Criminals are very adept at this kind of stuff... These cars were targeted and stripped at Creamfields music and drugs festival a few years ago.... and these were on the official, security patrolled car park.... (although there were rumours of an inside job, allegedly using some of the security guards)

The UK is done 6 brand new vans. Full front ends stolen Inc engine, gearbox, Ecu's and bsi. Cctv clocked them 45min job in and out at Leeds Citroen dealership

June 6, 1944. An American paratrooper jumps into Normandy in the dark and lands on the roof of a church. By the end of the war he had been declared dead, held a funeral he didn't attend, escaped the Nazis, and fought his way toward Berlin in a Soviet tank unit. His name was Joseph Beyrle. He's believed to be the only American soldier to serve in both the US Army and the Red Army during World War Two. Beyrle was from Muskegon, Michigan. He joined the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. His buddies called him Jumpin' Joe. On D-Day night his plane was hit by flak and he jumped early. He came down on a church roof, slid off, and lost his unit in the chaos. For a few days he fought on his own, blowing up a power station and cutting German communications. Then he was captured. Here's where it gets strange. A German soldier ended up wearing Beyrle's uniform and dog tags. That German was killed. When the body was found, the Americans identified it as Joseph Beyrle. The army told his parents their son was dead. His hometown held a funeral mass for him. His obituary ran in the local paper. Meanwhile, he was very much alive, being moved from one German prison camp to another. He escaped more than once. One time he and two other prisoners jumped off a train heading east. They thought they were heading for Russia and freedom. They got lost and ended up in Berlin, where they were caught by the Gestapo, beaten, and tortured. In January 1945, from a camp in eastern Germany, he finally made a clean escape. He went east, toward the gunfire. Toward the Soviets. When he found a Soviet tank unit, he walked out with his hands up, holding a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and shouted the only Russian he knew. American comrade. It worked. He asked to join them. And they said yes. For about a month, an American paratrooper rode with Soviet tank crews as they pushed toward Germany. He used his demolition training. He fought. He was reportedly welcomed by a Soviet officer who was one of the rare women commanding a tank battalion. Then a German dive bomber attacked. Beyrle was badly wounded. He was evacuated to a Soviet hospital. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov reportedly visited, heard his story, and gave him papers to get to the American embassy in Moscow. When he showed up, the embassy didn't believe him. As far as the US was concerned, Joseph Beyrle was dead. They held him under guard until his fingerprints proved who he was. He made it home to Michigan in April 1945. In 1946 he got married. In the same church where they'd held his funeral. Decades later, in 1994, he was honored at the White House by President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin for serving both countries. And the last twist. His son, Joseph Beyrle II, grew up to become the United States Ambassador to Russia.

In military aviation, there is one rule every mechanic knows: when a supersonic fighter jet is completely submerged in saltwater and tsunami mud, that airplane is dead forever. On March 11, 2011, a wall of black ocean water smashed into Matsushima Air Base in northern Japan and swallowed eighteen Mitsubishi F-2B fighter jets whole. Why did the pilots not simply fly the jets away before the wave hit? Because the earthquake knocked out base power and buckled the tarmac, and a fighter jet takes pre-flight checks and ground power carts before its engine can ignite. Instead of trying to save machines, the airmen ran out to rescue drowning local citizens. When the water receded, the blue fighter jets were buried in salt, mud, and crushed cars. Experts said every single one had to be scrapped. American and Japanese engineers refused to let those wings die. The F-2 fighter was born from a joint partnership between Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and America's Lockheed Martin, based on the legendary U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcon. Immediately after the tsunami, U.S. Air Force airmen from the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base rushed down to Matsushima to help pump out hangars and wash corrosive salt out of the airframes before the metal rotted. Then Japanese and American engineers from Mitsubishi and Lockheed Martin spent four years disassembling, rebuilding, and rewiring thirteen of those drowned jets bolt by bolt. On April 22, 2015, the first resurrected F-2B roared back into the sky and touched down at Misawa Air Base to thunderous applause from American and Japanese airmen standing side by side. Saltwater can rust iron. It cannot rust the bond between the men who built it.

