Viral video caught the moment that a Chinese space rocket crashed into a mountain shortly after an accidental launch on Sunday. The Tianlong-3 ("Sky Dragon 3") rocket accidentally launched during what was supposed to be a ground test of the vessel's booster. The two-stage Tianlong-3 is a partly reusable rocket under development by Space Pioneer – a rival of Elon Musk's Space X. The Tianlong-3 rocket is a competitor of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 spacecraft. During the ground test, the Tianlong-3 space rocket unintentionally detached from the test bench at the launch pad due to a structural failure. The botched launch was intended to be a routine "static fire" of the rocket’s engine with the spacecraft remaining on the launch pad, according to reports. Dramatic video shows the space rocket launch and then losing power and bending sideways seconds later. The rocket is seen on video falling from the sky in a horizontal motion. The rocket finally crashed back down to Earth and made a huge explosion in a mountain region near the city of Gongyi in central China's Henan Province, less than a mile away from the launch site. "Due to the structural failure of the connection between the rocket body and the test platform, the first-stage rocket was separated from the launch pad,” Space Pioneer said in a statement. “After liftoff, the onboard computer was automatically shut down, and the rocket fell into the deep mountains 1.5 kilometers [0.9 miles] southwest of the test platform. The rocket body fell into the mountain and disintegrated."Space Pioneer – a private Chinese business also known as Beijing Tianbing Technology founded in 2019 – reported that there were no injuries or casualties after an initial investigation, according to Reuters.Space Pioneer noted that parts of the rocket were scattered within a "safe area," but did cause a fire in the area after the spacecraft exploded. The fire has since been extinguished. Space Pioneer compares the performance of Tianlong-3 to SpaceX's Falcon 9.The Tianlong-3 rocket stands at 230 feet high, and is capable of carrying up to 17 tons into orbit.The Tianlong-3's maiden launch mission had been scheduled for July before Sunday’s accident.Space Pioneer is a space company known for specializing in liquid-propellant rockets.In April 2023, Space Pioneer successfully launched its Tianlong-2 rocket, making it China's first commercial launch operator to send a liquid carrier rocket into space and successfully enter orbit.However, this is the second Chinese rocket failure in a week. Just days before the Toanlong-3's explosion, the Long March 2C rocket blew up into pieces shortly after launch and rained down debris on a popular region. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Yakobchuk/iStock/Getty Images Plus .paywall-container {position: relative;display: flex;flex-direction: column; min-height:60px;} #paywall_overlay {position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;right: 0;bottom: 0;display:…

U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump are back on the campaign trail following their first debate last week. Biden’s sometimes-struggling performance in that debate has some members…

Scientists don't fully understand why.

Two Police Officers Shot in Iowa, Suspect Dead

What millions of Americans witnessed during last Thursday’s presidential debate was far worse than the mere implosion of an incumbent’s reelection campaign. The irredeemable corruption of the Democratic Party was also laid bare for all to see. There can be little doubt that Joe Biden’s unfitness for office has long been common knowledge among his party’s leadership as well as its rank-and-file officials. Yet the Democrats deliberately defrauded the American people concerning who really controls the executive branch of our government. Nor do they intend to do the right thing even now. The party’s “senior statesmen,” former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, have publicly urged Biden to continue the charade. These people couldn’t care less how perilous it is for the United States to continue … with a cipher in the Oval Office. Obama took to X on Friday and dismissed Biden’s disastrous performance: “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know.” But can we trust Him? This is the man who received PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year award in 2013 for telling the voters, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Clinton also came to Biden’s defense on X, where he credited him with reducing inflation. This fails the laugh test coming from the man who once looked the nation in the eye and told us, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Perhaps a more reliable guide to Biden’s mental acuity is Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on his mishandling of classified documents, which revealed Biden’s frequent memory lapses: Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter [Mark Zwonitzer] in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023 … He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Hur’s description is wholly consistent with the Joe Biden we saw on the CNN stage last Thursday night. It also accounts for his extraordinary behavior at the recent D-Day commemoration ceremonies and G7 Summit. Indeed, the combination of Hur’s report and Biden’s appalling debate performance effectively debunks White House claims that his cognitive decline has been exaggerated in “deceptively edited” videos by Fox News and the RNC. Yet most elected Democrats are still attempting to portray Thursday’s debacle as little more than a lackluster showing. