World General knowledge

World General knowledge

Share

This page was made to assist users with spoken English and preparation for various Competitive Exams.

17/03/2026

US President Donald Trump shows off his B-2 Bomber model at the Oval Office amid the ongoing war with Iran


Photos from World General knowledge's post 06/03/2026

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say
The targeting information has included the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East, the officials said.
A building beside the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Juffair, Bahrain, was damaged by an Iranian attack drone over the weekend. (Reuters)
By Noah Robertson, Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel
Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.
Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
“It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the people said.

Reached by The Washington Post on Friday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment on the intelligence findings. Moscow has called for an end to the war, which it labeled an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.”
The extent of Russia’s targeting assistance to Iran was not entirely clear. The Iranian military’s own ability to locate U.S. forces has been degraded less than a week into the r
Six U.S. troops were killed and several others were injured by an Iranian drone attack Sunday in Kuwait. Iran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. military positions, embassies and civilians, even as the joint American-Israeli campaign has hit more than 2,000 Iranian targets — including ballistic missile sites, naval assets and the country’s leadership.
“The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed,” said a White House spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, without commenting on any Russian aid to Iran. “Their ballistic missile retaliation is decreasing every day, their navy is being wiped out, their production capacity is being demolished, and proxies are hardly putting up a fight.”
The CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment.
When asked this week about his message to Russia and China, which are among Iran’s most powerful backers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he didn’t have one and that “they’re not really a factor here.”
Two of the officials familiar with Russia’s support for Iran said that China did not appear to be aiding Iran’s defense, despite close ties between the two countries.
In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Washington referred to Beijing’s diplomatic efforts to engage with partners in the region since the war began and said that the conflict should be “immediately ceased.”

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.
The CIA’s station at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, also was struck in recent days. Parts of the embassy building have been left “unrecoverable” and must be sealed off, according to an internal State Department assessment. The assessment, which was reviewed by The Post, said that other parts of the embassy would not be habitable for at least another month.
Iran is “making very precise hits on early warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” said Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re doing this in a very targeted way. They’re going after command and control,” she added.
Iran possesses only a handful of military-grade satellites, and no satellite constellation of its own, which would make imagery provided by Russia’s much more advanced space capabilities highly valuable — particularly as the Kremlin has honed its own targeting after years of war in Ukraine, Massicot said.

Nicole Grajewski, who studies Iran’s cooperation with Russia at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, said that there had been a high level of “sophistication” in the Iranian retaliatory strikes, both in what Tehran has targeted and in its ability in some cases to overwhelm U.S. and allied defenses.
“They’re getting through air defenses,” she said, noting that the quality of Iran’s strikes appeared to have improved even from its 12-day war with Israel last summer.
The Pentagon is quickly burning through its supply of precision arms and air defense interceptors, people familiar with the matter have told The Post, underscoring concerns raised by Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as President Donald Trump deliberated whether to approve the operation. The administration has sought to downplay Caine’s assessment.

Russia’s assistance reshuffles how various countries have engaged in a proxy war since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Throughout that conflict, U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with either direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry. The United States has given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s targeting.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X that the Trump administration had requested assistance in helping protect against Iranian drones and that Kyiv would provide “specialists” in response.
Iran has been one of Russia’s chief backers during the Ukraine war, sharing the technology to produce cheap one-way attack drones that have repeatedly been used to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defenses and exhaust Western stocks of interceptors donated to protect Ukrainian cities.
“The Russians are more than aware of the assistance that we’re giving the Ukrainians,” said one of the officials familiar with Moscow’s support for Tehran. “I think they were very happy to try to get some payback.”
The quality of Russia’s intelligence collection is not on a par with America’s but still ranks among the world’s best, this person continued.
The Post has previously reported that despite the blow to one of its closest partners, the Kremlin sees possible advantages in a prolonged war between the U.S. and Iran, including higher oil revenue and an acute crisis that distracts America and Europe from the war in Ukraine.
Iran, whose supreme leader was killed early in the conflict, could become the latest country to lose a pro-Russian government in recent years, following a Syrian uprising in late 2024 that ousted longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad and the U.S. military raid to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

Still, the lack of direct military involvement from Moscow is in part a sign of its need to focus elsewhere, Massicot said.
The Kremlin, she said, is “very much considering this is not their problem and not their war. From a strategic calculus perspective, Ukraine is still far and away the number one priority.”

