A rocket was fired at the headquarters of a number of global oil companies, including ExxonMobil, west of Basra, Iraq on Wednesday, injuring three Iraqi workers. Iraqi police said the rocket hit the Burjesia residential and operations headquarters, but no responsibility has been claimed for the short-range Katyusha missile that landed just 1,000 yards from…

The first time I ever spoke to Boris Johnson, almost certainly Britain’s next prime minister, was when my phone rang in London’s Soho back in 2002 and a now familiar voice boomed “I want to interview Saddam Hussein.” At the time I was the only British politician still traveling to sanctions-stricken Iraq and the only…

The OPCW failed to include evidence on the Douma “chemical attack” that contradicts the West’s favored narrative in its final report, so the resulting document is inherently compromised, an MIT professor said. The chemical weapons watchdog released its conclusions on last year’s high-profile incident in early March. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons…

The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford triggered outrage on the Conservative benches at PMQs, on Wednesday, after branding Boris Johnson, the favorite to become UK prime minister, a “racist.” Johnson, the former foreign secretary, finally appeared before TV studio cameras on Tuesday night in a live BBC debate between the candidates vying to become Theresa…

Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot famous for safely landing a plane on the Hudson River in 2009, told Congress that pilots of the troubled Boeing 737 MAX planes should get new simulator training. Sully was testifying in front of a congressional panel on Wednesday about Boeing Max safety, and also criticized the Federal Aviation Administration’s…

UFC welterweight contender Ben Askren is impressed by Russian Slapping Champion Vasiliy ‘The Dumpling’ Kamotskiy’s one-handed destruction of a watermelon in a recent video and has vowed to recreate it. ‘The Dumpling’ has become something of an online sensation since videos of his exploits at the 2019 Siberian Power Show in March first emerged showing…

Scientists have announced the discovery of two new Earth-like planets within our own galaxy so similar to our own that they’ve already shot up into the top 20 contenders for future human colonization. The planets orbit a neighboring star, Teegarden, just 12.5 light years away in the Aries constellation. Teegarden is an ultra-cool dwarf star…

YouTube claimed another victim in its ongoing account-banning spree on Tuesday, this time targeting internet sleuth and open-source “investigator” Eliot Higgins. The Bellingcat founder tweeted that his YouTube channel had been suspended and complained that social media companies seemed to be “having a go at open source investigator” accounts. “It’s not like they don’t know…

In one of the biggest drug busts in the US history, 16.5 tons of cocaine have been found aboard a ship docked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The street value of the haul is estimated at $1 billion. The US Attorney office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced on Twitter that an astonishing 16.5 tons (15…

Following a desperate social media plea, the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has given the green light for a military helicopter to airlift a morbidly obese civilian to hospital for treatment. Noor Hassan, a 47-stone (330kg) obese man from Sadiqabad, Punjab cannot travel to hospital by road in a conventional…