Saturday, July 11, 2026
British Conservative Icon Ann Widdecombe Murdered in Her Home — Suspect in Custody
One of Britain’s best-known conservative voices, former MP Ann Widdecombe, has been murdered at her home in Devon, with police arresting a 26-year-old man in connection with her death.
Devon and Cornwall Police said Widdecombe, 78, was found with fatal injuries at her property in Haytor Vale on Thursday.
Officers have launched a murder investigation and confirmed a 26-year-old suspect is in custody.
Police claim there is currently no indication that the killing was politically motivated or linked to terrorism.
However, detectives stressed that the investigation remains in its early stages and that all lines of inquiry remain open.
The suspect was arrested in Newton Abbot, approximately 11 miles from Widdecombe’s home, and remains in police custody while detectives continue their investigation.
Widdecombe served as Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald from 1987 until 2010, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in British politics
Known for her sharp wit and unapologetic defense of conservative values, she remained a prominent public figure long after leaving Westminster.
Following her time in Parliament, Widdecombe was a vocal supporter of Brexit and later served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party.
She was also a prominent cultural figure, appearing on shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and hosting Ann Widdecombe to the Rescue, where she helped people get their lives in order.
Tributes poured in following news of her death.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described her as a “force of nature” whose commitment to her principles never wavered.
Meanwhile, political leaders from across the spectrum offered condolences to her family and praised her decades of public service.
Police have appealed for anyone with information, CCTV or dashcam footage from the area to contact investigators. Widdecombe’s family is being supported by specialist officers.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/british-conservative-icon-ann-widdecombe-murdered-her-home/Friday, July 10, 2026
Nick Shirley Drops New Bombshell Video Exposing New York Fraud: Over $190 Million in Personal Home Care Scams
Investigative reporter Nick Shirley on Friday released his latest video uncovering over $190 million in fraud in New York.
The fraudsters used the needy and elderly to steal more than $190 million in home care scams.
“Here is the full 53 minutes of my crew and I exposing New York fraud, we uncovered over $190,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters use the elderly and needy to commit fraud through adult and personal home care scams in NYC,” Nick Shirley said.
“Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and Chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi, while the fraudsters give $ kickbacks to those who enroll. Like it and share this video, the fraud must STOP,” Nick Shirley said.
“We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for fraudsters to steal from our pockets. These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians. Time is up,” he said.
“Nobody speaks English here. Our tax dollars are going to places like these. Straight from NY Medicaid! No one can answer any questions!” Nick Shirley said.
WATCH:
Dr. Oz partnered up with Nick Shirley to take down the fraudsters in New York.
“Social adult daycares over the last 3 years have generated $2.5 billion,” Dr. Oz said.
WATCH:
Nick Shirley has also uncovered hundreds of millions in fraud in California and Minnesota.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/watch-nick-shirley-drops-new-video-exposing-new/
Taiwan Can Be Defended Against China. The Price Is the Real Problem
Cheap drones can make a Chinese assault on Taiwan bloodier and a quick victory less likely — but they don’t repeal geography or remove the risk of escalation. CSIS wargames suggest the U.S. and its allies could defeat an invasion while losing dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of troops.
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/07/taiwan-can-be-defended-against-china-the-price-is-the-real-problem/#google_vignette
RED SEA (Nov. 2, 2015) The amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), transits the Red Sea, Nov. 2, 2015. Kearsarge is the flagship for the Kearsarge Amphibious Group and, with the embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is deployed in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Ryre Arciaga/Released)
Taiwan has not become indefensible because drones, missiles, and sensors have changed modern war. It has become harder to defend cheaply.
Washington is drifting into bad habits. One camp talks as if Taiwan is already lost, because China is close and too far along in the military balance. Another talks as if cheap drones and unmanned boats can solve the problem that carriers, air bases, and manned aircraft increasingly struggle to solve.
210911-N-OP825-1213 PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 11, 2021) Sailors aboard amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7) man the rails on the ship’s flight deck as the ship prepares to pull into San Francisco in support of San Francisco Fleet Week (SFFW), Sept. 11, 2021. SFFW is an opportunity for the American public to meet their Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard teams and experience America’s sea services. During fleet week, service members participate in various community service events, showcase capabilities and equipment to the community, and enjoy the hospitality of San Francisco and its surrounding areas. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erica Higa /Released)
Both views dodge the harder point. Taiwan can be made a terrible target.
China can be denied a quick victory. But a serious defense of Taiwan still carries a price that American politics has barely begun to discuss.