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), for example, wrote it off thus: “That was strike one. If this were a ball game, he’s got two more swings.” More Than a Debate Sadly, this is not a ball game. Joe Biden is masquerading as the President of the United States. After last Thursday, no one believes this man is in charge of anything. This means the people who actually run his administration wield enormous power — without the consent of the American people. Regardless of what one thinks about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, no one voted for any of the Obama/Clinton retreads who currently infest the White House. Nor was a single ballot cast for “Dr. Jill.” Nonetheless, the Democratic Party is perfectly content to let this continue if it offers even a slim chance to remain in power. Even people like Maureen Dowd see this. As she writes in the New York Times: In Washington, people often become what they start out scorning. This has happened to Joe Biden. In his misguided quest for a second term that would end when he’s 86, he has succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump. And he is jeopardizing the democracy he says he wants to save … Jill Biden, lacking the detachment of a Melania and enjoying the role of first lady more, has been pushing — and shielding — her husband, beyond a reasonable point. After Thursday’s embarrassing debate performance, she exhorted the crowd and played teacher to a prized student: “You did a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!” The man subjected to this demeaning treatment is, lest we forget, our commander in chief and has the power to launch a thermonuclear attack against virtually any target on Earth. Moreover, it goes without saying that Dr. Jill’s claims were factually inaccurate. During a debate watched by roughly 51.3 million people, Biden claimed that no American soldier had been killed during his tenure in office. The actual death toll on his watch has, so far, been 13 in Afghanistan and 3 in Jordan. Biden also claimed that he had been endorsed by the Border Patrol Union, which was debunked in real time by the union itself. Biden then repeated the “fine people on both sides” lie that was debunked by moderator Jake Tapper after the debate. In the end, none of this mattered to the Democrats. After a few hours of whining about Biden’s debate performance, they began circling the wagons around him. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were joined by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. James Clyburn, Sens. Chris Coons and Raphael Warnock, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, et al. These people couldn’t care less how perilous it is for the United States to continue for the next six months with a cipher in the Oval Office. Their only concern is about positioning themselves for the next upward failure. Thus, the Democrats can’t be trusted with the reins of power in 2024. READ MORE from David Catron: Will Biden’s Pandering Fool Black Voters Again? Is Biden’s Dementia Just Russian Disinformation? The Spectacle Ep. 117: David Catron: Why Tim Scott Should be Trump’s VP   The post Biden’s Debate Debacle Disqualifies His Entire Party appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

No real journalist on the right was the least bit stunned by the undead President’s incomprehensible utterings last Thursday night. We’d been chronicling his mental deterioration for years. In a 2020 article here, I compared then candidate Joe Biden to John Gill, the puppet leader of a Nazi planet in the classic Star Trek episode, Patterns of Force. Gill is a total wreck, drugged up and propped up whenever needed to address the public by the actual leader of the military-industrial complex. In a truly cringeworthy video, a microphone-holding Jill … praises her befuddled husband as one would a child. Unfortunately for the country, too many Biden supporters — already a deluded crowd — don’t read the American Spectator or any conservative press, or listen to the voices of reason like Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, Victor Davis Hanson, Scott Adams, and the Daily Wire quartet (Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh), or watch Fox News or Newsmax primetime programs. Fox News, to its credit has done much to right the ship since its awful 2020 election performance, which I slammed in another piece. The network’s exemplary coverage of the border invasion has raised the issue as a public concern and lowered Biden’s approval rating. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) However, the Biden sycophants saw and heard none of this. They ignored what we could not — the evidence of our own eyes and ears. They preferred the gaslighting by the Democrats and their propagandist media — that Biden was a veritable dynamo. That once out of our sight, this shuffling, mumbling, wondering, decomposing zombie turned into Lieutenant Columbo. The Democrat insiders, yes, especially their subservient media interpreters, knew this was bunk. Yet they also knew their audience wanted the blue pill not the red one, so, they kept feeding it into their eager mouths. Until last week, when the Matrix was revealed. