In recent weeks, residents of New Jersey have reported numerous sightings of unidentified drones hovering over suburban neighbourhoods, industrial areas, and even sensitive locations. The unusual activity has sparked widespread speculation and concern, leading security experts to weigh in with a startling theory about who may be behind these mysterious drones and their possible purpose. Several experts have suggested that the mysterious flights might be linked to a secret US government operation, possibly a top-secret military program. This program could be designed to test and refine cutting-edge technology before deploying it in actual combat situations, New York Post reported. 

“My first guess is these are potentially government programs kept within what’s known as a ‘Special Access Program,’ which is purposely put together to keep even the most cleared people out — it truly is to keep it secret,” said Clint Emerson, a retired Navy SEAL and owner of security company Escape the Wolf.

“That’s why the government’s like, ‘We don’t know.’ They’re being truthful. They don’t even know the program exists,” Mr Emerson added.

He believes that the true secret of drones lies not in the devices themselves, but in the advanced technology they carry. This could include various types of sensors and collection capabilities, such as high-definition cameras, infrared cameras, or thermal imaging devices. Additionally, the drones may be equipped with hardware that can capture cellphone data from a specific area.

“How much data can we collect with this? Let’s say we got 10 drones, they fly in a grid, how much cellphone traffic can we pick up? Not actual conversations. But just the signature of millions of cellphones. What can 10 drones pick up going over an area? That’s a legitimate test. They’re not invading your privacy. That’s legitimate data. And that’s a f–king capability,” he said.

New Jersey, being the most densely populated state in the country, provides an ideal location for testing such technology, offering a unique environment to gauge its effectiveness in a crowded and complex setting.

Kelly McCann, a security expert with a background in the Marines and Office of Naval Research, also agreed with Mr Emerson’s views. He believes the government is testing its “operational capacity”.  enhance its operational capabilities.

The FBI, along with local law enforcement and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is currently investigating the incidents. 

Washington:

Top Senate Democrats – Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed and New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen are calling for an investigation into Elon Musk’s alleged ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top officials. 

They sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Defence Department Inspector General Robert Storch raising “serious questions regarding Mr Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a [security] clearance holder”.

The lawmakers want the Pentagon and Justice Department to probe whether Musk’s relationships with a US adversary compromise national security, especially given his major government contracts.

Musk’s reported “multiple, high-level conversations” with Putin since 2022 have raised eyebrows, despite the Kremlin’s denial, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

The billionaire’s response to the accusations was fiery, vowing to “nuke” those behind the claims on his X platform, “going to find out who’s making these accusations and nuke them”.

Reed and Shaheen question Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and security clearance holder, citing his alleged communications with Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko.

The senators highlight Russia’s space ambitions as a direct threat to US national security. They’re concerned that Musk, with his top-secret level clearance, doesn’t report his foreign government contacts, unlike others with similar clearances. SpaceX’s deep involvement in US defense and intelligence infrastructure adds to the concerns.

Musk’s ties to the US government extend beyond contracts; he backed Trump’s 2024 election bid and participated in diplomatic efforts, including calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and meeting Argentinian President Javier Milei in Trump’s Florida home.

However, his recent visit to the Iranian UN ambassador’s residence in New York has sparked controversy, with Iran’s foreign minister denying the meeting took place.

The investigation request underscores growing scrutiny of Musk’s foreign connections and their implications for US national security.
 

A couple in the United States defrauded the government of nearly $500,000 (approximately Rs 4.2 Crore) to take dozens of lavish vacations to Walt Disney World while claiming they were travelling for work. According to the New York Post, 61-year-old Thomas Bouchard, who is an Army contractor, used his government connections to get his girlfriend, 53-year-old Cantelle Boyd, hired for a “no-show” job as his assistant so they could take numerous vacations, including 31 trips to Walt Disney World in Flordia. Their elaborate scheme cost the Department of Defence more than $490,000, prosecutors said. 

