Exiled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is said to spend his days playing video games and brushing up on his ophthalmology skills in his luxury Moscow flat and country villa after being granted asylum by Vladimir Putin.

The deposed ruler, branded the ‘Butcher’ for killing his own people, has found a new life in a plush 1000ft tower after fleeing Syria when he was toppled in December, bringing an end to 24 years of brutal dictatorship.

The 60-year-old is believed to live in three apartments in a luxury high-rise with a mall downstairs in the Moscow City district, a glittering business centre in the heart of the Russian capital.  

The skyscraper penthouse is ‘lavishly decorated — cream-coloured wardrobes with gold trim, crystal chandeliers, and wide sofas reminiscent of Middle Eastern palaces’.

The ostentatious complex, where his family owns around 20 apartments worth more than £30million across three floors, is attached to a shopping mall, which he sometimes visit.

The brutal dictator fled to Russia after a lightning offensive led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in December brought to an end a 13-year civil war and six decades of the Assad family’s autocratic rule.

Since then, he has resumed his training as an eye doctor to treat the elite of Moscow, the city he now calls home following his deposal, a source close to the family has claimed. 

A friend of his family told the Guardian: ‘He’s studying Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology again. 

Bashar Al-Assad (pictured) was known as the ‘Butcher’ of his nation for the brutality of his treatment of his people 

Assad now lives with his cancer-stricken British wife Asma Al-Assad, sons Hafez and Karim, aged 24 and 21, and 22-year-old daughter Zein 

Exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad reportedly spends his days playing video games in his luxury Moscow flat

‘It’s a passion of his, he obviously doesn’t need the money. Even before the war in Syria began, he used to regularly practice his ophthalmology in Damascus’.

He trained in ophthalmology in London in the early 1990s, but was recalled back to his home nation following the unexpected death of his brother in a car crash in 1994.

Shortly after, he entered military academy and took over as the heir apparent to the regime. 

Now he spends much of his fays playing online video games, despite being freely allowed to move around Moscow and his country villa outside of the Russian capital. 

He has been provided with bodyguards from a private security firm paid by the Russian government. 

The friend said he now lives ‘a very quiet life’, adding: ‘He has very little, if any, contact with the outside world. He’s only in touch with a couple of people who were in his palace, like Mansour Azzam [former Syrian minister of presidency affairs] and Yassar Ibrahim [Assad’s top economic crony].’ 

Part of this comes from Putin’s apparent dismissal of al-Assad following the fall of the regime in Syria. 

A source close to the Kremlin told the newspaper: ‘Putin has little patience for leaders who lose their grip on power, and Assad is no longer seen as a figure of influence or even an interesting guest to invite to dinner’.

Images of Assad wearing speedos has generated ridicule on social media following the fall of his regime

One picture found following the regime’s fall shows Assad in nothing but white pants and a vest, clearly posing for the camera

A picture believed to be showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wearing only speedos is taken by Rebels following the capture of his palace in Aleppo

Pictures of apartments in the complex show luxury fittings and high-end furnishings, as well as panoramic views of Moscow (illustrative picture shows an apartment in the building)

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Assad now lives with his cancer-stricken British wife Asma Al-Assad, sons Hafez and Karim, aged 24 and 21, and 22-year-old daughter Zein.

Asma, who was born in London and married into the brutal autocratic dynasty in 2000, is described as being in a ‘serious’ condition from her leukaemia.

She has become accustomed to a life of luxury, with reports that she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on home furnishings and clothes during her husband’s reign of terror.

Their plush Moscow pad provides similar opulence, with a 20 metre high lobby flooded with light and decorated with modern art. There are sofas, partitions, and a welcome drink for visitors. 

They have a huge heated bath in front of a 13ft window in a 990ft skyscraper which enjoys one of the finest views in Moscow.

The bathroom is made entirely of Carrara marble. 

‘On Victory Day on May 9, you can watch the fireworks from the bathtub with a glass of champagne,’ Natasha, who sells penthouses in the same tower in the Moscow City district, told De Zeit.

The Assads ‘are in a good place and are enjoying the money they stole. The Syrian people mean nothing to them,’ the German newspaper, citing Syrian sources, reported.  