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams recognized it. As a trained hypnotist, he could see through the illusion and knew what or who to blame. “Journalism died this week,” Adams said on his latest podcast. Journalism as a profession — it died this week … I’m saying that the industry was destroyed — their reputation. They were bad forever but got away with it, until this week. This is the first time that the silos between the two world views just fell apart. And do you know why … ‘Cause it’s the first time that most of the country saw Trump in a natural environment with Biden … And when people saw it, they said, ‘Wait a minute. My news people have been telling me for years that he’s fine.’ And there isn’t the slightest chance that they didn’t all know the problem. And so did the world leaders, who had little choice but to further the illusion of a rapier-witted Biden to gain an advantage. A Wall Street Journal headline blurted the double-edged truth: “The World Saw Biden Deteriorating. Democrats Ignored the Warnings.” The newspaper story further elaborated: “European officials had already been expressing worries in private about Biden’s focus and stamina before Thursday’s debate, with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer.” But after the disastrous debate, diplomatic subtlety went out the window. “The Democrats must switch horses now,” said senior German lawmaker Norbert Röttgen. And those are America’s allies. Imagine the glee with which our enemies — Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Ali Khamenei of Iran — watched the debate, followed by the fear. Because one of the two debaters was a malfunctioning empty husk. But the other man was, and would be again, an impediment to their plans. Trump had Iran on its economic knees. He withdrew the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Deal and reinstated sanctions. Biden reversed both actions and gave Iran billions. The result is Iran on the verge of a nuclear bomb and the October 7th Hamas massacre in Israel. The downside to Biden’s utter collapse is that leftists can blame the failing country on the man and not their horrible policies. He was too inept to implement them well, they’ll say. But for this canard to work, the media must regain the liberals’ trust — by throwing Biden under the bus. And have they ever, judging by the brutal headlines from major news sources. The New York Times: To Serve His Country, President Biden Must Leave the Race The New Yorker: The Reckoning of Joe Biden — For the President to insist on remaining the Democratic candidate would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment. The Economist: Joe Biden should now give way to an alternative candidate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: It’s time for Biden to pass the torch — AJC Editorial Board: To defeat Trump and for the good of the nation, the president must bow out of the presidential race. Of course, for Biden to step down and enable a more lucid idiot, the Vice President, to replace him, an obstacle of sheer evil must first be moved — Doctor Jill Biden. But like the boulder of Sisyphus, she won’t be. No public, pitiable humiliation or the obvious anguish of her husband will sway her to forsake power. Though now, even the most willingly self-deceived can see her elder abuse, as we all did just moments after the disastrous debate for her. In a truly cringeworthy video, a microphone-holding Jill unnaturally thanks an unenthusiastic crowd, then praises her befuddled husband as one would a child. “Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!” (READ MORE: Return From American Zombieland) Lady Macbeth had nothing on Jill, who somehow appeared even creepier than her mate. Though she did manage something the whole hypnotic leftwing media couldn’t. Made conservatives want to defend Joe Biden, if only from her. Good riddance to both in November. The post Biden Voters Get the Red Pill appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In a plea deal agreed to by the Biden Justice Department Wikileaks founder Julian Assange plead guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act.  He was sentenced to time served in Britain for his offense. He is now a free man. Second, just because someone or some group operates a website does not mean they are entitled to protection under the First Amendment. The Espionage Act (18 US Code Sections 781-799) is a constitutional law that prohibits disclosing classified information. Leakers violate it when they give such information to any person unauthorized to receive it and such receiving persons are guilty of an offense under the Act if they further publish classified information. There is no “free speech” exception to these laws. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: SCOTUS Takes Strange Turns) The case arose from the 2010 publication by Wikileaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. classified documents regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the documents — and at least one video — Wikileaks published were leaked to it by Bradley (later Chelsea) Manning, an Army enlisted man who was given a long prison sentence for the leaks and then had his/her sentence commuted by then-president Obama. Assange had fled to London where he hid, for several years, in the Ecuadorean embassy until he outstayed his welcome. He had been imprisoned by the Brits since 2019 while he was fighting extradition to the United States. Because Wikileaks is a website, Assange has many supporters who claimed he was a journalist and a publisher so anything he did was protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. That is entirely wrong. In 2017, when he was the head of the CIA, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo said of Wikileaks that, “It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Pompeo