Do you panic when you get a text message or call from a number you don’t recognize? 

Forget having to send that awkward ‘sorry, who is this’ text or Googling the phone number – there are several ways to track down the caller.

TikToker Liz Perez posted a recent video detailing what to do when you get a call from an unknown number. 

Here’s how it works: If you get a text from an unknown number, mobile payment apps like Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or PayPal can help you put a name to that number.

All you have to do is copy and paste the number into your payment app of choice to unveil the mystery sender’s name.

However, this only works if you already have an account with one of those apps, and the sender has to use their real name and number in the app, too. 

Then there’s the flip side. What if you don’t want your name and phone number to be so readily available? 

Be sure to disable your mobile payment app from sharing your name and phone number with other people. The steps vary per app. For example, in Venmo, open Settings, Friends and Social and toggle off Phone contacts.

However, there are also settings in iPhone and Android phones that can figure this out. 

Here is DailyMail.com’s step-by-step guide to revealing mystery callers. 

What about blocked numbers?

Maybe you remember from your pranking years: Dialing *67 conceals your number from someone you call. There are similar numbers you can dial to respond to mystery callers.

The first is *69, which traces the number of the last person who called you. It works even for anonymous or hidden calls, so you can get the phone number and exact time they called. 

Once you have that number, you can block it on your phone so they can’t call you anymore.

In more dangerous circumstances, such as harassment, another number you can use is *57. 

It gets you the phone number and call information that *69 does, but it goes above and beyond by passing that info on to the police.

Your phone service will log a *57 call so authorities can more easily locate whoever is harassing you. 

To get the most out of this, call the police right after a *57 call with a written log of the calls from your harasser so law enforcement can act. 

Your phone company might charge you extra for these calls, so it’s worth checking your plan to see if it supports the shortcuts.

‘I just want it to stop’

If you have an iPhone, you can take a more extreme step and automatically block numbers that aren’t on your Contacts list using Silence Unknown Callers.

Calls from numbers not in your Contacts will still go to your voicemail and appear in your recent calls list, but your phone won’t ring for them. Follow these steps to turn it on:

● Go to Settings, then Phone.

● Scroll down to Silence Unknown Callers. Slide the toggle to the right to enable the feature.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy:

● Open the Phone app and tap the More icon (three vertical dots) at the bottom of the screen.

● Tap Settings, then Call blocking.

● Turn the Block anonymous calls switch to on.

Keep in mind that if you send calls not in your contacts directly to voicemail, there are downsides. You will miss important phone calls, say from your doctor or child’s teacher.

Using a different phone? Search your phone’s model name and “call blocking” for directions if you need them.

Use a (virtual) burner

Giving away your real number to anyone and everyone is always a mistake. Think about all the accounts your phone number is attached to. Scary stuff.

Google Voice gives you a free phone number to use however you like for domestic and international phone calls, texts, and voicemails. All you need is a Google account to get started.

Here are steps for doing this: 

● Download the app for iOS or Android or go to voice.google.com/u/0/signup to get it for your computer.

● Next, sign into your Google account.

● Review the terms and proceed to the next step.

● Choose a phone number from the list. You can search by city or area code.

● Verify the number and enter a phone number to link to your Voice account.

● You’ll get a six-digit code to enter for the next step.

Another option is downloading a burner app. These give you a second phone number and use your internet data or Wi-Fi to make and receive calls and texts.

Burner is one of the most popular apps of this kind. You can route calls directly to your secondary number. The app comes with a seven-day free trial, and plans start at $4.99 monthly for one line.

Hushed lets you create numbers from around the world, so you can go outside your area code or the country if needed. 

A prepaid plan starts at $2.99 for seven days and comes with bundled minutes for local calls and texts. You can step up to unlimited talk and text ($4.99 per month) and international service ($6.99 per month).

Sound like a tech pro, even if you’re not! Award-winning popular host Kim Komando is your secret weapon. 