Assad’s younger brother Maher reportedly stays at the Four Seasons Hotel in Moscow and spends his time drinking and smoking hookah. 

Revelations of the family’s luxury life in Moscow emerged as the Putin regime was forced to deny that Assad had been poisoned in an assassination attempt.

One image shows him in a khaki hunter costume with a gun and fur accessory, standing alongside friends who are also in costume

These photos appear to show the 59-year-old as a young man in the 80s and 90s

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria was widely seen as being a major embarrassment for Putin, who offered him refuge

A general view shows hundreds of people gathered in Al-Assi Square during celebrations marking one year since the city’s liberation, in Hama, Syria, December 5 2025

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that the former Damascus despot ‘has no problems living in our capital’.

Rumours of a food poisoning which led to Assad being hospitalised spread in late September.

But Lavrov said the following month: ‘There have been no poisonings, and if such rumours appear, I leave them on the conscience of those who spread them.’

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed citing a ‘private source’ that Assad had been hospitalised on the outskirts of Moscow.

The source claimed that Assad ‘had been poisoned’ and that the motive behind the assassination operation was ‘to embarrass the Russian government and accuse it of being complicit’ in his death.

The report said Assad’s condition was ‘stable’ after hospitalisation.

Lavrov also sought to justify Putin rescuing Assad from the revolution engulfing Syria and giving him a safe haven.

‘Bashar Assad is here for humanitarian reasons. He and his family were facing physical destruction,’ he said.

‘We all remember the fate of [Libyan leader] Muammar Gaddafi, which so delighted Hillary Clinton, who watched his physical destruction live on television and applauded.

‘And we, for purely humanitarian reasons, have granted asylum to Bashar Assad and his family. He has no problems living in our capital.

His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 which was considered cured until the cancer returned as leukaemia in 2024. 

She was already in Moscow undergoing treatment when her husband’s regime was toppled.

Their son Hafez, 23, who studied in Moscow, has told of the family’s escape from Damascus after Putin’s military pulled them just before they were engulfed by the revolution.

He admitted the downfall of the regime had come as a shock.

‘There was never a plan – not even a backup – to leave Damascus, let alone Syria,’ he admitted in a video, now deleted.

A Syrian rebel fires a weapon into the air to celebrate the rebel takeover of Damascus, in Homs, Syria, early 08 December 2024

Smoke rises after Syrian rebels took over Damascus, Syria, December 8 2024

‘After consulting with Moscow, base command informed us that our transfer to Russia had been requested.

‘Some time later, we boarded a Russian military plane bound for Moscow, where we landed that same night.’

Assad remains a wanted man by the new government in Syria, which issued an arrest warrant on charges of premeditated murder, torture, and incitement to civil war.

The warrant issued a precise description of him as ‘1.89 metres tall, oval face, prominent forehead, long nose. Eye color: Blue. Hair color: Brown.’

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The plant carries a fatal poison called oenanthotoxin in its white roots, which look like a bunch of parsnips and smell of parsley. If ingested in even small quantities, the toxin will start to attack the nervous system



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Israeli forces have shot dead two Palestinians, including a teenage boy, during separate raids in the Jenin governorate in the occupied West Bank, officials say, with security camera footage showing soldiers shooting the victim at a “point-blank” range.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced late on Saturday that Rayyan Abdel Qader, 16, had been fatally shot by Israeli forces after storming the town of Qabatiya, while the second victim, 22-year-old Ahmad Zayoud, was killed in Silat al-Harithiya, west of Jenin.

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Witnesses said Israeli troops had opened fire directly at Abdel Qader, the Wafa news agency reported on Sunday, blocking emergency crews from reaching him, leaving him to bleed until he died. His body was held by Israeli forces, the Palestinian agency reported.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Zayoud was shot in the chest. A 15-year-old Palestinian boy sustained injuries to his hand during the incident, the ministry said.

Zayoud’s killing comes about a week after Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old in the town.

Reporting from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said surveillance footage showed Abdel Qader walking towards what locals said was his home when Israeli forces shot him “point-blank”.

