[Just The News] Akey Russiagate lawyer known for his bare-knuckle election and legal tactics has landed at the center of the alleged Democrat plot in the Alaska Senate race to recruit a decoy candidate to siphon votes from their Republican opponent.
Marc Elias departed from the Perkins Coie law firm in 2021 and set up his own firm, catering to Democratic Party candidates. About the same time, the Justice Department was investigating its role in the Steele Dossier and its Trump-Russia collusion allegations, and he could face questions about the role his law firm played in representing multiple participants in the alleged scheme to recruit the candidate known as "Decoy Dan" in the Alaska race and whether there was any illegal coordination under federal election law.
Elias and his firm, Elias Law Group, were named in the explosive pre-election New York Times report on how campaign officials for Alaska's Democratic senatorial candidate Mary Peltola coordinated with Democratic operatives and aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to recruit the decoy, Daniel J. Sullivan, whose name is nearly identical to incumbent GOP Senator Dan S. Sullivan.
Still too close to call
The Senate race, which remains too close to call as election officials count ballots in the state’s more complicated ranked-choice voting system, has become the center of legal challenges and a possible criminal investigation related to the purported decoy candidacy.
The Justice Department escalated its probe into the purported scheme on Election Day, reportedly warning roughly 20 Democrats in writing that they may be investigative targets. Marc Elias as well as at least one Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee official were notified. A target letter signals that prosecutors view the recipient as a likely defendant, but it does not guarantee charges will be filed.
[Breitbart] Two Highly Skilled Female Skydivers Die After Chutes Become Entangled over Southern California.
Two exceptionally experienced skydivers died this weekend in a freak accident when their parachutes became entangled, causing them to plummet helplessly some 150 feet to the ground.
The accident, occurring during an organized dive in Southern California, took the lives of George Jean, 56 from Box Elder, South Dakota and Levi Pimentel, 29 of Auroa, Illinois, according to news reports.
Here, hold my beer while I adjust my helmet Gopro.
As is sometimes said: foreign affairs are the best
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Jensen Huang, CEO of the American technology company NVIDIA, admitted to cheating on his wife with a woman suspected of spying for China. This was reported by Axios on November 8.
The portal published a letter from Huang, in which he noted that there was no justification for his actions.
"I cheated on my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I deeply regret it," the letter reads.
Following his admission of a romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, the company's board of directors announced an independent investigation.
On November 6, The New York Times reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned senior White House officials about Huang's relationship with a woman US intelligence officials believed to be a Chinese spy.
NVIDIA technologies are indirectly linked to the F-35 fighter jet through high-performance computing. The onboard computing systems of modern fighter jets require powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) to process data from radars, targeting systems, and artificial intelligence. NVIDIA supplies specialized processors used in onboard equipment. In September, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government had seized parts for the American F-35 fighter jet, which, while being shipped from Australia to the United States, had somehow ended up in Hong Kong. Later, reports emerged that a United Parcel Service employee was allegedly responsible for the loss of the classified F-35 parts.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Two solar flares of the penultimate power class, M, were detected on the sun on the evening of November 8. This was reported by the press service of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Federal State Budgetary Institution "E.K. Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics."
Scientists recorded an M1.2-class flare lasting 25 minutes at 6:33 PM Moscow time. Another flare (M1.1-class) occurred at 9:27 PM Moscow time and lasted 20 minutes.
The number of solar flares over the past 24 hours reached 29, equaling the 21st century record. This was reported on November 8 by the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"According to the NOAA World Catalog, this is a tie for a record dating back to at least 2000," the lab's website said.
Scientists have twice recorded a similar number of flares in a single day: on May 5, 2022, and on December 10, 2024. Thus, November 7 became the third date since the beginning of the 21st century when solar activity reached this level, the experts explained.
Moreover, the scientists noted, the Sun has never surpassed the 30-flare-per-day mark this century. All 29 flares on the record-breaking day occurred within a single sunspot group, number 4566.
On November 5, specialists discovered one of the largest coronal holes observed in 2026 on the Sun, measuring approximately 1 million km. They warned that solar wind streams from this region could trigger magnetic storms for several days. According to preliminary calculations, the effects will last at least five days, and full stabilization of the Earth's magnetic field is not expected until November 13-14.
On October 11, scientists recorded a G3 magnetic storm, the strongest in the past three months. The last disturbance of this intensity was observed on July 4.
Cardiologist Alexey Erlich previously noted in an interview with Regnum News Agency that there is currently no scientific evidence of the negative impact of magnetic storms on human health. The expert pointed out that the worsening of health that some people attribute to geomagnetic disturbances is often attributed to self-delusion.
[JP] From time immemorial, education has been one of Judaism’s most important values. In Jewish tradition, teachers are revered figures. "Parents bring a child into this world, but a teacher can bring a child into the World to Come," says the Talmud.
In that spirit, the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, and its partner organization UnitEd convened the four-day Global Jewish Educators Summit in Jerusalem on October 12.
