A tourist cruising the streets of Rome in a rented Maserati SUV took a wrong turn that has landed him in considerable legal trouble when he shockingly drove down the city’s famed Spanish Steps and badly damaged the legendary landmark. The jaw-dropping incident reportedly occurred last week as the unnamed Saudi national was visiting the Italian capital on vacation. While heading back to his hotel in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the man steered his SUV down the 18th-century marble monument and wound up getting the vehicle stuck on the iconic staircase, which has appeared in a myriad of movies and television shows.
Security camera footage from the mishap shows the man driving down the stairs, exiting the SUV, and expressing dismay at the unfathomable predicament. After an attempt to enlist a tow truck for help proved to be futile, the man eventually managed to escape the situation by turning the vehicle around and driving back up the steps, which no doubt caused additional damage to the landmark. Perhaps thinking that he could get away with the motorvehicle misadventure, the man eventually headed to the airport with the intention of going back home to Saudi Arabia, but police were waiting for him to return the rented SUV and subsequently arrested the tourist before he could leave the country.
Authorities say that the destructive detour caused two of the steps to become fractured and they will now need to be restored by experts. For his part, the man has apologized and taken full responsibility for the incident, though his attorney insists that the wrong turn was due to his GPS instructing him to head in that direction. Regardless of whether the man’s drive down the stairs was truly in error or actually the result of an ill-advised joyride, he could face considerable consequences for his actions as he has been charged with ‘aggravated damage to cultural heritage and monuments,’ which carries a possible prison sentence and a hefty fine.
Hyperion, the world’s tallest living tree.Hyperion is the name of a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California that was measured at 115.92 m (380.3 ft), which ranks it as the world’s tallest known living tree.
Comet Leonard in the frigid Canadian night. Spectacular photo!
Jølster, Norway!
A gentle reminder.
Humpback whale salute In Monterey Bay, California.
Rainbow as seen from a plane
Solar Eclipse from Space…
A highland storm over Loch Etive, Scotland
Snowy owl
Dog-sledding under the Northern lights in Norway.
Frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia
The Wave is a sandstone rock formation located in Arizona, United States, near its northern border with Utah. The formation is situated on the slopes of the Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness of the Colorado Plateau.
Granada, Spain
Magical sunset.
A lighthouse in Michigan, before and after major ice storm.
Image caption,Workers look after trees planted in the “green belt” area around the city of Karbala, Iraq.Image caption,The opening ceremony at the My Dinh National Stadium in Hanoi, Vietnam, marked the beginning of the Southeast Asian Games. About 5,000 athletes will be competing in 40 sports.Image caption,Prince Charles stood in for the Queen for the first time to open a new session of Parliament, after she had to pull out because of mobility problems. The Prince of Wales, flanked by the Duke of Cambridge and the Duchess of Cornwall, read the Queen’s Speech during the State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords.Image caption,The Azov regiment released this photo of an injured Ukrainian serviceman inside the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, which is besieged by Russian troops. All elderly people, women and children have now been evacuated from the plant.Image caption,Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes due to a swift-moving wildfire in southern California. Meanwhile, the largest wildfire in the US continues to threaten communities and businesses in New Mexico.Image caption,A bee-eater bird catches a bee in the village of Buszkowice in Podkarpacie, Poland.Image caption,Migrants wait to disembark from a Spanish coastguard vessel at the port of Arguineguin, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain.Image caption,British soldiers participate in a Nato “Swift Response 22” exercise in North Macedonia, to test the military alliance’s deployment readiness along its eastern borders.Image caption,Mayor of London Sadiq Khan walks through cannabis plants which are being legally cultivated at a licensed factory in Los Angeles. The mayor was seeing for himself how legalised cannabis production operates in California.Image caption,Sri Lankan security forces were ordered to shoot law-breakers on sight in a bid to quell anti-government protests. Demonstrators are calling for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over the island’s worst ever economic
The first public congressional hearing into UFO sightings in the US in over 50 years is being held on Tuesday.
The highly-anticipated testimony from two top military officials tasked with probing the sightings will be closely watched after decades of secrecy.
The Pentagon brass are expected to say that it has been a struggle to unearth witness accounts from government workers concerned about job security.
Is the hearing open to the public?
The hearing is being held in the House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee.
The two officials testifying are Ronald Moultrie – the Pentagon’s top intelligence official – and Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence.
The officials will describe US efforts to investigate Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) – the government’s term for UFOs – in a public hearing.
“The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks — especially those we do not fully understand,” Representative André Carson said in a statement.
