[Regnum] The death toll in the passenger train collision in Spain has risen to 68. This was announced on October 28 by Emiliano García-Pajé, head of the government of the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha.
"According to the latest data we have, 68 people have died," García-Pajé said in a speech broadcast by RTVE.
On the morning of October 28, in the Spanish province of Toledo, between the villages of Los Yebenes and Urda, two high-speed trains traveling from Madrid to Seville collided. The Renfe train was carrying 397 passengers, while the second train, operated by private operator Iryo, was carrying 147. The collision derailed several cars, some of which fell down an embankment. Initial reports indicated 64 fatalities and 179 injuries.
Local authorities have launched an investigation. According to preliminary reports, the automatic signaling system malfunctioned, the train was switched to manual control, and a control center employee allowed the Renfe train to proceed, even though an Iryo train was already parked on the tracks ahead.
Following the emergency, the Sindicato Español de Maquinistas Ferroviarios (Sindicato Español de Maquinistas Ferroviarios) union of train drivers declared a strike, demanding that authorities take effective measures to improve safety.
The Russian Embassy in Madrid stated that no complaints had been received from Russians regarding the train collision in Spain.
[GaroweOnline] Æthiopia has taken delivery of 12 Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets and expects to receive four S-400 air defense systems from Moscow, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Wednesday, as tensions with neighboring Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... escalate.
Abiy said the aircraft arrived a year ahead of schedule, crediting Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... for helping accelerate the delivery. He described the acquisitions as a milestone in strengthening Æthiopia’s national security and deterring potential aggression.
The announcement comes amid a worsening dispute between Æthiopia and Eritrea, which have exchanged accusations over military activity along their shared border and support for gangs in Æthiopia’s northern Tigray region.
The two countries severed diplomatic ties in early October, deepening concerns that renewed fighting in northern Æthiopia could spill across the border. Their relationship has tanked in recent years, despite a 2018 peace agreement that ended decades of hostility.
Æthiopia has called for sovereign access to the Red Sea, a demand that has heightened tensions with Eritrea, which controls a strategic stretch of the coastline.
The Su-35 is a Russian-made multirole fighter designed for air combat and ground-attack missions. The aircraft can reach speeds of about 2,400 kilometers per hour at high altitude and is capable of operating over long distances.
The S-400 is a Russian long-range air defense system designed to track and intercept aircraft and various types of missiles. Abiy did not say when the systems would be delivered or where the aircraft and defense batteries would be deployed.
He also did not disclose the value of the deal.
Æthiopia faces multiple security challenges, including renewed fighting in Tigray, where festivities between federal forces and gangs have threatened a 2022 agreement that ended a devastating two-year war.
The country’s military has used drones and other imported weapons in recent conflicts. The acquisition of the Russian aircraft and air defense systems could expand its military capabilities, though the effect on regional security will depend on their deployment and operational readiness.Unable to connect to Postgres server!
n a surprising development, Ethiopia has taken receipt of 12 Russian-made Su-35 multirole fighters, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced, adding a significant new capability to the Ethiopian Air Force. The agreement also calls for four batteries of Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system, although their delivery schedule remains unclear.
Abiy said the fighters arrived a year ahead of schedule under an agreement with Moscow and thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for facilitating the accelerated delivery. The financial terms of the deal, the aircraft’s basing locations, and whether additional fighters are included in the agreement have not been disclosed. The Ethiopian leader announced the development on his X account, also posting photos and a video showing himself and other Ethiopian and Russian officials alongside two of the jets. The location appears to have been the third Russia-Africa Summit, taking place in Moscow on October 28-29.
The acquisition comes as Ethiopia seeks to strengthen its military capabilities amid persistent domestic security challenges and tensions across the Horn of Africa.
The Su-35 is a heavily modernized derivative of the Soviet-era Su-27, known by NATO as the Flanker. It combines twin thrust-vectoring engines for a high degree of maneuverability, advanced radar and other sensors, and the ability to carry a range of air-to-air and air-to-surface weapons.
