Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

In 2016, a crack in the ice opened beneath the site of the U.S. Navy’s flagship Arctic exercise several hundred miles north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, forcing experiments to end early and leaving researchers scrambling to evacuate. Five years later, an early freeze trapped roughly two dozen commercial vessels in the East Siberian Sea; some had to wait weeks for Russian icebreaker assistance. And during a Canadian-led multinational military exercise in 2025, allied forces encountered a difficult combination of conditions: extreme cold grounded helicopters, broke snowmobiles, and knocked out communications equipment even as thinning sea ice forced U.S. pilots to…

VIENNA — The CIA has warned European countries of a suspected Russian plot to launch Gerbera-type drones from aboard commercial vessels in the Mediterranean, a new report says.Major Spanish daily El Mundo published the article, which was based on testimony from an anonymous Lithuanian intelligence source, late Wednesday local time. According to the paper, the CIA had assessed that Spain, France or Italy may be the targets of these attacks, with drones launching from international waters in the Mediterranean and traveling to the coastal countries over the course of an hour or two. The Gerbera drone was selected because of…

The growing rivalry between Norma Dumont and Ailin Perez is boiling as they approach fight night on Sept. 26, and the top-ranked Brazilian makes it clear that things are personal with the rising Argentine bantamweight.Dumont vs. Perez goes down in the preliminary portion of UFC Vegas 121, and Dumont celebrates finally having a date in the cage with Perez after claiming “she ran away as much as she could” before ultimately agreeing to meeting at the Meta APEX.“It’s a fight that literally has a personal anger, a personal issue, that the two of us have against each other,” Dumont told…

As the Trump administration downsizes the civil service and weakens federal employee job protections, new survey data shows that, by some metrics, more Americans have a favorable opinion of civil servants, even as trust in the federal government diminishes.“Views of civil servants are more positive now than any of the previous few years,” researchers for the Partnership for Public Service wrote. “Whether that trend continues will probably depend on how the Trump administration continues its efforts to change the federal workforce and how much competence and experience are valued.”The good government nonprofit has been conducting national surveys on the public’s…

“If one is to judge by the fire and ardor with which this book is sought after, it is the most excellent of all books. Never were so many copies printed of any work; never were so many editions made of a single book; never has any writing been read by so many people.”-Pierre-Valentin Faydit in La Télémacomanie (1700), snidely critiquing the “mania” surrounding the initial publication of The Adventures of Telemachus.A sprawling epic that thrills the public, mesmerizes it with its aesthetic qualities and technical prowess, and reignites collective interest in some of the most foundational texts of the…

I like the idea of a tactics game where getting to know your companion changes what you two can do in combat. That’s the premise behind Nightbound, and you can now give it a try. Crooked Cats Studio has released a free demo on Steam for Windows, covering the first three days and nights of Jun and Loren’s story. Jun arrives at Loren’s home in a world devastated by the Bloom, which hunts the remaining survivors after dark. She isn’t exactly pleased to see him, but they need each other to survive. The plan is to repair a van and…

The ambulance variant of the Boxer 8×8 armoured vehicle. (Crown Copyright)A contract worth £2.8 billion was signed on 4 November 2019 between ARTEC and OCCAR to deliver 623 Boxer armoured vehicles to the British Army that will form part of its Armoured Brigade Combat Teams (ABCT) in the early 2030s.ARTEC, a joint venture between KMW, Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles and Rheinmetall Military Vehicles Nederland, designed Boxer to meet the requirements of the German and Dutch armies for a highly protected armoured personnel carrier (APC). A 530kW multi-fuel engine powers the 33-ton 8×8, with a top speed of 103km/hr. Its modular…

VIENNA — German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters after a Bundestag defense committee hearing on Wednesday that lawmakers had shown “much agreement” on his ministry’s record 2027 budget request, even as he pushed back against criticism that Germany is buying too much legacy hardware rather than new technology.Pistorius is asking parliament to approve nearly €140 billion ($160 billion) for defense next year, combining €109.7 billion from the core ministry budget — a 32.7% increase over 2026 — with roughly €30 billion drawn from the expiring Sondervermögen Bundeswehr, a special off-budget fund created in 2022 following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.The…

Creotech Instruments (Creotech), Poland’s largest integrator and manufacturer of satellites, satellite systems, and subsystems, is witnessing a dramatic increase in the satellite demand and aims at quadrupling its production capacity in the coming years, while continuing to keep under strict control its supply chain to avid incurring in export issues Multidomain added space and cyber to the three typical domain, land, sea, and air. Poland presence in the space sector is increasing the largest satellite integrator in the country being Creotech. Visiting MSPO as part of a study tour on the Polish Defence Industry organised by Polska Agencja Inwestycji i…

Greenland’s government and residents expressed relief that a military pact with the United States and Denmark may end anxiety over President Donald Trump’s threats to seize their Arctic island, but many remain distrustful of Washington.“I am incredibly relieved and think the outcome is very sensible. We can be satisfied,” Naaja Nathanielsen, a Greenlandic MP in the Danish parliament, told Reuters.Parliament speaker Kim Kielsen urged households to raise the Greenlandic flag on Wednesday. Activist and influencer Orla Joelsen encouraged residents in the capital, Nuuk, to show up at the airport to welcome the prime minister and foreign minister back from New…