesian officials have previously blamed the sinking of the submarine on an electrical failure that caused the submarine to be unable to execute emergency procedures to resurface. Other theories also included a missile strike or catastrophic blackout.

Terrorists from Hamas have fired more than a thousand rockets at Israel over the last few days, which has resulted in the deaths of a least five people with over a hundred injured. More civilians would have been critically injured if it wasn’t for Israel’s Iron Dome.

Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted has already intercepted scores of missiles from Hamas as the Palestinian terrorist organization continued to launch attacks against Israeli citizens.

The Washington Post explained how the Iron Dome works:

First put into service in 2011, it is designed to stop short-range rockets and artillery like those fired from Gaza. Two separate systems, known as David’s Sling and Arrow, are designed for medium- and long-range threats, including planes, drones, rockets, and missiles.

Iron Dome relies on a system of radar and analysis to determine whether an incoming rocket is a threat, firing an interceptor only if the incoming rocket risks hitting a populated area or important infrastructure.

The interceptors, which are fired vertically either from mobile units or a static launch site, are designed to detonate the incoming rocket in the air, producing the explosions in the sky that have come to accompany warning sirens during recent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

WATCH as the Iron Dome Aerial Defense System intercepts rockets over southern Israel: pic.twitter.com/xUz3bMuTzz

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 12, 2021

All the Iron Dome videos out of Israel going viral tonight: pic.twitter.com/l27BzTD4zR

— Livefist (@livefist) May 11, 2021

On Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, terrorists rioted in the Israeli city of Lod, setting three synagogues on fire and torching numerous other businesses and cars. Lod Mayor Yair Revivo spoke on the incidents, comparing the acts to Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass when Nazis in Germany killed hundreds of Jews and vandalized Jewish communities in 1938.

“This is Kristallnacht in Lod,” Revivo said on Channel 12. “I have called on the prime minister to declare a state of emergency in Lod. To call in the IDF. To impose a curfew. To restore quiet… There is a failure of governance… This is a giant incident — an Intifada of Arab Israelis. All the work we have done here for years [on coexistence] has gone down the drain.”

“All of Israel should know, this is a complete loss of control,” Revivo added, sounding desperate. “This is unthinkable. Synagogues are being burned. Hundreds of cars set alight. Hundreds of Arab thugs are roaming the streets… Civil war has erupted in Lod… The Orthodox-nationalist community here has guns. I’m imploring them to go back home but they understandably want to protect their homes. Petrol bombs are being thrown into [Jewish] homes. The situation is incendiary.”

On Wednesday morning the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went to Twitter to troll Hamas after a surgical strike from the Israel’s Air Force that terminated multiple Hamas intelligence officials.

“Our fighter jets, with the ISA, neutralized key figures of Hamas’ intelligence: Hassan Kaogi, head of the Hamas military intelligence security department & his deputy Wail Issa, head of the military intelligence counterespionage department. Looks like our intel was better.”

France has hardened its defense on any far-left attempts to infiltrate their country’s structure. Recently the government issued a ban on the use of gender-neutral terminology in schools, saying that the push by the “woke” leftists is a threat to the French language and their culture altogether.

“The country’s education ministry issued the ruling last week after a push to include full stops in the middle of written words – dubbed ‘midpoints’ – which allow both male and female forms to be represented simultaneously,” The Daily Mail reported. “In French grammar, nouns take on the gender of the subject to which they refer, with male preferred over female in mixed settings.”

The Académie Française, a nearly 400-year-old institution that guards the French language, pushed back on the attempt to make the language woke, saying that it is “harmful to the practice and understanding of [French.]”

Nathalie Elimas, the State Secretary for Priority Education, said that the attempts to make the language “woke” were “the death knell for the use of French in the world.”

“‘With the spread of inclusive writing, the English language – already quasi-hegemonic across the world – would certainly and perhaps forever defeat the French language,” she argued that the move would not make the language more popular and instead would drive people to learn English instead.

