What's being described as an "IT malfunction" has paralyzed Volkswagen Group's central infrastructure, forcing the automaker to suspend production at several plants on Wednesday. 

German business newspaper Handelsblatt spoke with a Volkswagen spokesman who said an "IT disruption of network components at the Wolfsburg location" was detected around 12:30 pm local time. 

The network disruption has led to production lines at the main auto plant in Wolfsburg, as well as in Emden, Osnabrück, and Zwickau, to halt operations.  

"Nothing is currently working in the offices at the Wolfsburg headquarters either. The extent of the disruption is not yet entirely clear," Handelsblatt said. 

The newspaper noted, "An attack from outside is considered unlikely." However, nothing is confirmed amid a spate of recent cyberattacks across the Western world (remember Vegas a few weeks ago). 

How long until Russia is blamed? 

The Guardian on Wednesday has published some of the contents of a secretive document sent from the Ukrainian government to its Western allies in the G7, which compiles findings from the Iranian-manufactured drones Russia has used in hundreds of attacks on Ukrainian targets.

The conclusion of the document entitled "Barrage deaths: report on Shahed-136/131 UAVs" is that Western components have made their way into construction of Iranian Shahed Kamikaze drones, which Kiev sees as a scandal which must be dealt with.

"A wide range of components produced by western companies have been found in the downed drone models, according to the submission to the G7, which comprises France, the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada, plus the EU," The Guardian writes, based on the secret document it has reviewed.

Allen Dulles, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will explain the thinking behind various operations conducted by the CIA during his tenure as its head (1953-1961) on the CBS news special report "In the Pay of the CIA: An American Dilemma, " The broadcast will be seen Monday, March 13 at 10:00 to 11:00 p.m., Eastern standard time in color on the CBS television network.

Former Senator Barry Goldwater and Senators Wayne Morse (Dem. Ore.) and Eugene McCarthy (Dem. Minn.) will also give their views on the secret CIA payments. Goldwater will be seen as he spoke during a February 26th 1967 "Face the Nation" interview.

The broadcast will present many of the persons involved in recently revealed secret payments by the CIA, through legitimate foundations, to student, labor, broadcast and other organizations. The implications to the American way of life of the secret funding will be discussed by all participants in the broadcast. Telling their own stories on "In the Pay of the CIA: An American Dilemma" will be Gloria Steinem, who headed the Independent Research Service and admitted taking secret CIA funds to pay for American students attending Soviet sponsored youth festi- vals, and Philip Sherl.e, former president of the National Student Association, who was the first to reveal the CIA payments to NSA.

Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court will discuss the CIA involvement and their meaning to Americana. !'In the Pay of the CIA; An American Dilemma" is produced by Ron Bonn. Leslie Midgley is executive producer.

I don’t mention it often but I actually have a degree in journalism. I graduated with distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2003, and while it would be another 13 years before I’d ever put my degree to any use, the experience played a massive role in forming my opinions about the mainstream press.

One of the lessons I think about a lot came at the beginning of my two-week internship with Channel 10's Eyewitness News (now 10 News First) when I was watching the show’s bedraggled news editor put everyone’s story assignments up on the whiteboard one morning. I’d been paying a lot of attention to TV news at the time because that’s what we were studying, and I’d noticed that the stories Channel 10 would cover were always exactly the same as the ones that would be covered by Channel 7 and Channel 9— usually in exactly the same order.

“Why do you guys always cover the same stories as Channel 7 and Channel 9?” I asked. “Do you guys phone each other to coordinate?”

He laughed.

Anyone not believing there is a culture war raging across America only has to look at California as a prime example. Lawmakers in this left-leaning state have repeatedly worked against the constitutional rights of citizens there.

The attacks against American rights and values extends all the way to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) who this week readied his political hammer to slam down on school districts that dare disobey leftist edicts. Any district that doesn’t bow to laws that force the teaching of leftist ideals will be slammed.

Newsom has openly targeted conservative school districts and sought power from the state legislature to punish communities that don’t align with LGBTQ+ issues and “ethnic” studies.

From Breitbart:
Newsom signed a bill Monday that will enable him to slap fines on local school districts that refuse to obey state edicts on curriculum involving controversial subjects like race, gender, and sexuality.

Despite supermajorities of Democrats in both houses of the state legislature, the bill was failing before Newsom jumped in to save the legislation. He has voiced his plans to punish one school district in particular, in Temecula, California, where a new conservative majority won school board elections and rejected LGBTQ+ materials.

Newsom claims the law “bans book bans and censorship” and gives families the “freedom” to “decide what’s right for them.” The reality is that now the state can force districts to follow state-mandated teaching plans that do not include conservative or traditional perspectives. His claim of “freedom to decide” now doesn’t exist because the law strips that freedom from families, via their own school districts, wanting to decide what their children should learn.

House Republicans are moving forward with their impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. The first hearing will be held this week. Investigators will unveil evidence they’ve uncovered over recent months. This potential evidence will justify the inquiry and could lead to impeachment.

