CR MAG

The sudden closure of El Paso's airspace Wednesday came sometime after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials used an anti-drone laser that was provided by the military to shoot down objects that were later identified as party balloons, four people familiar with the matter said.

The technology was used without coordinating with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, the people said.

The testing of U.S. military-owned laser technology was taking place in the proximity of the airport. The FAA responded by issuing a "temporary flight restriction notice," which was to shut down the airspace for 10 days. It prevented flights, including helicopters used for medical transport, below 18,000 feet. The airport is a major hub for the region, with more than 50 flights scheduled every day.

The airspace was reopened several hours later Wednesday morning. The decision prompted confusion and finger-pointing inside the Trump administration over who was to blame.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, frustrated by the conflicting reports and a lack of information, requested a classified briefing with the FAA administrator over the closure.

"At this point, the details of what exactly occurred over El Paso are unclear," said Cruz, the head of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening for a scheduled closed-door meeting and refused to answer reporters' questions about the closure. He said he would respond to Cruz's request once he receives it.

One of the people familiar with the testing said the Defense Department has a working relationship with Homeland Security, where CBP is headquartered, that allows its personnel to use certain military equipment for its objectives, testing, evaluation and use along the southern border.

Recently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the use of the weapon for CBP, the people said. Spokespeople for CBP referred questions to the White House, which did not elaborate beyond initial statements.

Initially, a Trump administration official and some lawmakers said the airspace had been closed because the U.S. military had shot down a cartel drone. Administration officials maintain that was the case.

But the people familiar with the matter said that was not true, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday there was no indication that any cartel drones were operating near the border.

It then appeared the airport groundingwas in response to the testing of the technology by the military. But it has now become clear, according to the people, that it was CBP using it.

Separately, the Defense Department is testing similar laser weaponry that military personnel will potentially use to counter drones used by drug cartels.

That weaponry requires coordination with the FAA, and a meeting is scheduled to take place Feb. 20 to discuss safety and regulatory issues. The people familiar with the matter said that the meeting could help to explain why the FAA responded with the 10-day airspace closure.

El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said the temporary flight restriction was unnecessary and "should have never happened."

"This unnecessary decision has caused chaos and confusion in the El Paso community," he said at a news conference. "You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, the community leadership. That failure to communicate is unacceptable."

Johnson said medical evacuation flights had to be diverted to Las Cruces, about 45 miles away. All aviation operations, including emergency flights, were grounded, he said.

"This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9/11," he said.

The FAA had said in a "notice to airmen" that no flights would be able to operate in the airspace over El Paso and the neighboring community of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, for 10 days, from Feb. 11 to Feb. 21.

The FAA, which is only responsible for U.S. airspace, did not elaborate on why the restrictions had been put in place for El Paso, which borders Mexico and the city of Ciudad Juárez.

The notice said the airspace was classified as national defense airspace.

Deadly force could be used on an aircraft if it is determined that it "poses an imminent security threat," it said. Pilots who violated the order "may be intercepted, detained and interviewed" by law enforcement and security personnel, according to the notice.

By Michael Martina

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Just weeks after a dramatic purge of China's top general, the CIA is moving to capitalize on any resulting discord with ‌a new public video targeting potential informants in the Chinese military.

The U.S. spy agency on ‌Thursday rolled out the video depicting a disillusioned mid-level Chinese military officer, in the latest U.S. step in a ​campaign to ramp up human intelligence gathering on Washington's strategic rival.

It follows a similar effort last May that focused on fictional figures within China's ruling Communist Party that provided detailed Chinese-language instructions on how to securely contact U.S. intelligence.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that the agency's videos had reached ‌many Chinese citizens and that it ⁠would continue offering Chinese government officials an "opportunity to work toward a brighter future together."

Last month, China's defense ministry announced that Zhang Youxia, second-in-command under Xi ⁠as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), was under investigation, the highest-profile removal of a senior Chinese military leader in decades.

The short CIA video posted to its YouTube channel appeared aimed at exploiting domestic political ​fallout ​from Beijing's years-long crackdown on military corruption that has hit ​the upper echelons of the People's Liberation ‌Army (PLA) beyond Zhang.

"Anyone with leadership qualities is bound to be subject to suspicion and ruthlessly eliminated," the fictional officer in the video says in Mandarin. "Their power is built on countless lies," he says, referring to superiors.

