Bits and Bites from Around the World > Toddler Bites Snake back and Kills it; Moon Landing a Hoax?

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Vengeful toddler sinks teeth into snake and kills it in revenge attack

after animal bit her on the lip

Katie Davis

16:12, 13 Aug 2022

A TODDLER unleashed a deadly hissy fit on a snake by killing it with her teeth in revenge for biting her.

The two-year-old was playing in the back garden of her family home in Bingol, Turkey, when she started screaming loudly as the slithery critter sank its fangs into her.

The tot got her revenge on the snake after it bit her. Credit: Newsflash

She was playing in her back garden in Turkey when the snake attacked. Stock pic. Credit: Getty

Neighbours dashed to help the tot and to their horror found her with the 20-inch snake clamped in her mouth.

The vengeful youngster managed to kill the unwanted garden guest with her teeth after it bit her on the lip.

It is understood she was playing with the snake on August 10 when it lashed out.

Neighbours performed first aid on the tot before rushing her to Bingol Maternity and Children's Hospital, where she was put under observation for 24 hours.

She is now reported to be well and recovering.

Her relieved dad Mehmet Ercan - who was at work when the snake struck - said: "Allah has protected her, really.

"Our neighbours have told me that the snake was in the hand of my child, she was playing with it and then it bit her. Then she has bitten the snake back as a reaction."

It comes after an eight-year-old girl had to be rushed to hospital after she was bitten by a venomous adder during a picnic with her family.

The little girl, who has not been named, went to probe the snake with her finger at Kinver Edge, Staffs.

To her shock, it bit her - causing her finger to "rapidly swell".

Paramedics later rushed the schoolgirl to Birmingham Children's Hospital where she was pumped with anti-venom serum.

Conspiracy theorists say they have new proof Apollo 17

moon landing was hoax

Postmedia News - 4h ago

Conspiracy theorists claim they have new proof that the Apollo 17 moon landing was a hoax by the U.S. government.  Claims that the moon landings were a hoax have been around since 1969, but a new one focuses on an odd figure found in the visor of one of the astronauts in a clip of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.

© Provided by Toronto Sun

Conspiracy theorists claim they have new proof that the Apollo 17 moon landing was a hoax by the U.S. government. Claims that the moon landings were a hoax have been around since 1969, but a new one focuses on an odd figure found in the visor of one of the astronauts in a clip of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.

Conspiracy theorists claim they have new proof that the Apollo 17 moon landing was a hoax by the U.S. government.

Claims that the moon landings were a hoax have been around since 1969, but a new one focuses on an odd figure found in the visor of one of the astronauts in a clip of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.

On the last manned trip to the moon, the astronauts — commander Gene Cernan, lunar module pilot Harrison “Jack” Schmitt and command module pilot Ronald Evans — were the final people to touch down.

In a video titled “Reflection in a Visor. Where’s the reflection of the camera taking the photo?” user Streetcap1 claims the shot proves it was a hoax.

The YouTuber claims a reflection in the visor of one of the astronauts shows a “stagehand” — and, allegedly, the person is not wearing a spacesuit, according to the New York Post.

“You can see some sort of, it looks like a man, back in the early ’70s, long hair, wearing some sort of waistcoat-type thing … and a shadow of that figure, presumably,” the narrator claimed, using his mouse to outline the figure as he talks.

“Where’s this guy’s space suit?” he says.

The clip has been viewed nearly three million times since being uploaded in 2017.

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Military Madness - Dramatic Increase in Drone Strikes in Afghanistan - What did it Accomplish?

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‘Killing for the sake of killing’: Disillusioned US drone pilots

leak footage of air strikes against unarmed Afghans, media says

25 Aug, 2021 13:54 / Updated 2 hours ago

FILE PHOTO. The US military in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold, are using high-tech Predator drones against their enemy. © Getty Images / Veronique de Viguerie; (inset) A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). © Getty Images / John Moore

American drone pilots have leaked video of “punitive” and “nihilistic” strikes in Afghanistan in 2019 that led to the killing of civilians, including at least one child, as the US looked for an exit strategy in the two-decade war.

The footage, published on Tuesday as part of an investigation by military news outlet Connecting Vets, reportedly reveals how successive US administrations and defense strategists relaxed the rules of engagement in Afghanistan – as part of a policy to pressure the Taliban to the negotiating table.

However, drone operators interviewed by the outlet claimed the loosened rules around air strikes served “no point” and did not “make a difference” – with one pilot stating that it was “killing for the sake of killing.” The strikes also reportedly killed far more civilians than the Pentagon has admitted.

An unidentified pilot, who worked with the Marines as part of ‘Task Force South West’ in the country’s Helmand province in 2019, said he had been traumatized by one mistaken killing and shared a journal account of the incident with the site.

My productivity today was derailed. We killed two innocent men and a charger [military slang for a child]. They were on a motorcycle and by dumb luck drove into the same intersection as our target as the hellfire [missile] struck.

The operator said the target was an Afghan man on a bike who had been using a two-way radio – which were commonly used in Helmand after cellular towers were downed.

However, the target “rode right through the blast and kept going,” the pilot wrote, adding that he “watched a passerby load the bodies into a truck and drive them to a hospital. They are all dead.”

The account was corroborated by a military official involved in the operation who spoke to the site on condition of anonymity. While the Afghan on the radio – whose name or connection to the Taliban was never discovered – drove off through the smoke like a “Bond villain,” the official said the “two adults and a toddler on the other motorcycle ... were killed right off.”

But the Connecting Vets report noted that the Department of Defense (DoD) recorded only one civilian casualty on the date of the strike, which was “likely the toddler,” while leaving out the two adult males who “just happened to be there.”

US Central Command, which had jurisdiction over military operations in the area, did not respond to questions submitted by the site.

Drone operators told the site about being disillusioned with the task force, whose Marines had apparently already given up on Helmand. By 2019, the province was largely under the control of the Taliban, with “virtually no American ground patrols ... and not many Afghan military ones”.

According to the outlet, the military had “transitioned from intelligence-driven targeting to using a target engagement criteria” such as holding a rifle, but the threshold for coming under suspicion could be easily crossed by unarmed adult men.

Last year, the DoD released air power summaries for Afghanistan that showed a six-fold increase from less than a thousand strikes in 2015 to 7,423 strikes in 2019.

And what did they accomplish except to keep the 'hellfire' inventory moving?

According to a 2017 report by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, Barack Obama “vastly [expanded] and [normalized] the use of armed drones for counterterrorism” to the tune of 542 strikes, killing roughly 3,797 people in various countries.

Under Donald Trump, authorization for drone strikes was delegated to field commanders as part of a National Security Council strategy to get the Taliban to agree on an exit strategy for US forces.

How did that work?