“We don’t often have video surveillance to show how many of these killings have been done under what Palestinians call extrajudicial killings, which is Israeli forces killing Palestinians point-blank or under excuses that they say they’ve been doing something that is seen as resisting Israeli forces,” she said.

“Not only that, they refused to let anyone come close to the body for 40 minutes, a practice we’ve been seeing a lot in the occupied West Bank where Israeli forces kind of wait for the person to die,” Ibrahim said.

Al Jazeera spoke to Abdel Qader’s family, who said they had no idea what had happened.

“It’s really part of the pain that the families have to endure, seeing videos like that showing how little regard the Israeli army has for Palestinian lives,” Ibrahim said.

Over 200 children killed since 2023

On the other hand, the Israeli military said the deaths occurred after the victims hurled a block and an explosive at their forces – claims that have turned out to be false most of the time. It claimed that Abdel Qader had been shot after hurling a block towards its soldiers, who responded with fire, while Zayoud had thrown an explosive.

No Israeli troops were injured in the incidents, it said.

The latest deaths bring the death toll from Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank to 1,101, including 229 children, since October 7, 2023 – the day of the Hamas-led attack that led to a brutal Israeli response against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli authorities during that period. As of December 1, some 9,300 Palestinian prisoners were in Israeli jails, more than a third of them detained without charges.

Palestinian prisoners have routinely been tortured, sexually abused and even killed in custody, while attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have surged amid the mainstreaming of the far-right in the country. Israel has confirmed the identities of 86 Palestinian prisoners who died in its custody. On Sunday, the Israeli government approved the construction of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank in violation of international laws.

Numerous rights organisations have dubbed Israeli action in Gaza as an act of genocide, and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

The violence has played out in tandem with ongoing deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza, in violation of the ceasefire signed in October, prompting warnings that they could jeopardise diplomatic efforts to advance to the second phase of the United States-brokered agreement. Israel has killed at least 400 Palestinians since the ceasefire pushed by US President Donald Trump came into effect on October 10.

Two killed in Gaza City

Meanwhile, a medical source at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital said two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday in the Shujayea neighbourhood in the east of the city.

The source said the killings took place near the so-called yellow line, demarcating territory under Israeli military control.

An Al Jazeera team on the ground reported that Israeli artillery shelling and helicopter gunfire were also targeting areas near Israeli positions east of Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip.

The latest killings in Gaza came a day after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Turkish state news agency Anadolu that Israel’s repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement are “creating major risks for transitioning to the second phase”.

Fidan’s comments came as he joined diplomats from the US, Egypt and Qatar in the US city of Miami to review the first phase of the agreement reached in October.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Ministry of Interior and National Security said four people were killed when a three-storey house collapsed in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood on Saturday night.

The latest deaths brought the total number of people killed in such circumstances to 18 since the ceasefire came into effect in October.

The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza said on Sunday it had successfully rescued five people, including a child and two women, from the building.

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Allie Wharf’s career unfolded amid conflict. As a senior foreign producer for Newsnight, she reported on Iraq and Afghanistan. Just two years ago, she was filming mass graves in Ukraine.

But burnt out by wars, and after a detour farming ducks in Tanzania, Wharf has now settled on the quiet north Norfolk coast. Here, alongside her life and business partner, Willie Athill, she has embarked on a different kind of mission: the creation of Europe’s largest natural oyster reef.

The Luna Oyster Project, a collaboration between Norfolk Seaweed and Oyster Heaven, aims to restore 4 million oysters to the North Sea, using the first-ever mass deployment of mother reef bricks.

These fired clay structures provide the skeleton of a lost world. Centuries of bottom trawling and human impact have stripped historical oyster reefs bare, leaving only scattered fragments of what was once a teeming underwater landscape across Britain and Europe. These reefs, long absent, are now poised to anchor a new era of marine life along the coast.

The project rebuilds reefs with fired clay bricks, giving oysters structures to cling to. Photograph: Michael Leckie/PA Media Assignments

Luna’s new mother reefs have recently been installed 2 miles out to sea. In April, millions of baby oysters from Morecambe Bay will be rehoused in their nooks and crannies, slowly forming their own natural reefs that could one day connect with smaller restoration projects to the north and south, forming a living lattice of biodiversity along England’s North Sea coastline.

