Navy

Russian nuclear submarines sailed past UK waters on secret mission into the Atlantic to prove they can strike the United States in largest operation since the Cold War

Russian submarines are conducting a secret mission to sail into the North Atlantic and threaten the US East Coast, according to Norwegian intelligence.

Ten submarines, at least eight of them nuclear-powered, set sail from the port of Murmansk early last week before some of them passed through the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, skirting British territorial waters.

Those submarines are now heading out into the North Atlantic with the goal being to pass west of Greenland and as far into the North Atlantic as possible.

The mission, the largest fielded by Russia's Northern Fleet since the Cold War, is designed to prove that Moscow has the ability to strike the US East Coast, Norway's intelligence service said.

Internet security

Russia will disconnect from the Internet tomorrow to test cyber-war defences

In a bid to protect itself from any cyberattacks , Russia will disconnect from the global internet tomorrow.

The test will see Russia revert to an internal version of the web called ‘RuNet’ which is isolated from the networks of other nations, according to a report by D-Russia.

While the Russian Government claims that the test is intended to shield Russian systems from a potential cyber-attack, critics claim that the tests are part of a wider attempt to isolate Russia’s citizens from the surrounding world.

The D-Russia report writes: “On Monday, the government approved the provision on conducting exercises to ensure the stable, safe and holistic functioning of the Internet and public communications networks in the Russian Federation.

Privacy security

Edward Snowden says Facebook is just as untrustworthy as the NSA

American whistleblower Edward Snowden is living a life of exile in Russia because he shared thousands of top-secret government documents with journalists. But six years after he exposed how the US government surveils the digital lives of everyday Americans, Snowden is not just worried about the powers of government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), he’s concerned about big technology companies, too.

In an upcoming interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher on the Recode Decode podcast, Snowden said he thinks it’s a “mistake” to see the NSA as a bigger threat to privacy than tech companies.

“Facebook’s internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their capability, and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment. And damn the consequences,” Snowden told Swisher. “This is actually precisely the same as what the NSA does. Google ... has a very similar model. They go, ‘Oh, we’re connecting people.’ They go, ‘Oh, we’re organizing data.’” Although, Snowden said, these companies still don’t know as much as the government, which can gather information from all of the many tech platforms.

War on terror

Al-Baghdadi’s ‘number one replacement’ is dead, Trump says

U.S. troops have successfully taken down the top replacement for Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to President Donald Trump.

“Just confirmed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s number one replacement has been terminated by American troops,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Most likely would have taken the top spot - Now he is also Dead!”

The Pentagon referred questions about the tweet to the White House, which did not immediately provide additional information when contacted by Military Times. The State Department also did not provide comment on the record to Military Times.

It’s unclear who Trump was specifically referring to, however, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that ISIS’s spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir was killed in a strike in northeast Syria. An anonymous U.S. official told the Journal that al Muhajir “would have been one of the potential successors” to al-Baghdadi.

Syrian Democratic Forces, the anti-ISIS coalition the U.S. has backed, also announced Sunday that al-Muhajir was dead. Mazloum Abdî, the commander of the SDF, said Sunday he “was targeted in a village named Ein al Baat near Jaraboul city, the mission was conducted via direct coordination of SDF Intel & US military.”

Weapons

Ground Launched Variant of the Small Diameter Bomb in Production

The Small Diameter Bomb, also known as the GBU-39B, is a bomb with retractable gliders that allow it to accurately guide itself to its target. Developed by Boeing, the bomb is an air-dropped weapon that several militaries around the world operate. However, now Boeing and Saab has teamed up to develop a ground launched variant of the GBU-39B, the GLSDB (Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb).

The GLSDB was first tested in 2015. The first test was to see how well the small diameter bomb integrates with the M26 rocket. The second test was two years later and was mainly to test the weapon’s guidance systems. The final test happened in Norway and was to determine if the weapon is capable of hitting a target 130 kilometers away.

After the successful third launch of the ground to ground small diameter bomb, Boeing and Saab believe they have managed to acquire the necessary data to move the weapon into mass production.