Following the public hearing, the committee will close its doors for a private classified session with lawmakers.
Ahead of the hearing, scientists and experts have written draft questions that they hope lawmakers will ask the witnesses.
Christopher Mellon, a former top Pentagon intelligence official and critic of the government’s handling of UAP evidence, said that the most important question to ask is whether any have been observed outside Earth’s atmosphere.
“If members can confirm UAP in space, they’ll make history and help to eliminate an entire category of potential explanations having to do with atmospheric phenomenon, Chinese lanterns, civilian drones, etc,” he wrote on his blog.
Ronald Moultrie, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, oversees the UFO inquiry office
How did we get here?
Public fascination with flying saucers, glowing lights and otherworldly aircrafts has been ongoing for generations.
The last public hearings into the issue began in 1966, when Republican congressman – and future president – Gerald Ford convened a pair of hearings to discuss a UFO sightings following one in Michigan that was observed by over 40 people, including a dozen policemen.
The Air Force officials attributed the incident to “swamp gas”, leading Ford to deride their description as “flippant” .
In 1969, an Air Force investigation into UFOs called Project Blue Book closed after determining that no flying object had ever been confirmed or deemed a threat to US national security.
Blast forward to 2017, when US media reported on the Pentagon’s secretive efforts to probe testimony from pilots and other US military members who had reported seeing strange objects in the sky.
The reports included footage of the UFOs, and descriptions of how they seemed to fly in unexpected ways, including hovering in place during high winds and changing elevation rapidly.
Pilots described seeing them on an almost “daily basis” outside military bases, and one whistleblower described how UAPs had interfered with US nuclear weapons facilities, even forcing some offline.
In 2020, a Covid relief bill signed by Donald Trump included a provision requiring US intelligence agencies to deliver an unclassified report on UAPs within 180 days.
In June 2021, the US Director of National Intelligence released a report saying it had no explanation for dozens of unidentified flying objects related to 144 incidents dating back to 2004. Only one could be easily explained as a deflating balloon, while the others were labelled “largely inconclusive”.
“Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects,” the report stated, adding that 80 of them were detected on multiple advanced military sensors and radar systems.
The June 2021 report failed to reach any conclusive answers in regards to what the objects are, or how they function. It called for expanded investigation and better data collection, given the stigma government workers may have against their describing unexplained encounters.
Last December, Democrats succeeded in including a stronger disclosure requirement in the annual National Defense Authorization Act signed by Joe Biden.
The law requires the military to establish a permanent office on UAP research – now called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.
A peculiar piece of footage from Canada shows an odd triangular object silently cruising across the sky and some suspect that the eerie anomaly could be some kind of clandestine military aircraft. The intriguing video was reportedly filmed in Ontario by an individual named Michael and an unidentified female companion as they were out for a walk around sunset. Alas, as is often the case with UFO footage that pops up online, the specific location and date of the strange sighting are unknown. Be that as it may, the video is rather compelling by virtue of the object at the center of the weird scene.
In the video, a triangular object sporting a light on each of its three points as well as red illumination in its center can be seen gliding through the sky while making no noise. “It doesn’t look like a plane,” exclaims Michael, while his friend echoes that bewilderment, marveling “that’s unusual. That is weird.” Fortunately, the footage captured by the couple provides a fairly clear look at the unknown object, although what it could have been remains a matter of conjecture.
Setting aside an extraterrestrial scenario, one popular and almost equally fantastic suggestion put forward by people online is that the UFO could be a clandestine military aircraft, specifically the apocryphal TR-3B, which is believed to be a secret spy plane that is said to be triangular shaped and, some say, powered by anti-gravity technology gleaned from a downed alien vehicle. More skeptical observers, however, argue that the object seen over Ontario was simply a drone.
Looks like a drone to me. Space Aliens wouldn’t have a red light blinking on their extrastellar spaceship.
Image caption,The Moon turned a deep shade of copper-like red as it passed through the Earth’s shadow
Stargazers have been treated overnight to a stunning and unusual sight – a super blood Moon.
Shortly after 03:30 GMT on Monday, Earth’s orbit meant that for several minutes our planet was positioned directly between the Sun and the Moon.
In that time the Moon fell completely into Earth’s shadow – temporarily turning it a dusky shade of dark red.
Its hue was created by sunlight being projected through Earth’s atmosphere onto the Moon’s shadowed surface.
The lunar eclipse coincided with a separate event – a super Moon. This is when the Moon is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit and so appears larger than usual.