Citing the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, the Post reported that the couple claimed that they were travelling for work. Mr Bouchard, who was in charge of the US Army Natick Contracting Division in Massachusetts, reportedly used his “long-standing relationship with government contractor Evolution Enterprise Inc., to have Ms Boyd hired as an assistant to support him. She was paid a government salary of $487,658 and performed “little if any useful function” from 2014 to 2018, costing the government an extra $75,583 in travel expenses, prosecutors said. 

The couple reportedly booked vacations ranging from two to 15 days, and their travels – which were done during business hours – included staying a hotels, lounging by the pool and visiting Disney parks. In addition to this, the couple also travelled to Virginia and other Florida locations. Prosecutors said that the 61-year-old concealed the nature of their trips and sought reimbursement by falsifying and then approving expense records. 

Also Read | US Army Tests Robot Dogs Armed With AI-Enabled Guns At Military Facility In Middle East: Report

Federal authorities arrested the couple in July 2020. They each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of theft of government funds and false declarations. The 61-year-old was sentenced in August to one year and one day in prison and is required to pay $487,658 in restitution.

“Those of us who are privileged to work in public service owe a duty to the taxpayers to act with integrity at all times,” said Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy. 

“This defendant clearly failed in adhering to this solemn oath and abused his position of trust to line his own pockets, hire a friend into a phantom position and enjoy junkets all on the taxpayer’s dime. He will now pay the price for his inexcusable conduct,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Ms Boyd was sentenced to six months of home confinement on October 2. Prosecutors said she is required to pay restitution “at a later date”. 

Eight TikTok content creators sued the U.S. Government on May 14, issuing another challenge to the new federal law that would ban the popular social media platform nationwide if its China-based parent company doesn’t sell its stakes within a year.

Attorneys for the creators argued in the lawsuit that the law violates users’ First Amendment rights to free speech, echoing legal arguments made by TikTok in a separate lawsuit filed by the company last week. The legal challenge could end up before the Supreme Court.

The complaint filed on May 14 comes from a diverse set of content creators, including a Texas-based rancher who has previously appeared in a TikTok commercial, a creator in Arizona who uses TikTok to show his daily life and spread awareness about LGBTQ issues as well as a business owner who sells skincare products on TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of the platform.

The lawsuit said the creators “rely on TikTok to express themselves, learn, advocate for causes, h.are opinions, create communities, and even make a living”.

“They have found their voices, amassed significant audiences, made new friends, and encountered new and different ways of thinking — all because of TikTok’s novel way of hosting, curating, and disseminating speech,” it added, arguing the new law would deprive them and the rest of the country “of this distinctive means of expression and communication”.

A spokesperson for TikTok said the company was covering the legal costs for the lawsuit, which was filed in a Washington appeals court. It is being led by the same law firm that represented creators who challenged Montana’s state-wide ban on the platform last year. In November, a judge blocked that law from going into effect.

The federal law comes at a time of intense strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China on a host of issues and as the two have continued to butt heads over sensitive geopolitical topics like China’s support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. lawmakers and other administration officials have aired concerns about how well TikTok can protect users’ data from Chinese authorities and have argued its algorithm could be used to spread pro-China propaganda, which TikTok disputes.

Under the law, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance would be required to sell the platform to an approved buyer within nine months. If a sale is in progress, the company will get a three-month extension to complete the deal.

However, TikTok and ByteDance said in their lawsuit last week that they would still have no choice but to shut down by next Jan. 19 because continuing to operate in the U.S. wouldn’t be commercially, technologically or legally possible.

They asserted it would be impossible for ByteDance to divest its U.S. TikTok platform as a separate entity from the rest of TikTok, which has 1 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the United States. A U.S.-only TikTok would operate as an island that’s detached from the rest of the world, the lawsuit argues. It also said the Chinese government — which would need to approve such a sale — has “made clear” it would not permit a sale of the recommendation algorithm that populates users’ feeds and has been the “key to the success of TikTok in the United States”.

In an interview, Brian Firebaugh, the Hubbard, Texas-based rancher who is part of the creator lawsuit, said he started his TikTok account in 2020 to help establish his brand and market the cattle-related products that he sells online. That decision allowed him to quit his full-time job and live off the income he was making from TikTok, where he currently has more than 4,30,000 followers.