Its radar and long-range air-to-air missile capabilities, in particular, represent a notable improvement for Ethiopia’s ability to detect and engage hostile aircraft, while its multirole design allows it to perform a wide range of strike missions.
Ethiopia already operates Russian-designed Su-27 fighters, providing a considerable degree of familiarity with the Flanker family. The current fleet comprises around 10 (and perhaps as many as 15) secondhand Su-27s, including two-seaters, supplemented in 2024 by a pair of Su-30Ks. The latter were originally produced for India as interim equipment, and then ended up in storage in Belarus before being refurbished and delivered to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Flankers saw action against Eritrean opposition in the 1990s, and there have also been a handful of non-combat attrition losses.
The planned acquisition of four S-400 batteries could prove equally significant.
The S-400 is a mobile air-defense system designed to engage aircraft, cruise missiles, and certain ballistic missile threats.
If delivered, the systems would considerably strengthen Ethiopia’s ability to protect military installations, critical infrastructure, and other strategic sites against aerial attack.
Ethiopia occupies a strategically important position in the Horn of Africa, bordering Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. Its security environment includes various unresolved regional tensions, longstanding border disputes, and internal armed conflicts.
Ethiopia’s relationship with Eritrea remains particularly relevant given their history of war and continuing tensions. Relations with Egypt and Sudan are also shaped by disputes over the Nile.
Abiy has presented the acquisition as a means of deterring aggression and strengthening national sovereignty.
At the same time, the delivery reinforces Russia’s position as a supplier of advanced military equipment to African countries. Russian exports to the continent have included combat aircraft, helicopters, armored vehicles, and ground-based air-defense systems.
Su-35s, specifically, have previously been delivered to Algeria, a long-term recipient of Russian military equipment on the African continent, as you can read about here.
[IsraelTimes] Lina Attalah, founder of banned Mada Masr news site, fined $53,400 and detained until it’s paid; conviction is for running outlet without a license, though it has sought one for years
An Egyptian court ordered the closure of one of Egypt’s last independent news outlets Tuesday after convicting its editor-in-chief of operating a website without a license, in a major blow to the country’s shrinking press freedom.
The publication, Mada Masr, said its editor-in-chief and founder, Lina Attalah, was ordered to pay a fine equivalent to about $53,400. After the verdict, the judge ordered Attalah detained until the fine is paid.
Mada Masr was one of the few remaining news outlets in Egypt known for investigating corruption, the expanding role of the country’s powerful military, and human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... violations in a country where newspapers and television stations are closely controlled by authorities. Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Human Rights Watch called the prosecution of Attalah an escalation in an "outrageous attack on independent media."
Attalah’s lead lawyer, Hassan el-Azhary, said Mada Masr planned to appeal the closure order.
"Today’s decision represents a crushing blow to press freedom in Egypt and marks a dark day for independent journalism in the country," Amnesty International said in a statement. By imposing a large fine, ordering the closure of Mada Masr and the seizure of its property, while "detaining Lina Attalah until payment is made, the Egyptian authorities are sending a clear and ruthless message: critical, independent reporting will not be tolerated."
During Tuesday’s session at a Cairo misdemeanor court — the first in a trial announced last week — the judge rejected all of the defense’s procedural requests and ordered its lawyers to immediately give closing arguments, said Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a rights group, who attended the session.
When Attalah’s eight lawyers refused, the judge brought in a court-appointed lawyer none of them knew, over loud objections from the defense and from Attalah herself, Bahgat said. The judge declined to enter her rejection of the lawyer into the record, he said.
State security prosecutors summoned Attalah for questioning last week on charges of publishing false news and operating without a license, then referred her to trial on the latter charge.
Mada Masr says it first applied for a license in 2018 but never received an answer. Authorities have blocked its website inside Egypt since 2017, and the outlet says this is the sixth case brought against it or its journalists in six years.
Amnesty International and 118 other civil society groups and independent media outlets worldwide called on Egyptian authorities to stop targeting Mada Masr and grant it a license.
Khaled Elbalshy, head of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, the country’s press union, said in a Facebook post that the organization is standing by and supporting Attalah’s case, calling it "a wake-up call" that "runs counter to the demands" for removing press restrictions and media reform.