said that documents hacked from the Democratic National Committee had been given to Wikileaks which published them. Because Wikileaks doesn’t even attempt to perform the basic journalistic functions of news gathering and investigative reporting, it is not a news media organization and Assange is neither a journalist nor a publisher. Wikileaks sole purpose is to obtain leaks and publish government secrets. Thus, it and Assange fall outside the First Amendment’s protections. The question boils down to whether or not the publication of any government secrets can be prosecuted and what limits, if any, does the First Amendment put on the publication of government secrets. Before Assange A little history is in order. During the Nixon Administration, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the seven- thousand-page study of the Vietnam war that came to be known as the “Pentagon Papers” to the New York Times which, after the government tried to restrain publication, went ahead and published them. The study was, to one degree or another, classified. Its publication was highly embarrassing to the U.S. government going back to the Johnson administration. The Supreme Court was presented with an attempt by the Nixon administration to prevent the publication of the secret “Pentagon Papers” through the courts. In a three-paragraph per curiam decision — which means none of the justices signed the ruling — SCOTUS said “any system of prior restraints comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity” and “the Government thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.” The Court found that the government hadn’t met that burden. But in six separate concurring opinions, the Court was all over the place. The opinions ranged from Justice Black saying that no power of prior restraint can be given to the government to Justice Brennan concluding that prior restraint on publication — censorship — would be permissible in certain circumstances, but the vague, nonspecific claims of harm to national security made in that case were insufficient to justify prior restraint. There have been a few cases in recent years regarding highly classified information but, again, they are not like the Assange case. For example, Edward Snowden — an employee of an NSA contractor — leaked to the New York Times about two million secret and top-secret documents as well as the details of top-secret NSA programs that were put in place after the 9-11 attacks to spy on terrorists here and abroad. Snowden fled to Russia after the leaks which significantly damaged our ability to gather intelligence on terrorists. There was an opportunity for the government to attempt a prior restraint in the Snowden case and it tried. President George W. Bush made a personal call to the Times’s publisher to plead for restraint. But the New York Times — like it did in the Pentagon Papers case — published the story. On the same day that the story was published NYT reporter James Risen published a book containing much of what Snowden leaked. Snowden, unlike Assange, didn’t pretend to be a journalist. Assange Is No Journalist With regard to Assange, Sen. Rand Paul (Libertarian-Sorta-R-KY) was, as usual, both right and wrong. He said on X, “This plea deal sets a dangerous precedent, criminalizing journalism and damaging our First Amendment rights. The ‘Land of the Free’ can and must do better.” (READ MORE: Hunter’s Laptop: The Other Story) Paul is right in that we need to do better, but his jump to the conclusion that Assange is a journalist is neither factual nor logical. Assange is neither a journalist nor a publisher. Again, Wikileaks was created solely to publish government secrets. And Assange didn’t act responsibly. He gave the government no notice that he was going to publish its secrets. So when can someone who publishes our nation’s most closely-held secrets claim that he is a journalist or publisher? When is prior restraint appropriate? The Supreme Court’s opinion in the New York Times‘s Pentagon Papers case gives us no clue of how the government can prevent publication of its secrets, but there must be some means to protect secrets that will damage national security. We are left a twofold problem. First, every publisher has some level of responsibility to protect the nation’s secrets. When something is so important and will damage the government’s ability to protect major secrets no publisher should deny a request to withhold publication which demonstrates the damage that publication will cause. It shouldn’t require a personal telephone call from a president to a publisher. That requires that the publisher take some responsibility on itself. Most newspapers have a strong liberal bias. We cannot expect newspapers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post to deny their biases and withhold any reports no matter how damaging to the nation. We are left with prior restraint, brought by an injunction in federal court, to prevent publication of secrets that will damage the nation. Second, just because someone or some group operates a website does not mean they are entitled to protection under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court punted on the New York Times‘s Pentagon Papers case. There will be another opportunity — if publishers give the government a chance — to set out just when prior restraint is proper. The next time — and there will be one — the Court cannot fail to set out how to protect our most highly valued secrets. The post We Must Prevent the Next Assange appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.