The CIA has said it is confident that the online campaign is penetrating China's "Great Firewall" internet restrictions and reaching the intended audience.

"Our past videos reached millions of people and inspired ‌new sources," a CIA official told Reuters on condition ​of anonymity, without providing details.

The CIA has been investing ​heavily into countering China and has tried ​to rebuild its spy network in the country after Beijing crippled its reach ‌by killing or imprisoning numerous U.S. sources ​between 2010-2012, according to ​reports.

American officials say China's spy agencies have worked tirelessly to recruit current and former U.S. employees, and in recent years Beijing has published accounts of what it says are U.S. ​spy rings it has uncovered ‌in China.

The high-stakes spy games are part of an escalating military and technological rivalry ​that many observers deem to be a new form of cold war.

(Reporting by Michael ​Martina; Editing by Don Durfee and Nick Zieminski)

• A US Navy destroyer and a support ship collided in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday.

• A military spokesperson said the incident occurred during a replenishment-at-sea.

• Two personnel were injured but are in stable condition.

A US Navy destroyer and a support ship collided in the Caribbean on Wednesday, leaving two people with minor injuries.

The incident involving the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Truxtun and the Supply-class fast combat support ship USNS Supply occurred during a replenishment-at-sea, a spokesperson for US Southern Command confirmed to Business Insider.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the collision.

Two personnel reported minor injuries but are in stable condition, the official said, adding that both ships are sailing safely and that the incident is under investigation.

Areplenishment-at-seais a naval process in which one ship transfers supplies, such as fuel or munitions, to another while sailing closely alongside one another.

It is a particularly dangerous job given the proximity of the two ships, and there have been accidents during resupply in the past, including a near-miss in 2024 that saw a skipper lose his command. It's unclear what caused the most recent incident.

The Navy deployedroughly a dozen warshipsto the Caribbean last year as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuela and its then-President Nicolás Maduro. Despitehis capture in early January, the massive naval force has remained in the region.

USS Truxtun is one of the Navy warships still deployed to the Southern Command area of responsibility, a defense official told Business Insider.

In recent weeks, the Navy and other US military forces haveseized several sanctioned oil tankersin the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and as far away as the Indian Ocean.

Read the original article onBusiness Insider

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The formation of a black hole can be quite a violent event, with a massive dying star blowing up and some of its remnants collapsing to form an exceptionally dense object with gravity so strong not even light can escape. But, as new observations indicate, the process sometimes ‌can be a rather quiet affair.

Researchers have tracked a big and bright star that in its death throes virtually vanished from view as it apparently morphed into ‌a black hole without exploding as a supernova. It is now detectable only because of a subtle glow caused by leftover gas and dust heating up while being sucked inward by the newborn black hole's irresistible gravitational pull.

The star, ​named M31-2014-DS1, resided in the Andromeda Galaxy, a Milky Way neighbor, about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

M31-2014-DS1 may offer the best evidence yet of black hole formation without a supernova, the researchers said. They tracked how the star was luminous in four decades of observations before 2014, then brightened in 2015 before almost disappearing from view, consistent with transforming into a black hole.

"This provides observational evidence of black hole formation in real time, suggests that many black holes may form without supernova explosions and ‌shows that stars with masses as low as about 13 times ⁠that of the sun can form black holes," said astrophysicist Kishalay De of the Flatiron Institute and Columbia University in New York, lead author of the research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists have known for more than 50 years that black holes exist, but still have "very, very limited ⁠observational evidence for how stars turn into black holes," De said. "So this discovery provides an important insight into that process."

The star began its existence at least 13 times more massive than our sun. Over its relatively brief lifetime of 15 million years its powerful stellar winds expelled about 60% of its mass.

The explosion of a large star typically leaves behind an object called a neutron star that is highly ​compact, ​but not as much as a black hole. Such a supernova can produce a black hole depending upon ​the star's mass and other factors, though it is tough to confirm ‌through observations that this has occurred.

"In the supernova pathway, a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel and its core collapses, briefly forming a neutron star. This collapse generates a shockwave," De said.

"If the shock succeeds, it completely expels the outer layers of the star as a bright supernova. However, in some cases we think that the remaining core is not pushed out and eventually falls back into the neutron star, making it collapse into a black hole," De added.

In a process called thermonuclear fusion, stars fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, generating outward pressure that balances the incessant inward pull of gravity. When the nuclear fuel dissipates, the balance between inward and outward forces is upset and gravity causes the core to collapse.

