Random News and Notes 5 February
There is news of another new Medal of Honor recipient. I told you about SSG Michael Ollis yesterday.
This time it is 100 year old Navy Vet Royce Williams. Royce was a F9F Panther pilot during the Korean War. He is being awarded the Medal for his actions on 18 November 1952 near the Yalu river. Williams and 3 other pilots engaged in a classified mission encountered 7 Soviet MiG 15 fighters. When his wingmen had to disengage, Williams was forced to dogfight with the MiG 15s. He shot down 4 of the MiGs and damaged two more.
By the end of the 35-minute period, only one of the MiGs was still in the air with him, and he managed to escape back to his carrier, out of ammunition and having lost his hydraulics. He was uninjured, but 263 holes were counted in his Panther jet.
Initially Williams was awarded the SIlver Star for his actions. That was upgraded to the Navy Cross in 2022. It has now been upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Part of the reasoning behind the lesser awards was the classified nature of the encounter. The Soviets were not officially engaging in aerial combat over Korea. Soviet archives, released after the fall of that particular commie hellhole, showed that of the 7 MiG 15s that went up that day only one returned.
Williams went on to fly 110 missions in Skyhawks and Phantoms during Vietnam. He retired as a Captain in 1980 after 37 years of service.
In 2023, Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese national, was arrested for running an unlicensed biolab in Reedley, California. On January 31, 2026, federal agents and Las Vegas police searched a Sunrise Manor home owned by Zhu. They seized over 1,000 items including vials of unidentified liquids, refrigerators, and lab equipment from the garage.
It gets worse. The home is located a short distance from Nellis AFB and the Vegas Strip. According to the reporting around this episode, Zhu made thousands of calls to the guy running the house for him and his wife, who is also under indictment for the Reedly biolab and who fled to China.
If the previous one didn’t make you mad, this one will. Four Amish men were killed when the van they were riding in was hit head on by a semi. The truck driven by Bekzhan Beishekeev crossed into the oncoming lane on State Road 67 in Jay County, striking a van carrying an Amish work crew from Bryant, Indiana, just before 4 p.m. Tuesday. The victims were Henry Eicher, 50, his sons Menno, 25, and Paul, 19, plus family friend Simon Girod, 23, all killed by blunt force trauma. Driver Donald Stipp, 55, is in critical but stable condition after surgery, with a fifth passenger hospitalized seriously.
Anything jump out at you there? Yeah, the semi driver is an illegal.
Beishekeev is in custody on an ICE detainer and bench warrant; investigators probe ties to a Chicago-area trucking network flagged for safety violations and high crash rates. As stated above, the company involved is a “chameleon company”. These companies share equipment, addresses, phone numbers, branding, drivers, and management but use multiple separate DOT numbers. When one entity racks up too many violations, crashes, or out-of-service orders, operations shift to another “clean” DOT number. This particular network has been linked to nearly 100 crashes.
In a baffling move, the IRGC has seized two tankers in the Persian gulf. They claim the vessels were smuggling fuel. Just yesterday they were winging about the US walking away from the negotiating table because of their ridiculous demands.
While this editor does not know what is to be negotiated here, he does not have the full picture. Reporting has indicated the sticking points involve the Iranian ballistic missile program and the regime funding terrorist groups.
Regardless, this kind of open provocation is not going to end well for them.