Listen on 425+ radio stations or get the podcast. And join over 500,000 people who call her free 5-minute daily email newsletter. 

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By Andrew Prentice For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 21:42 EDT, 22 September 2023 | Updated: 21:42 EDT, 22 September 2023

A tranche of UFO videos — including never-before-seen footage — has been quietly released by federal law enforcement.

US Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies.

The videos were released on August 9 without warning, a press release or much in the way of context, only to be discovered by UFO enthusiasts and online sleuths earlier this week.

The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and yet another apparent floating orb, hovering this time near a parked 16-wheeler truck.

But the enigmatic nature of the drop — which offered little detail regarding the times and locations of these sightings, plus more than a few sweeping redactions — has left more questions than answers.

The quiet video drop follows rising tensions within the corridors of power in Washington on the once taboo subject of UFOs. 

Open congressional hearings, federal legislation and even brand new government offices have now been dedicated openly to the investigation of these aerial mysteries, with at least one former senior US intelligence official calling the strange sightings ‘a national security issue.’

The videos were released on a dedicated site for agency records made public via requests under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

But perhaps most significantly, the release confirms, at least tacitly, the veracity of a heavily-scrutinized, 2013 thermal UFO video leaked to UFO researchers in 2015.

For the first time since that leak, the April 25, 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico UFO video first investigated by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies has now been confirmed by the US government as genuinely unidentified. 

Asked by NBC News, Chris Mellon, a former official with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, described the release as ‘very significant.’

‘This will help the public understand what our military personnel are encountering all over the world,’ Mellon said. 

‘We’re getting, on the Defense Department side, 50 to 100 [UFO] reports per month — and this is happening globally.’ 

‘It’s happening overseas. It’s happening off the east coast and the west coast,’ he elaborated. ‘This will help people better understand why Congress takes the issue seriously [and] why it’s a national security issue.’

While Mellon praised US Customs’ show of openness and transparency with the official release of these 10 videos,  America’s dedicated community of UFO skeptics were less impressed. 

Mick West, a prolific and dedicated examiner of UFO claims and the owner of the skeptics forum Metabunk, described the videos as ‘mostly not new.’ 

‘And those that are new are not particularly interesting,’ West told the DailyMail.com, noting that several had already been the subject of unofficial leaks to reporters and researchers on the UFO beat.

West, a retired computer programmer and video game designer, described the first of US Customs’ UAP videos as something that ‘looks like a microlight aircraft.’

Several others, he noted, appeared to be ‘ambiguous white dots, […] a balloon or a plastic bag.’

The second video, West said, was the so-called ‘Rubber Duck’ UAP, which the noted skeptic devoted considerable time to investigating on his YouTube channel and in Metabunk’s forum back in 2021. 

West identified CBP video 9 as the ‘infamous ‘Aguadilla’ video,’ which he has argued reveals a thermal signature ‘consistent with a pair of wedding lanterns drifting in the wind.’ 

West has taken the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) to task for errors located in an Appendix to their lengthy report on the Aguadilla case, but at least according to the SCU’s co-founder, engineer Robert Powell, those errors do not undermine the remainder of his team’s assessment.

‘The report does not depend on Appendix L,’ Powell told the DailyMail.com, stating that West did not have an answer for why floating wedding lanterns would veer from west to north, as the Aguadilla UFO is recorded doing in the video’s final moments.

‘The second reason it’s not Chinese lanterns,’ according to Powel, ‘is that Chinese lanterns can’t survive the wind speeds that were occurring that day. The wind speeds were around 13 miles an hour.’ 

‘It’s basically a little candle that sits on these little wires, and you’ve got a very light [plastic or paper] bag around it,’ Powell said. ‘Heavy winds will collapse the outside of your Chinese lantern.’ 

Whatever the mystery of Aguadilla proves to be, US Customs’ 10 videos were not the only agency records quietly released this August under FOIA. 