“It’s been very expensive and time-consuming,” Wharf admitted. “Our licence application was 280 pages and cost six figures.” Securing the licence took more than three years. George Birch from Oyster Heaven said: “None of the licences care that you’re restoring biodiversity. We had to jump through the same hoops as oil and gas platforms.”

Beyond the paperwork, the job itself demands delicate attention. “You have to tend to oysters like babies,” Wharf said. “It’s like a sweet nursery. We’re even considering whether to play the music of the sea to them; it has to be recorded locally because they’re very sensitive to different sea sounds.” Birch called the reefs “living soil”, sparks of life on an otherwise barren seabed.

Oysters are astonishingly fecund. Across multiple spawning seasons, over a lifespan of 10 years or more, a single female can release tens of millions of eggs, even though the vast majority perish before they ever find a surface to cling to.

The oysters are not for eating, but the restoration is more than a purely ecological exercise. It is also a community endeavour. The project has employed local ecologists, project managers and crew, reviving skills and livelihoods that once thrived around oyster and mussel farming.

Birch said: “Historically, the North Sea was crystal-clear, unrecognisable compared to today’s muted waters, because trillions of oysters were filtering the waves, each little creature cleansing 200 litres of water every day.”

Native oyster reefs also act as natural wave breaks, stabilising coastlines, fostering biodiversity and transforming flat seabeds into complex, three-dimensional ecosystems teeming with life.

“A reef will create an entire ecosystem out of a barren seabed,” said Birch. “We did a trial run on a virtually bare seabed in the Netherlands and after one year, there were 12.7 million brand-new crabs, worms, fish, microbes and fungi on the reefs.”

That is why the project is largely funded by Purina, the pet food company. “What they are buying from us is supply-chain resilience,” said Birch. “Purina source fish from the North Sea for their products and need to know that resource is going to be sustainable and high-quality. By improving the marine environment, that’s what our oysters are doing for them.”

Oysters themselves are exquisitely sensitive, responding to light, pressure and sound. Not only can they change sex but Birch described realising that his hatchery female oysters were only spawning eggs on Mondays.

“We were, like, ‘How do they know it’s Monday?’” he said. “Then we realised that Mondays come after the two quiet weekend days, showing they were aware of the peacefulness in the room around them at the weekend and so felt safe enough to mature their eggs. How awesome is that?”

From the chaos of war zones to the meticulous care of microscopic life, Wharf, Athill and Birch are cultivating tiny, perceptive lives that will quietly transform the seabed into vibrant ecosystems – hopefully reshaping the North Sea.

“One of the most beautiful things that I’ve discovered about oysters is how sensitive they are,” said Birch. “They can sense pressure changes in the air outside the water: if you open a door into the hatchery room, they’ll all shut their shells. They know you’ve come in.”

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The result came as a surprise to researchers at the Icaro Lab in Italy. They set out to examine whether different language styles — in this case prompts in the form of poems — influence AI models’ ability to recognize banned or harmful content. And the answer was a resounding yes. 

Using poetry, researchers were able to get around safety guardrails — and it’s not entirely clear why. 

For their study titled “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” the researchers took 1,200 potentially harmful prompts from a database normally used to test the security of AI language models and rewrote them as poems.

Known as “adversarial prompts” — generally written in prose and not rhyme form — these are queries deliberately formulated to cause AI models to output harmful or undesirable content that they would normally block, such as specific instructions for an illegal act.

Poetry as a jailbreak technique: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe probably would have approvedImage: akg-images/picture alliance

In poetic form, the manipulative inputs had a surprisingly high success rate, Federico Pierucci, one of the authors of the study, told DW. However, why poetry is so effective as a “jailbreak” technique — i.e. as an way to circumvent the protective mechanisms of AI — remains unclear and is undergoing further research, he says.

Poetry as a security weakness

What prompted the Icaro Lab’s research was the observation that AI models get confused when a manipulative, mathematically-calculated piece of text is appended to a prompt — known as an “adversarial suffix,” a kind of interference signal that can cause the AI to circumvent its own security rules. These are created using complex mathematical procedures. Major AI developers regularly test their models using precisely these types of attack methods to train and protect their models.

