An army general visited one of the field kitchens of one battalion under his command. While eating breakfast with the soldiers, he was impressed to see the army’s insignia stamped on every biscuit.
He went to the Senior NCO cook to ask how this feat was done, so it could be used at other battalions’ field kitchens under his command.
The SNCO chief cook replied, “I’d be glad to share that with you, General. After each biscuit is cut, I just slap it here against my belt buckle which bears the army insignia.
Horrified, the General exclaims, “That’s very unhygienic!”
The SNCO chief cook shrugs and replies, “Well, If that’s the way you feel, sir, I suggest you avoid the donuts.”
Bud and Jim were a couple of drinking elderly buddies who worked as aeroplane mechanics in Atlanta.
One day the airport was fogged in and they were stuck in the hanger with nothing to-do. Bud said, “Man, I wish we had something to drink!”
Jim says, “Me too. I know, I’ve heard you can drink jet fuel and get a buzz. You wanna try it?”
So they pour themselves a couple of glasses of high octane stuff and get completely smashed.
The next morning Bud wakes up and is surprised at how good he feels.
In fact, he feels GREAT! NO hangover! NO bad side effects. Nothing!
Then the phone rings… It’s Jim. Jim says, “Hey, how do you feel this morning?” Bud says, “I feel great. How about you?”
Jim says, “I feel great, too. You don’t have a hangover?” Bud says, “No, that jet fuel is great stuff – no hangover, nothing. We ought to do this more often.” “Yeah, well there’s just one thing…” “What’s that?”
“Have you farted yet?” “No…” “Well, DON’T, ’cause I’m in PHOEN!X!!!
Ozzy Osbourne has sent an update for his worried fans, three days after undergoing extensive surgery to realign pins put in his neck and back.
“I am now home from the hospital recuperating comfortably,” the Prince of Darkness wrote in a statement shared through his social media. “I am definitely feeling the love and support from all my fans and send everyone a big thank you for their thoughts, prayers and well wishes during my recovery.”
Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife, released a statement on Tuesday, stating that the operation went well and that her husband was on his way to recovery.
“Your love means the world to him,” she said.
The procedure Monday was at least the third spinal operation Ozzy has gone through since injuring his neck in a trip-and-fall in 2019. Ozzy recalls being in such agony after the injury that he was certain he was going to die.
He’s hoping that this newest treatment will allow him to return to the stage after years of being unable to “walk properly.”
The operation and Ozzy’s forthcoming recuperation, according to Sharon, will “define the remainder of his life.”
Photo: Getty Images North America
Before he can begin recovery, Ozzy will allegedly require round-the-clock nursing care for many weeks. He hasn’t given a complete performance since 2018, despite the fact that he’s released two new studio albums after his accident in 2019.
The 13th solo album from the Black Sabbath cofounder and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is set to be released in September.
A twin-engined aircraft with its transponder switched off flew over seven European countries. Accompanied by fighter jets, it landed in Bulgaria: police found no one on board.
Lithuanian news broadcaster LRT on June 10, 2022, the unidentified plane appeared to be a Piper PA-23–250-Aztec twin-engined light aircraft, which was previously registered as LY-LOO. Its manufacturer’s serial number is 27-2250. The aircraft was misidentified as a Beechcraft in earlier reports published by Romanian and Hungarian media.
For a whole day, the aircraft flew over the skies of Eastern Europe, but it did not communicate with any control tower or interfaced with their radars. The ghost plane that took off from Lithuania on June 8 with two Russian-speaking individuals on board, remains an unsolved mystery. It crossed seven NATO countries and landed in Bulgaria, escorted – but not shot down – by Hungarian and Romanian military fighters and never responded to any signals. There were no passengers on board once it landed in Sofia. When the Bulgarian police checked the aircraft, the engine still hot.
The Piper twin-engined phantom plane
The phantom aircraft was a twin-engined, six-seater Piper PA-23–250-Aztec. The small aircraft had belonged to the director of Nida Airfield, Bronius Zaromskis, who claims to have sold it very quickly to an unidentified Russian-speaking customer during the last week in Panevezys, northern Lithuania.
Zaromskis told local media that the three men who arrived to inspect the plane before purchase were not Lithuania nationals.
“I cannot guess which country they were from. They might be Ukrainians, maybe Romanians or Bulgarians. I was speaking to one of them in the Russian language. But I don’t know the names of any of these men, I was not interested,” the plane’s former owner was cited as saying by LRT.
He added: “I’ve been trying to sell that plane for years, I had nowhere to store it, so I’m glad somebody bought it. I don’t remember the name of the company which bought it.”
The Nida airfield is not far from the Russian base of Kaliningrad (an enclave of Russian territory in the middle of Europe), he told the press. The payment was made through a convenient company, making the real buyers untraceable.