The White House has been running defense for Joe Biden since these investigations began. A common claim by the Biden administration is that his family did not receive money from China. This strikes against Republicans’ claims that Biden was selling favors to enrich his family.

But while the White House maintains this claim, a new revelation could upturn everything. As it turns out, Hunter Biden might have doomed Biden with two documents.

From Just the News:
President Joe Biden claimed his family did not make any money in China, but first son Hunter Biden listed his father’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address for two 2019 bank wires of Chinese origin, House Republicans revealed after obtaining transfer records…

“In 2020, Joe Biden told Americans that his family never received money from China… now we know that two wires originating from Beijing listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington home as the beneficiary address when he was running for President of the United States.”

House Republicans are pointing to two wire transfers to undermine claims from the White House. These wire transfers, according to reports, were from China to Hunter Biden. In these documents, Hunter Biden lists his father’s home address in Delaware as the beneficiary of the transfers.

We're just a week away from the first-ever interplanetary mission for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. 

The Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch NASA's Psyche spacecraft from the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 5.

It will be the eighth mission overall for the powerful SpaceX launcher, which debuted in February 2018, and its first for NASA.

A collision between two ancient icy moons that may have once orbited Saturn could have given rise to the planet's iconic ring system, a new study reveals.

Saturn is probably the most eye-catching planet in the solar system, but it may also be one of the most mind-boggling. Surrounded by a series of seven concentric rings and orbited by an army of 245 moons, the gas giant, second in size only to Jupiter, has puzzled astronomers for centuries. 

A new study may have found an answer to one of Saturn's mysteries — the origin of its rings. The study, based on dozens of computer simulations, used data collected by NASA's Cassini mission that orbited Saturn for 13 years between 2004 and 2017. The probe found the material that makes up the rings, first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610, consists of icy fragments that are very pristine and unpolluted by dust. Those Cassini findings suggested that the iconic rings of Saturn must be fairly young, only a few million years old, and that for the majority of the solar system's 4.5 billion-year history, the iconic Saturn looked much more bland. 

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed its investigation of the failure suffered by Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle more than a year ago.

That failure occurred on Sept. 12, 2022, when an uncrewed research mission lifted off from Blue Origin's launch site in West Texas. About 65 seconds after launch, New Shepard's reusable first-stage booster experienced a serious problem and came crashing back to Earth. 

The vehicle's capsule engaged its emergency escape system and ended up landing softly under parachutes on the desert floor. The 36 research payloads that launched on the mission were unharmed, and the mishap caused no injuries or property damage, Blue Origin representatives said.

Woke headline of the day!

OSIRIS-REx's asteroid-sample canister just creaked open for the first time in more than seven years.

Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston lifted the canister's outer lid on Tuesday (Sept. 26), two days after OSIRIS-REx's return capsule landed in the desert of northern Utah.

"Scientists gasped as the lid was lifted," NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division, which is based at JSC, wrote Tuesday in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

The operation revealed "dark powder and sand-sized particles on the inside of the lid and base," they added.

Are some cases of Alzheimer's disease triggered by a form of diabetes in the brain? Perhaps they are, according to researchers. Mayo Clinic's campuses in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jacksonville, Florida, recently participated in a multi-institution clinical study, testing whether a new insulin nasal spray can improve Alzheimer’s symptoms.

“This study has furthered our understanding of the gene that is the strongest genetic risk factor known for Alzheimer’s disease,” says Dr. Guojun Bu, a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist. "About 20 percent of the human population carries this riskier form of [the gene] APOE, called the E4," says Dr. Bu. It's believed that more than 50 percent of Alzheimer’s cases can be linked to APOE4, according to the study, which was published in Neuron.

The Biden campaign is preparing to target Republican economic positions, views it expects to play a large role in the second Republican presidential debate in California on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden has frequently touted "Bidenomics" — the word the administration embraced that encompasses his economic agenda — but more recently he has highlighted what he calls "MAGAnomics," having used the word for the first time, according to a senior White House official, to target Republican economic policies this month. The term is a play on "MAGA," the abbreviation for Trump's "Make American Great Again" slogan, which his followers have embraced.

The Biden campaign plans to portray "MAGAnomics" as harming middle-class families, senior citizens and American manufacturing, all while helping the "super wealthy," "Big Pharma" and China, according to campaign advisers.

Bill Maher has warned that Biden 'will lose' to Donald Trump at the next election and likened him to Ruth Bader Ginsburg over his inability to quit.

The Democratic comedian and writer issued a stark prediction for Biden's chances saying he is the 'only' candidate who can lose to Trump.

During a segment on his Club Random podcast, Maher branded the president, 80, 'Ruth Bader Biden' in a reference to the Supreme Court Judge who also refused to retire.

Liberal Bader Ginsburg died while in office at the age of 87 and was replaced by Trump with a conservative judge allowing him to further extend a right win influence over the Supreme Court's decisions.