The lead researchers of the study: Piercosma Bisconti, Federico Pierucci and Matteo Prandi from Icaro Lab (from left to right)Image: Flavia Ostili

“We asked ourselves, what happens if we give the AI a text or prompt that is deliberately manipulated, like an adversarial suffix?” says Federico Pierucci. But not with the help of complex mathematics, but quite simply with poetry — to “surprise” the AI, he continues. He explains the thinking behind this: “Perhaps an adversarial suffix is a bit like the poetry of AI. It surprises the AI in the same way that poetry — especially very experimental poetry — surprises us,” says Pierucci.

The researchers personally crafted the first 20 prompts into poems, says Pierucci, who also has a background in philosophy. These were the most effective, he adds. They wrote the rest with the help of AI. The AI-generated poems were also quite successful at circumventing the safety guardrails, but not as much as the first batch. Humans are apparently still better at writing poetry, says Pierucci.

“We had no specialized author writing the prompts. It was just us — with our limited literary ability. Maybe we were terrible poets. Maybe if we had been better poets, we would have achieved a 100% jailbreak success,” he says.

For security reasons, the study did not publish specific examples.

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Challenge for AI systems: The diversity of human forms of expression

The big surprise coming out of this study is that it identified a thus-far unknown weakness in AI models that allows relatively straightforward jailbreaks.

It also raises questions that beg further research: What exactly is it about poetry that circumvents the safety mechanisms?

Pierucci and his colleagues have various theories, but they can’t say for certain yet. “We are conducting this type of very, very precise scientific study to try to understand: Is it the verse, the rhyme, or the metaphor that really does all the heavy lifting in this process?” explains Pierucci.

A major field of research: How do AI models determine the content they deliver?Image: Google DeepMind/Unsplash

They also aim to find out if other forms of expression would yield similar results. “We have now covered one type of linguistic variation — namely poetic variation. The question is whether there are any other literary forms, such as fairy tales that work. Perhaps an attack based on fairy tales could also be systematized,” says Pierucci.

Generally speaking, the range of human expression is extremely diverse and creative, which could make it more difficult to train the machines’ responses. “You take a text and rewrite it in infinitely many ways and not all rewritten versions will be as alarming as the original,” says the researcher. “This means that, in principle, one could create countless variations of a harmful prompt or request that might not trigger an AI system’s safety mechanisms.”

The cultural sector is also involved in AI research

The study also highlights the fact that many disciplines are cooperating in research into artificial intelligence — like at the Icaro Lab, where teams work together with scholars from the University of Rome on topics such as the security and behavior of AI systems. The project brings together researchers from the fields of engineering and computer science, linguistics and philosophy. Poets haven’t been part of the team so far, but who knows what the future will bring.

Federico Pierucci is definitely very keen to pursue his research. “What we showed, at least in this study, is that there are forms of cultural expressions, forms of human expressions, which are incredibly powerful, surprisingly powerful as jailbreak techniques, and maybe we discovered just one of them,” he says.

Incidentally, the name of the lab is a nod to the story of Icarus: a figure from Greek mythology who dons wings made of wax and feathers and, despite all warnings, flies too close to the Sun. When the wax melts, Icarus plunges into the sea and drowns — a symbol of overconfidence and the transgression of natural boundaries.

The researchers therefore see themselves as a warning that we should exercise more caution when it comes to trying to fully understand the risks and limitations of AI.

Paul McCartney & Rosalía: Strategies for surviving AI music

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This article was originally written in German.

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In Brooke Shields’ denim recommendations I trust.

I spoke to the 60-year-old supermodel earlier this month to pick her brain about the best holiday gifts for the season. She highlighted several giftable goodies, but one pick stood out to me in particular: Her “favorite” jeans. Shields exclusively told PEOPLE that her current go-to denim style is a “vintage Levi’s straight-leg [that’s] not too high-waisted but not low-rise.” 

She dubbed the cut as “old school” and ’70s-inspired, which led me to find the Levi’s Classic Straight-Leg Jeans. They check all of the boxes that Shields laid out — and you can snag them on sale for just $35 at Amazon right now.