Now with the small diameter bomb about to enter production, the two companies need to find buyers for the weapon system. While the United States remains a potential buyer for the product, the two companies believe that their best markets are international militaries, specifically those with smaller air forces and looking for a low cost option for precision strikes.

Cybersecurity

EU Report: Cybercriminals Targeting Profits and Children

The European Union’s police agency has recently noted that cybercriminals are exploiting online vulnerabilities and utilizing new technology to target more profitable victims.

Europol has recently published its annual Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment Report. In it, the agency has mentioned that digital data has become a major target for hackers and cybercriminals. The report further notes that “data security and consumer awareness are paramount for organizations”.

The annually published report is mainly intended to give law enforcement and legislators the tools to analyze cybercrime trends. The cybercrimes that raise the most concern among these agencies are often fraud, theft, and child sexual exploitation.

The report also mentions how “deep fake” technologies, technologies that make it seem as though someone is saying or doing something that they aren’t, raises concern for online child sexual exploitation.

Energy security
Researchers transmit energy with laser in 'historic' power-beaming demonstration

It was the second day of a three-day-long tech demonstration at the David Taylor Model Basin at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where attendees had gathered to stand around in the dark to look at something they mostly couldn't see.

It was a long-range, free-space power beaming system—the first of its kind. Attendees that day, May 23, could see the system itself—the two 13-foot-high towers, one a two-kilowatt laser transmitter, the other a receiver of specially designed photovoltaics. But the important part, the laser that was beaming 400 watts of power across 325 meters, from the transmitter to the receiver, was invisible to the naked eye.

On one end of the of the testing facility—one of the largest test facilities for model ships in the world—the receiver was converting the laser energy to DC power, which an inverter was turning into AC power to run lights, several laptops, and a coffeemaker that the organizers were using to make coffee for the attendees, or "laser lattes."

Terror threat

Ex-Saddam Hussein Officer Becomes New Daesh Leader – Reports

After US military operations Saturday and Sunday resulted in the deaths of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and spokesperson Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir in Syria, the terrorist organization has reportedly acquired a new leader.

Abdullah Qardash, who reportedly bears the nicknames “the Destoyer” and “The Professor,” was reportedly already overseeing Daesh’s day-to-day operations and kill campaigns and has formally become its leader in the wake of Baghdadi’s death on Saturday, Newsweek reported, citing a regional intelligence official.

Qardash was previously an officer of the Iraqi military during the reign of the late President Saddam Hussein.
“Baghdadi was a figurehead. He was not involved in operations or day-to-day,” the official told Newsweek. “All Baghdadi did was say yes or no — no planning.”

According to the Times of London, Qardash had been loyal to Baghdadi, as the pair were held in the Camp Bucca detention centre in Basra, Iraq, after being jailed by US forces over their links to al-Qaeda in 2003, and Baghdadi was even handing more power to Qardash before he died. Fadhel Abo Ragheef, a former security analyst with the Iraqi government, told the Times in August that Baghdadi was “trying to prepare Qardash to lead ISIS in the future.”

Declassification


Vatican's Secret Archives no longer officially secret after renaming

The Vatican Secret Archives, containing millions of documents spanning 12 centuries, are no longer officially “secret”.

Pope Francis has renamed the priceless archives, which include letters concerning King Henry VIII’s request to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, which led to the English church breaking away from Rome in 1534.

They also hold the original acts of the 1633 trial of the astronomer Galileo by the Roman Inquisition, which condemned him as a heretic for teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun.

The Vatican said on Monday the new name would be the Vatican Apostolic Archives. This removes any potentially “negative nuances” from the Latin word “secretum”, which the pope said in a decree was closer to “private” or “reserved” than “secret” when the archives were first named in about 1610.