Firebaugh, 44, said TikTok has also helped him build an online community with other ranchers and gave him the opportunity to participate in a Netflix reality show where his winnings allowed him and his wife to afford the adoption process for their son. Losing TikTok, he said, would disrupt everything.

“One hundred percent of our customers come from TikTok,” Mr. Firebaugh said. “For that to go away, you’re now stealing money out of my family’s mouths.”

Chloe Joy Sexton, a 29-year-old content creator who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and runs a cookie business called Chloe’s Giant Cookies, said she started experimenting with TikTok four years ago after losing her prior job. Ms. Sexton said she had been posting content on other social media platforms, but only TikTok created a viral trajectory for her baking. Today, she has more than 2 million followers on the app, where she has also shared more intimate details about her life, such as losing her mother to brain cancer and subsequently adopting her little sister.

“There has been no evidence whatsoever that my information is in danger or anybody else’s,” said Ms. Sexton, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Nobody has provided that – not the government, not anybody else. And to base this purchase, this tug of war that changes my life off of a hypothetical is so hurtful to me personally, because my government at that point is not protecting me.”

The creators are asking the court to issue a declaration saying the law is unconstitutional and an order that would prevent Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing it. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington, United States:

The US Congress passed an 11th-hour funding bill Saturday to keep federal agencies running for another 45 days and avert a costly government shutdown — although the deal left out aid to war-torn Ukraine requested by President Joe Biden.

Three hours before the midnight Saturday deadline, the Senate voted to keep the lights on through mid-November with a resolution that had advanced earlier from the House of Representatives in a day of high-stakes brinkmanship on Capitol Hill.

The last-ditch “continuing resolution” was pitched by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as millions of public workers looked set to be sent home unpaid, upending government functions from military operations to food aid to federal policymaking.

Biden is set to sign the measure into law in the coming hours, with a White House official telling AFP the administration expects Republicans to allow a quick separate vote on Ukraine aid.

The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their own party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.

Saturday’s bill kept federal spending at current levels and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the lower chamber’s vote “a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists.”

But the result could end up costing McCarthy his job. The 21 hardliners had threatened to remove him as speaker if a stopgap measure they opposed was passed with Democrat support.

One of the group, Lauren Boebert, declined to say after the House vote whether she and her colleagues would try to force McCarthy out, but she was clearly unhappy with the outcome.

“There are too many members here who are comfortable doing things the way they’ve been done since the mid ’90s,” she told reporters. “And that’s why we’re sitting at $33 trillion in debt.”

McCarthy sought to convey confidence both about his own future and the prospects for securing a final agreement within the new timeframe.

“In 45 days we should get our work all done,” he said, while seeming to offer a hand to the hardliners, saying, “I welcome those 21 back in.”  

While the crisis highlighted Republican divisions, Jeffries held his caucus together, with only one member defecting in a protest of the lack of assistance to Ukraine.

‘No blank check’

Arming and funding Kyiv in its desperate war against the Russian invasion has been a key policy plank for the Biden administration and, while the stopgap is temporary, it does raise questions over the political viability of renewing the multibillion-dollar flow of assistance.

“This is enough to keep the government open, and I’m not going to shut the government down over foreign aid,” one House Democrat, Jared Moskowitz, told CNN.

McCarthy said Russia’s invasion was “horrendous” but insisted there could be “no blank check” for Ukraine.

“I have a real concern of what’s going to happen long term, but I don’t want to waste any money,” he said.

With tensions running high and Democrats poring over the text of McCarthy’s proposal, one of their lawmakers, Jamaal Bowman, triggered a fire alarm in a building housing congressional offices an hour before the House vote.

Bowman’s spokesman insisted it was an accident, but Republicans accused him of seeking to delay proceedings.

If Congress had failed to keep the government open, the closures would have begun just after midnight (0400 GMT Sunday) and would likely have bled into the following week, delaying salaries for millions of federal employees and military personnel.

A shutdown would have meant the majority of national parks, for example — from the iconic Yosemite and Yellowstone in the west to Florida’s Everglades swamp — shutting to the public from Sunday.

The stopgap measure buys legislators time to negotiate full-year spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2024.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)