Levi’s Classic Straight-Leg Jeans

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The jeans are aptly named for their timelessly cool look, complete with a mid-rise waistline that multiple reviewers find “flattering,” plus straight legs that are far from restrictive. If you’re looking for a “just-right” pair on the denim spectrum — á la Goldilocks — this straight-leg design is a happy medium between the baggy trend and skinny jeans. 

Another perk? They don’t have the stiff and scratchy feel that often comes with rigid denim. One reviewer wrote, “They feel relatively soft (as jeans go) and stretchy against my skin, but the fabric feels sturdy and durable.” They added, “They are insanely flattering and make my butt look so good.”

The jeans are available in seven washes that are great for everyday wear — no matter if you’re dressing them up with a luxurious sweater or a blouse for a night out, or keeping them casual with a tee during the day. They also come in regular, long, and short lengths.

Take a style note from Brooke Shields and pick up the Levi’s Classic Straight-Leg Jeans while they’re marked down at Amazon now. Below, you’ll find even more pairs of straight-leg jeans on sale, including styles from high-end brands like Lucky Brand and Madewell.

More Brooke Shields-Inspired Straight-Leg Jeans

Levi Strauss Signature Gold Heritage Loose Straight-Leg Jeans

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Levi’s Ribcage Straight-Leg Jeans

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Lucky Brand Mid-Rise Sweet Straight-Leg Jeans

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Madewell Dean Easy Straight-Leg Jeans

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By DARREN BOYLE, DATA JOURNALIST

Published: 05:30 EST, 21 December 2025 | Updated: 07:50 EST, 21 December 2025

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Ripped from their seats and left to plunge 31,000ft out of the night’s sky after a bomb smuggled onboard inside a radio detonated over Lockerbie. The haunting final moments of flight Pan-Am 103 – Britain’s deadliest terror attack

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Elon Musk’s exploding Starship could have caused a ‘potential extreme safety risk’, adding FAA personnel were not informed

A massive debris field spat out by an exploding SpaceX rocket caused chaos on a local flight path(Image: Bob Beresh/Youtube)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX was involved in a rocket explosion in the middle of a busy flight path that saw multiple passenger jets placed at “extreme safety risk”.

The seventh test flight of the company’s uncrewed Starship rocket ended in disaster early this year when it spectacularly detonated after lifting off from a landing platform in Texas. The ship – which Musk hopes will eventually take humanity to Mars – caused mass panic, according to new records, when debris was scattered into a busy flight path.

Multiple flights were impacted by the explosion – which Musk would later call “entertainment” – with one forced to declare “mayday” so it would be able to undertake an emergency landing.

READ MORE: Elon Musk branded ‘weird’ after social media comment on Sydney Sweeney’s breastsREAD MORE: Grimes reveals petty treatment by Elon Musk after he ‘blocked’ herThe January ship explosion was a massive but dangerous spectacle(Image: Sajaa K/Youtube)

Three flights carrying 450 people altogether were endangered on the night of the explosion, with crewmembers aboard a JetBlue trip to San Juan told the trip would be made “at your own risk”. Among the risks cited at the time was a potential debris field caused by the explosion, which it was feared could remain airborne above the Caribbean for up to an hour.

Debris is extremely dangerous to planes, as it can cause Foreign Object Damage (FOD), with even small pieces able to permanently damage and even stall an engine on entry.

FOD was blamed for the famous 2000 Concorde disaster, when a Concorde embarking on its final flight crashed into an airport in France, killing everyone on board, after a titanium strip punctured its landing gear. Following the January SpaceX incident, two other planes flying too close to one another were saved from disaster by an air controller.

Elon Musk hailed the explosion as ‘entertainment’(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

They told one of the pilots they would need to declare an emergency and land at San Juan. The response from the aircraft in question was: “In that case we declare emergency: Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.”

SpaceX posted after the botched test that the Starship had undergone “rapid unscheduled disassembly” while ascending, but did not comment on the overall impact to local aerial operations. Instead, the company said in a post on social media that the destruction would still help the rocket-maker make improvements.