Missile defense

US ballistic missile defenses, 2019

Missile defense systems can have a significant effect on nuclear weapons postures, the strategy for their potential use, and crisis stability and international security. The defenses don’t even have to work very well; the uncertainty that they might work, or could become more capable in the future, are enough to trigger the effect. Advocates argue that missile defenses don’t threaten anyone and can help deter adversaries, but those adversaries are unlikely to simply give up; they are more likely to be stimulated to try to beat the defenses to ensure their own deterrent forces remain effective and credible. This dynamic is clear from many cases during the Cold War and remains evident today. On balance, it is difficult to see what real national security benefits the United States has achieved from decades of missile defense research and development. While defense of a forward base of a limited size may be possible, the promise of a credible defense of the homeland remains doubtful. Instead of assured security, missile defenses have helped to harden adversarial perceptions of US intentions and fueled development of more capable offensive capabilities directed against the United States and its allies. In response to actual or suspected missile defense capabilities, the nuclear-armed states undertook substantial modernization programs during the Cold War.

War on terror

Syrian Kurds say spy stole Baghdadi’s underpants for DNA test

Syrian Kurds say they managed to place a spy in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s inner circle who stole a pair of the Islamic State leader’s underpants to prove his identity and then helped guide US soldiers to his Syrian hideout.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claim they played a key role in tracking down Baghdadi to a compound in northern Syria where he was reportedly planning his escape over the nearby border into Turkey.

Donald Trump has thus played down the role of the SDF, who fought the military campaign against Isis with US troops, but whom Trump abandoned earlier this month by ordering US troops to stand aside before a Turkish offensive against the Syrian Kurds.

“Since 15 May, we have been working together with the CIA to track Al Baghdadi and monitor him closely,” Polat Can, a senior SDF official said on Twitter. “One of our sources was able to reach the house where Al Baghdadi was hiding. Al Baghdadi changed his places of residence very often. He was about to move to a new place in Jerablus [on the border with Turkey].”

He continued: “Our own source, who had been able to reach Al Baghdadi, brought Al Baghdadi’s underwear to conduct a DNA test and make sure (100%) that the person in question was Al Baghdadi himself.”

Economic security

Here Are The Countries On The Brink Of Recession Going Into 2020

Topline: Amid a global slowdown in economic growth that has seen central banks lower interest rates near zero or below in an effort to provide stimulus, here’s a look at which of the major economies are on high recession alert.

• Hong Kong, following five months of citizen protests that have battered the city’s economy, has entered into a “technical recession,” with industries like tourism and retail especially hard hit from the ongoing turmoil.
• The U.K., with its ongoing uncertainty over leaving the European Union (and still no end in sight), has watched its economy recently shrink for the first time since 2012, and a no-deal Brexit could well slide it into a recession.
• Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, is set to slide into a recession thanks to a continued decline in its manufacturing sector as well as lackluster global auto sales.
• Italy, the EU’s fourth-largest economy, was in a technical recession for the second half of 2018 and has faced continued economic woes from weak productivity, high unemployment, huge debt and political turmoil.
• China’s economy has continued to slow amid the trade war, too, although not yet in a recession: The IMF forecast only 5.8% growth for the world’s second-largest economy in 2020, down from 6.6% in 2018 and 6.1% forecast in 2019.

Other highly stressed economies around the world include Turkey, Argentina, Iran, Mexico and Brazil, among others.

Election security

Hannity: Reports on alleged FISA abuse and origins of Russia probe will ‘shock the conscience and soul of the nation

Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity said the release of investigations into the FBI and Justice Department probes of President Trump and his campaign will "shock the conscience and soul of the nation."

"There's a lot coming," Hannity said. "We got the Horowitz report on FISA report ... my sources tell me it will shock the conscience and soul of the nation and when the Durham report comes out, that will similarly shock the conscience and soul of the nation about abuse of power and corruption," said Hannity during this year's Politicon in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday.

WHERE IS THE FISA REPORT?

For weeks, it’s been speculated the long-awaited review of alleged surveillance abuses by the Department of Justice and the FBI during the investigation into Russia’s purported meddling in the 2016 presidential election could drop any day — though Hannity believes a November release is likely.