Taiwan War: The Drone Age Cuts Both Ways
Admiral Samuel Paparo’s “hellscape” idea captured something real about the way war is changing. If China attempts an amphibious assault, it must move men, armor, fuel, and follow-on forces across the Taiwan Strait. That means ships in predictable waters, landing craft moving toward narrow beaches, ports that must function, and communications that cannot go dark.
Drones make all of that more dangerous. Small unmanned aircraft can find targets. Unmanned surface vessels can threaten ships. Loitering munitions can turn logistics into exposure. Mines, mobile missiles, decoys, and cheap sensors make the problem worse. None of this guarantees Taiwan’s survival, but it does make a Chinese assault less like a parade and more like a bet Beijing cannot fully price in advance.
China has watched the same wars. It has drones too, missiles in quantity, cyber tools, space assets, electronic warfare, and the industrial base to replace losses. So the drone age does not simply rescue Taiwan. It makes the whole fight more lethal and less forgiving.
The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) transits the Strait of Hormuz.
The Fight Would Not Stay On Taiwan
The part Washington prefers not to dwell on is geography. Taiwan is close to China and far from the United States. This cannot be wished away by invoking innovation.
A U.S. defense of Taiwan would have to operate inside a region China has spent decades trying to make hostile to American military power. Ships would be exposed. Air bases in Japan and Guam would matter immediately. Fuel depots, ports, maintenance hubs, and command networks would all become part of the war even if nobody in Washington wanted to say so.
Japan would not be spared in this crisis. U.S. bases there are central to any serious Taiwan contingency. That means Tokyo would face a political and military decision almost as soon as the shooting started. The alliance system would be the operating platform for American strategy, not a diplomatic footnote attached to it.
Loose talk about resolve becomes dangerous here. Resolve is cheap before a war begins. It becomes more expensive when runways are cratered, ships are hit, pilots are lost, and allies begin calculating what the next Chinese missile salvo might mean for their own cities.
Amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA- 7) , departs Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., April 7, 2022. Tripoli completed flight deck operations with 20 F-35B Lightning II jets from Marine Fighter Attack Squadrons 211 and 225, Marine Aircraft Group 13, and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, as well as Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, as part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Lightning carrier concept demonstration. The Lightning carrier concept demonstration shows Tripoli and other amphibious assault ships are capable of operating as dedicated fixed-wing strike platforms when needed, capable of bringing fifth generation Short Takeoff/Vertical Landing aircraft wherever they are required. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Samuel Ruiz)
Taiwan Can Survive, and America Can Still Bleed
Recent public wargaming on Taiwan has not concluded that defense is futile. The CSIS Taiwan invasion wargames concluded that U.S., Taiwanese and Japanese forces could frequently defeat a conventional Chinese invasion attempt and maintain Taiwan’s independence — albeit with heavy losses.
The rest of it is less comforting. In those scenarios, the United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands upon thousands of service members. Taiwan’s economy was devastated. America’s global position was damaged for years.
That is not an argument for surrender. It is an argument for sobriety. A campaign can succeed by the narrow military standard and still leave the United States strategically weaker. Great-power war has a way of taking neat plans and grinding them into uglier choices.
If the United States is killing Chinese forces at scale, Beijing gets a vote on escalation. China may strike bases beyond the immediate theater. It may use cyber and economic pressure to split American allies. It may accept damage that Washington assumes no rational state would accept.
The Blockade Problem
An invasion is the cleanest scenario analytically and the least likely to be clean. China may prefer something murkier: a quarantine, a partial blockade, pressure against ports and shipping, or a campaign that moves in pulses rather than one dramatic opening blow.
An invasion gives Washington a clearer trigger. A blockade asks the United States when it is willing to start shooting. China would try to make that question uncomfortable, using coast guard vessels, maritime militia, legal claims, and selective pressure on commercial traffic. The point would be to make Taiwan suffer while making American escalation look optional.
A Marine with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, fires an AT4 antitank rocket launcher in the Central Command area of operations, March 23, 2015. The 2/7 Marines participated in a range that tests their ability to conduct an integrated combined arms assault against a simulated enemy position. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Will Perkins/Released)
A Serious Strategy Starts With the Bill
Taiwan has become much harder to coerce or conquer on its own soil and in its own waters. The priority should be survivable denial: replaceable drones, hidden anti-ship missiles, mines that complicate movement, air defenses that protect what has to keep operating, and stockpiles that last longer than the opening exchange.