The agency’s official confirmation of these previously only leaked thermal videos and security recordings were also accompanied by a 389-page PDF document, ostensibly of UAP records held internally by US Customs. 

While the paperwork includes much chaff — news clippings, and already public government reports — the FOIA drop also included internal emails detailing internal deliberations on the law enforcement agency’s UFO cases.

Several agency emails from August 2021, document an exchange between a UFO enthusiast and his superior regarding efforts to comply with spirit of the then-recent congressional legislation on UFOs and the resulting UAP Task Force report.

‘As a pet project, or for fun, do all the research you want,’ the redacted official wrote to the CBP’s equivalent to X-Files FBI agent Fox Mulder. ‘I know this topic is of great interest to you and there’s a ton of information to sift through.’

‘There just isn’t an avenue for any formal research or reporting any type of findings or conclusions,’ the redacted official stressed.

The also-redacted CPB employee responded, ‘T4… I apologize, and took The Director of National Intelligence’s UAP report seriously.’  

But the release also includes over two dozen tantalizing pages that have been redacted in their entirety. 

Per statute, each page lists the legal exemption under which US CBP is permitted to withhold certain records relevant to an open records request. 

The majority of these redactions, in this case, were justified under the b(5) and b(7)e exemptions clauses of federal FOIA law. 

Investigative reporters and open government advocates have dubbed the b(5) exemption the ‘The Withhold It Because You Want To Exemption‘ as its guidelines were even described by the US Justice Department as ‘opaque.’

The b(7)e exemption pertains effectively to law enforcement’s own ‘sources and methods,’ as it withholds details that would ‘disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions’ and other material that officials believe ‘could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.’

To this end, several of the released videos have notably redacted the majority of the heads-up-display information from US CBP’s infrared or thermal video recordings: which would likely include data on the altitude, bearing and range of these UAP.

All summer long, a sweltering UFO fever has gripped Washington DC, stoked in no small measure by a series of extraordinary claims and revelations from lawmakers, former US intelligence and Navy personnel.

This past June, charges of an illegal, hidden UFO crash retrieval program operating within the shadows exploded across television airwaves and online as made by Air Force and intelligence agency veteran David Grusch.

Soon thereafter, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio revealed he too had been briefed by several other US government officials with top-level security clearances, who professed that they personally had ‘first-hand’ knowledge of UFO programs.

By late July, Grusch was reasserting many of his claims under oath before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, along with Ryan Graves, an esteemed former pilot, and veteran Navy fighter pilot Commander David Fravor, who witnessed the now famous 2004 ‘Tic Tac’ UFO.

In his further comments on the new CPB videos, former DOD intelligence official Chris Mellon hoped that the newly official US Customs videos would spur the Pentagon toward greater transparency itself.

Mellon noted that these mysterious UFO videos highlight ‘the challenges we are facing monitoring and controlling our airspace.’ 

He cited both last February’s infamous Chinese spy balloon affair (and still-as-yet-unidentified UAP), and ‘of course the explosion of drone use around the world,’ as examples of the new threats to US sovereignty posed by the weak official reporting and widespread stigma surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena.

‘I hope that the Defense Department and [US] Intelligence Community are paying attention,’ Mellon told NBC. 

‘They have many videos that are of a similar, unclassified nature,’ he noted, ‘or were, until they — out of nowhere — created this new classification guide.’ 

Echoing comments by Grusch on the legality of the Pentagon’s actions, Mellon went on to express the opinion that the DoD’s new and more expansive classification standards for its own UAP or UFO videos might not be ‘lawful.’ 

‘I don’t think that’s consistent with the executive order governing classification,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘But they are withholding a lot of similar kinds of videos from the public on that basis.’ 

 

 

Volodymyr Zelensky attended a secret roundtable in New York City with the nation’s top financiers, including private equity bosses at JPMorgan, Google and Blackstone to discuss rebuilding war-torn Ukraine.