The pirate plane’s flight route took it over 7 European states
After the purchase, there are few traces available in this story. It is certain that the plane took off from Lithuania on June 8, with two Russian-speaking passengers on board.
Speaking to Lithuanian media, Oro Navigacija, a local state-owned company that provides air traffic, communication, navigation, and surveillance services in the region, said it does not have any data related to the flight, although it reportedly took-off from Lithuania on June 8, 2022.
However, it is thought that the plane did not take-off from any of the three main civil Lithuanian airports – Vilnius (VNO), Kaunas (KUN), or Palanga (PLQ). Instead, it could have left the country via any one of the country’s minor airfields.
The first unauthorisedlanding and chase in Hungary
Flying low and with all signalling systems off, the Piper escaped control systems, flew over Poland and reappeared on radar in Slovakia and Hungary. According to Hungarian press, the aircraft entered Hungarian airspace from Slovakia and in the afternoon landed at Hajdúszoboszló Airport without permission.
The pilot then threatened an airport worker who called the police. When the police arrived and approached the plane, the pilot “gave it full throttle and took off” at around 17:30 hrs., violating all flight rules, according to a report by Rtl.hu.
According to the Romanian Ministry of National Defence, the plane had no confirmed flight plan and did not respond to any attempts to establish radio communication, and ignored all visual signals. However, it “did not show hostile or dangerous behaviour”.
Then, a pair of Hungarian Air Force Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets chased it: attempts to get in touch with the crew were in vain, the plane did not respond. From the base of Feteşti, US fighter jets also take flight, then Romanian ones.
The military planes escort the mysterious flight, but the phantom aircraft’s transponder remains off and there will be no way to get in touch with its two passengers on board.
Saab JAS-39 Gripen
Bulgarian media reported that at around 17.49 CET the plane entered Romanian airspace in the vicinity of Oradea. As per a cross-border agreement between Romania and Hungary, the Hungarian jets continued to accompany the mystery plane. Several minutes later, it was intercepted by two patrolling US Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from 86th Feteşti Air Base.
At around 18:36 CET, the surveillance was taken over by two Romanian Air Force F-16s. While being followed, the aircraft entered Serbian airspace for two minutes in an area between Drobeta-Turnu Severin and Korbovo.
The plane is then seen again over Serbia and then at 19:09 hrs in Bulgaria. No Bulgarian Air Force fighter jets were scrambled and no alarm was raised.
“At no time the plane was a threat to the civilian or military infrastructure of Bulgaria. It was flying at a low altitude, difficult to catch by fighters, but we monitored it at all times. We located where it landed and are working to establish the circumstances,” Bulgarian Minister of Defense Dragomir Zakov told Bulgarian media on June 9, 2022.
In Targovishte, Bulgaria, the plane lands on an unused runway at Buhovți Airport, a small airport. But when the police arrive it’s too late. The engine is still hot, but no one is on board: the two pilots had disappeared. The plane was reportedly found covered with a tarpaulin with no signs of any crew or passengers.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bulgaria has opened an investigation to locate the pilot of the plane.
Provocation or test against NATO?
The secret services from all over Europe are working to understand what happened and the identity of the two pilots. Security experts say that it is very strange that military aircraft did not act against the aircraft, which was able to fly through the skies of 7 seemingly undisturbed European countries, right now that the alert is high due to the war. The mystery remains about the reasons for the flight: some have already speculated that it was a Russian test to assess security measures, responsiveness and the “penetrability” of the skies over NATO member countries.
Parts of European airspace have become more challenging recently. Besides the usual summer ramp-up of operations, airlines also have to keep a watchful eye on events in Ukraine. Possible GPS interference or spoofing can affect operations. There are many more risks, that EASA, Europe’s aviation safety watchdog, has analysed thoroughly in previous months.
The plane’s hypothetical track. (Image: Google Earth)
The most annoying web browser in history, Internet Explorer, has today seen its last day of support from Microsoft.
Way back in 1994, Bill Gates had said that he foresaw little commercial potential for the Internet for the following 10 years. I had been bitten myself by the bug while studying and working in the USA earlier in 1991, a time of dial-up modems, AOL reigning supreme as an email box provider, and when Netscape was still a sexy web browser to use (still have its installation floppies buried someplace).
He and Microsoft realised how wrong that stance was eventually, but they weren’t the first to launch a web browser for fledgling web surfers.
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign created the first widely used graphical web browser, Mosaic. It was developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, although despite being the most well-known, it wasn’t the first graphical web browser. ViolaWWW, a Unix browser, was the first Windows graphical web browser, whereas Cello was the first Windows graphical web browser.
