I came across them during my research for my biography of the British publisher George Weidenfeld. These letters are not part of the files released by the US Congress or Department of Justice, but were included in Weidenfeld’s private archive.

I was already aware of a connection between Epstein and George Weidenfeld. The Boeing 757 that Epstein used to traffic underage girls to his Caribbean island was nicknamed by the locals as the “Lolita Express”. It was a reference to the novel by Vladimir Nabokov about a professor who minimises the repeated rape and sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. In 1959, this book, Lolita, was famously published in the UK – overturning a government ban in the process – by George Weidenfeld.

The first letters I found in George’s archives involved Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years in prison for helping sex offender and billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse teenage girls.

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Under Nicolás Maduro, the hostility hardened further. Washington responded to Venezuela’s internal political crisis with crippling economic sanctions, asset seizures, and diplomatic isolation. The attempt to install Juan Guaidó as a “parallel president” was perhaps the most extravagant intervention of the century—a strategy that collapsed spectacularly as the world refused to accept what became a geopolitical fiction. These episodes are not isolated. They form a continuous arc of confrontation stretching from the late 1990s to the present, an arc that shapes how any potential U.S. military action must be understood today.

In this context, Russia and China have become central actors. Russia’s involvement is direct and strategic. Moscow sees Venezuela as a key outpost in its global contest with U.S. dominance. Over the past decade, it has expanded military cooperation, supplied advanced air-defence systems, trained Venezuelan officers, and signalled repeatedly that it will not allow a rerun of Iraq or Libya on its geopolitical perimeter. In the event of an attack, Russia would not need to deploy troops to meaningfully alter the balance; its intelligence, cyber capabilities, defence technologies and diplomatic weight would dramatically raise the cost of any U.S. assault.

China, though less dramatic in tone, is just as indispensable. Beijing has poured billions into Venezuelan energy, infrastructure, and long-term credit lines. It has consistently rejected sanctions and opposed external interference, grounding its approach in sovereignty and economic stability. If the U.S. attacked, China would respond by ensuring Venezuela’s economic survival: expanding credit lines, buying oil regardless of sanctions, and blocking any Western attempt to legitimise military action at the United Nations. Beijing’s calculus is simple. Allowing a violent overthrow in Venezuela would set a precedent that could later be used against its other partners—and eventually against itself.

But perhaps the most striking change lies not in Eurasia, but in Latin America itself. The region has moved into a new era marked by sovereignty, cooperation, and an instinctive rejection of U.S. militarism. Even countries that disagree with Maduro on ideology or governance oppose any form of foreign military intervention. The era in which Washington could rely on neighbouring states to serve as logistical platforms or political cover is over.

Colombia is the clearest example. Once the centre of U.S. security operations, Colombia under President Gustavo Petro has undergone a profound transformation. Petro has rebuilt relations with Caracas, embraced diplomacy over militarised counterinsurgency, and rejected the U.S.’s punitive drug war model.

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The decision by the Russian prosecutor general’s office is the latest move in a crackdown on Kremlin critics, journalists and activists, which has intensified since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a separate statement on Friday, the office said it was opening a case against Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot that would designate the group as an “extremist” organisation.

Separately, Russia’s Supreme Court designated on Thursday the Anti-Corruption Foundation set up by the late opposition activist Alexey Navalny as a “terrorist” group.

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The committee announced on Friday, November 28, 2025, that “Person A,” whose identity has not been disclosed, warned British officials after the data breach but was subsequently confronted with an emergency court order prohibiting him from speaking about or confirming the issue in any form.

Person A explained that in 2021, during the fall of Kabul, he participated in assisting former Afghan security personnel and their families, initially in administrative tasks and later in processing cases across a wide network of units.

He said the breach became evident when a family under his care came across sensitive information about themselves on Facebook anonymously.

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Gen Zers feel their future is slipping away from them.

They are playing the game of academic achievement, but where are the well-paying jobs they were promised? Meanwhile, as they work two jobs or wake up at 3 a.m. simply to get a good seat in overcrowded university classes, social media offers a steady stream of Instagram-perfect lives – the privileged living in luxury. So Gen Z has used the internet to fight back.