The case comes amid a broader crackdown on independent media in Egypt. In late September, security forces arrested six journalists from the investigative platform Matsdaash. They remain in pretrial detention on charges including joining and financing a terrorist group and spreading false news.
Egypt ranks 169th among 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
That’s all they’re admitting to. How much is it really, and how far back did it start?
[Breitbart] China’s National Bureau of Statistics published the 2026 edition of its yearbook this week, revealing that the national population declined by 3.39 million in 2025 — the fourth decline in a row, and the worst since 2022.
China’s population remains enormous at over 1.4 billion, but the cycle of births and deaths left it 7.71 million people smaller than it was in 2021, the beginning of China’s seemingly inexorable population decline.
Foreign Affairs called it “China’s long twilight,” pointing out that the situation for China was graver than the total population numbers indicated, because a generation of much-needed young workers is not being born:
By the 2040s, if China continues to follow East Asia’s descent to ultralow fertility rates, it will shed around one percent of its population annually—roughly ten million people, more than the population of New York City. At the same time, the proportion of China’s population aged 65 and older will surge, doubling from 15 percent today to around 30 percent in the 2040s, and then rising to well over 40 percent by the late twenty-first century. The size of that cohort in the United States, by contrast, is projected to rise far more gradually, from around 19 percent of the population today to just over 23 percent in 2060.
Put simply, China is entering a century of demographic decline. This change will remake the country’s economy and politics just as dramatically as the last century’s demographic boom did.
Signs of this century of decline include China’s “increasingly regressive and rigid” political system, which relies on “repression and reflexively following central mandates” instead of innovation.
Foreign Affairs pointed out that China’s economy under dictator Xi Jinping relies heavily upon pumping out waves of cheap exports as domestic consumer demand withers, while its government is increasingly a one-man show marked by sudden purges of top officials, without the flexibility that characterized the boom years — and growing population — of Xi’s predecessor Deng Xiaoping.
“Even as the country heads toward a demographic cliff, Beijing seems incapable of preparing for the social challenges it will face in the decades ahead,” the article concluded.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argued that China’s sudden “birth crash” would undermine every plan the Politburo made over the previous two decades, because those plans were premised on a growing industrial base of young workers.
AEI placed much of the blame on China’s infamous “One Child” policy of forced abortions, which crippled Chinese fertility rates in the 90s and set the stage for a “full-blown plunge” in the 2010s. The post-One Child “birth shock” produced the kind of population decline that usually follows a devastating war or plague.
#1
"China Loses Three Million in Largest Population Drop Since 2022"
Guessing maybe in part:
Actual Covid #'s,
And about 1/2 as planted agents sent in as 5th column immigration to the USA, Canada and other nations on their agenda list.
#2
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argued that China’s sudden “birth crash” would undermine every plan the Politburo made over the previous two decades
That's the problem will all bureaucratic states which corrupt honesty and only the the 'happy glad' reports go up.
#3
Yi Fuxian, at thenUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison conducts demography research. He thinks the current census report is about 100M too high.
UN Demographic officials accept China's numbers.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
10/29/2026 11:53 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Just remember that this is from a report by the Chinese government.
The actual population drop numbers are probably way way higher.
The folks doing the counting and reporting don't want to give their higher ups any 'bad news', as the consequences are rather severe.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
10/29/2026 11:54 Comments ||
Top||
#5
And Dr. Fuxian's reporting has always been very conservative about China's loss of population.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
10/29/2026 11:57 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Typical know-it-all’s in charge, F around with the natural order of things and then seemed perplexed at the inevitable outcome.
Note: there have been some data analysis studies trying to estimate the Chinese population by backing into the number examining food consumption and other metrics. I think those estimates came to the conclusion that China advertises way more population than metrics support.
#12
Looks like the Census Bureau says that domestic births exceed deaths - but it doesn't parse out how many domestic births are to illegal immigrants.
[Jpost] DHS said in a statement it was "aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively."