France’s leftist teacher’s union, the SUD Education Union, issued a statement attacking the ban and called on schools to ignore it.

“SUD Education demands from the Minister that he stop trying to impose his backwardness on the educational community,” the statement said. “SUD calls on staff to take no account of these instructions from another time, and to exercise as they wish, depending on professional situations, the full use of their pedagogical freedom.”

The Eastern European hackers responsible for the hack, who compromised the energy company’s pipeline, were paid $5 million in ransom by the Colonial Pipeline group.

Based on reports from two different sources close to the situation, the gasoline, jet, and diesel fuel company paid the ransom to “DarkSide” earlier this week. The deposit made to the hackers enables the pipeline to get back online, it may still be several days before the supply is back to normal in the affected regions of the southeast.

This is an excerpt from the report:

“Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction,” Bloomberg noted Thursday.

The company paid the ransom in “untraceable cryptocurrency,” according to the outlet, and the Biden administration was aware that the company intended to pay the $5 million to hackers the White House suggested, Wednesday, could be Russian or affiliated with Russia. The group, which admitted they were responsible for locking up Colonial Pipeline’s servers on Monday, claims they are not affiliated with any government and that their motivation is primarily financial, not political.

Media outlets insisted, earlier this week, that Colonial Pipeline had no intention of paying the nearly $5 million that DarkSide demanded to release the clogged server. Fox Business reported Wednesday that “the pipeline operator refused to pay, enlisting help from the Department of Energy, as well as federal, state and local authorities instead.”

The White House did say that they did not pressure Colonial Pipeline to pay any ransom, though, on Monday, a deputy National Security Advisor admitted that “companies are often in a difficult position if their data is encrypted and they do not have backups and cannot recover the data.”

The FBI does not advise paying a ransom to hackers, as it is likely to encourage further attacks.

On Mother’s Day, a gas station clerk in Florida intervened in the alleged kidnapping of a woman while working an ordinary weekend shift. The clerk says all she could think about was getting this endangered woman to safety.

Rachel Craddock recalls working that Sunday afternoon when a car pulled up that happened to be occupied by a man accused of beating and forcing a woman into his vehicle. The man had been identified by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office as Cody Jackson, who had struck the woman over the head with a piece of wood while inside her home in Seffner.

According to authorities, Jackson then forced the woman into his car and drove away only stopping at one point to tie her ankles and wrists with an extension cord. Jackson then drove to the gas station.

While Jackson went into the store, the woman escaped from the restraints and bolted toward a side entrance to the gas station.

“He seen [sic] the woman that he had bound in the car escape from the car and he started running out the door,” Craddock explained. “While he was running out the door she was running to my private door that was locked.”

CORRECTION: The incident occurred Sunday, May 9, 2021. https://t.co/UEB9lOTtQL

— HCSO (@HCSOSheriff) May 10, 2021

“She was banging on it saying ‘Help me, help me. He’s going to kill me!’” she said. “I hurried up and unlocked the door and I pulled her in and I locked that door.”

Craddock quickly called 911 and noticed the woman had a laceration on her head.

“All I could think was get her safe into the store with me,” said Craddock.

Jackson jumped back in his car and sped off then later ditched it in Tampa. He is still on the run and possibly armed.

“This man’s actions are reprehensible. He was threatening this victim’s life and it could have ended in tragedy had the victim not managed to escape just in time,” stated Sheriff Chad Chronister. “This attack was targeted. However, given Jackson’s violent behavior, we are urging anyone who comes in contact with him to please call us immediately. Please do not engage with the suspect, for he may be armed with a weapon.”

If you have any information on Jackson’s whereabouts please call the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office at 813-247-8200.

It was recently announced in a tweet from the official “Real Time with Bill Maher” that the 65-year-old host has tested positive for the coronavirus even though he has been fully vaccinated.

The comedian’s diagnosis resulted in the taping of Friday’s May 14 show being canceled.

“Bill tested positive during weekly staff PCR testing for COVID,” read the announcement. “He is fully vaccinated and as a result is asymptomatic and feels fine.”