Mosaic, on the other hand, was the first browser to allow users to see graphics within website pages. That was a game-changer, to say the least. Previously, pictures could only be shown as independent files in browsers. The first and earliest browser battle was a foregone conclusion: Mosaic was victorious.
Whether it was a tidal wave or not, Microsoft was still unprepared. Spyglass, a commercial version of the popular Mosaic web browser, was chosen as a rapid repair. Internet Explorer (IE) 1 was released in August 1995 as part of Microsoft Plus for Windows 95, a Windows software add-on bundle.
The first version of Internet Explorer was a failure. It also strained relations with Spyglass, which had been promised a cut of Microsoft’s IE earnings. However, Microsoft began bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, resulting in a loss of revenue. In 1997, Microsoft reached a $8 million settlement with Spyglass.
This Spyglass/Mosaic codebase would remain in Internet Explorer until the release of IE7. “Distributed via a licence arrangement with Spyglass, Inc.” was written in the “About” pane of Internet Explorer 1 through 6. Microsoft is said to have innovated with Internet Explorer. It didn’t work out.
Simultaneously, Andreessen took the Mosaic code and converted it into Netscape, the first widely used web browser. Netscape will “convert Windows to a set of badly debugged device drivers,” Andreessen promised.
The threat was taken seriously by Microsoft. In a June 1995 meeting, Microsoft offered that the two firms split the browser industry, with Internet Explorer becoming the exclusive Windows browser, according to Netscape CEO James Barksdale. Microsoft would smash Netscape if it did not cooperate.
During the US Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in 2001, Barksdale claimed, “I had never been in a meeting in my 33-year business history where a rival had so openly implied that we should either cease competing with it or the competition would destroy us.”
But the true reason we’re saying goodbye to IE now, long after Netscape has vanished, is because Microsoft used their unlawful PC/Windows monopoly to prevent Netscape from being installed on PCs. Microsoft coerced PC manufacturers into installing the new operating system and browser on all of their machines. There was no significant OS rivalry in the mid-’90s, so the objective wasn’t so much to kill out other PC operating system makers. The idea was to completely demolish Netscape.
The courts were in agreement. The US Department of Justice won its lawsuit against Microsoft because the company’s PC monopoly prevented Netscape from competing with Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, instead of splitting Microsoft up into independent firms or open-sourcing its code, the government handed it a smack on the wrist. And, as Microsoft had threatened back in 1995, Netscape perished.
As a result, many of you grew up with Internet Explorer as your default browser. You had no idea what could have been the alternatives.
After the introduction of IE6 with Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft ceased developing with the browser. What was the point? There was no way for users to leave. They didn’t have any other options. By the mid-2000s, Internet Explorer had a market share of more than 90%.
However, in 2005, Firefox, which was based on Netscape’s outdated coding, became a viable alternative. The ultimate death of IE came in 2008, when Google chose to create Chrome, a contemporary, fast, and efficient web browser (yippee!!).
Microsoft never managed to catch up. Today, Microsoft’s contemporary browser, Edge, is built on the open-source Chromium code base. Except for Firefox, all of the current main Windows web browsers are based on Chromium. Edge has a feature called IE mode that uses the Chromium engine for current websites and the Trident MSHTML engine from Internet Explorer 11 for legacy sites.
And IE? Simply abandoned and let to rot. Despite this, many continue to use Internet Explorer today, … mehh, Lord help them! The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) of the US federal government reports an average of 300,000 Internet Explorer site visits to government websites in the last seven days.
Despite support for Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10 stopping on June 15th, Microsoft isn’t completely abandoning the browser. In fact, with extended security updates, the IE11 desktop client on Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 (and even Windows 10 Enterprise, version 20H2) will continue to plough on.
When will IE be laid to rest for good? We have no idea. Microsoft has been tight-lipped about the situation. Someday, though, you’ll get a Windows Update that completely removes Internet Explorer.
IPhone 12 phones are seen at the new Apple Store on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 24, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)
Apple has tilll 2024 to make changes
Company claims that the shift will stifle innovation.
Apple’s sales could be boosted by the sale of newer phones.
In a world first, EU governments and parliament agreed on Tuesday to a single charging port for mobile phones, tablets, and cameras, requiring Apple to modify the connector on iPhones sold in Europe by 2024.
After corporations failed to achieve a single solution, the European Commission intervened, claiming that it would make life easier for customers and save them money.
For more than a decade, Brussels has pushed for a single mobile charging connector, sparked by concerns from iPhone and Android users about having to switch between multiple chargers for their smartphones.
iPhones use Lightning cables to charge, while Android smartphones use USB-C connectors.
The corporation had previously warned that the measure would stifle innovation and result in a pile of technological garbage, but did not immediately react to a request for comment.