The revolution has come with plentiful brushstrokes of youth, from the use of a gaming platform to organize to the ubiquitous symbol of the movement – a Jolly Roger flag taken from a popular Japanese comic. Some protesters needed their parents’ permission to participate.

Yet what is perhaps most extraordinary about the Gen Z protests worldwide, experts say, is their unprecedented interconnection. A global generation has spawned a global movement.

David Clark of Binghamton University has studied protest movements for years. This is the first time he’s seen so many protests refer to one another. With hashtags, movements are creating chain reactions.

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On Friday, the Washington Post newspaper, citing sources familiar with the situation, reported that Hegset ordered “everyone to be killed” during the US strikes on drug traffickers off the coast of Venezuela, and therefore, during the first strike on September 2, the commanders were ordered to launch a second strike to kill the survivors.

~ Link…

At usual cruising altitudes (35,000-40,000 feet), an aircraft operates with roughly 100 to 300 times the cosmic ray and solar particle flux we experience at ground level. The Earth’s atmosphere shields from this radiation, so commercial aviation loses a significant portion of protection.

During a solar flare, the sun ejects high-energy protons that travel at nearly the speed of light. When these particles (or the secondary neutrons created when they collide with atmospheric molecules) pass through a semiconductor, they can deposit enough electrical charge to flip a bit in memory or logic circuits (0 becomes a 1, or vice versa). This is a known phenomenon called the Single Event Upset (SEU).

The Airbus advisory traces the exact vulnerability to their ELAC B (Elevator Aileron Computer) hardware running software version L104, the upgrade from L103. Flight control computers process sensor inputs and compute control surface positions many times per second. When a bit flip corrupts a value mid-calculation, such as an elevator deflection command, the output can be wrong without any error-checks.

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Arrest warrant issued for missing Thai mogul Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip, as co-owner investigated in Mexico.

The Miss Universe competition has been overshadowed by legal drama as its owners face charges of fraud in Thailand and an investigation into drugs and weapons trafficking in Mexico just days after the latest pageant concluded.

The Miss Universe Pageant, which once belonged to United States President Donald Trump, has been owned by Thai mogul Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip and her company, JKN Global, since 2022.

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There Is No World In Which This Isn’t Corrupt

It is almost comedic to imagine the narrative pretzels one must jump through in order to pretend that a coherent argument can be made here, that what we are witnessing is the application of a good faith effort in pursuit of justice. You would need to explain how installing your personal defense attorney as a federal prosecutor to indict your named enemies isn’t corrupt. There is no framework that makes this defensible. The appearance of impropriety isn’t subtle—it’s the entire structure. You would need to argue that violating the appointment statute is a “technical” issue rather than a constitutional constraint. But that requires treating the law as an obstacle to be gamed rather than a framework constraining power. Once you make that move, you’ve abandoned the rule of law entirely. You would need to justify why the prosecutor indicted within three days of taking office, presenting to a partial grand jury, mere days before the statute of limitations expired. The timeline screams vindictiveness. There’s no good-faith explanation for this haste—no sudden discovery of crucial evidence, no compelling prosecutorial necessity. Just Trump’s public demand followed immediately by prosecution.

You would need to explain why, after the judge ruled the appointment unlawful, the White House “stands with” Halligan and Bondi says the ruling “does not” affect her role. This isn’t defending a good-faith legal position—it’s doubling down on the violation itself.

None of these things can be defended coherently without abandoning basic principles: that the rule of law constrains power, that procedures matter, that appointment statutes exist for reasons, that the appearance of justice matters, that constitutional constraints aren’t “technical” obstacles. The corruption required destroying these frameworks. And destroying frameworks requires stupidity—not because the people involved lack intelligence, but because intelligent defense of the indefensible is impossible.

You cannot think clearly while maintaining that personal lawyers should prosecute personal enemies, that appointment statutes are technical trivialities, that three-day indictments after presidential demands aren’t vindictive, that partial grand jury presentations are proper procedure, that immunizing your target through illegal process is winning. The framework cannot cohere. So stupidity becomes the only option. Not chosen stupidity, but necessary stupidity—the epistemic collapse that corruption requires.

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