Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] A magnetic storm, slightly stronger than the minimum, will hit Earth on September 24 and last for about 24 hours, but the peak disturbances will only last a few hours. Sergei Bogachev, head of the Solar Astronomy Laboratory at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke with Regnum News Agency on Tuesday, September 22.
According to the scientist, a magnetic storm will hit Earth on September 24. It will be caused by a solar wind stream from the coronal hole sweeping across the planet.
"Its strength will be approximately G1.5, meaning it's between weak and moderate. Its full duration will be about a day. However, most of the time it will be a disturbance, and the disturbance itself will be quite short-lived," Bogachev explained.
The expert noted that the strength of magnetic storms is assessed on a five-point scale, with one being the minimum. According to forecasts, during the first half of September 24, the intensity of cosmic disturbances will only exceed the minimum level for a few hours. For the rest of the day, their intensity will not even reach one point—they will no longer be considered magnetic storms.
"On a five-point scale, this is a minor event. It will be the second largest in September. The first was at the beginning of the month. The upcoming event isn't the most significant," Bogachev concluded.
The first magnetic storm of the fall occurred on September 8th. The event was weak, classified as Category I on a five-point scale. The disturbances were associated with a plasma cloud ejected by the Sun.
[FOX] "People figure out they don't have to be the best at their job, they have to be the best at making sure their boss thinks they're the best," Stu Scheller, the senior Pentagon adviser leading the effort, told Fox News Digital. "And those are actually two very different things."
"Right now in our current system, we have people that are very good at navigating their careers," Scheller said. "We have very good, I want to be clear, very good military personnel and leaders across the military, but there isn't a stand-alone function that can truly assess the best military commanders on the battlefield."
Scheller said these performance reports will remain the "bedrock" of promotion decisions, while the JWE will give boards a separate measure of how well an officer can solve the kinds of military problems they could face in command.
There is an Army saying you hear dozens of times when you make full colonel: "Congratulations, that's the last promotion you will ever make based solely on merit."
The idea behind that saying is that when it comes time to compete for a 1-star promotion, you need a sponsor, and… https://t.co/hocpfxUJUV
#1
Long over due. They kept the old peacetime bureaucratic selection system in place since 9/11. You need people with demonstrated skills not box checkers. Gaming the system and getting sponsors doesn't get you fighters. It was all designed to measure in a peacetime environment when the actual function, war, was not the background to measure. War is not fair. Expecting your selection system to rank 'fair' over demonstrated competence leads to mediocracy at best, if you are lucky.
KYIV, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Ukrainian staff sergeant Vitalii Tomchyshak believes he knows how to beat Russia on the battlefield: empower frontline leaders such as himself to make critical decisions.
Too often, Tomchyshak says, combat commanders are overruled by senior officers who do not understand the specifics of a battlefield situation.
"It doesn't matter who you are — a sergeant, an officer, anyone — you need to be listened to," the 27-year-old former software developer said.
Tomchyshak was among 103 battle-hardened squad commanders pulled from the front line by Ukraine's military and put through an intensive three-month course this summer aimed at increasing their effectiveness as leaders.
As Russia wages its war in Ukraine, the Ukrainian army is trying to transform itself — not just in terms of technological innovation, but also in its culture and leadership.
That means dismantling a Soviet-era culture of rigid, top-down command and encouraging more initiative from battle-tested troops.
[BBC]
In the expansive grasslands of Inner Mongolia, farmers are picking plump potatoes alongside new neighbours: huge, rectangular blocks that will fuel China's AI platforms.
Ulanqab, with its steppes and volcanoes, is an unlikely digital frontier. For years, it has been China's official "potato capital". But now its fields have also become construction sites for a slew of data centres, as Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping meet to discuss AI safety among other things.
Hundreds of workers in yellow helmets carry heavy equipment into the building site as welding sparks fly off metal scaffolding. Above them huge cranes move with precision to build rooftops, while men balance on ladders to plaster brickwork.
"This is China speed," jokes one worker. "An infrastructure maniac," is how he describes his country, laughing as he walks away. “There is one phase every year. This is the second phase," explains an electrical engineer. "There will be many more phases afterwards."
Artifical[sic] intelligence sits at the heart of China's contest with the United States and the key to it is the computing power inside the data centres here.