I think there is a misunderstanding in this argument. The issue is not where aircraft are based, but who commands them, who can shift them between theatres, and who decides the priorities of the larger war. There is an interesting historical peculiarity here which most tend to gloss over. Until Independence, India had a single Commander-in-Chief over all three Services. In 1947, this arrangement gave way to three separate Service heads, each responsible for his own force, with their Commander-in-Chief designations subsequently standardised. In 1955, the Government removed the Commander-in-Chief designation, but Nehru explicitly stated that their authority, including operational authority, would remain unchanged. Over time, the Services developed subordinate formations, which today total 17 Commands. But these are not 17 independent command systems in the traditional sense. They are subordinate headquarters within three Service-wide command structures. Therefore, theatreisation is not quite the often-repeated reduction from 17 Commands to three. At the level of command authority, it is a reorganisation of three nationwide, Service-specific command structures into three geographically organised, joint theatre structures. Consider what this means for air power. Today, Air HQ can shift effort between its Commands as the larger air situation demands. Under theatreisation, the same aircraft may be assigned to different theatre commanders, each with legitimate operational priorities. Who decides when one theatre must surrender aircraft to another? And who ensures that these decisions serve the larger air campaign rather than the immediate needs of individual theatres? These concerns have historical precedent. In 1971, India deliberately concentrated its principal military effort in the East. Even within the Western theatre, aircraft and missions were shifted between sectors as the fighting developed. Having 60 squadrons instead of 30 may ease the resource constraint, but it does not remove the command question. Someone must still decide where air power is most needed and have the authority to move it. Unless that responsibility is clearly transferred elsewhere, Air HQ will perforce have to retain an operational role beyond the proposed mandate of 'Raise, Train, Sustain'. Of course, an empowered joint staff under the CDS could make these decisions, with the CDS effectively functioning as a Commander-in-Chief. But that requires a clear redistribution of authority, not merely replacing Air HQ with HQ IDS. Indeed, when the CDS was created in 2019, the Government explicitly stated that the CDS would not exercise military command over the three Service Chiefs. This is where the Kargil Review Committee's observations become relevant. Its principal criticism was that the Service Chiefs had become operational commanders at the expense of their responsibilities as Chiefs of Staff. The weakness it identified lay in integrated military advice, planning and decision-making at the apex, rather than simply in the absence of theatre commands. The higher-command question and theatreisation are two distinct reforms, yet they have increasingly come to be treated as one. One concerns how forces are commanded within a theatre. The other concerns who exercises military authority above the theatres and reconciles competing operational priorities. I explored the historical evolution of India's command structure, and particularly the distinction between theatreisation and higher defence reform, in some detail here: iafhistory.in/2026/08/22/the…

. The present CDS is also likely to retire without anything moving towards any kind of solution. A quarter century to formation of IDS and ANC.... Like a gigantic game of Tambola, the reorganisation revitalisation Snowball rolls over to next Saturday....

#BREAKING IAF Chief finally rejects original #theaterisation plan. Says: 1) @IAF_MCC will not accept splitting of fighter assets 2) Theaterisation should be in phases so that combat readiness is not compromised 3) No to replicating foreign model. tribuneindia.com/news/india/…

Boarding on AI 882 AMD-DEL is delayed by 20 minutes because Supreme Court Judge Vipul Pancholi & wife had to be VIP boarded first. They walk in with a posse of 6 guards + 3 AI staffers. Is this the VIP culture that India’s judiciary advocates? @MLJ_GoI ? #VIPculture 🚨#lalbatti

We remember Tom Skerritt, who has died at 93. As Commander Mike “Viper” Metcalf in Top Gun (1986), he brought quiet authority and humanity to an enduring portrayal of naval aviation. He later returned to a naval role as Captain Bill Rhodes in Tears of the Sun (2003). An Air Force veteran, Skerritt’s commitment to those who served extended beyond the screen. He co-founded the Red Badge Project, helping veterans find their voices and share their experiences through storytelling. Our condolences to his family, friends, and all those whose lives he touched.

SOME MORE ILLEGAL FIRING SP Pradeep Sharma to IG Rakesh Gupta and Ujjain Collector Roshan Kumar Singh to Mahakal Temple Administrator Pratham Kaushik and Municipal Commissioner Abhilash Mishra to Smart City CEO Dr. Nidhi Jain IAS ALSO, IAS are not authorised service weapon

"Good morning, gentlemen, the temperature is 110 degrees." "Holy shit, it's Viper!"

I know Kadam ji well. Very humble & down to earth person. Schaffler is one of our global customer. No PSU’s heads are arrested , even sacked, when accidents happen in their plants but Pvt entities are game since politicians have no stake. Accidents are unfortunate but how does an MD get arrested directly without proper investigation? Is this the #MakeInIndia snake oil that Govt wants to sell abroad & attract global manufacturing to India? Shame really.. m.economictimes.com/industry…

🚨 SCOOP – Not a single submarine commander passed the legendary Perisher course last year Fewer than 10 surface officers passed CQ2, for sea command The RN need 35 passes per year to sustain. Insiders blamed low morale & lack of sea time thesun.co.uk/news/40752485/r…

India, the most vegetarian nation on earth, now has a Prime Minister going on national radio to beg it to use less cooking oil. In February 2025 Narendra Modi used his monthly broadcast to ask every family to cut its edible oil by 10%, and to pass the challenge on to ten others. By August he was repeating it in his Independence Day speech. The national school board told schools to put up oil boards, and the health ministry wanted signs in offices showing how much oil is in a samosa. He had reason. In 2022, 212 million Indians had diabetes, more than a quarter of every diabetic on the planet, and 133 million of them weren't being treated. He warned the country it could have 440 million obese people by 2050. It starts before birth. Doctors in Pune found Indian newborns were the best part of a kilo lighter than British ones, and had lost far less of their fat than of everything else. They named it the thin-fat baby. This is the nation that eats around 8kg of meat a head a year, a fraction of the world average. The plate is rice, roti, dal and vegetables, as approved by every plant-based book in print. And the fat it is cooked in stopped being ghee a long time ago. India is the biggest importer of edible oil on earth, and the tins on the kitchen shelf hold soybean, sunflower and palm. A country that eats a fraction of the world's meat and swapped its ghee for the imported tins has ended up with a quarter of the world's diabetes. It is still cited as proof that the plants work. The ghee was never the problem, India. Put it back in the pan.

🇫🇷 A German documentary about the differences between a tiny enclave of Chinese immigrants and North African migrants in France.