"We know it's finished, it still hasn't been released to the public, and we've seen delay after delay after delay," Hannity said in an earlier segment of his show.

For more than a year and a half, Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating alleged misconduct related to the FISA warrants delivered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department and the FBI obtained warrants in 2016 to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page. It is unclear, at this point, if Page was the only Trump official that the DOJ obtained a FISA warrant against.

Navy

Cheap, Stealth and Insanely Dangerous: 'AIP' Submarines are Real Killers

One of the most crucial improvements in submarines of the postwar era is the air independent propulsion (AIP) system. First fielded in the 1990s, the development of AIP changed the ways non-nuclear submarines operated, allowing them to fight—and hide—underwater longer. Combined with their extreme quietness, the use of AIP has made modern diesel-electric subs efficient killers, capable of stalking and sinking their prey even in a challenging anti-submarine warfare environment.

Conventional, non-nuclear propulsion submarines previously spent a great deal of time on the surface. Equipped with diesel-electric engines, these submarines needed surface air to run the engines and recharge their batteries. This had the unfortunate effect of limiting the amount of time a submarine could spend submerged, and meant diesel-electric subs would typically leave port sailing on the surface and then submerge once in the patrol area. A reliance on surface air also limited the amount of time a sub could stay underwater during combat.

AIP, while not granting a diesel-electric submarine the same underwater staying power as a nuclear-powered submarine, is still a radical improvement. There are several types of AIP propulsion systems. The Sterling system is one of the oldest, closed-circuit diesel generators, followed by chemical fuel cells. The latest trend in AIP systems is the use of powerful, long-lasting lithium ion batteries.

Cybersecurity

Quantum supremacy: not a Jason Bourne movie

In a development at the edge of scientific advance and journalistic descriptive capabilities, a group of Google researchers say they have achieved the science fiction-sounding feat known as “quantum supremacy.” In a paper published in Nature, members of Google’s AI Quantum team describe their successful efforts to create a computer that capitalizes on the laws of physics most obviously in play at the subatomic realm. That quantum computer, named Sycamore, “performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output,” two scientists involved in the experiment—John Martinis, chief scientist quantum hardware, and Sergio Boixo, chief scientist quantum computing theory—wrote on the Google AI Blog.

War on terror

Here’s the US military dog that helped take down ISIS leader Baghdadi

One of the most discussed details of the US military raid to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is that a dog — yes, a dog — played a vital part in the whole operation.

As the notorious terrorist tried to escape capture by fleeing into underground tunnels, a trained military canine followed to keep tabs on him. It allowed US forces to close in on Baghdadi, leading him to explode the vest he was wearing, killing himself and three children he had with him.

President Donald Trump praised the animal in his remarks announcing the operation’s success on Sunday, saying “the dog was so great.” The president did note that the dog sustained injuries during the mission, but Army Gen. Mark Miller, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the canine is recovering and is already back to work.

Economic security

The American System of Tipping Makes No Sense

Here’s a simple question. It’s Sunday. You order coffee and a simple breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast—at a local diner. The service is efficient, but not memorable. The bill comes, and it’s $10. What’s the tip?
$1.50, according to typical online guides for foreign travelers in America
$2.00 at least, according to The Washington Post
$3.00 for sure, according to The New York Times

Whatever the hell you want, according to some guys on Twitter,

I have no confidence that anything I write here will persuade readers to increase or decrease their average tip. To me, the range of answers raises a larger question: Why are we still crowdfunding worker salaries when tippers so clearly do not know what the hell they’re doing?

The history of tipping isn’t well documented, but it’s thought that aristocrats in England kicked the whole thing off when they started leaving hoteliers a little something extra on the way out. The practice then spread to the rest of Europe and the United States in the 1700s. While Europe’s political revolutions in the 19th century mostly did away with the custom, tipping persisted west of the Atlantic. Gratuity took hold in U.S. restaurants and barbershops and shoeshine stands and everywhere else where American customers could be made to feel, briefly, like a pampered aristocrat.