Image caption,The super blood Moon sets over hilltops in the Republic of North Macedonia
Those watching out for the resulting super blood Moon got the best view from 03:29 GMT, the moment the full lunar eclipse started and the event became visible in the Western hemisphere.
For almost one and a half hours afterwards, the only sunlight reaching the Moon had passed through the Earth’s atmosphere turning it red.
Image caption,In Greece, spectators gathered at the Temple of Poseidon near Athens to watch the Moon before the full eclipse
In Europe, the phenomenon was only visible for some of that time because of the Moon beginning to set. But in the Americas areas under clear skies were treated to the full spectacle.
“If you were an astronaut standing on the Moon, looking back towards Earth, you’d see a red ring running around the outside of our planet,” he told the BBC.
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter and Linda Harrison. It was the first in a series of five films made between 1968 and 1973, all produced by Arthur P. Jacobs and released by 20th Century Fox.
The film tells the story of an astronaut crew who crash-land on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute creatures wearing animal skins.
Some set scenes from the movie:
The human spaceship crash lands in a desert lake. The lake used in the film was Lake Powell on the Utah Arizona border.
The spaceship model.
This shot may have been from the sequel, “Beneath the planet of the Apes”
In 2017, bike sharing took off in China, with dozens of bike-share companies quickly flooding city streets with millions of brightly colored rental bicycles. However, the rapid growth vastly outpaced immediate demand and overwhelmed Chinese cities, where infrastructure and regulations were not prepared to handle a sudden flood of millions of shared bicycles. Riders would park bikes anywhere, or just abandon them, resulting in bicycles piling up and blocking already-crowded streets and pathways. As cities impounded derelict bikes by the thousands, they moved quickly to cap growth and regulate the industry. Vast piles of impounded, abandoned, and broken bicycles have become a familiar sight in many big cities. As some of the companies who jumped in too big and too early have begun to fold, their huge surplus of bicycles can be found collecting dust in vast vacant lots. Bike sharing remains very popular in China, and will likely continue to grow, just probably at a more sustainable rate. Meanwhile, we are left with these images of speculation gone wild—the piles of debris left behind after the bubble bursts.
A worker rides a shared bicycle past a huge pile of unused shared bikes in a vacant lot in Xiamen, Fujian province, China, on December 13, 2017.
Shared bikes stored and piled in Shanghai on February 1, 2018.
A worker untangles a rope amid piled-up bicycles in a lot in Xiamen, Fujian province, China, on December 13, 2017.
A parking lot is seen packed with tens of thousands of shared bikes belonging to the Chinese bike-sharing firm Bluegogo in Beijing’s Chaoyang District on March 5, 2018. Bluegogo, once China’s third-largest bike-rental service, ceased operations last November having run out of money, leaving tens of thousands of its bicycles in limbo. Bluegogo was recently acquired by Didi, another bike-share company, which says it plans to replace some of the older Bluegogo bikes with its own.
Thousands of illegally parked share bikes are temporary detained in a sports field in Hefei, Anhui, China, on August 17, 2017.
Bicycles from various bike-sharing services sit in a lot in an urban village in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, on September 7, 2017.
A man walks past piles of share bikes outside a repair shop in Beijing on April 13, 2017.
Shared bicycles block a pathway in Jiuxianqiao, Chaoyang district, Beijing, on July 14, 2017.
Bicycles of various bike-sharing services completely fill a large lot in Shanghai, China, on November 23, 2017.
In Death Valley National Park, north of Barstow, California, is Rainbow Canyon. It’s not especially remarkable, just one canyon in an area full of them, all but indistinguishable from its neighbors in an area populated mainly by snakes. But stand on one of the canyon tops for long enough and a fighter jet will suddenly roar into the valley below you, flying fast and very, very low. It will be visible for only a few seconds before it turns hard and disappears behind the next hill. But during those few moments, anyone with a camera has a brief chance to take a spectacular picture. Rainbow Canyon (or Star Wars Canyon, as some call it) is part of the R-2508 restricted airspace complex, host to a busy, low-level training route for combat aircraft.
Military pilots train to fly low and fast, hiding behind hills to fool radar and going fast enough that they can’t be shot at. Since flying is a perishable skill, every fighter or attack pilot periodically has to practice such low-level flights. Rainbow Canyon is in the desert of eastern California, where the population is sparse and the airspace wide open. It’s also surrounded by military bases, bombing ranges, maneuvering grounds and radars—an ideal spot for military pilots to hone their skills. Among the nearby facilities are Edwards AFB, Naval Air Station China Lake, and Plant 42 (where Lockheed and Northrop build advanced aircraft).
as seen from a plane 
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