The meeting was hosted by the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan, on Wednesday evening, and included Google CEO Eric Schmidt, billionaire Mike Bloomberg, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and billionaire Barry Sternlicht were also in attendance, sources told CNN.

Hours earlier, Zelensky met with Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock to discuss how to attract US private sector money for the rebuilding effort, According Fox News.  

Zelensky is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden later this week to discuss US aid to Ukraine. This comes after Biden and the US Congress have provided more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. 

Zelensky met with senior members of JP Morgan back in February, where he took part in one of the largest annual investment summits organized by the bank, attended by 200 largest corporations, investors, and financial companies.

The meeting discussed the creation of a platform for attracting private capital to rebuild Ukraine. Zelensky also focused on directions of large investment projects in Ukraine specifically in green energy, IT, and agricultural technologies.

JPMorgan has served as Zelensky’s financial adviser to attract private capital for a new investment fund to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure destroyed in its war with Russia, sources told Fox Digital. 

The meeting comes a day after Zelensky attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. 

In his address to United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden pledged that the US would remain the ‘largest single country donor’ of humanitarian assistance and vowed to help ‘climate proof’ the world. 

Biden also emphasized the success of PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – as its reauthorization is at stake over conservative claims that it supports abortion abroad.

‘We saved tens of millions of lives that would otherwise be lost to preventable and treatable diseases like measles, malaria and tuberculosis,’ Biden said. 

‘HIV/AIDS infections and deaths plummeted in no small part becuase PEPFAR’s work in more than 55 countries, saving more than 25 million lives.’

The crowd included both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – dressed in his traditional military fatigues – and Russian Amb. Vaisily Nebenzya in the audience.

Biden hammered Russia’s ‘naked aggression’ and vowed to keep funding Kyiv as he again called the present moment ‘an inflection point in world history.’

He also noted that ‘for a second year in a row, this gathering dedicated to peaceful resolution of conflict is darkened by the shadow of war.’

The president called it ‘an illegal war of conquest’ and one that was ‘brought without provocation’ by Russia into Ukraine.

‘Like every nation in the world the United States wants this war to end,’ he said. ‘No nation wants this war to end more than Ukraine. And we strongly support Ukraine and its efforts to bring about a diplomatic resolution that delivers just and lasting peace.’

But he said that ‘Russia alone, Russia alone bears responsibility for this war.’

‘Russia alone has the power to end this war immediately. And it’s Russia alone that stands in the way of peace because the Russians’ price for peace is Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory and Ukraine’s children,’ Biden said.

‘Russia believes that the world will grow weary and will allow it to brutalize Ukraine without consequence,’ the president added.

Biden then laid out what he thought would be the cost of that weariness.

‘But I ask you this, if we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected?’ he asked.

‘If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?’ the president added. 

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Updated: 16:04 EDT, 23 August 2023

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By Shivali Best For Mailonline

Published: 10:23 EDT, 13 August 2023 | Updated: 12:03 EDT, 13 August 2023

From a blind date that turned into a first love to a 14-year affair that ended in a very ugly – and public – court battle, Clint Eastwood’s love life has been as varied as his film career. 

The actor was an unabashed ladies’ man in Hollywood, living with mistresses while he was still married – only to break their hearts with headlines about secret children. 

Fast-forward decades later and it seems most of that is under the bridge, with even Eastwood’s first wife electing to join him at his latest movie premiere with all eight of his children. 

But just who were Eastwood’s many loves? 

MAGGIE JOHNSON 

Before he was famous, Eastwood fell in love with a model named Maggie Johnson – who he met on a blind date when he was 23 years old. 

The year was 1953, five years before the actor received his breakthrough role in the CBS series Rawhide.

Eastwood and Johnson quickly got engaged and married just six months after their first date. 

It was during their engagement that Eastwood had an affair with a woman in Seattle, who got pregnant and gave up their child for adoption.