A spokesperson said at the time: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

The debris field was so significant that it could be seen from the ground(Image: Greg Munch / TMX / SWNS)

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would later determine in a report that the explosion posed a “potential extreme safety risk”.

The agency went on to claim SpaceX had failed to officially inform officials about the explosion in the aftermath, saying its controllers in Miami had only learned about the risk from impacted pilots. The FAA later investigated how to better deal with debris fields stemming from explosions, an effort it stepped up when another SpaceX test vehicle exploded a few months later, in March.

But the review was ended then because the FAA said recommendations had been implemented, with a spokesperson saying: “The FAA will not hesitate to act if additional safety measures are required.”

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Pictures of Donald Trump are included among at least 16 documents that have disappeared from the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The Democrats from the House Oversight Committee drew attention to the apparent removal of an image showing two printed pictures of Mr Trump in a desk draw.

One picture has Mr Trump standing surrounded by women in bathing suits, while the second appears to be an already known picture – partly obscured – of him, his wife Melania, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

After the Democrats flagged the missing image on Saturday, Sky News went back to the files online and confirmed that it did appear to be missing, despite the fact they downloaded it when the files were initially released on Friday.

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List of documents online now shows a gap where the file ending ‘468’ was on Friday

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The file ending ‘468’ seen in Sky News’s downloads from Friday

The other photos removed from the trove of documents were almost all nude paintings of women in Epstein’s home.

Mr Trump has not commented on the release of the files and has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s case.

Sky News has contacted the DOJ for comment.

Questions over heavy redactions

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Pic: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout via Reuters

Thousands of documents relating to the dead paedophile financier were made public by the DOJ on Friday – hours before a legal deadline following the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Many of the pages were either partially or fully redacted, which the DOJ says is to protect the more than 1,200 victims and their families identified in them.

Some of Epstein’s victims, legal experts and members of the public have questioned whether this is the sole reason for the redactions, while the Oversight Democrats have claimed: “This is a White House cover-up.”

Ashley Rubright, who was abused for several years after meeting Epstein in Palm Beach when she was 15, told Sky News: “Seeing […] completely redacted pages, there’s no way that that’s just to protect the victims’ identities, and there better be a good reason. I just don’t know if we’ll ever know what that is.”

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Epstein ‘was a monster’: Survivors speak to Sky News

Gloria Allred, a lawyer who has represented some of Epstein’s victims, says she has been told that despite the heavy redactions, some compromising pictures of survivors and their names were left in the files released on Friday.

“We have had to notify the Department of Justice about names that should have been redacted that weren’t redacted,” she told Sky News.

“So this is further trauma to survivors, and apparently also some of the images of some of the survivors appear not to have been redacted, and they are nude or not completely dressed.

“This is a major concern because the law clearly indicates, and the judges have indicated, that the names and any identifying information of the survivors must be redacted.”

Read more:
Epstein victims react to partial release of files
Links between Epstein and the UK revealed in new files

In a letter to the judges overseeing the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, US attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton acknowledged that a review “of this size and scope is vulnerable to machine error [or] instances of human error”.

He also said the DOJ had opted to redact the faces of women in photographs with Epstein “even where not all the women are known to be victims,” as it was not viewed as practical for the DOJ to identify every person in all the photos.

The methodology has led to some confusion and misled speculation online.

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Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges

Many celebrities and public figures appear with Epstein in the photos published by the DOJ, often included without context.

There is no suggestion that these pictures imply anyone has done anything wrong, and many of those featured in them have denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

Through its release, the Trump administration has claimed to be the most transparent in history, despite the fact Congress forced their hand by voting to make the files public by 19 December.

But some have been held back, with Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general and a former personal lawyer for Donald Trump, saying more would follow in the coming weeks.

Many Democrats and some Republicans have criticised the partial release as failing to “comply with law,” as have lawyers including Ms Allred.

“So clearly, the law has been violated. And it’s the Department of Justice letting down the survivors once again,” she said.

She labelled the incomplete release of the files a “distraction”, adding: “This is not over, and it won’t be over until we get the truth and transparency for the survivors.”

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“These peace negotiations are a farce.”



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