01/03/2026
25/02/2026

Inside an 18th-century British warship.

25/02/2026

English Literature: Major Periods & Timeline

24/02/2026

COLD vs HOT WATER EFFECTS 💧🔥 Your daily water habit can support digestion, circulation, and recovery. Don’t underestimate simple routines — consistency beats complexity 💪

23/02/2026

Buddhism: Russell’s respect and criticism

“Among present-day religions Buddhism is best. The doctrines of Buddhism are profound, they are almost reasonable, and historically they have been the least harmful and the least cruel. But I cannot say that Buddhism is positively good, nor would I wish to have it spread all over the world and believed by everyone. This is because Buddhism only focuses on the question of what Man is, not on what the universe is like. Buddhism does not really pursue the truth; it appeals to sentiment and, ultimately, tries to persuade people to believe in doctrines which are based on subjective assumptions not objective evidence. However, subjective opinions can produce false beliefs. I think that no matter what the religion, nor how ambiguously its faith is expressed, the same problem arises because of the substitution of subjective sentiment for objective evidence. Sentiment might be taken as the dominant force in our daily lives, but as for belief in facts, the farther we distance ourselves from sentiment the better. Never substitute sentiment for facts. It is absolutely harmful to do so.“

— Bertrand Russell, Russell on Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell (1999), Part II. Religion and Philosophy, 6. The Essence and Effect of Religion (1921), p. 74

━━━

Background: Bertrand Russell and Buddhism

Bertrand Russell saw many positive philosophical aspects in Buddhism, especially its non-theistic nature and lack of apparent persecution. Despite holding many of the foundational teachings of Siddhartha Gautama in high esteem, Russell expressed substantial criticism toward the Buddhist clergy, particularly in Tibet, describing them as frequently obscurantist, authoritarian, and brutal, and arguing that this arises from a predictable outcome when a privileged class distorts the founder's ideas to consolidate power.

Russell explains:

“The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his death-bed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood, as it exists, for example, in Tibet, has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree. There is nothing accidental about this difference between a religion and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress.”

— Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Russell also regarded Buddhism's founder, Siddhartha Gautama, and the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, as morally superior to Jesus of Nazareth. In his essay "Why I Am Not a Christian," Russell suggested that while some of Jesus' teachings were occasionally admirable, they likely fell short of much of ethical principles of the Buddha.

“I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Despite his praise, Russell firmly rejected Buddhism because it relied on mystical, subjective claims that could not be supported by logic or science. In his work Mysticism and Logic, Russell argued that while mystical intuition can inspire philosophical ideas, only logic and evidence can determine their truth. He believed that the core tenets of mysticism—such as the illusion of time, the illusory nature of evil, and the ultimate unity of all things—were unverifiable. Russell viewed any form of philosophy that failed to base its cosmology on science as limited. While Russell admired the Buddha's ethical philosophy, he rejected the notion that religion, even one as benign as he perceived Buddhism to be, is necessary for — or conducive to — a good life, and that science, not religion, was the tool for advancing humanity.

Image: Statue of Siddhartha Gautam Buddha, 2nd–3rd century BCE. 東京国立近代美術館 The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, permanent display (Asian Gallery). This statue symbolizes the artistic culmination of Greco-Buddhist cultural exchange, triggered by Alexander the Great's conquest and the subsequent creation of Graeco-Indian Kingdoms. Currently, the cultural heritage, historical importance, religious customs, and philosophical principles of these ancient Buddhist kingdoms are largely unrecognized within Western popular consciousness.