Despite this, its stock was up 0.9 percent in New York morning session.
According to analysts, the switch might be a sales driver for Apple in 2024, pushing more Europeans to buy the latest products rather than those without USB-C.
“We are pleased that laptops, e-readers, earbuds, keyboards, computer mouse, and portable navigation devices are covered,” said Dr Alex Agius Saliba, a Maltese MEP who led the debate in the European Parliament.
According to CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino, it may entice buyers to upgrade to a new phone sooner. “Pre-existing customers can continue to utilise the Lightning cable,” he said, “but there may be fewer purchases of older devices on third-party marketplaces.”
Bloomberg reported last month that Apple is working on an iPhone with a USB-C charging port that could be released next year. When Apple announces new iPhones, older models are frequently discounted, resulting in millions of buyers opting for the less expensive models.
According to Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at research firm IDC, if the EU forbids the sale of older models, it risks offending many consumers and forcing them to pay more. According to a 2019 Commission survey, half of the chargers sold with mobile phones in 2018 had a USB micro-B connector, 29 percent had a USB-C connector, and 21 percent had a Lightning connector.
In a statement, the European Parliament stated, “By fall 2024, USB Type-C will become the common charging port for all mobile phones, tablets, and cameras in the EU.” Consumers would save roughly 250 million euros ($267 million) as a result of the agreement, according to EU industry director Thierry Breton. “It will also allow new technologies to arise and mature, such as wireless charging, without allowing innovation to become a cause of market fragmentation and consumer discomfort,” he said.
Laptops will be required to comply with the law within 40 months after its implementation. Wireless charging solutions will be harmonised by the EU executive in the future. Analysts believe that because the agreement encompasses e-readers, earbuds, and other technologies, it will have an influence on Samsung, Huawei, and other gadget makers.
“We are pleased that laptops, e-readers, earbuds, keyboards, computer mouse, and portable navigation devices are covered,” said Dr Alex Agius Saliba, a Maltese MEP who led the debate in the European Parliament.
Since 1952, the air temperature in Malta has risen by 1.54°C.
Malta is an archipelago with numerous gorgeous landscapes, architectural marvels, and enticing beaches, making it a popular tourist destination.
However, there is a danger on the horizon. Malta is experiencing a water shortage dilemma as a result of a lack of groundwater and rising global temperatures.
Parts of the islands are becoming desert, unable to maintain the same level of food production and endangering Maltese daily life.
A switch from semi-aridity to hyper-aridity will see far less naturally occurring freshwater, impacting vegetation, agriculture and domestic needs. (Photo: Desiree Attard/Shutterstock.com)
In addition, air temperatures in Malta have been continuously rising since 1952, with the mean maximum air temperature expected to rise by 1.54°C by 2020, according to a climate report published by the National Statistics Office (NSO), titled “The State of the Climate 2022”, to mark World Environment Day. According to the report, data analysis indicates that the environment is growing progressively warmer, drier, and more prone to weather extremes.
The mean lowest air temperature climbed by 1.37°C between 1952 and 2020, while the mean highest maximum air temperature grew by 1.20°C. The mean lowest minimum air temperature climbed by 1.67°C throughout the same time period.
Temperature rises can vary dramatically over short periods of time due to predictable, cyclical phenomena as well as difficult-to-predict wind and precipitation patterns.
The global temperature, on the other hand, is mostly determined by the amount of energy the planet gets from the Sun and how much it radiates back into space. According to studies, the quantity of energy emitted by the Sun varies little year to year, however the amount of energy emitted by Earth is directly linked to the chemical composition of the atmosphere, notably the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
A one-degree shift in global temperature is important since it takes a lot of heat to warm all of the seas, atmosphere, and land masses by that much.
In fact, according to the NSO climate report, the average water temperature in Malta climbed by 1.89°C between 1978 and 2020, with the maximum mean sea temperature increasing by 2.20°C. According to the NSO report, total rainfall in Malta declined by 71.27mm between 1952 and 2020. Furthermore, the average 24-hour rainfall (rainfall intensity) declined by 1.90mm.
The overall number of days with thunderstorms rose by 8.65 days, while the mean atmospheric pressure increased by 0.34hPa. The average duration of bright sunlight per day in Malta grew by 0.08 hours between 1961 and 2020, but the average relative humidity fell by 4.72 percentage points. During the same time period, the average wind speed fell by 0.82 knots, with the north-west wind direction dominating for 57.22% of all months.
Former BON JOVI bassist and original founding member, Alec John Such, has died at the age of 70. It’s unclear how Such passed away, but the band shared the news via its social media channels.
The Cons's Nook: www.ivanmconsiglio.com 