Financial safety

A scam targeting Americans over the phone has resulted in millions of dollars lost to hackers. Don't be the next victim.

Pieter Gunst, 34, received what he thought was a credible phone call from his bank. But in a matter of minutes, Gunst realized the call was anything but after he had nearly handed over the keys to his account.

The woman was a scammer, and Gunst was just the latest target in a growing trend that's left thousands of Americans frustrated, broke, and without a clue how to get their money back.

The over-the-phone scheme is a type of phishing scam.

And in the last year, a whopping 26,379 people reported being a victim of some sort of phishing scam. Together they reported nearly $50 million in losses, according to the FBI's 2018 Internet Crime Report.

While the number of reported scams increased slightly from the 25,344 phishing scams reported to the FBI in 2017, the losses skyrocketed by nearly $20 million.

Outer space

Air Force’s secretive X-37B ‘spaceplane’ lands after record 780 days in orbit

The U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle landed Sunday morning after more than two years in orbit. The 780-day mission bested the spacecraft’s previous record of 718 days in orbit.

“The X-37B continues to demonstrate the importance of a reusable spaceplane,” Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said in a statement. “Each successive mission advances our nation’s space capabilities.”

It was the fifth mission for the reusable and unmanned “spaceplane,” which resembles a mini space shuttle. Little is known about its latest mission, but when it was launched on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket in September 2017, the Air Force said it was carrying small satellites and would test experimental technologies in zero gravity.

“This program continues to push the envelope as the world’s only reusable space vehicle. With a successful landing today, the X-37B completed its longest flight to date and successfully completed all mission objectives,” Randy Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said in a statement Sunday. 

Drug trafficking

Americans’ love of drugs may soon bring Mexico’s collapse

Buy an avocado, boost a Mexican drug lord? Soon enough, it seems.

Reports from south of the border say Mexican avocado farmers are taking up arms to protect their increasingly valuable crop from the country’s ­rapacious cartels, always on the lookout for a quick buck.

But considering the ease with which cartel gunmen dispatched the Mexican army in a pitched battle in Sinaloa State this month, one would guess that the odds don’t favor the ­avocado farmers.

Or Mexico itself, for that matter — and this has ominous ­implications for the United States, too.

Flush North Americans — think millennials, in particular — love avocados; they will pay top dollar for them, which sets the market into motion. Most often this means good things. But not always.

Think cocaine and other ­illicit drugs.

As with avocados, drug dollars follow demand: A recent RAND Corporation study reports that Americans spent just shy of $150 billion on illegal narcotics in 2016. The bulk of this money goes to Mexico, which also has become a major conduit into the United States for synthetic opioids like Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, upping the cartels’ take.

War on terror

Exclusive: Baghdadi's aide was key to his capture - Iraqi intelligence sources

In their long hunt for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Iraqi intelligence teams secured a break in February 2018 after one of the Islamic State leader’s top aides gave them information on how he escaped capture for so many years, said two Iraqi security officials.

Baghdadi would sometimes hold strategy talks with his commanders in moving minibuses packed with vegetables in order to avoid detection, Ismael al-Ethawi told officials after he was arrested by Turkish authorities and handed to the Iraqis.

“Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi’s movements and places he used to hide,” one of the Iraqi security officials said.

“Ethawi gave us details on five men, including him, whom were meeting Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used,” he told Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Baghdadi died “whimpering and crying” in a raid by U.S. special forces in the Idlib region of northwest Syria.

Communication security

Why you should worry if you have a Chinese smartphone

Samantha Hoffman is an analyst of Chinese security issues at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi). She recently published a paper entitled Engineering Global Consent: The Chinese Communist Party’s Data-Driven Power Expansion.

Internet pioneers heralded a time when information would be set free, giving people everywhere unfiltered access to the world’s knowledge and bringing about the decline of authoritarian regimes… that’s not really happened has it?
Bill Clinton said that, for China, controlling free speech online would be like “nailing Jell-O to the wall”. I wish he had been right. But unfortunately, there was too much focus on the great firewall of China and not enough on how the Chinese Communist party was trying to shape its external environment.