Eastwood and Johnson separated in 1964 after he had an affair he had with a Rawhide stuntwoman, but briefly rekindled their romance and welcomed children Kyle Eastwood in 1968 and Alison Eastwood in 1972. 

The couple officially divorced in 1984. 

ROXANNE TUNIS 

Eastwood met Tunis on Rawhide, where she was a regular stuntwoman and extra on the show. 

The pair quickly hit it off and began having an affair, which lasted into the 1970s.  

She even appeared in Eastwood’s film Every Which Way But Loose in 1978.  

Tunis gave birth to Eastwood’s second child, Kimber Lynn Eastwood, in 1964. She died in June of 2023 after a brief illness, her daughter said. 

SONDRA LOCKE  

Eastwood had a 13-year affair with actress Sondra Locke, who he met in 1972 on the set of The Outlaw Josey Wales. 

Locke lived with Eastwood from 1975 to 1989, while he was still married to Johnson. 

The couple never had any children but she later claimed that he forced her to get two abortions. 

Locke said she also got her tubes tied because Eastwood said parenthood didn’t fit their lifestyle, only to find out that he had fathered two children with another woman during the last three years of their relationship. 

Things turned ugly after Locke learned of Eastwood’s affair and in 1989 she filed a palimony lawsuit after he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and put all her possessions into storage. They eventually settled. 

JACELYN REEVES 

It was flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves who Eastwood had an affair with while he was with Locke. 

Reeves went on to give birth to their son Scott Eastwood in 1986 and daughter Kathryn Eastwood in 1988. 

The couple reportedly ended their relationship in 1990 after it came out in an expose published by The Star. 

Kathryn and Scott grew up with their mother in Hawaii but still had a relationship with their father. 

Scott, an actor, has auditioned to be in a number of his father’s films and appeared in Gran Torino and Invictus. 

FRANCES FISHER 

The same year that Eastwood broke things off with Locke and Reeves, he fell for a woman named Frances Fisher. 

As with many of his romances, Eastwood met the actress on set of a film together. 

The pair lived together for five years and Frances gave birth to their daughter Francesca Fisher-Eastwood in 1993. 

DINA EASTWOOD   

Shortly following his split from Fisher, Eastwood fell for TV news anchor Dina Ruiz after she was assigned to interview him about the film Unforgiven. 

The pair married three years later in 1996 and Dina gave birth to their daughter Morgan that same year. 

Dina starred in the E! reality show Mrs Eastwood & Company, which centered around her life in Los Angeles with Morgan and step-daughter Francesca. 

Eastwood only made a few appearances on the show, which premiered in 2012. The couple filed for divorce after 17 years of marriage in 2013.

NOOR ALFALLAH

Eastwood was snapped on a date with film producer Noor Alfallah in January of 2019 in Los Angeles. The producer, who had past dated Mick Jagger, welcomed a baby with Al Pacino in 2023.

Russia warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin kept a secret harem of barely legal women in St Petersburg before his armed mutiny against Vladimir Putin, a report has claimed.

‘The mercenary boss likes his girls on the younger side but he also has an eccentric obsession with exchanging bodily fluids with virgins,’ according to independent Russian news and investigative outlet The Insider.

A woman who ‘sold her virginity to billionaire Prigozhin when she was 18’ – and now regrets the decision – said the Wagner private army boss ‘believes having sex with first-time partners prolongs his youth’.

The revelations come one month after the Wagner chief led a band of mercenaries in an uprising against Russia’s defence ministry that saw them seize the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and bear down on Moscow before calling off the mutiny. 

Wagner fighters have since entered Belarus and are helping to train Belarusian military units while Prigozhin, 62, appears to have temporarily secured his safety amid a deal with the Russian president.  

The allegations against the Wagner supremo, who some believe had ambitions to be Russian president, are stark and detailed.