Speaking to Dem strategist James Carville, Maher said: 'I think we're on the same page with Biden. Did a great service but whereas in 2020, maybe he was the only one who could have beaten Trump, I think now he's the only one who will lose to him.' 

A record 11.1 million tickets were handed out between March 2022 and March 2023, according to new data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

The data shows that an average of more than 30,400 penalty charge notices were handed out every day.

It is also a dramatic increase in the number of parking tickets in the past year when just 8.6 million fines were issued.

"The WEF insists we have to bankrupt peasants using any possible means so that they appreciate our generosity when we bring in CBDCs" - Official Drowning Street Souce

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized Wednesday for Parliament´s recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis in World War II and said former Speaker Anthony Rota was 'solely responsible' for the incident. 

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, was invited to Parliament and praised as a Ukrainian and Canadian hero by Trudeau and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

It later emerged that Hunka had been involved in the Nazi division during World War II, prompting Speaker Anthony Rota to resign and Trudeau to apologize.

'This is a mistake that deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada,' Trudeau said Wednesday in a televised address ahead of his apology in the House of Commons.

'It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust and it was deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people,' Trudeau said.

The PM did not take questions from reporters following the 'unreserved apology.' 

A leader of President Joe Biden’s anti-gun violence initiative is a former left-wing activist who decried larger police budgets in the wake of the George Floyd crime wave.

Biden launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Sept. 22, as part of his administration's effort to "combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart." Officially helmed by Vice President Kamala Harris, the initiative will be led in part by Greg Jackson, the former executive director of the left-wing Community Justice Action Fund.

The president lauded Jackson and Rob Wilcox, whom Biden also tapped for the office, for "being advocates for change." But the change Jackson advocates for puts him at odds with a major White House stance.

Jackson has attacked police departments and their budgets throughout his career, including in a January 2021 University of Maryland policing seminar when he lamented that he is "struggling to survive while … police budgets thrive." That same year, Jackson participated in an Obama Foundation webinar entitled "Re Imagining Policing," during which he touted "community-led violence intervention and prevention strategies" in place of traditional law enforcement. The goal, Jackson said, is to "ultimately reduce the need for policing."

 Rep. Henry Cuellar’s (D-TX) newest Republican challenger is his recently-departed staffer, Jose Sanz.

 Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized former President Donald Trump during the second Republican Party primary debate on Wednesday night.

 The U.S. Senate passed on Wednesday a formal dress code, putting an end to the brief reign of “The Fetterman Rule” named after Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and his penchant for casual attire.

 California’s new court-ordered treatment program goes into effect next week, a significant attempt by the state to get a handle on California’s addiction, mental illness, and homelessness crises.

 Tens of thousands of U.S. State Department emails were stolen by a group of China-based hackers who breached Microsoft’s email platform earlier this year, according to a Senate staffer.

 Alabama State Rep. John Rogers (D) — who previously gained national attention over controversial remarks that he made about abortion — has been indicted on federal obstruction of justice, according to prosecutors.

 Former President Donald Trump spoke to autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan, Wednesday night, calling on striking union members to back his campaign while slamming President Joe Biden’s economic and environmental policies. 

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has withdrawn from her position for the day, leaving the chattering class to speculate about her reasons and whether she would return to work ready to fill some of the positions that her temporary successor is saying are in desperate need of attention.

Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee on Wednesday night posted on X that she would be filling in as acting governor, saying she is “pleased to step in this role” without giving an explanation. She added her hope that Hobbs would appoint 13 agency directors upon her return, positions that have languished under the first-term Democrat.

Democrats have repeatedly claimed that Republican governors bussing migrants to “sanctuary cities” is cruel and “inhumane.”

El Paso’s liberal Mayor Oscar Leeser apparently disagrees, saying that the city has reached “a breaking point.”

“The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” Leeser said at a press conference on Saturday.

“I think it’s really important to note that we have a broken immigration system,” Lesser added. “It’s the same thing over and over again.”

The arrest of a Queens man on gun charges two years ago may have led federal authorities to the discovery of a Satanic pedophile extortion cult that targets minors over the internet.

Investigators uncovered the heinous group — 764 — while probing disturbing social media posts made by Angel Almeida, 23, who was busted in Nov. 2021 and charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, according to court documents and a report published Thursday.

In February, Brooklyn federal prosecutors announced they had filed a superseding indictment against Almeida, adding charges related to child exploitation and enticement of minors.

Prior to Almeida’s arrest, the FBI followed anonymous tips that allegedly linked him to social media accounts containing vile posts about child sex abuse — including one Instagram profile, “@necropedocell,” that featured a photo of what appeared to be a child bound and gagged.

A post on another one of Almeida’s alleged Instagram profiles showed him posing with ammunition strapped to his chest, in front of a black flag bearing the logo of the Order of Nine Angels (O9A), which prosecutors described as “a worldwide Satanist…group which embraces elements of neo-Nazism and white supremacy.”

 Federal law enforcement officials have launched a second investigation related to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) being indicted last week on federal corruption charges.