To the Chinese Communist Party, these buildings are critical for the country's economic and national security. Once finished, they will help drive its mission to embed AI across 90% of industries and society by 2030.
[GaroweOnline] The Pentagon is considering a major reduction in the number of US troops and military assets stationed in Europe, with options including the withdrawal of at least 25,000 personnel and potentially as many as 40,000, according to US and Western officials familiar with the discussions.
The proposals are part of a six-month review of the US military posture in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... launched by the Pentagon earlier this year. No final decision has been made, and several options remain under consideration, officials said.
The most widely reported option would remove about 25,000 troops from Europe, representing nearly one-third of the approximately 80,000 US service members currently stationed on the continent. A more extensive option could reduce the force by as many as 40,000 personnel.
The review covers more than troop numbers. Pentagon officials are also examining possible changes involving aircraft, naval forces, weapons systems and the broader US military infrastructure in Europe.
Germany, Italia and Spain are among the countries that could be affected because they host some of the largest US military deployments on the continent, according to officials cited in reports on the deliberations.
The discussions have raised concern among some NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... allies, particularly as European governments face continued security challenges related to Russia and the war in Ukraine.
The proposed reductions also come amid a broader effort by the administration of President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... to encourage European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defence. Washington has repeatedly pressed NATO members to increase defence spending and reduce their reliance on US military capabilities.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the European force review in June. The assessment is being led by Pentagon brasshats and involves the US military command responsible for operations in Europe.
Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of US European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has been involved in the review and is expected to provide recommendations to Hegseth. A final recommendation is expected in November before being presented to Trump.
The possible drawdown has also prompted debate in Washington. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for US diplomats to be more closely involved in the review because changes to troop deployments could affect relations with European allies.
The Pentagon's review comes as Washington reassesses its global military priorities. The administration's defence strategy has placed greater emphasis on shifting resources toward other regions, including the Indo-Pacific, while expecting European partners to take a larger role in their own defence.
At the same time, the United States has continued to deploy forces to parts of Europe. On Tuesday, Lithuania said a new rotation of US troops was being sent to the NATO member, which borders Russia and Belarus. Lithuanian officials welcomed the deployment as a sign of continued US engagement despite uncertainty surrounding the broader force review.
The review therefore does not yet amount to a decision to withdraw US forces from Europe. Officials are weighing several alternatives, including reducing forces, repositioning some units toward NATO's eastern flank or maintaining different levels of military capability across the continent.
Any substantial reduction would mark a significant change in the US military presence in Europe, which has remained a central component of NATO's collective defence structure for decades.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump and the leaders of Greenland and Denmark signed an agreement on Tuesday that permits a larger US military presence on Greenland and may resolve a standoff over the strategically located and mineral-rich island.
The agreement, signed during Trump's visit to the UN General Assembly in New York, stops short of Trump's demand that the US annex Greenland as a US territory to head off the growing Arctic presence of Russia and China.
But the deal does codify a greater US military presence on the icy territory, an option that emerged as Greenland leaders argued against a complete US takeover.
A text of the deal released after the event said the US can establish a "Golden Dome" defense system in Greenland as a shield against ballistic missile threats. The shortest route from Europe to North America runs via the Arctic island, which is the location of the northernmost US military base.
In his speech to the assembled world leaders at the UN before the signing ceremony, Trump said the agreement gives the US "permanent control over security and all other needs on that territory."
"No US adversary will ever be permitted to establish a military presence in Greenland any more, or make sensitive investments there without our express written approval," Trump said.
Trump signed the agreement along with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen in a trilateral ceremony after Trump gave his UN speech.
Frederiksen described the agreement as a deal that can "last forever" and said it underlines the importance of the NATO alliance and respects Greenland's right to self-determination.
[Yahoo-Bloomberg] Vice President JD Vance announced the Trump administration will take hundreds of thousands of people off Obamacare plans, alleging they were improperly enrolled.
The administration is also suspending some brokers who sell Affordable Care Act coverage, accusing them of being responsible for thousands of fraudulent enrollees, including some who didn't exist. Vance said Tuesday that the administration believes around 750,000 "are fraudulently enrolled" and added that officials would conduct "additional verification" on roughly 419,000 people.