Washington also has to be more honest about the objective. The aim should be to deny Beijing a quick victory, not to promise an open-ended war for dominance in China’s near seas. Those are different missions. They require different force posture, different alliance diplomacy, and a different tolerance for risk.
Restraint does not mean indifference to Taiwan. It means refusing to confuse an important interest with an unlimited one. Taiwan matters to the people who live there. It matters to Japan. It matters to the balance of power in Asia. It matters to the credibility of American commitments, though that phrase has been stretched thin.
Drones may help Taiwan ruin China’s first week. They may make a landing bloodier, a blockade riskier, and a fait accompli less likely. But they do not repeal geography. They do not remove escalation. They do not make Japan invulnerable, Guam distant enough, or American losses politically painless.
Taiwan is not hopeless. The fantasy is that defending it can be made cheap enough to avoid the tragic part of the choice.
Taiwan has not become indefensible because drones, missiles, and sensors have changed modern war. It has become harder to defend cheaply.
Washington is drifting into bad habits. One camp talks as if Taiwan is already lost, because China is close and too far along in the military balance. Another talks as if cheap drones and unmanned boats can solve the problem that carriers, air bases, and manned aircraft increasingly struggle to solve.
210911-N-OP825-1213 PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 11, 2021) Sailors aboard amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7) man the rails on the ship’s flight deck as the ship prepares to pull into San Francisco in support of San Francisco Fleet Week (SFFW), Sept. 11, 2021. SFFW is an opportunity for the American public to meet their Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard teams and experience America’s sea services. During fleet week, service members participate in various community service events, showcase capabilities and equipment to the community, and enjoy the hospitality of San Francisco and its surrounding areas. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erica Higa /Released)
Both views dodge the harder point. Taiwan can be made a terrible target.
China can be denied a quick victory. But a serious defense of Taiwan still carries a price that American politics has barely begun to discuss.
Taiwan War: The Drone Age Cuts Both Ways
Admiral Samuel Paparo’s “hellscape” idea captured something real about the way war is changing. If China attempts an amphibious assault, it must move men, armor, fuel, and follow-on forces across the Taiwan Strait. That means ships in predictable waters, landing craft moving toward narrow beaches, ports that must function, and communications that cannot go dark.
Drones make all of that more dangerous. Small unmanned aircraft can find targets. Unmanned surface vessels can threaten ships. Loitering munitions can turn logistics into exposure. Mines, mobile missiles, decoys, and cheap sensors make the problem worse. None of this guarantees Taiwan’s survival, but it does make a Chinese assault less like a parade and more like a bet Beijing cannot fully price in advance.
China has watched the same wars. It has drones too, missiles in quantity, cyber tools, space assets, electronic warfare, and the industrial base to replace losses. So the drone age does not simply rescue Taiwan. It makes the whole fight more lethal and less forgiving.
The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) transits the Strait of Hormuz.
The Fight Would Not Stay On Taiwan
The part Washington prefers not to dwell on is geography. Taiwan is close to China and far from the United States. This cannot be wished away by invoking innovation.
A U.S. defense of Taiwan would have to operate inside a region China has spent decades trying to make hostile to American military power. Ships would be exposed. Air bases in Japan and Guam would matter immediately. Fuel depots, ports, maintenance hubs, and command networks would all become part of the war even if nobody in Washington wanted to say so.
Japan would not be spared in this crisis. U.S. bases there are central to any serious Taiwan contingency. That means Tokyo would face a political and military decision almost as soon as the shooting started. The alliance system would be the operating platform for American strategy, not a diplomatic footnote attached to it.
Loose talk about resolve becomes dangerous here. Resolve is cheap before a war begins. It becomes more expensive when runways are cratered, ships are hit, pilots are lost, and allies begin calculating what the next Chinese missile salvo might mean for their own cities.
Amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA- 7) , departs Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., April 7, 2022. Tripoli completed flight deck operations with 20 F-35B Lightning II jets from Marine Fighter Attack Squadrons 211 and 225, Marine Aircraft Group 13, and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, as well as Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, as part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Lightning carrier concept demonstration. The Lightning carrier concept demonstration shows Tripoli and other amphibious assault ships are capable of operating as dedicated fixed-wing strike platforms when needed, capable of bringing fifth generation Short Takeoff/Vertical Landing aircraft wherever they are required. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Samuel Ruiz)
Taiwan Can Survive, and America Can Still Bleed
Recent public wargaming on Taiwan has not concluded that defense is futile. The CSIS Taiwan invasion wargames concluded that U.S., Taiwanese and Japanese forces could frequently defeat a conventional Chinese invasion attempt and maintain Taiwan’s independence — albeit with heavy losses.