Poll results

McLaughlin poll: 52% say impeachment is a 'stunt'

A new poll found 52% of Americans consider the Democrats' impeachment investigation of President Trump a "political stunt." The McLaughlin poll, the Gateway Pundit reported, also indicated 47% believe the president should not cooperate and 59% say it's just a waste of time and the Democrats "need to work with Republicans to solve the nation's problems. "Meanwhile, Breitbart reported, Gallup has admitted that its poll indicating 52% of Americans "now support Trump's impeachment and removal" may have included illegal aliens or non-citizen legal residents.Gallup also said it doesn't know how many of the poll respondents were registered voters.

Immigration security

Turkey vows to ‘open the gates’ to flood Europe with Syrian refugees

Turkey’s president vows to send millions of refugees to Europe if its countries do not back his proposal to settle them in a Syrian “safe zone.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned he would “open the gates” for asylum-seekers if European countries failed to support his plans to resettle them in Syria’s northeast, the Independent reported.

“If Turkey’s plans for the return [of the refugees] … is not supported, we will have no choice but to open our borders,” Erdogan warned.

Turkey already hosts about 3.6 million Syrians who fled conflict in their homeland, but wants to send up to 2 million back across the border.

Earlier this month, Erdogan told European leaders he would “send 3.6 million refugees your way” in retaliation for international criticism of his country’s military operation in northern Syria.

War on terror

ISIS target believed to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is killed in Syria: sources

The Islamic State group leader who reportedly had a $25 million bounty on his head is believed to have been killed in Syria.

A "high value ISIS target" -- believed to be Islamic State mastermind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi -- was killed by U.S.-led forces in Idlib, a well-placed military source told Fox News on Saturday night.

A senior Trump administration official later confirmed the source's account.

But at 9:23 p.m. Saturday, President Trump posted a Twitter message hinting at "very big" news.

Soon after, the White House issued a statement that major news would be announced there at 9 a.m. Sunday.

Newsweek reported late Saturday that Baghdadi was killed during a special operations mission that President Trump approved about a week ago.

In September, an audio recording purportedly by Baghdadi included a call for members of the extremist group to use any means necessary to free Muslims who were being detained "by Crusaders and their Shiite followers."

The U.S. had reportedly posted a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture of Baghdadi.

Earlier this year, Iraqi intelligence officials speaking to Fox News maintained he was lurking in Syrian border towns, often donning non-traditional or “regular” clothes, using a civilian car and making sure all those around him had no mobile phones or electronic devices in order to bypass detection.

Some experts had predicted that as time passed and ISIS losses in the Middle East started to mount, it was inevitable that Baghdadi would either be captured or killed.

Innovations & technologies

Invisible Tanks, Jets, and Armor: The Material of the Future

The United States Naval Institute has been looking into metamaterials as a means to better camouflage the United States military’s armored vehicles, submarines, and tanks. Metamaterials are designed to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum in such a way that vehicles coated in this material could be invisible to radars, sensors, and potentially the human eye.

Currently metamaterials are considered difficult to manufacture and we are still far from full-scale production of the material.

Metamaterials could have several military applications, as mentioned by Usni.org. Plastic and metal metamaterials can be engineered into patterns that result in a material that can manipulate electrical and magnetic fields.

When energy travels and interacts with an object, that same energy is then either reflected, absorbed, or dispersed. This is how most sensors, including our eyes, see objects, they measure the energy reflected or absorbed in materials.

Metamaterials do a better job of eliminating the reflection and absorption of the energy hitting them. This is how metamaterial play a part in remaining hidden to sensors.

Religion

Amazon synod calls for married priests, pope to reopen women deacons commission

 The Vatican gathering of Catholic bishops from the Amazon has called on Pope Francis to allow for the priestly ordination of married men on a regional basis in order to address a lack of ministers across the nine-nation region.