For M31-2014-DS1, the shockwave ‌generated by the core collapse failed to muster enough energy to detonate the star.

"We call this a ​failed supernova," Flatiron Institute astrophysicist and study co-author Andrea Antoni said.

"Gravity therefore dominated, leading to the formation of a ​black hole," De said. "The star's outer envelope was gently ejected rather than explosively expelled. ​As this material expanded and cooled, it produced a transient infrared brightening. Afterward, the star lost its central power source and faded from view ‌across wavelengths."

The expulsion of the star's outer layers is about a thousand ​times less energetic than a supernova, Antoni said.

"For a ​star to vanish and implode as 'quietly' as this one did, we think that the key is that it's not spinning too fast before collapse so the majority of its mass falls straight in and only the outermost layers are sloughed off in the process," Harvard University astronomer and study co-author Morgan MacLeod said.

The newborn black hole has ​a mass roughly five times greater than the sun.

The researchers are ‌eager to learn how common it is for black holes to form in the quiet way. They already have identified another star that seems to have ​transformed into a black hole without an explosion.

"Presently, there are too many uncertainties on the theoretical side to know what percentage of core collapse deaths of ​massive stars lead to black hole formation," Antoni said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

TEL AVIV — TwoIsraelishave been charged in connection with the suspected use of classified information to place bets on the prediction platformPolymarket, authorities said Thursday.

The suspects, an army reservist and a civilian, were arrested on suspicion of placing bets on Polymarket "regarding the occurrence of military operations, based on classified information to which the reservists were exposed as part of their military duties," the Israeli Defense Ministry, police and the Shin Bet domestic security agency said in a joint statement.

Israeli authorities did not elaborate on what the bets related to, but the Israel Defense Forces stressed that "no operational harm was caused in this specific incident."

The suspects were arrested following an investigation that authorities said had found sufficient evidence to indict them for "serious security offenses" as well as bribery and obstruction of justice.

Neither indicted suspect has been publicly identified.

Lawyers for the reservist said in a statement to NBC News that their client "is a man with many rights who has made a significant contribution to the security of the state."

"Due to the broad gag order, it is not possible at this stage to relate to the matter in detail, but rather in the sense of what is not in the case," Ran Cohen Rochverger and Naor Alon Sosnosky said in a statement.

The statement added: "The indictment that was filed accuses our client of providing 'confidential information when he is not authorized to do so' after the State Attorney's Office was convinced that there was no reason to attribute to him what was initially investigated as suspicion — an intention to harm national security. No serious security offense or negative motive is attributed to our client in this context."

The lawyers added that they have "strong allegations" about the indictment, including "the flaws in it, selective enforcement and the improper and serious conduct of the investigative authorities, which led to a violation of security — and we are convinced that after these are presented, the case will end in a completely different way than when it was opened."

It was not immediately clear if the other defendant has legal representation.

"The defense establishment emphasizes that engaging in such betting activities, based on secret and classified information, poses a substantial security risk to IDF operations and to the security of the state," the defense ministry said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the IDF said in a statement: "The IDF views with utmost severity any act that endangers the security of the state, particularly the use of highly classified information for the purpose of personal gain."

The IDF statement called it a "grave ethical failure and a clear crossing of a red line," and added that disciplinary action would be taken against anyone found guilty of such crimes. "In response to the incident, measures have been taken and procedures will be reinforced across all IDF units to prevent similar cases from recurring," it said.

Polymarket allows users to buy and sell shares on financial exchanges representing potential future outcomes, which are priced between 0.00 and 1.00 USDC, a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the dollar. The platforms pay out depending on the outcome, but users are trading with each other and not against "the house" as with a traditional sportsbook.

Polymarket has multiple ongoing bets related to foreign policy and military action, including many relating to Israel.

On one titled "US strikes Iran by...?" users have bet the equivalent of $239 million.

Another, titled "Will Israel strike Gaza on...?" which expires Feb. 28 has had the equivalent of more than $1.4 million in bets.

One Polymarket gamblermade more than $400,000last month betting that the U.S. military would depose President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

U.S. users were previously banned from Polymarket and some have called for it to be regulated, amid broader concerns that prediction markets could be used to profit from access to classified information. Congressman Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.,introduced legislation last monthto crack down on public officials making money from prediction platforms.

Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

Omer Bekin reported from Tel Aviv, and Patrick Smith from London.