"These programs they are deserving, they're important, but they're not going to exist unless we stop the fraud," Vance said during a press conference in the White House complex. "We are actually making sure that people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them. Amazingly we weren't doing that before."
Vance said Tuesday that the administration believes around 750,000 "are fraudulently enrolled" and added that officials would conduct "additional verification" on roughly 419,000 people, estimated to save $2.2 billion.
Vance estimated the move would save $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds. The figure couldn't be immediately verified.
Shares of health insurance companies fell Tuesday morning after early news reports of the cuts. Centene Corp. fell as much as 3.9%, Molina Healthcare Inc. was down as much as 3.5%, Elevance Health Inc fell as much as 1.9%, and UnitedHealth Group Inc. was down as much as 1.4%.
Conservatives have long alleged that the Affordable Care Act markets are rife with fraud, accusations that opponents have called a smokescreen for kicking people off the program. The Trump administration has curbed some policies that made enrollment easier.
Enrollment in Obamacare markets has dropped by millions since Republicans in Congress let Covid-era subsidies expire, causing premium payments to jump for many enrollees.
Enrollment for the federal Obamacare marketplace opens Nov. 1. People shopping for plans are likely to see spikes in premiums ahead of enrollment, adding to mounting concerns about affordability ahead of the midterm elections.
[BB] Fortune 500 lobbyists say that “H-1B [visa] workers are supposed to be doing a specific job that Americans aren’t able to do,” immigration lawyer John Miano told Breitbart News. “That’s what we’re told, and if that is the case, when that job goes away, there’s no need for them, and they should go home.”
[JTN] President Donald Trump used the United Nations gathering this week and the run-up to a White House summit to work through the largest foreign-policy files on his desk in one stretch: Iran, Russia, China, artificial intelligence, Greenland and a contracting global peace organization.
The results were plainly evident Tuesday when the second-term president signed an Arctic security deal that many said was impossible, forced Cuba's diplomats to storm out of a global meeting and earned polite applause from the UN General Assembly (UNGA) audience for defanging Iran's nuclear ambitions.
And on Wednesday, Trump pivots to another high-stakes meeting when China's president arrives for the summit.
"We've not seen anything like this, even during President Trump's first term, which in many ways was his learning phase. He was figuring out how to pull the levers of government. Now he's very very capable at it," former Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates told Just The News.
"That's what he really laid out today in this historic UNGA speech: everything he's been doing while everyone else in that hall has been sitting around and bellyaching and clutching their pearls and generally getting upset over things," Coates added.
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab on Tuesday said it will give the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency direct, on-site access to its latest quantum computing hardware as part of a new research center the company opened in Maryland alongside the University of Maryland and other industry partners.
The center, located in the university's Discovery District near Washington, D.C., will house a new quantum system that uses Microsoft's Majorana 2 chip for independent testing and evaluation by DARPA.
Quantum computers hold the promise of tackling problems that would take conventional machines thousands of years. Of particular interest to national security experts is protecting and cracking encrypted communications.
Microsoft is one of a number of quantum firms being evaluated by DARPA to discover whether any quantum computing approach can yield economically feasible systems by 2033.
Until now, DARPA has evaluated Microsoft's technology remotely, accessing machines in Redmond, Washington, and Europe. The Maryland delivery marks a shift to physical access in a dedicated DARPA space where its experts can load hardware and run it through their own boot sequences.
"This is a big deal for us because it essentially enables DARPA to kick the tires and to sort of figure out how good this machine is and how it's performing," Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president of Microsoft Quantum, said in an interview.
Alam said the arrangement imposes discipline as Microsoft moves from research toward a commercial product. DARPA's key evaluation metric is whether the value of the computation performed by a quantum system outweighs the system's cost.
"It enforces a certain amount of engineering rigor that scientific teams normally do not have," he said, describing DARPA as "a completely trusted organization" with which Microsoft can share both current work and future plans.
#1
Of particular interest to national security experts is protecting and cracking encrypted communications.
Ordinary citizens who think their communications are safe because they're encrypted will then find out otherwise. It might be time to go back to writing letters with pen and paper and dropping them in an old fashioned mail box.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/23/2026 14:51 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Chris Rufo Substack]