23/02/2026

The Forgotten British Weapon That Destroyed German Airfields Without Bombing Them

April 15, 1943. A misty morning over Lannion airfield in occupied France. German ground crews hear the engines first — not the distant drone of high-altitude bombers, but something lower. Faster. Meaner.

Four Hawker Typhoons rip across the treeline at barely 100 feet.

There’s no time for sirens. No time for fighters to scramble.

Under each wing hangs a weapon the Luftwaffe has begun to dread more than heavy bombers: the British 60-lb rocket projectile.

The pilots don’t circle. They don’t climb. They dive.

Eight rockets ignite in a roar that sounds like a freight train tearing through the sky. In seconds, they slam into the runway — not exploding on the surface like conventional bombs, but punching through it.

And then the ground erupts from beneath.

This wasn’t strategic bombing in the style of thousand-plane raids. It was surgical violence at treetop level. In under a minute, Lannion’s main runway was left shattered — not just cratered, but structurally broken. The concrete collapsed inward. Drainage systems ruptured. The foundation itself turned to rubble.

The Luftwaffe could fill a bomb crater in hours.

This? This took days.

The weapon responsible was the RP-3 rocket, developed at windswept test ranges in Wales by engineers working far from the spotlight. The work centered around facilities like RAF Aberporth and Pendine Sands, where physicists and ordnance experts solved a problem that had frustrated Allied planners for years.

High-level bombing looked impressive on film. But a 500-lb bomb detonating on a runway often created neat, repairable craters. German engineering crews were exceptionally efficient. Within three or four hours, aircraft could be taking off again.

Allied commanders needed something different.

The RP-3 delivered it.

Fired from a diving Typhoon at speeds exceeding 500 mph, the semi-armor-piercing rocket struck at steep angles. Its hardened steel nose penetrated reinforced concrete before a delayed-action fuse detonated a 12-kilogram Torpex charge underneath the surface.

Instead of blasting upward, the explosion propagated downward and outward — collapsing the runway from below.

Each Typhoon carried eight rockets. A flight of four aircraft could hammer a runway with 32 penetrating strikes in less than three seconds of firing time.

The first sustained operational use came during Operation Starkey, where RAF squadrons attacked Luftwaffe airfields across northern France. At Poix-de-Picardie, post-strike reconnaissance showed distinctive inward-collapsing craters — evidence of subsurface detonations.

German records later revealed the airfield remained unusable for heavier aircraft for over a week.

That mattered.

In the six weeks leading up to D-Day, Typhoon squadrons from the Second Tactical Air Force flew hundreds of low-level strikes against forward Luftwaffe bases. On June 6, 1944, the Allies flew more than 14,000 sorties over Normandy.

The Luftwaffe managed fewer than 300.

Many factors contributed to that imbalance — fuel shortages, attrition, overwhelming Allied production. But damaged and repeatedly closed airfields were part of the equation.

The RP-3 didn’t carry the drama of the atomic bomb. It didn’t have the mystique of radar or the fame of the Spitfire.

It was blunt. Heavy. Uncomplicated.

And devastatingly effective.

You can still see surviving examples at the RAF Museum London, sitting quietly beneath legendary aircraft. They don’t look revolutionary. Just steel, cordite, and purpose.

But in the spring of 1944, that simple rocket helped ground an air force at the moment it was needed most.

Not by leveling cities.

By breaking runways from the inside out.

If you want to understand how eight low-flying aircraft could achieve what entire bomber groups struggled to accomplish — and how this overlooked weapon reshaped the air war over Europe — the full story is waiting below.

𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒖𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 👇👇

23/02/2026

◀️پنجاب حکومت کا کسانوں سے 30 لاکھ میٹرک ٹن گندم خریدنے کا اعلان
◀️گندم کی قیمت 3500 روپے فی من مقرر
◀️پنجاب نے اپنے سٹریٹجک ویٹ ریزرو کے لیے پبلک پرائیویٹ پارٹنرشپ پر مبنی پالیسی متعارف کرائی ہے: مریم نواز شریف

Want your school to be the top-listed School/college in Kotli?

Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.

Location

Category

Website

Address

Kotli
11100