The rest of it is less comforting. In those scenarios, the United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands upon thousands of service members. Taiwan’s economy was devastated. America’s global position was damaged for years.
That is not an argument for surrender. It is an argument for sobriety. A campaign can succeed by the narrow military standard and still leave the United States strategically weaker. Great-power war has a way of taking neat plans and grinding them into uglier choices.
If the United States is killing Chinese forces at scale, Beijing gets a vote on escalation. China may strike bases beyond the immediate theater. It may use cyber and economic pressure to split American allies. It may accept damage that Washington assumes no rational state would accept.
The Blockade Problem
An invasion is the cleanest scenario analytically and the least likely to be clean. China may prefer something murkier: a quarantine, a partial blockade, pressure against ports and shipping, or a campaign that moves in pulses rather than one dramatic opening blow.
An invasion gives Washington a clearer trigger. A blockade asks the United States when it is willing to start shooting. China would try to make that question uncomfortable, using coast guard vessels, maritime militia, legal claims, and selective pressure on commercial traffic. The point would be to make Taiwan suffer while making American escalation look optional.
A Marine with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, fires an AT4 antitank rocket launcher in the Central Command area of operations, March 23, 2015. The 2/7 Marines participated in a range that tests their ability to conduct an integrated combined arms assault against a simulated enemy position. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Will Perkins/Released)
A Serious Strategy Starts With the Bill
Taiwan has become much harder to coerce or conquer on its own soil and in its own waters. The priority should be survivable denial: replaceable drones, hidden anti-ship missiles, mines that complicate movement, air defenses that protect what has to keep operating, and stockpiles that last longer than the opening exchange.
Washington also has to be more honest about the objective. The aim should be to deny Beijing a quick victory, not to promise an open-ended war for dominance in China’s near seas. Those are different missions. They require different force posture, different alliance diplomacy, and a different tolerance for risk.
Restraint does not mean indifference to Taiwan. It means refusing to confuse an important interest with an unlimited one. Taiwan matters to the people who live there. It matters to Japan. It matters to the balance of power in Asia. It matters to the credibility of American commitments, though that phrase has been stretched thin.
Drones may help Taiwan ruin China’s first week. They may make a landing bloodier, a blockade riskier, and a fait accompli less likely. But they do not repeal geography. They do not remove escalation. They do not make Japan invulnerable, Guam distant enough, or American losses politically painless.
Taiwan is not hopeless. The fantasy is that defending it can be made cheap enough to avoid the tragic part of the choice.
Influencer model plunges to her death from 27th floor of Dubai skyscraper
A newly engaged influencer mysteriously plummeted to her death from the 27th floor of a Dubai skyscraper, according to her mother.
Kauana Bilhar, 27, of Brazil, was recently traveling to the United Arab Emirates when she fatally fell from the high-rise, her mother, Darla Bilhar, confirmed in a heartbreaking social media post.
The model’s partner, Barbara Abrantes, had been with her at the time, and was the one to break the harrowing news to her family, according to the Sun.
Authorities have not determined whether her death was a suicide, a freak accident or a murder, according to Brazilian outlet Globo. The exact date of her death was not immediately clear.
“There are no words capable of expressing the magnitude of the longing you left behind,” Darla Bilhar posted on Instagram in a touching tribute to her daughter. “Today you are no longer by my side as I dreamed, but you will live forever within me.”
“I love you infinitely, my girl. Until the day we can meet again,” the influencer’s mother wrote Wednesday.
The grieving mom has traveled to Dubai to speak with investigators and arrange to have her body brought back to Brazil.
The influencer’s family reportedly learned about her death from her partner, Barbara Abrantes, with whom Bilhar had just celebrated her engagement, according to her social media posts.
Kauana Bilhar had more than 21,000 followers on Instagram alone, where she posted videos and photos of her luxurious trips abroad and designer clothing.
As the investigation continues, Dalar Bilhar declared that her “daughter deserves respect” after her social media post was flooded with hateful comments, according to Jam Press.
“It is with my soul in pieces that I come to speak out,” she wrote.
“My daughter deserves respect.”
https://nypost.com/2026/07/10/world-news/influencer-model-plunges-to-her-death-from-27th-floor-of-dubai-skyscraper/
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