The statement added that the show’s production has “taken every precaution following CDC guidelines.”

pic.twitter.com/dSBoyr1U5c

— Real Time with Bill Maher (@RealTimers) May 13, 2021

“No other staff or crew members have tested positive at this time,” the statement assured. “The show will be rescheduled at a later date.”

As he is known to be, Maher has been very outspoken about his feelings toward the coronavirus pandemic, even going as far as slamming blue states for keeping schools closed.

In his closing monologue in April, Maher took aim at the media’s “panic porn” during the pandemic, citing a Dartmouth study showing that “nearly 90 percent” of U.S. national media coverage was negative in comparison to other countries even as conditions were getting better.

“[Democrats] also have a greatly exaggerated view of the danger of COVID to and the mortality rate among children, all of which explains why today the states with the highest share of schools that are still closed are all blue states,” Maher lamented. “So if the right-wing media bubble has to own things like climate change denial, shouldn’t liberal media have to answer for ‘How did your audience wind up believing such bunch of crap about COVID?’”

Maher also mentioned a Gallup survey that showed a majority of Democrats incorrectly overestimate the chances of being hospitalized from COVID, with 41% believing it’s at least 50% while only 10% of Democrats correctly said that the probability is only 1-to-5% while 26% of Republicans agreed, adding that Democrats were “wildly off on this key question.”

“When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us, yeah, you wind up with a badly misinformed population, including on the left,” Maher said. “Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble … but what about liberals? You know, the high-information, by-the-science people?”

The Biden administration is segregating restaurant owners by race in prioritizing pandemic financial aid, barring white male restaurant owners from applying to a multi-billion dollar restaurant stimulus fund for three weeks, by which time the money may run out.

A lawyer said the move may be unconstitutional since the preferences are not remedying losses caused by government racial discrimination, but rather offsetting losses from a virus that ravaged the industry as a whole.

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was established and approved this year in the Democratic $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill and began accepting applications around the country on May 3.

The $28.6 billion dollar fund is experiencing extremely high demand due to the fact that the restaurant industry was among the hardest hit during the pandemic. The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced that it will only select applications from restaurants and other eligible small businesses that are at least 51 percent owned by “women, veterans, or socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”

Socially disadvantaged individuals are defined as “those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias because of their identity.” Economically disadvantaged individuals are defined as a subset of socially disadvantaged individuals “whose ability to compete in the free enterprise system has been impaired due to diminished capital and credit opportunities as compared to others in the same business area who are not socially disadvantaged.”

Some industry experts expect the $28.6 billion funds could run out before the initial 21 days are up.

The National Restaurant Association expressed concern that the demand for relief is so high that the money would be depleted “in a matter of weeks — possibly only a few.”

“We will continue to work with the SBA and our members to ensure the application process goes smoothly, even as we’re alerting Congress to our concerns about the limits of the current funds,” Sean Kennedy, the association’s executive vice president for public affairs, told Restaurant Dive.

Former Boy Meets World star announced her first adult film back in 2019 when she made her debut in Drive. Since then she’s become immensely popular when she joined the subscription service OnlyFans, where she’s been earning 6 figures a month.

Maitland Ward is a 44-year-old actress who appeared on 45 episodes of ABC’s Boy Meets World, which aired from 1993 to 2000, in which she played Rachel McGuire in the series. On Boy Meets World, Ward played Rachel, a character added to the cast in season 6. You may remember her as the roommate of Shawn’s brother Eric.

A TMZ reporter ran into Ward outside a restaurant on April 4 when they inquired what she had been up to after her pandemic activities. Ward noted that she’s been mostly “inside, on my webcam.”

When asked about how her journey into OnlyFans has gone, Ward called it “absolutely amazing.” She noted that the pandemic has kept people indoors, which has lent to the success of her OnlyFans page.

