Corruption Ledger

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A military pilot whose advanced fighter jet went temporarily missing over the weekend is heard repeatedly requesting an ambulance in a perplexing 911 call from the South Carolina home where he had parachuted to safety, according to an audio recording released Thursday to The Associated Press. The four-minute recording captures the bizarre circumstances for the three unidentified people involved: a North Charleston resident calmly explaining that a pilot just parachuted into his backyard, the pilot who doesn’t know…

The author of letters to social media companies demanding the financial punishment of Russell Brand is a British lawmaker implicated in London’s war on Covid-19 and Ukraine dissenters. Her husband was a commander in the Army’s psy-ops division. Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20.  The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of…

  WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s prime minister said his country is no longer sending arms to Ukraine, a comment that appeared aimed at pressuring Kyiv and put Poland’s status as a major source of military equipment in doubt as a trade dispute between the neighboring states escalates. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in an interview late on Wednesday that Poland is no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine. He made the comment as his populist party faces pressure from a…

  WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned to Washington on Thursday for a whirlwind one-day visit, this time to face the Republicans now questioning the flow of American dollars that for 19 months has kept his troops in the fight against Russian forces. Zelenskyy arrived at the Capitol to talk privately with Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate as the world is watching Western support for Kyiv. He will also meet with President Joe Biden…

Credit reporting firm TransUnion has denied claims of a security breach after a threat actor known as USDoD leaked data allegedly stolen from the company’s network. The Chicago-based company’s over 10,000 employees provide their services to millions of consumers and more than 65,000 businesses from 30 countries. “Immediately upon discovering these assertions, we partnered with outside cybersecurity and forensic experts to launch a thorough investigation,” the company said. “At this time, we and our internal and external experts have found…

Over 400,000 nuisance calls in total have been made to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing since the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea began in late August, Japanese government sources said Tuesday. On the back of growing anti-Japan sentiment in China, the daily number of harassing calls received by the embassy peaked at more than 40,000 on Aug 25, a day after the ocean discharge started, and has stayed at around…

On 20 July, a tornado tore through a Pfizer plant in Rocky Mount, US, destroying part of a large facility in that makes sterile injectable drugs. The twister caused extensive damage to warehouses storing critical hospital supplies such as dopamine, potassium acetate and vitamin K1 for babies. The facility manufactures a quarter of Pfizer’s sterile injectables for US hospitals, comprising around 8% of total US consumption. While production facilities remained largely unscathed, they had to be stopped. ‘In this highly…

US officials suppressed internal assessments that Al Qaeda’s Syrian wing had an “advanced” sarin production cell even as the US publicly blamed the Assad government for a 2013 chemical weapons attack, a report reveals. Leaked documents obtained by The Grayzone show a shadowy British intelligence contractor helped sell the story that Assad was responsible – and nearly triggered Western intervention. On September 13, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) appraisal detailing the chemical…

  The crash of an F-35B Joint Strike Fighter aircraft in South Carolina over the weekend has raised numerous questions about what prompted the pilot to eject and how the $100 million warplane was able to keep flying pilotless for 60 miles before crashing. Here’s what is known about the modern warplane and its latest incident: ‘Forced to eject’ A U.S. Marine Corps pilot was flying a single-seat F-35B fighter jet on Sunday when the pilot experienced a malfunction and was “forced…

West Point was accused in a federal lawsuit Tuesday of improperly using race and ethnicity as factors in admissions by the same group behind the legal challenge that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissions. Students for Fair Admissions claims the U.S. Military Academy sets benchmarks for how many Black, Hispanic and Asian cadets there should be in each class. The lawsuit filed in New York’s Southern District claims West Point is violating the Fifth Amendment…

The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Tuesday its computer system had been hacked, a breach at one of the world’s most high-profile international institutions and one that handles highly sensitive information about war crimes. The ICC said it had detected unusual activity on its computer network at the end of last week, prompting a response that was still ongoing. A spokesperson declined to comment on how serious the hack was, whether it has been fully resolved, or who might…

Ukrainian forces carried out a missile strike on a market in eastern Ukraine and then falsely blamed Russia for the attack, according to analysis from the New York Times. From The New York Times, “Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy”: The Sept. 6 missile strike on Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine was one of the deadliest in the country in months, killing at least 15 civilians and injuring more than 30 others. The weapon’s payload of metal fragments struck a…

BAE Systems and Hybrid Air Vehicles have agreed to jointly explore a long-range hybrid airship system for security and defense applications. Hybrid’s Airlander 10 will be trialed for new ways of communication and intelligence gathering, according to BAE. It is an “alternative sustainable and cost-effective solution to air logistics and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities,” according to Hybrid.  It complements “today’s networks of air, space, and surface systems.”  Heavy-Lift, High-Endurance Aircraft The Airlander 10 can stay airborne for up to…

The Microsoft AI research division accidentally leaked dozens of terabytes of sensitive data starting in July 2020 while contributing open-source AI learning models to a public GitHub repository. Almost three years later, this was discovered by cloud security firm Wiz whose security researchers found that a Microsoft employee inadvertently shared the URL for a misconfigured Azure Blob storage bucket containing the leaked information. Microsoft linked the data exposure to using an excessively permissive Shared Access Signature (SAS) token, which allowed full…

Having been accused of getting off to a slow start in relation to the imposition of sanctions arising out of developments in Russia and Ukraine, the UK Government appears to be generating something of a head of steam and has in recent days sanctioned 7 Oligarchs and 386 members of the Russian Duma. Indeed the unprecedented pace of sanctions from across the globe has created a major issue for many businesses, and the intended and unintended consequences of those sanctions…