‘Before his downfall and exile to Belarus, Prigozhin used to keep a rotating harem of very young (a little over 18) girls in rented rooms at the Solo Sokos Hotel in St. Petersburg,’ alleged The Insider.

A ‘sex workers’ union representative told the media outlet that ‘he had sex without a condom’ because ‘he believed that this is how he exchanges energy, fluids’.

‘It’s as if he receives a charge of vitality from them,’ they said.

A woman named only as Masha said she lost her virginity to the Wagner chief in 2019 when she was 18 and living in his home city St Petersburg.

‘I was deeply depressed and had to go to the hospital,’ she said.

‘At that time, I met another girl, around my age, and she had been kicked out of her home and she really needed money.

‘She asked me if I would like to sell my virginity for 40,000 rubles.’

The amount was at the time the equivalent of $623 or £482.

‘I was like, ”OK, let’s”, although I didn’t need the money that much myself.’

Masha was introduced to Prigozhin’s pimp, another woman in her 30s with long, dark hair, at a cafe on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main avenue, said The Insider.

‘She said I had to go to the clinic to have my virginity checked. I was sent to the Sogaz clinic, right there on the other side of Nevsky Prospekt.’

The ownership of this clinic has been linked to Putin’s elder daughter Maria Vorontsova, 38, and known to treat VIPs including Prigozhin.

‘At the reception desk, you had to say a password – ”women’s sports”,’ said Masha.

This indicated it was a hymen inspection ordered for Prigozhin.

‘After Masha’s virginity was confirmed, she was sent to the Solo Sokos Hotel on Vasilyevsky Island on the western side of the city,’ said the report.

‘It seems like there were always rooms reserved for him and the girls and there were always people who supervised them,’ the woman told the publication.

‘There were girls, not virgins, whom he paid 5,000 rubles [$78] for sex. They were the ones who told me that it was Prigozhin. They hadn’t seen him for several days.’

She claimed to have known at the time about Prigozhin and his private army, as well as his troll farms spouting pro-Putin propaganda on the internet.

‘In complete shock, I went to the hotel room and waited for him,’ she said. ‘He started knocking on the wrong door and thought that I was not opening it. He got angry.’

When he finally arrived, she ‘sat motionless on the bed’. ‘Everything was very fast,’ she said. ‘He just left the money in a pile on a chair.’

He also told her to ‘be nicer’ complaining of a ‘dour expression’ on her face as he took her virginity.

‘Even with my insane personality, selling my virginity to Prigozhin was a bit over the top,’ she said.

‘I felt really down. I remember that day I was thinking about not being late for a doctor’s appointment at the psychiatric hospital.’

The Insider alleged: ‘Masha was one of countless women Prigozhin has visited at the Solo Sokos, where his underlings kept a ready supply of them.

‘The virgins, Masha learned, he dubbed ”shampoo”, after the disposable bottles found in hotel bathrooms.

‘You open them and then toss them away.’

Prigozhin was nicknamed Putin’s chef after coming to prominence staging Kremlin banquets and winning lucrative Russian government catering contracts.

A Soviet-era prisoner convicted of robbery, he branched out into troll farms and built his mercenary army, which amid the war in Ukraine recruited tens of thousands of jail inmates, offering them a pardon if they stayed alive at the front line for six months.

An earlier leak on Prigozhin since his armed mutiny saw how he kept a cupboard full of wigs at his mansion.

He used the wigs and fake beards for disguises in Africa and the Middle East as he furthered Putin’s interests and deployed Wagner forces.

One disguise showed him as an Employee of the Ministry of Defence in Sudan, another as an assistant diplomat from Abu Dhabi.

In a third he was mocked up as a Senior Lieutenant from Benghazi in Libya.

The versatile Prigozhin – whose Wagner forces have been used in many countries – also posed as a colonel from Tripoli, a ‘merchant from Syria’, and a field commander named Mohammed.