The leak website Distributed Denial of Secrets said on Wednesday it has released data on more than 40,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, including details about officials working in sensitive fields such as surveillance and human intelligence.
DHS said in a statement it was "aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively." The agency said it was working to ensure its employees were properly protected and would update the public "when more information is available."
The disclosure, which the nonprofit data transparency group says draws on information obtained by an entity calling itself "Department of Peace," is the third major government data leak to make headlines in the past month.
In September, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed the theft of a massive trove of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including sensitive job details and medical information from thousands of bureau employees. Last week, the Defense Department was hit with a class action lawsuit following a breach that exposed data on millions of current and former military personnel.
The DHS data includes names, phone numbers, and email addresses of employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and other DHS component agencies.
Also included in the data were job titles and email groups, which, among other details, showed which agents were assigned to special operations, surveillance jobs, computer forensics, and undercover work.
In a statement, Distributed Denial of Secrets co-founder Emma Best said the hacktivist known as "maia arson crimew" developed a search tool for the data that would allow the public to browse it. Best said the tool would "replace anonymity with accountability" and empower journalists, guide public records requests, and boost congressional oversight.
The Department of Peace did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement included with the data it said that DHS employees "have our information, so it's only fair that we have theirs" and that it hoped the data "can be used to limit further harm by the DHS and supports all efforts in that direction."
ENTITY CLAIMED RESPONSIBILITY FOR PREVIOUS DHS HACK
The Department of Peace in March grabbed credit for hacking DHS and posting documents related to contracts with outside vendors.
Best's statement said the Department of Peace harvested the data from the Okta sign-on service used by DHS. Rooters could not immediately corroborate the claim. Okta said in response to a Rooters query, "Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised."
Rooters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the entire data trove, but it was able to match personal information about six DHS employees named in the leak to credit bureau records and breach data carried by the dark web intelligence platform District 4 Labs.
Rooters called three DHS employees directly and was able to confirm their phone numbers and other details. One said it was the first they had heard of a breach.
In several cases, the data tracked information available on DHS employees' LinkedIn profiles. But in others, the data revealed nonpublic data about internal DHS organization charts or previously undisclosed programs or operations.
[TWZ] Serbia has released the first footage of its TSMB M-25 heavy self-propelled mortar in action, revealing an unusual artillery system that puts a massive 203mm weapon on a comparatively light, six-wheeled truck. The system is designed to hurl projectiles weighing around 220 pounds at targets up to approximately seven-and-a-half miles away, bringing super-heavy firepower to a platform that looks surprisingly modest for the job.
The Serbian Ministry of Defense published the brief footage in a larger video montage, seen immediately below, but has not disclosed when or where the firing tests took place or what they demonstrated. Regardless, the M-25’s configuration alone makes it stand out.
[JP] As Thailand approved a $104.4 million emergency defense fund to buy military equipment and reinforce defenses along the Cambodian border, IWI (Israel Weapon Industries) announced it delivered its ARBEL Anti-Drone System (ADS) to Thailand’s Defense Ministry.
Thai forces have integrated the platform into their existing rifles after troops received on-site training from company officials.
Developed by IWI after close to a decade of design work, the fire control technology transforms standard infantry rifles into precision-guided interceptors.
“Small tactical drones have become a direct and growing threat to soldiers on the battlefield. We developed the ARBEL ADS to give soldiers an effective means of defending themselves against this evolving threat, while providing armed forces with a critical tactical advantage in an increasingly complex battlespace,” said SK Group’s vice chairman Ronen Hamudot.
Integrated directly into the AR-15 platform and IWI’s own ARAD assault rifles and Negev machine guns, ARBEL allows soldiers to engage threats, including aerial ones, using their existing weapons, optics, and ammunition with no additional gear required. Depending on the selected firing mode, it can hit targets up to 450 meters away using standard 5.56 mm ammunition.
With electronic sensors and gyros, it simplifies the shooting cycle after the initial shot and enables effective target engagement within a window of opportunity of several seconds, typical of real combat situations. According to IWI, it significantly improves efficiency and lethality by increasing hit probability for static and moving threats by two to three times.
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.
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