“I feel very fortunate because I, you know, get 6 figures a month from OnlyFans,” she said. Revealing that she is currently raking in more money than she ever has before, Ward pointed to OnlyFans, along with her previous adult film work, as her primary income sources.

“Porn is really giving me back my career,” Ward said. “I’m doing more acting than I’ve ever done and making more money. And I’m feeling more powerful than I ever have in my life.”

Ward’s recent uptick in acting gigs is not exclusive to the adult film industry. She will be making her television return via a sitcom called The Big Time, and may even consider dipping her fingers into producing at some point in the future.

Ward said she is looking forward to a bright future in mainstream media as well as the adult industry.

“I want to slay both industries,” Ward said. “I love and embrace both. Me being bold and free in my sexuality and so out there with it has really given me that power. When I was like this innocent flower, I was letting everyone else dictate what I should do or what I should be.”

The Colonial Pipeline is performing normal operations once again after being targeted for a cyberattack that cut off the gas supply for most of the eastern United States for several days.

“Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal,” Colonial Pipeline said in a statement. “Some markets served by Colonial Pipeline may experience, or continue to experience, intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period.”

“Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal,” the statement added.

The hackers demanded millions in ransom money which the pipeline operator refused to pay. Help from the Department of Energy soon stepped in as well as federal, state, and local authorities. Deputy Energy Secretary Dave Turk said the company has already resumed partial operations under manual control.

Colonial said safety would be its “primary focus” following the restart. The pipeline operator will conduct a series of safety assessments to comply with federal guidelines.

“This is the first step in the restart process and would not have been possible without the around-the-clock support of Colonial Pipeline’s dedicated employees who have worked tirelessly to help us achieve this milestone,” the company said.

We just got off the phone with #ColonialPipeline CEO. They are restarting pipeline operations today at ~5pm. More soon.

— Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) May 12, 2021

The ransomware attack has been credited to Russian hacking group Darksideand targeted a 5,500-mile pipeline that moves 100 million gallons of fuel a day, which’s about half of the East Coast’s supply.

Last Friday, the pipeline was forced to shut down some systems to counter the ransomware attack. This caused fuel deliveries to come to a screeching halt and triggered panic among the public much like the toilet paper shortage we experienced at the beginning of the pandemic.

A state of emergency has been declared by several governors in response to the crisis.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed the impacts of the Colonial Pipeline shutdown by flip-flopping between admitting and denying a supply shortage and said the administration used appropriate language in each moment.

On Monday President Biden’s homeland security adviser, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall informed reporters “Right now there is not a supply shortage.”

“We are monitoring supply shortages in parts of the Southeast and are evaluating every action the Administration can take to mitigate the impact as much as possible,” Psaki said.

The next day, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm refused to acknowledge the shortage, saying instead that there was a “supply crunch.”

“It’s not that we have a gasoline shortage. It’s that we have this supply crunch and that things will be back to normal soon and that we’re asking people not to hoard and know that we are all over this.”

“We know that we have gasoline. We just have to get it to the right places,” the secretary continued.

However, the EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg both called the lack of gasoline at the pumps is indeed a “shortage.”

Colonial Pipeline, which transports 45% of fuel used on the East Coast, shut down its entire operation Friday after a ransomware attack, in which hackers typically lock up computer systems by encrypting data, paralyzing networks, and demand a large ransom to unscramble it. The FBI has assigned blame to criminal group DarkSide, whose group members are Russian speakers. Russia has denied involvement in the attack.

Psaki punted on a question of whether Colonial Pipeline paid the ransom. “The guidance from the FBI is not to do that,” Psaki said while directing questions toward the company.

“I will say that there is advice and guidance we get from the federal government because we know this incentivizes additional attacks,” she said. “That is guidance that’s given from the FBI. But this is a private sector company, and I would refer you to them for any questions about what they have or have not paid.”

Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline.

— US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) May 12, 2021

The EPA has issued a temporary fuel waiver lifting environmental protection standards and the Department of Transportation waived hours requirements which allow truckers to take fuel to affected states beyond the daily limit of 100 hours.