More than 250 teachers, principals, and educational leaders from dozens of educational institutions and Jewish communities worldwide attended. The conference program included professional development sessions, panels, workshops, and tours of the Gaza border communities and heritage sites.
[TWZ] The Army on Wednesday unveiled its new system allowing front-line troops to rapidly convert 60mm and 81mm mortar rounds into drone-droppable munitions. Dubbed the Munitions Air-dropped Lethal Effects Tool (MALET), it is part of the service’s Picatinny Common Lethality Integration Kit (CLIK), which enables lethal payloads to be placed on unmanned systems, including small drones.
The development of these systems is taking place as the Army races to catch up to a mode of delivering munitions on enemy targets that began to show up a decade ago, when ISIS fighters started using this capability during the Battle of Mosul in Iraq in 2016 and 2017.
Work on the MALET system began in 2024, the Army explained in its announcement Wednesday morning. Experts at the Armaments Center’s Fuze and Mortar Divisions “recognized a critical opportunity,” according to the service. “Rather than introducing new munitions to the battlefield, soldiers could benefit from a capability to safely drop existing munitions without having to perform field modifications or manually remove safety mechanisms.”
What they came up with was a clip-on kit that adds a fuze function to the round that allows it to be detonated after being dropped and includes fins to ensure “the aerodynamic stability required for a drone drop of the cartridge,” the Army stated.
Once the rounds are converted, the goal is to drastically extend the range of mortars. Fired from a tube, they have a range of about between two to 3.5 miles. While the Army did not specify which drones were used in recent MALET tests, a solicitation earlier this year said the service is seeking to place these systems on drones with a desired operational range of between 20 and 40 km (about 12.5 to 25 miles).
The MALET system doesn’t damage the mortar, nor does removing it. That way, if the mortar is not expended, or mission requirements shift, soldiers can return the munition back to its original state, allowing it to be fired as a conventional mortar if needed.
Another advantage of the MALET system, according to the Army, is that it has a large supply of mortars.
“Instead of having to procure purpose-built munitions on drones, soldiers will be able to use rounds which they have in abundance already, such as 60mm and 81mm mortar rounds,” the Army noted.
Recent test drops at multiple facilities “have already shown the MALET’s effectiveness, successfully maturing both the system’s fuze function and its critical safety elements,” the Army claimed. “The team just recently had a successful test where they demonstrated the performance of MALET with live 60mm mortars. The items were dropped from a UAS on the move; they oriented correctly and detonated within the desired target area.”
As it conducts these tests, the Army says the MALET architecture can be applied to munitions other than these two mortar types. Mortars were the first to be demonstrated due to their maturity and alignment with large UAS requirements.
“The MALET Integrated Product Team (IPT) is exploring even more concepts” which are “mostly close-hold for now,” said the Army. Senior Scientific Technical Manager for Indirect Fire Munitions Ryan Gorman would say only that these new concepts are “unique.”
“The MALET program is a great example of how the DEVCOM Armaments Center can leverage core competencies like fuze design, safety, and ammunition development and apply them to a dynamic, emerging space like lethal UAS to provide a unique and viable option for the warfighter,” Gorman added.
For the Army, the next step is to distribute the kit to major military exercises this fall “to allow for soldier touchpoints and receive feedback,” the service stated. “Conversations with industry partners, the User and Acquisition communities have already proven fruitful.”
As we noted at the top of this story, MALET is part of the Picatinny CLIK modular system. It includes the Armament UAS Delivered Immediate Battlefield Effects (AUDIBLE) Weapons Release System and the Gunslinger fire control software.
AUDIBLE enables “quick change adapters to safely drop existing munitions, like the M67 grenade, providing a proven concept that is scalable to service a larger array of munition options,” the Army said in a 2025 release.
Gunslinger was originally designed by the Armaments Center for the Future Vertical Lift – Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft XM915 20mm Cannon, the Army explained in a separate release.
Fire control software helps users point the weapon where it will most likely result in a strike while taking into account variables like target or weapons platform motion.
While the Army is touting the MALET system, it should be noted that last year, the service came under fire for lauding its ability to drop a grenade from a drone. This practice had been in widespread use by even the lowliest of actors for years by then.
“Have you ever seen a drone drop a GRENADE?” a now-deleted post from the official U.S. Army account on X read. “Watch Soldiers from @7thATC [7th Army Training Command], the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine [JMTG-U] and @173rdAbnBde [the 173rd Airborne Brigade] execute the Army’s first live-grenade drop from an unmanned aircraft system in Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany.”
The accompanying video, also since deleted, showed Army personnel loading standard M67 fragmentation hand grenades, as well as inert M69 practice types, onto small quadcopter-type drones fitted with purpose-built mechanisms for dropping them. The system was designed to pull out the safety pin on the unmodified grenade as it is released.
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.
[Just The News] Akey Russiagate lawyer known for his bare-knuckle election and legal tactics has landed at the center of the alleged Democrat plot in the Alaska Senate race to recruit a decoy candidate to siphon votes from their Republican opponent.