And after the 185 male voting members at the monthlong Synod of Bishops said in their final document that the idea of ordaining women as deacons had been "very present" during their discussions, Francis announced he will be summoning his commission on the issue back to work, and adding new members to its ranks. 

"I am going to take up the challenge … that you have put forward, that women be heard," the pontiff said in spontaneous remarks after close of the synod's business Oct. 26.

The dual announcements regarding possible new openings for Catholic ministry came at the end of an Oct. 6-27 gathering that focused on the serious environmental threats facing both the Amazon Basin and the people who have protected and called it home for centuries. 

National security risks

Risk Management And Black Swan Events

In 2007, statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined “Black Swan” as an event that “is an outlier,” as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations. Black Swans by that definition are mostly unforeseen, rare, and can be created by geo-political, economic, or from other unexpected events.

Black Swans bring challenges to risk management, especially in our rapidly transforming technological landscape. However, those transformative changes in emerging technology add to the ability to analytically forecast and try to mitigate Black Swan events.

Because of advanced computing and other emerging technologies, there are Black Swan events we can plan for, and help contain through risk management. While there are many scenarios. There are three categories that I believe we should apply risk management principles to including; 1) threats to the energy grid and critical infrastructure, 2) bio-terrorism and pandemics, and 3) the potential of malevolent artificial intelligence. 

Electromagnetic pulse

"Millions of Americans Could Die": Are We Ready for An EMP Attack?

Among the most important findings of 2004, 2008, and 2017 reports by the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack is that millions of Americans could die and the loss of our electronic civilization to manmade or natural EMP catastrophe would be a national doomsday.
Among the most important findings of 2004, 2008, and 2017 reports by the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack is that millions of Americans could die and the loss of our electronic civilization to manmade or natural EMP catastrophe would be a national doomsday. Therefore, EMP is one of a very small number of existential threats that demands immediate high-priority attention from the U.S. Government.

President Trump deserves the gratitude of every American for heeding EMP Commission warnings and issuing his “Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses” on March 26, 2019.

However, the President’s executive order to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures is in danger of being undermined by a small number of highly influential non-expert career bureaucrats in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. This cabal of about five members of the permanent federal bureaucracy were obstacles to national EMP preparedness during the Obama Administration— and today are entrusted by DHS and DOE with implementing President Trump’s EMP Executive Order.

Moreover, with the resignation of several key people at the top of the National Security Council staff, it is at best uncertain that the replacements will have the knowledge, experience, and drive to see that the President’s Executive Order is implemented, particularly in the face of resistance from career bureaucrats in league with domestic and foreign electric power monopolies.

Drug trafficking

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the US, but in some places, meth kills more

Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug in the United States. But in some areas of the country, methamphetamine kills more people.
A new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics found that fentanyl is the drug most commonly identified in fatal overdoses. In 2017, fentanyl was associated with 38.9% of all drug overdose deaths, an increase from 2016, when it was associated with 29% of all fatal overdoses. This is the second year that CDC analyzed fatal overdoses in this way.
In 2017, heroin was associated with 22.8% of all fatal overdoses. Cocaine, a stimulant, was involved in 21.3% and methamphetamine, also a stimulant, was involved in 13.3%.
Other drugs linked to overdose deaths were benzodiazepines; diphenhydramine, an antihistamine; and gabapentin, an anticonvulsant.

Outer space

NATO’s going to call space a war zone, but don’t worry there won’t be any fighting

At an upcoming summit in early December, NATO is expected to declare space as a “warfighting domain,” partly in response to new developments in technology.

If it does declare space a war zone, NATO could start using space weapons that can destroy satellites or incoming enemy missiles. But what is this technology and how could it enable a war?

In a recent first for space technology, Russia has launched a commercial satellite specifically designed to rendezvous with other satellites. The purpose of this vehicle is peaceful: it will perform maintenance tasks on other satellites in orbit.

The fact that commercial companies have this capability probably means that it already exists for global military powers. This has caught the attention of NATO. If a country or company can maneuver its own satellites into close proximity of others, then it can do so for military or sabotage purposes – potentially without detection.